CUBA'S - techlife magazine

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28 techlifemag.ca
there’s subtle gravity in that statement. Frame it in the
likelihood of a post-embargo Cuba and the economic
acceleration that might follow, and it suggests an
acknowledgement of the need to prepare for a future
the Revolution likely didn’t anticipate.
Longoria – who bears a striking resemblance to
Cuban hero José Martí, leader in the late-19th century
fight for independence from Spain – seems ready for
whatever change might come. He’s already seen a
lot since he came to this part of the country in the
early 1980s as an engineer to operate the nuclear
power plant. Back then, the Soviet Union played big
brother here; its nuclear plant project was sustaining a
workforce of thousands. In short, the future depended
heavily on the agenda of a communist superpower.
In 1991, of course, the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
A few boxes of outdated nuclear physics textbooks,
printed in Cyrillic, are the only remnants of the previous
inhabitants of the training centre, its classrooms and
open-air corridors filled today with early- and midcareer
Cubans.
After the school started in 2000 by offering
electrical and instrumentation courses to about 80
students, recalls Longoria, it moved into welding in 2001
and mechanical and millwright training in 2002. From
there, it offered certification to supervisors, welding
inspectors and, today, inspectors of high-risk equipment
including pressure vessels, boilers, valves and piping. It
will even tailor programs to suit specific employers and
train on-site, according to needs identified by MINBAS.
Overall, more than 16,400 students have graduated
from CNCI over the last decade, with roughly 1,200
achieving international certification based on NAIT
and Alberta curriculum.
But the best example of the change the school
represents might be the role it played in the Energy
Revolution. Starting in 2006, the national campaign
addressed not only a deteriorating power grid, but
the need to move toward sustainable energy sources.
Thousands of small, fuel oil-powered generators known
as gensets tackled the former, if not the latter. To
help with their rapid rollout across Cuba, the school
developed its own curriculum and trained nearly 6,000
operators and maintenance technicians. The machines
may be little more than a bandage solution, but the
immediate outcome has been positive. Besides proving
the school’s burgeoning self-sufficiency, the genset
rollout, for now, has addressed the crippling energy