In my many hours enjoying reading, I once read a sentence from El Diablo Ilustrado, where it assures that literature is a door to the infinite world of knowledge.

Today I want to tell you how a teacher was the magic key for a generation of young people, who are very grateful for her love for letters and knowledge.

The founder

The teacher Martha Ofelia de la Torre, always enjoyed challenges, that’s why, in 1970, in her school located in Havana Square, she suggests to children to write about an experience, it could be a poetry or a story, she was impressed by the writings of two students, she found them very talented and decided she should support them.

From the municipal directorate of Education, they asked for a teacher to simultaneously go from her school to Renato Guitar school, located in Martí Square, she finally stayed in the second one, but she continued with writing classes in both. She did not know yet that those classes were literary workshops.

Shortly after this beginning, a student went without permission to have lunch at his house, she made stay overtime and little Luis Ariel, in order to obtain her forgiveness, wrote a poem to the teacher; where he expressed that she was shaping him to be better.

When the child’s mother came to look for him, she saw his work and that of the other classmates, she noticed that there was a literary workshop there and finally Martha’s class had a name.

Workshops

As not everyone could write with equal fluency, the students who painted brought to color what others described in their work; integrating two workshops.

Each year the name of the workshop varied according to some occasion, in 1971 it was dedicated to Nicolás Guillen who was still alive and they sent him an album with their writings, which were complimented by the poet.

A year that set standards was 1973, dedicated to the centenary of Ignacio Agramonte, they made their Camagüey route and visited El Potrero, Las Clavellinas, the Park and all the news at that time related to the admirable figure of him.

The students

From that group there are still brilliant students in contact, such as María del Carmen Pontón, now the director of Casa Finlay, and Susana Cortez, current quality specialist at Radio Cadena Agramonte.

From there, exchanges very close to El Mayor were born, since they met her granddaughter Lucia, former owner of the current marriage palace and together with her, they discovered new nuances in the mystical figure of the Bayardo. She left her signature on the album that summarizes children works and that to this day, she treasures to donate to an institution interested in preserving it.

Literature goes to the ether

The work also went to a new, more encompassing space. A program called Para ti Pionero appears on the radio, which was broadcasted at 5:00 pm from Monday to Friday; and they were recorded on Sundays for the whole week, with the voice of the deceased announcer Luis Bastián and children.

She wrote the scripts and a friend helped her in the writing, there they addressed Camagüey values ​​and other places of cultural historical interest in Cuba. It aired from 1973 to 1978. When the children went to secondary school, the work became more difficult and the space disappeared.

Last year to celebrate the anniversary of Cuban radio, that first script of that children’s program was donated by Martha.

Longings

With regret and lowering her voice, Martha comments that it hurts her that those children’s literary workshops have been missed in some schools. She is very sorry that the radio program will also end, because she assures that although not all would become writers, they would learn to appreciate reading, to show interest in reading different topics and improving themselves. In this way, the teaching profession fulfills its mission, by forming a society of people more cultured and attached to their heritage and roots.

It has been a beautiful afternoon, we enjoyed a gathering with a small audience, talking about important literary works, we toasted with a drink of ha ha ​​ha (special family cocktail) and the teacher Martha Ofelia remembered her happy days in the classrooms, which without doubts, were her greatest passion.

Translated by: Aileen Álvarez García