Raúl Ferrer Pérez

Cuban pedagogue and poet, symbol of the Literacy Campaign and adult education.

He was born in the town of Meneses, municipality of Yaguajay in central Cuba.

In 1933 he graduated with a degree in Sciences and Letters from the Marist Brothers school and proposed to begin medical studies, but the University of La Habana had been closed by Gerardo Machado.

Due to economic necessity he began working as a sugar worker at the Vitoria sugar mill in Yaguajay, and participated in the mill workers' union as a member of the union executive board.

In 1935 he received the title of Professor of Physical Education in the city of Santa Clara, capital of the former province of Las Villas. The following year he attended the I Provincial Sugar Congress as a delegate of the sugar workers from the Vitoria mill.

From 1936 to 1939, during the Spanish Civil War, he participated in the activities of the Municipal Anti-Fascist Front of Yaguajay.

In 1937 he moved to La Habana to begin a pedagogical course at the José Martí Rural Normal School. He was selected as a Rural Civic Teacher, and began this work at the Narcisa mill (now Obdulio Morales), where he had the support of the sugar union and the backing of workers and teachers.

In 1941 he organized the National Federation of Rural Teachers, in which he rose as a leader, from the municipality and province to the National Executive. In that teaching organization he created his first ties with the National Peasant Association. The Federation of Teachers assumed direction of the magazine La Escuela Rural and appointed him as editor-in-chief.

He organized struggles for salary increases for teachers and custodians, for a greater number of classrooms, for school breakfast for primary school students, and for teachers' rights.

In 1943 the leaders of the Federation of Teachers of Cuba and the Federation of Rural Teachers united their forces to try to unify Cuban teachers, divided into parallel organizations. From August 12 to 19, 1945 the Congress of Teaching Unity was held at the Instituto Tecnológico de Ceiba del Agua, with the attendance of eight hundred delegates from throughout the nation; there the Colegio de Maestros de Cuba was born, which fulfilled the unity objectives. Raúl Ferrer held the position of secretary of finances in it.

On August 10, 1949 he received the title of Certified Teacher. In 1951 he began preparatory studies in order to take the competitive examination for teaching positions in the School District of La Habana. In 1952, the year of Fulgencio Batista's coup d'état, he moved his residence to the capital and submitted an application to participate in the Teachers' Competitive Examination of the School Director of La Habana. He occupied a preferred place on the teachers' roster, and on February 23, 1953 he was appointed sixth-grade teacher in a boys' school.

As a member of the Colegio de Maestros de Cuba he attended as a delegate the International Conference of the Trade Union Federation of his profession in Vienna, Austria. These tasks made him known in Cuban teaching.

In 1954 he gave a lecture in the city of Camagüey titled "Another Version of the Rosa Blanca." That same year he received the National Prize from the Commerce Organization of La Habana for his décimas "La Guayabera," published in the bohemia magazine, and published the poem "Yaguajay" in his native town.

In 1959 he held the position of secretary of International Relations of the reorganized National Colegio de Maestros Normales y Equiparados, among whose agreements was the publication of the newspaper El Magisterio Cubano, of which he was subdirector.

He intervened masterfully in the II Congress of Rural Education, and worked in the organization of the I National Congress of Municipal Education Councils, literacy commissions and Technical Literacy Brigades. On April 12 of that same year he published his pedagogical essay The Nationalization of Teaching.

In 1960 he was part of the Cuban delegation to the VII American Congress of Teachers in Lima, Peru, and served as a member of the organizing commission of the III Conference of Educators of the World in Conakry, Guinea.

When the National Literacy Commission was restructured in 1961, Raúl Ferrer was appointed national vice-coordinator. From that position he carried out multiple activities that made him personally known among a good part of the educators and literacy workers of the country, as his ability to communicate and his condition as a poet allowed him to bring messages of encouragement and victory to the great majorities, and he became a symbol of the Cuban Literacy Campaign.

In 1963 he was part of the Cuban delegation to the Conference of American Educators in Rio de Janeiro. In 1965 he attended the World Congress against Illiteracy in Teheran, Iran.

In 1968 he was president of the Cuban delegation to the I Seminar of CREFAL on functional literacy in Latin America, held in Quito, Ecuador. In 1970 he chaired the Organizing Commission of the Pre-seminar on Permanent Education sponsored by UNESCO and MINED.

In 1972 he chaired the Latin American Seminar on Adult Education directed by CREFAL. Likewise, he published his book A Decade of Adult Education.

In 1976 he served as a member of the UNESCO Special Committee of Governmental Experts, based in Paris, which was in charge of presenting draft recommendations regarding the development of adult education in the world. That same year he published, at UNESCO's request, Adult Education in Cuba.

In 1980 he held the position of International Advisor to UNESCO in the Literacy Crusade in Nicaragua, and was appointed Director of the International Seminar on Literacy and Adult Education in the People's Republic of Angola.

Between 1981 and 1983 he performed diplomatic functions in European countries. In 1984 he held the position of Specialist in Literary Publications at the Ministry of Culture and chaired the National Commission of the Program for Promoting Reading Habits and Book Promotion.

In 1990 he published a small collection of poems, Mirror of Patience.

Each year, from May 3 to 5, the event "Raúl Ferrer among us" is celebrated in Meneses and Yaguajay, where new research is presented and theoretical discussions, encounters, and exhibitions take place in tribute to the teacher. Within the framework of these activities the Municipal House of Culture, which bears the name "Raúl Ferrer," awards the winners of the annual literature and visual arts competition of the same name.

Source: EnCaribe.org