At just 22 years old she had already been widowed. She put her two young children in the care of her parents and decided to get a scholarship to be able to get ahead and pass the fourth grade of school. In just over a decade he conquered all levels of education, in the midst of sugar harvests and other difficult contests, until in 1975 he graduated as an agronomist from the University of Havana.
Broadly speaking, it is said to be easy, but the life of Orestes Lucio González Jiménez has been a constant battle. However, at 82 years of life he is proud to have dedicated 54 to teaching, 40 of them to the University of Pinar del Río.
FROM NIQUERO TO SAN ANDRÉS
Professor Orestes is one of the most veterans of Famsa, as the former San Andrés Mountain Faculty is still known, today headquarters attached to the Faculty of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences of the UPR and, although he feels an indescribable attachment to the institution, confesses that it was the need for housing that led him to it, more than three decades ago.
From the moment we exchange the first words, the typical accent of eastern Cuba is noticeable. Thus, he tells me how, from a small rural town in Niquero, Granma, he came to the other end of the Island to put down roots and give his life to teaching.
“I was born in Campechuela, but we moved to Niquero and I grew up there. In those days, having a fourth grade was something tremendous. Notice that I went to Brigadier Conrado Benítez. But my parents always wanted me to improve and I continued studying.
“My first wife died giving birth to our second child. He was only 20 years old. So I decided to get a scholarship and while I was studying, at an accelerated speed, I experienced stages in which the lessons were interrupted and I had to leave for the sugar or rice harvest. They were hard times,” she recalls.
We talked in one of the Famsa hallways. Before telling me how he came to live in one of the 10 little houses that they built to bring the teachers closer to the center, he tells me about his younger years in that little town of Niquero, about when from his house the shots from the battle of Alegría de Pío could be heard. , of the news of the revolutionary triumph, of Girón, the October Crisis and the five days of Cyclone Flora.
“At the age of 24 I went to Cauto to promote a rice farm, and there I learned about rice cultivation until I ended up in Havana where I stayed as a teacher to train intermediate technicians, even without finishing school.
“In the capital I met my second wife and, since phosphorus and alcohol cannot be around, we had two children. Then we moved to Cajálbana, to the Forestry Polytechnic, because in Havana we had nowhere to live. Then a friend asked me to join the University of Pinar del Río to teach.”
As an agronomist, he spent 10 years at the UPR, but the distance from his family continued to be an obstacle, until upon learning about the new homes in the community of Cantarrana, the same university gave him the opportunity and he decided to go to San Andrés until today.
“I have the bad habit of not knowing how to say no, so in the Forest races I have given everything. Every time a new subject came out they gave it to me. In this school I have taught Phytotechnics, Fruit Trees, Experimentation… The truth is that I had to learn very hard, but I don’t regret it. “It’s wonderful to have gone through all that.”
IN LOVE WITH AGRONOMY, WITH TEACHING
Professor Orestes lives alone. He also lost his second wife. He affectionately talks about his four children, his grandchildren, and even the great-grandson who has come to fill his days with joy.
Although he has been retired for years, he still remains in the Famsa cloister. His more than eight decades have not clouded his ability to teach or his clarity of knowledge. However, he believes that it is time to take a break, because health demands it.
“I live in love with my career. Every time I think about it being my last semester, I get a lump in my throat. And not only for the Faculty, but for the teaching, for the exchange, for the human warmth between the teacher and the student. Each student is a world, and one gets to know so many worlds that this shapes the love for what he or she does.
“Although I am already thinking about retiring due to health problems, I always say that I have a young man inside. That’s why I get angry every time I hear people say that it can’t be done, how can it not be possible?
And with that same conviction he speaks about today’s challenges in agriculture, about the new generations of engineers, about the future of a country that has been through so much.
“Why has agriculture not responded as it should? he asks me without leaving room for an answer. Well, because before we had to go out and look as good as we could, and what we had experienced was very hard. However, now parents are very overprotective of their children, ‘don’t do this, don’t do that’, and logically, children become very dependent, so when they are given a tough task, the answer is no. , or excuses come.
“That is one of the reasons why today engineers are trained who are only thinking about graduating and going to other places. Or sometimes, when you give a practical class, you hear them protesting because they have to get in the mud. So, what agronomists are we training?
“We are to blame. We get used to being like the little bird that opens its mouth, gets the worm and remains in the nest without moving. We abuse that, and in life you have to be pretty.
“Agriculture is our main wealth, and it has been much vilified. It is incredible that being an eminently agricultural country, the basic basket currently comes from imports, that we have to wait for a ship to arrive with rice, beans, sugar and coffee. We rest on our laurels. In most countries, agriculture is subsidized, because you have to contribute to it, because it is what guarantees food.”
Art is also part of Professor Orestes’ life. There are days when you need it more than others.
“After my second wife passed away, there were nights when it was three in the morning and I was still painting. When I do it it’s like time stops and all the problems go away. I have a few things done, saved.”
Although he regrets not having the conditions to write his memoirs, he is proud to have written a book on Forest Experimentation that is preserved at the University. A text for which he had to prepare in several experimental stations in Cuba and which contributed a lot to his career.
Almost at the end of the dialogue, he looks around some of the surroundings, like someone who nostalgically caresses what has been his home for a long time. Then he immediately emphasizes: “What a teacher should never lack is love for what he does.”
