{"id":14457,"date":"2021-07-29T03:34:28","date_gmt":"2021-07-29T07:34:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.palabranueva.net\/guanabacoa\/"},"modified":"2021-07-29T04:49:21","modified_gmt":"2021-07-29T08:49:21","slug":"guanabacoa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.palabranueva.net\/en\/guanabacoa\/","title":{"rendered":"Memoirs of a Piarist priest in Guanabacoa"},"content":{"rendered":"

In remembrance of my uncle, Jes\u00fas Lamelas Rom\u00e1n, who died in 1946, a Piarist seminarian from El Buen Pastor. R. I. P.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

With the coming to power of Fidel Castro, vast social, political and economic transformations took place, which also affected the private secular and religious schools. June 7 of this year marked the sixtieth anniversary of the publication in the Official Gazette of the Law of Nationalization of Education.1<\/p>\n

For this reason, it is appropriate to analyze the effects caused by the intervention process six decades after its application. A reliable sample of the result obtained is constituted by the Pious Schools and in particular the one located in the municipality of Guanabacoa.<\/p>\n

History assures that when the invasion by Playa Gir\u00f3n took place on April 16, 1961, the militiamen occupied the Piarists of Guanabacoa. However, classes continued and the children were examined as scheduled.2<\/p>\n

However, the last graduation took place on June 18, 1960 because on May 2, 1961, still without concluding the 1960-1961 academic year and the school being occupied, the military chiefs presented themselves to the superior of the order, Father Pedro Carceller. , and they notified him that the center was officially nationalized.3 In this way, the school was confiscated thirty-six days before the corresponding legislation was published in the Gazette. The temple and the novitiate were not seized. The students and lay teachers were distributed among other teaching centers where they were able to conclude the school year.4<\/p>\n

Currently, at the busy corner of Quint\u00edn Banderas and M\u00e1ximo G\u00f3mez streets, passersby are amazed to discover at six meters high, the empty niche with the broken glass that housed an image of Saint Anthony of Padua, whose last “miracle” in the town of Pepe Antonio it was to have disappeared, before public view, without anyone noticing the “supernatural” feat.<\/p>\n

The deplorable vacancy only serves as a warning to the walker interested in the history of education, so that he is not depressed by the dire state of the old school grounds sixty years after the intervention.<\/p>\n

If the pilgrim scholar continued his journey to the entire school complex – cloister, classrooms and sports fields -, which includes some fifteen thousand square meters, the initial astonishment would be transformed into sadness, despite the warning of the Padua miracle worker, when contemplating the state “Destructive” of what was until 1961 one of the best Catholic schools in Latin America and the Caribbean, if not the best in the entire American continent.<\/p>\n

The deterioration has advanced so much that the walls and ceilings are clearly seen about to fall on the workers of the Municipality of Education of Guanabacoa, who work in the offices installed in the immense building for more than twenty years, despite the danger .<\/p>\n

Only the novitiate house is spared from decline and it was in this place that the Piarist Father Ricardo Alberto Sola Ros, rector and superior of the order in Cuba, had the kindness to expose a succinct history of the Order of the Clerics to the New Word. Poor Regulars of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools, better known as Piarists.<\/p>\n