OCLAE celebrates its 55-year-long struggle

HAVANA, Cuba, Aug 9 (ACN) Resolute, tireless, belligerent and vital, like its more than 100 million young members, the Latin American and Caribbean Continental Organization of Students (OCLAE) celebrates its 55th anniversary on August 11.

The students’ extremely prominent role in the great struggles currently under way in countries like Colombia, Chile, Brazil and Fidel's revolutionary Cuba, endorses the theme of this new commemoration: "Standing up for Education, Unity and Anti-imperialism", OCLAE president Leonel Perez Freeman, a fourth-year medical student, told ACN.

COVID-19 makes it impossible to gather the General Secretariat in Havana to celebrate the new birthday and convene the 19th Latin American and Caribbean Congress of Students (CLAE), he remarked. “However, the pandemic will not rain on our parade, as there will be other actions in Cuba and across the continent both in streets, schools and social networks and within OCLAE’s 36 organizations from 22 countries.”

Leading the OCLAE on behalf of the Federation of University Students of Cuba, Perez Freeman confirmed that, come August 11, there will be a main ceremony at the José Martí Memorial, an excellent occasion to confer the 55th Anniversary Medal to personalities and institutions closely linked to and supportive of the continental students movement.

“The party will go on after Wednesday,” he added, “as in August 12 we will celebrate International Youth Day and on the 13th the 95 years of eternal life of Commander Fidel, teacher of revolutionaries, guide and inspiration of the youth and students movement and founder and mentor of our Organization.”

There will be as well an anti-imperialist panel to discuss the challenges posed by the U.S. hegemonic policies of interference in Latin America and the Caribbean and a mobilization in support of food production, a top priority these days for the new generations of Cubans, as is the fight against the pandemic.

“We have beautiful days of jubilation and combat ahead to honor, recognize and reflect on the history, the present and the future of an Organization indissolubly linked to the life of the continent as much as on what to do to help fulfill the dreams of our heroes and martyrs about a united, free and prosperous Great Homeland,” Perez Freeman concluded.