He who leads has to speak the truth – Escambray

With this premise, Nora Quintana Vázquez, founder of the Government bodies, was a delegate of Popular Power for more than 20 years and member of the first Executive Committee in Sancti Spíritus

I know you don’t like interviews. I insisted so many times that he agreed to a kind of conversation to avoid any questionnaire or tell me about your life. A woman like her has a lot to say;

and he does it with the soft and sweet voice typical of his person, without leaving aside a fine sense of humor that never hurts.

I have known her forever and we have shared meetings, government events, tours and even love for the same person; in his case, the purest feeling of brotherhood towards someone he loved and admired. I know that she is very special, with a great culture, that she speaks French very well and has an elementary level of piano, but I am missing things to know about this woman who dedicated most of her life to the work of Popular Power since its foundation and She was a grassroots delegate for more than 20 years.

With great parsimony, she narrated her first steps as an Education worker in the 1970s, when, having already graduated in History, she taught the subject at the then Pedagogical Institute and her transition through teaching, until the voice of Marina, a former classmate, of battles, changed the direction of his thoughts: “Look, journalist, say that Nora Quintana Vázquez is the best delegate that Sancti Spíritus has ever had. Here in constituency 16 she managed to get people who remained on the sidelines and were not even interested in what she had to do with any social process to participate in the activities that were organized.

Without knowing it, it gave me the perfect motivation to listen to anecdotes about his role in the origins of that first mandate of the Municipal Assemblies of Popular Power and the birth of Sancti Spíritus as a province.

“I was chosen as a delegate in the first elections in 1976, they proposed me and I accepted with great fear because, although the experience of Matanzas already existed, it was something new for everyone. I was from that same year until 1995 as secretary of the Assembly of Popular Power in the main municipality, there were around six mandates, although I was never a delegate to the Provincial Assembly.

They were difficult times because we had to organize the entire Government apparatus in the province, but the colleagues who took over at that time did so with all the willingness in the world, especially the vice president, Luciano Francisco, who had a lot of management experience in different activities. . We made a very nice friendship and began to interact with the delegates, then we moved on to the formation of the administrative entities, the appointment of directors; That is to say, putting together the entire administrative machinery of the territory, appointing the delegates to the Provincial Assembly, electing the deputies, and all of this corresponded to that first Executive Committee. It was, despite everything, a very nice stage.”

In the case of Sancti Spíritus, things turned out to be somewhat more difficult. The birth of a Political-Administrative Division detached from the umbilical cord that Las Villas meant generated so many setbacks that only with the desire to do things could they be solved and, as on other occasions, the passion that Nora brings to everything that touches her triumphed.

How much experience do you have of the first meetings with the people when there were needs that a nascent province lacked?

If there is a difficult task in the work of Government, it is the meeting with the voters, those accountability meetings where they raise issues of all kinds and you have to know the activity and functioning of the management of the entities to give an explanation and convince. Over time I learned that the delegate must maintain an effective, permanent link with the voters, with the Government and with the entities, because he is the only person who has the possibility of transmitting the problems of the people and within his function it is essential that this be one of your priorities. At that time we didn’t know how to do that, but it became organized and as we went along, life gave us the opportunity to know how to implement that style of work. I have to say that the delegates of that first mandate, all apprentices, did everything possible to make it work well and it was achieved.

Marking the distances, the work of the delegate continues to be important because it is the closest link between the Government and the population, the one who conveys the reality of the existing situation, the one who can inform clearly because it reaches everyone and is the person who should be best informed in a constituency.”

For more than twenty years she weaved a coming and going through the old headquarters on Independencia Street, where everyone paid attention to what that sweet voice was saying that made people fall in love, but compromised, because there was sweetness, but also strength and will in this woman. which was shared between the home, the FMC and many friends.

What lessons did all that work leave you?

”The Government taught me how to work, but Education is a school and I came from there where I taught Political Guidance to the workers and the rest was taught to me by the people from those first accounts. Afterwards, it was not so easy to separate myself from an organization that is part of my life, and they trusted me to attend to the newly created Office of the Department of International Relations of the Provincial Assembly of People’s Power, where I was for 18 years, from 1995 to 2013.” .

What did that stage mean, so different from what your time in the local government was like?

“It was a very nice stage that took me to visit several countries, including Italy, Spain, Mexico and Canada, where we experienced the Cuban reality of the moment, it helped me understand the Revolution much more because to attend to foreign delegations or when we went to a certain country to establish twinning relationships, one had to be clearer about what had to be explained about the country’s situation, it helped me prepare for many subjects, in fact I already graduated in French and I had to learn some Italian. From a human point of view I saw depressing things in those highly developed countries that shocked me because they are not seen in Cuba.”

Those who know her more closely say that in Sancti Spíritus the FMC is called Nora…

“My father, who was always a convinced revolutionary, started me in the FMC since I was almost a child, then in the Young Rebels and the UJC, and I also helped organize the Pioneers, but the Federation is my life. I was a member of the Municipal Committee from 1976 until very recently and I have always held positions at the block and delegation level in which I am still an organizer and that keeps me active. I enjoyed going to the organization’s congresses, always attentive to what Fidel said, who took the time to share with us, with that clarity he had to envision the future for us.”

More than three decades in government bodies taught Nora to remain in action “so that the mind remains active” and that admirable memory that she possesses at 76 years of age does not diminish. She calls herself quintessentially Cuban and rellolla from Sancti Spiritus; She, like the leader she will always have inside her, still has words to say to future generations: “He who leads has to speak the truth, even if he works very hard, the best of all is honesty and it is also important to know listen, even if everyone doesn’t want to. We must ensure that people are honest in every task and job position so that there is credibility and what we have achieved over more than 65 years can be maintained.”