The Ghost Colleges

The Ghost Colleges / Fernando Damaso
Posted on May 6, 2013

Some, hopelessly lost, a few dedicated to other purposes with better
luck, others collapsing, and most in an advanced state of accumulated
deterioration, the large Havana private schools, both religious and
secular, that existed before 1959, are irrefutable proof of
irresponsibility and negligence with respect to the care of national
possessions.

La Salle of Vedado, the Marists of the Vibora, the church schools of
Guanabacoa, Havana and the Vibora, Baldor, the Edison Institute, the
Ursulines, St. George's, Arturo Montori, Our Lady of the Rosary, Our
Lady of Pilar, others, both male and female or mixed, without years of
maintenance or repair or shoddy repairs and a bit of "rouge" on their
facades, are sad bad examples that everyone can see. And something
similar happens with those in other provinces.

Major financial resources were dedicated to building boarding schools in
the countryside, and not on preserving the existing architecture
dedicated to teaching, during the years of the fever to link
agricultural work and study at all costs, in a narrow interpretation of
a Jose Marti, precept. The large private schools, designed and built to
meet all educational requirements, are now old ghosts scattered around
our cities. The agriculture-education experiment, both from the point of
view of teaching as well as production and economics, now most of these
junior high and high schools in the countryside are also abandoned and
in a deplorable state, or in the process of adaptation as homes and
shelters for farmers and agricultural workers.

The large private schools were stripped of their original names, renamed
using the official ideological saints and totally transformed, not for
the better, into gray institutions, they have lost their personality and
traditions, achieved in years of the exercise of teaching. In addition
to these losses, the generational link is also lost where grandparents,
parents, sons and daughters and grandchildren were students at the same
school, becoming teachers and students in a large family, to which
belonged for life. To be a graduate of La Salle, of the Marist,s of
Edison, of Belén or the Ursulines, to cite just a few examples, was part
of personal identity and proclaimed with healthy pride.

Despite the time elapsed and the many avatars, from time to time we find
former students of these schools, who mostly remember their school days,
and their teachers and classmates and some transcendental moments spent
in their classrooms and patios fondly and with nostalgia. It is true
that, with the first storm winds of the "hurricane of January," a
considerable number left the country and those who stayed, the few,
molded their lives to the new imposed conditions in order to survive,
now without the possibility to reunions every five or ten years in the
same school, as this had ceased to be.

There are, not officially recognized, some alumni fraternities in the
country, which join together according to the colleges they belonged to.
I know in detail of the Piarist Alumni Fraternity, comprising the male
alumni of Havana and Vibora and the alumnae of El Cerro, which, despite
many difficulties, and the continued aging of its members, meets every
three months, in the old, rundown places that were the Pious Schools of
Havana in San Rafael and Manrique.

On the agenda, they regularly speak of the successes and achievements of
their members and their needs and problems, as well as reports on the
deceased in the last quarter, they are old professors or students. Also
they learn about the major Piarist activities in other countries, where
these schools maintain their presence.

These quarterly meetings become a forum for fellowship and friendship,
despite passing of the years. Alumni of the Marists, De La Salle and
Belén, to a greater or lesser extent, also have them. All function due
to the tenacity of their members who don't accept the disappearance of
an important era in education in Cuba.

Sometimes, going over and over the old Reports of each course, which was
kept in the majority of the schools, have images of those years with the
known names and faces, and we never stop comparing these to the present.
Then the memories take on their own life where poets, engineers,
architects, artists, lawyers, teachers, soldiers, traders, businessmen
and even politicians, of either sex, all appear, who, in earlier times,
were mere students of these schools. Each one marked by a different
destiny, but most with a great longing for those unrepeatable times and
the absurd and unnecessary loss of a tradition.

To save the great schools that are still standing, should be a demand
and citizen outcry, as they constitute material and historical value, as
well as being an important part of the identity of the municipalities,
provinces and the country, and even more of generations of Cubans.

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