Cuba vs. Helms-Burton Act: Against my future, we do not understand each other
Young Cuban teenagers, artistic education students and professors of the dance specialty, explain with their words what the application of the U. S. Helms-Burton Act against the island would mean in their training and future as artists.
In order to be able to study in an art school, mainly in the capitalist world, lessons have a very high cost. And then here in Cuba, it’s completely different, lessons are for free here, says Zujayla Fernández, a young dance professor of the National School of Art. Like her, other students were leaving their views:
Gabriela Pérez (student): I always envisaged that I would work, because I want to be a dancer, I’m going to achieve it, I’m going to enter my art school, I’m going to train myself as a professional.
Zujayla: Here in Cuba, what is demanded from them is not a salary that their parents can afford, but the technical requirement they may have in school.
Sixela de la Caridad (student): If it weren’t for free, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to be sitting here, taking ballet, technique and folklore lessons, which is what motivates me and what I like for my future.
Gabriela: My family wouldn’t have how to afford this (the school). And I couldn’t fulfill my dream of being a dancer.
Zujayla: The truth is that education would never be private, because it would be like an oppression to talent.
Sixela: It (privatization) would reduce the massification of the students for dance training.
Héctor Alejandro Ramírez (student): I believe that Cuba, the Cuban government, and all the authorities will not allow that the Helms-Burton Act becomes effective, because I think it is a genocidal law that has no future, that has no basis and that has no consistency because this Revolution is Cuban for over 60 years.
Sixela: We may jeopardize the future of the cultural level of our Revolution, everything we have cultivated in our dance, such as identity, Cubanness, idiosyncrasy, thanks to this school, which is a revolutionary achievement.
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