Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic urged students:
“Study with passion and defend the concept that the economic and social crisis they are trying to impose on us with the intensification of the blockade should never become a spiritual, educational, knowledge and humanistic crisis.”
Following the national opening ceremony for the 2026–2027 academic year in Higher Education, held at the University of Matanzas, the Cuban president also urged future professionals to dedicate themselves to exploring the paths of knowledge and the roads of science and innovation.
“Do not use any of our shortcomings as a pretext to justify a lack of knowledge or poor teaching results; be rebellious, defenders of innovation, nonconformists, but also responsibly join in seeking the solutions that the Cuban nation needs, that Cuban society demands,” he added in statements to the press.
In assessing the relevance of the course at this level of education, amidst a difficult context, the Cuban president commented that it constitutes an expression of a country that does not yield to the intensification of the economic, commercial, and financial blockade, in addition to the genocidal effects of the United States’ energy blockade against Cuba.
“I would say that it is an act of educational resistance, scientific resistance, and cultural resistance, because precisely in higher education we defend that: educational training, the defense of our pedagogy, of our university pedagogical history, science, and innovation as one of the pillars for overcoming adversity. Here we defend the nation, socialism, the Revolution, our values; it is our response to the colonial-cultural domination they want to impose on us, and therefore, it is above all an act of ideological resistance.”
The President also highlighted its historical significance, because it is a year that Higher Education is dedicating to the centenary of Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro (1926-2016) and to the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Ministry of Higher Education: “Although in retrospect it may seem like a normal thing, exactly 50 years ago, when Fidel was 50 years old, he consolidated an idea that had already emerged since the Moncada attack, which was how the country would become one great university.”
This Thursday, with the University of Matanzas as the venue, the national event marking the start of the 2026-2027 academic year in Higher Education reaffirmed the commitment to the work of the Commander-in-Chief and the certainty that the future of the Revolution is also defined in the training of competent professionals with a social and humanistic vocation.
[ SOURCE: AGENCIA CUBANA DE NOTICIAS ]
