INNOVATE 24 <strong>techlife</strong>mag.ca From left, Leonis pérez gonzález, a fourth-period Electricity student at CNCI, in his dorm room after classes; the students and staff of CNCI make their home here, in nearby Nuclear City. Opposite, a church in the central square of Cienfuegos, the largest urban centre in the area. As soon as leonis pérez gonzález steps through the door of his college dorm, in a tiny city on Cuba’s south coast, the tour he’s conducting of his temporary home is virtually over. The place might measure 20 square metres. There’s a sink, a tiny plastic table, two sets of bunkbeds, a closet far too small for the belongings of him and three roommates, and a balcony looking onto concrete walkups distinguished from this one by little more than location, each one as blocky, plain and weathered as the next. Pérez doesn’t mind. He has his distractions: weekend trips into the nearby city of Cienfuegos, a portable CD player for listening to salsa and reggae, and keeping up with the struggles of his hometown baseball team of Santiago de Cuba, 670 kilometres to the southeast. “They’re young,” he explains with a forgiving shrug. “They have a lot of new players.” Really, he’s too busy to worry about his cramped quarters anyway. Pérez, 36, is a fourth-period Electricity student at the nearby Centro Nacional para la Certificación Industrial (CNCI, or the national centre for industrial certification). “It is a lot of subjects in a small time,” he says in confident but limited English. “It is very hard but it is to our benefit.” Already an electrician at a cement company in Santiago, Pérez knows the certification he’s getting at CNCI – which meets international standards – will mean a modest pay raise. That’s a privilege. “There are others who cannot come here,” he says. In time, they might. Thousands already have. Once, this remote part of Cuba, roughly 250 kilometres southeast of Havana and overlooking Cienfuegos Bay, was the site of a Soviet attempt to kick-start Cuba’s nuclear power infrastructure. Pérez’s current hometown, known almost nostalgically as Nuclear City, was originally built to house staff to run the local plant. When its construction was unexpectedly suspended in 1992, a few thousand workers suddenly had no obvious purpose. That’s changed. In the service of Cuba’s Ministry of Basic Industry (MINBAS), and through a 10-year partnership with NAIT and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), CNCI has transformed this region into a staging ground for the future of the nation. At home, it has pushed Cuban productivity with a workforce of skilled tradespeople. But, in a nation politically and economically isolated for more than half a century, it is also creating new – and more importantly, sustainable – opportunities with international partners.
“ThE wOrld is dEvElOPinG. YOu CAn’T GET sTuCK. YOu hAvE TO mOvE wiTh ThE wOrld.” - LEONIS PéREz GONzáLEz, FOURTH-PERIOD ELECTRICITY STUDENT v4.2 2011 25
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