Women In Charge Of Rockets

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31333, 1 April 1967, Page 2

Women In Charge Of Rockets

(N.ZP.A.-Reuter; HAVANA. Cuba is training women technical officers to supervise the maintenance of its rockets, aircraft, radar and other delicate military equipment. These new “amazons” are taking three to five-year courses in various branches of technical and engineering studies at the recently opened Military Technical Institute on the outskirts of Havana. There are about 50 of them, representing 10 per cent of the cadets under training at the institute, housed in the fine white buildings of the former Bethlehem College, a Catholic school. They wear the same olivegreen uniform, undergo the same combat training and discipline, and follow the same courses of study as their male comrades. The institute’s directors are particularly proud of their women cadets whose presence there, in military technical training courses, they regard not simply as a minor revolution but also as a new victory over discrimination against women. Military-Honours They did not hesitate to show their high esteem for them when three of the girls died in an explosion and subsequent fire last November. The bodies were borne through the streets of Havana in military procession and buried in the Army Pantheon with the full honours accorded to officers killed on the field of battle. In a recent article in the weekly magazine, “Verde Olivo," the institute’s principal, Captain Fernando Vecino, proclaimed his faith in the technical capacity of his girl cadets. “We are convinced,” he declared, ’■‘that our military precision equipment will receive equal or even better treatment from our women. “Hence we have not discriminated against women who, in the future, will have a prominent place among the best and most complex armaments we possess.” One of the girl cadets, 20yearold Luisa Rodriguez Lechuga, told "Verde Olivo” “that she was going to specialise in rocket engineering.” “I have adapted myself to military discipline without difficulty,” she added. “Here, we are all proud of being the first women technical cadets in Cuba, and, I believe, in all Latin America.” She described how, on breaking formation every day, the girls raise their battle cry of revolutionary internationalism with shouts of: “For Vietnam (the Viet Cong) wo offer our Hood.” The courses studied cover

all aspects of sea, land and air equipment—rockets, radar, supersonic aeroplanes and ail types of artillery and tanks. The girls, like their male comrades, rise at 5.30 a.m., and after physical training, have six hours of study. They also have courses in combat' training. Three hours * day are devoted to private study.