Dimas Castellanos, Translator: Unstated
On the 50th anniversary of the University Reform enacted in January
1962, the newspaper Granma published on Monday, January 9, 2012, an
article entitled University and Society by Armando Hart Dávalos, in
which he proposes that "after the triumph of the Revolution university
reform was essential to realizing the final link between the university
and the people and the new national socio-economic reality … "
In the article he omits the most significant: the history that led to
the loss of University Autonomy as the nerve center of civil society.
This simplification of the antecedents allows Hart to confer a
definitive character on the reform of 1962, as if social processes have
a point of closure.
Jose Ortega y Gasset, in Mission of the University and other related
essays, declared: "Man inherently belongs to a generation and every
generation is not installed in any place, but with great precision on
the previous. This means that it is forced live up to the times and
especially to the height of the ideas of the time."
Between the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Father José
Agustín Caballero, Tomás Romay Chacón, Félix Varela, José de la Luz y
Caballero, José Martí and Enrique José Varona, among many others, made
strenuous efforts to situate education at the height of its times. It
follows that education reform is an ongoing process that does not
support "definitive" and that from this continuity emerged University
Autonomy as unavoidable necessity of modernism.
In the Republic, Carlos de la Torre, in his inaugural speech as Rector
of the University of Havana in 1921, outlined a program to reform the
university and achieve University Autonomy, which for him was: "to
authorize the University to manage in all its affairs in full
independence, except as regards the management of its funds." The
following year the Rector of the University of Buenos Aires, Joseph
Maples, gave a lecture on "the evolution of Argentine universities," in
which he explained the process begun with the manifesto of Cordoba,
1918, which led to a university reform whose centerpiece was the
autonomy and the involvement of students in university government.
In this context a group of Cuban students published a manifesto in which
they called for the formation of student association, which was founded
in December 1922 under the name of Federation of University Students
(FEU). Subsequently, on January 10, 1923, the fledgling federation
issued the Document of the University Reform Program in Cuba, which
called for "The status of the university and its autonomy in economic
and educational matters." To remedy the situation, Enrique Jose Varona
proposed creating a commission composed of professors and students to
study the project, which upon acceptance led to the establishment of the
Joint Commission, composed of the Rector, teachers and members of the
FEU and recognized by Presidential Decree.
The project was analyzed by the Joint Commission, the Rector, the Board,
teachers and students who went to the Presidential Palace and submitted
to President Alfredo Zayas, the bases of the bill for University
Autonomy. Zayas, before the force of the reform movement, legally
recognized the FEU and authorized the creation of the University
Assembly, composed of professors, graduates and students. The advance
led reform in October 1923, at the First National Student Congress,
which demanded the repeal of the Platt Amendment and agreed to establish
the José Martí Popular University to open the doors of the higher
educational establishment to the workers.
During the government of Gerardo Machado the University Assembly was
dissolved and the FEU outlawed, but the struggle continued. Finally on
September 10, 1933, after the fall of Machado, the Government of the
Hundred Days, led by Ramon Grau San Martin issued Decree Law 2059 of
October 1933, which enacted University Autonomy. Subsequently, the
failure of the March 1935 strike, the University was taken over
militarily and the government revoked the autonomy.
In 1939, under President Federico Laredo Bru, University Autonomy was
restored and the Constituent Assembly was convened which adopted and
drafted the Constitution of 1940, which, in Article 53, upheld the
constitutionality of the Autonomous University as follows: "The
University of Havana is autonomous and shall be governed in accordance
with its Statutes and the Law by which they will be tempered." Thanks to
this they could form the forces that faced the military coup of 1952,
though Fulgencio Batista overthrew the dangerous University Autonomy
with the repeal of the Constitution of 1940.
In January 1959, rather than the promise of restoring the 1940
Constitution, as we read in History Will Absolve Me, it was reformed,
without consultation, to confer to the Prime Minister the powers of Head
of Government and to the Council of Ministers functions of Congress, an
amendment similar to what Batista had done with the statutes that
replaced the constitution after the 1952 coup. It then proceeded to
dismantle civil society and all its instruments, including the
University Autonomy.
To accomplish this, the Supreme Council of Universities was created,
made up of professors and students from three universities in the
country and government representatives. This Council developed the draft
University Reform presented on January 10, 1962. That same year, the
Cuban Communist leader, Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, in an article published
in the press, stated that the new university would be governed jointly
by teachers and students, but said, "to the extent that the university
revolution is the work of a real revolution and that socialism presides
over the transformations, we can not think of teachers and students as
two opposing groups… A professor of revolutionary consciousness, guided
by Marxism-Leninism and a member of that ideology for years [he was
referring to Juan Marinello], will have no need of the watchful presence
of students with him in the governance of the University, because he
will have the maturity to approach problems of higher education with
certain criteria. "
Thus, University Autonomy, without having been lawfully repealed, in
fact ceased to exist. Since then the University, one of the most
important sources of social change in our history, was rendered
inoperable for that purpose. One of its worst consequences is that under
such control, the State raised the slogan of "The University is for the
revolutionaries," which resulted in the expulsion of hundreds of
students and teachers who did not share the ideology of the system.
The result could be no other. With the intention of giving finality to a
changing process, the University, with the loss of autonomy, ceased to
be nerve center of civil society. Therefore, the changes that are taking
place in the economy have to be complemented by changes in the rights
and freedoms, including University Autonomy, which is an inescapable
necessity to put the University in step with the times.
(Published in Diario de Cuba on Monday, January 16, 2012:
http://www.diariodecuba.com/cuba/9112-reforma-universitaria-sin-autonomía)
January 20 2012
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