August, 2022.- "The experienced teachers, who shared with us at the school in the countryside, praised us for the work we did because we gave our body and soul to the task." Stated the Educator Luis Gustavo Fernández Vega, better known as Guicho, who was a member of the II Contingent of the Manuel Ascunce Domenech Pedagogical Detachment in the specialty of History.
Like other educators, his incorporation into the pedagogical detachment was in response to a call by Commander in Chief Fidel Castro at the closing of the II National Congress of the Union of Young Communists (UJC).
“I remember that I was in the tenth grade at the Ignacio Agramonte Urban Basic Secondary School in Nuevitas when the call was made and a commission from the municipal UJC met with us and raised with us the need stated by Fidel based on an explosion of enrollment that It happened in the country, in that decade of the '70s, and it was necessary to build dozens of schools in the countryside.
We went from being students to professors in the one that was beginning, and from September 1973 to July 1978 I was a student at the Faculty of Pedagogy of the University of Camagüey, where we received a careful prior preparation with highly experienced professors. This allowed us to face the assignment, combining studies with teaching in rural schools in the Sierra de Cubitas area.
He says that many times they gave classes to boys who the previous year were his classmates in high school, but they took it with great seriousness and enthusiasm; therefore, it did not represent any inconvenience.
“This was one of the most significant and decisive plans carried out regarding the education of Cubans after the Literacy Campaign of 1961, and it meant a revolution within the cultural revolution that was taking place on the Island. During the first decades after the triumph of January 1959.
That brilliant idea of Fidel's, gave a truly surprising result with concrete results that are still palpable because many of the leaders, both from Education and from other Government instances, from Scientific Research of Universities, among others, came from there, of that formation that the Manuel Ascunce Domenech Pedagogical Detachment experienced”.
Fernández Vega, who maintains communication with many of those who were his colleagues in that mission, affirms that his generation is proud to have fulfilled that task and satisfied to see that today many of his students have become successful professionals who recognize them and greet them happily.
“I am sure that the members of Manuel Ascunce were the answer that the country expected at that time, and thus we helped solve the problem that arose with that explosion of enrollment when tens of thousands of children reached a level of education without that there were enough teachers, or schools created to accept that avalanche product of the transformations that the Revolution made from its beginnings. However, this initiative by Fidel was something well thought out and designed.”
After five years of training, they studied two more courses to complete their degree, and the graduation ceremonies were attended by Fidel.
It was a task created by him, designed by him, followed by him and until the very end, when each one of us young people graduated, he was present, that filled us with pride, and will accompany us throughout our working lives, even in the retirement stage of many of us we continue with the same feelings, the same enthusiasm and the same decision to continue helping as we have done”. 
This is corroborated since Guicho was located in Nuevitas, after graduating from Sierra de Cubitas, and by the educational improvement of the former Institute for Educational Improvement (IPE) he served as a professor of Marxism-Leninism to serve teachers in training, he worked with all kinds of teaching staff, from trainers, nursery school educators, teaching assistants, primary and secondary teachers, and in bachelor's degrees.
After working for a few years at the IPE, and at the same time as a teacher at the municipal school of the Communist Party of Cuba. Voluntarily, he was recruited by the Bureau of the partisan organization and they proposed him to direct the Municipal School of the PCC, a task that he assumed and fulfilled for eight years.
Later, he carried out other tasks in the Municipal Government, the Culture Sector, Public Health, the local Nuevavisión telecenter (in the first years of its foundation) in the same manner, when the University Headquarters was created, he also worked eight years in it.
Likewise, in the Cuban Registry of Ships, as a specialist in the Quality Control System, she gave classes on the subject to the different companies that were contracted, and her working years were completed in the Astilleros del Oriente Base Business Unit (ASTOR) in Nuevitas, where he gave lectures on Internal Control.
“In one way or another, from the moment I joined the Manuel Ascunce Domenech pedagogical detachment in 1973 until I retired, and even afterward, I have always remained linked to teaching, teaching what I learned to other colleagues who have needed it. And I am proud that I fulfilled the task”.
During the search for elements to contribute to this communicative product, Guicho smiled when leafing through photos belonging to the time in which he was part of the contingent, in which he appears with his schoolmates, his wife Daisy Díaz Martínez, and as part of a musical group in the one who represented the school in various festivals of amateur artists.
During the search for elements to contribute to this communicative product, Guicho smiled when leafing through photos belonging to the time in which he was part of the contingent, in which he appears with his schoolmates, his wife Daisy Díaz Martínez, and as part of a musical group in the one who represented the school in various festivals of amateur artists.
To highlight the performance of educators who, from a very young age, assumed the responsibility of teaching the new generations of Cubans and who have so many stories to tell, this reporter keeps interviewing nueviteros who formed the Manuel Ascunce, a detachment that just celebrated its half-century this May 19 .
