“What we see and observe in our nation and in secular life today is the result of what had been sown, what had been taught and what had been induced [in the nation] for years; here is its beginning. It is an agricultural principle, but is works here as well. Everything that you sow is also what you are going to reap. And the rigid structure and rigid forms [of life], obstinate slogans and topics and mottoes and phrases that we can observe today in the majority of Cubans, all over the nation, it has its origin in the basic education, it has its origin in upbringing that has been given to the nation for years. Or maybe there is someone [who resists], but even though we see today that some people are protesting, using the culture or some other sphere and that they are going to talk about a different topic, what if that person is compromised by the form of government or by the political totalitarian hegemony, that we have seen and still see in the television, in the radio and in the printed press, local as well as national? There is no room for a different form of education, for a different form of upbringing, than the one that is already established.”
“When we were of that age, we were already producing for our country. When I consider it, I can tell you that I have paid my studies at least three times over, including the salaries of those who taught us, those who organized our studies during secondary education as well as during higher secondary schooling. This stage therefore did not bring much satisfaction to our own lives.”
“The idea that stood behind this kind of schooling practiced in the rural schools, from whence would come the idea, I think that what they wanted to do was to separate the young people of that time, who were of certain age, in order to instill in them a certain kind of thinking, to create or to foment an ideology, and they took all the time in the world, to achieve and to pursue the project of formation of those young boys and girls who studied there. Today, many of us, those young people who studied there, we have met, because we have memories of sharing this stage of our adolescence and of getting to know each other more deeply. And we have memories of meeting our own brothers and sisters, whom we have met during this stage of our adolescence.”
Valerio Ganem Mendoza was born in Palma Soriano, municipality of the province Santiago de Cuba, on the 19th of February 1970. Later, he was raised in Manacas, a town which forms the part of the municipality of Tercer Frente, located in Sierra Maestra, and subsequently he moved to Contramaestre, where he attended a primary school until the sixth grade. As an adolescent, he went to study to Isla de la Juventud, where he attended a rural school and where he, according to his own testimony, used to carry out various labours in other to pay for his studies. He finished his military studies in eleven months and graduated as a police sergeant instructor. He accepted the faith in Christ at a very young age during a visit of the Pentecostal church located on Isla de la Juventud. He started a process of conversion to Christianity and later he became a pastor. The church that he presides over does not belong to the Church Council of Cuba, and as a result, he experienced various legal problems with the police and the state security. Currently he resides in Cuba in the municipality of Contramastre in the province of Santiago de Cuba.
