BY LUIS MADRID
HAVANA, Cuba-"Che believed the duty of the socialist producer was to produce an adequate supply of goods, with the utmost quality, and at the lowest cost," said Orlando Borrego at a June 14 meeting here.
Borrego was speaking at an event commemorating the birthday of Ernesto Che Guevara. Che would have been 67.
The meeting was the first activity organized by the newly established Che Guevara Studies Department at the University of Havana. The department, part of the Latin American Department of Social Sciences (FLACSO), was launched March 2 to develop "the research, study, and the dissemination of the thought, revolutionary activity, and life of Che."
Argentine-born, Guevara was one of the central leaders of the July 26 Movement and the Rebel Army that led Cuban workers and peasants to overthrow the U.S.-backed dictatorship on Jan. 1, 1959. In the mid-60s he departed from Cuba to help advance the anti-imperialist and anti- capitalist struggle developing in the Southern Cone of Latin America. Guevara was captured by the Bolivian army in a CIA- organized operation Oct. 8, 1967, and murdered the following day.
Delia Luisa López, chair of the new department, presided at the event. Tirso Sáenz and Salvador Vilaseca gave presentations. "Che and I exchanged courses," said Vilaseca, who taught math to Che in the early '60s while the Cuban leader was helping to guide the socialist transformation of banking and industry. "I taught him mathematics; he taught me revolution." Also a former president of the University of Havana, Vilaseca is the honorary chair of the new department.
Borrego and Sáenz were among those who worked closely with Che in the early years of the revolution in areas relating to the development of industry, technology, and the economy. Sáenz spoke of the difficulties at the beginning of the process. In the wake of the revolution, said Sáenz, "70 percent of Cuba's engineers left the country; and we had not yet established relations with Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. "Being able to keep production going with the engineers who stayed was in and of itself a triumph," Sáenz added.
In addition to Che's insistence on promoting disciplined habits of work, and his interest in developing a system of incentives, both material and moral, all three speakers underlined Che's emphasis on the development of revolutionary consciousness. They pointed to the relevance of Che's perspectives for Cuba today.
Borrego is a former minister of the sugar industry who also fought in Che's column in the revolutionary army. Borrego recalled that "Che used to draw two curves and say: `I prefer a curve of development of productivity that is less pronounced, as long as the curve of the development of consciousness follows it very closely so that they eventually meet." Borrego pointed to this as a guide for the further development of both the productive forces and consciousness today.
The Che Guevara studies department will initiate a course in the academic year that begins in September. It is the first in a series of projections for the next two years. These include a number of conferences and an essay competition on Che's life and thought. The department also plans to organize the publication of documents by Che not yet in print. As a token of that pledge, a pamphlet containing three little-known speeches by Guevara to university students was distributed to those attending the June 14 launching of the department.