Charco Piedra is a village in the municipality of Amancio, located some 13 kilometers from the municipal capital, whose structural base was formed by immigrants who arrived as a workforce, mainly from Haiti and Jamaica, to work as laborers in the then Central Francisco, in the second decade of the 20th century.
Las Tunas, Cuba.- Thus began its development as a peasant community that today has just over 570 inhabitants, good, hard-working people, with a basic cooperative production unit (UBPC) that was once going to be dissolved due to its dismal economic indicators.
The cooperative, named Rubén Martínez Agún, lacked a board of directors to guide the workers, who were all worried about the disappearance of their productive base, but fortunately for them, everything began to change when three years ago the young Richard Daniel Adrián Baños arrived, who after working there as a batch manager, had gone to do his Active Military Service and then worked in another UBPC.
"The first thing we set out to do was to improve the Unit, rescue the livestock modules, plant food and strengthen ties with the neighborhood; restore the social circle, paint the family doctor's office, the school, and the bakery, and today the whole community is our responsibility and that is why we achieve what we set out to do there."
"We treat the residents of the neighborhood as if they were members of the cooperative. We provide them with any service, we sell them food, we take care of the Social Circle and the vulnerable people who have breakfast and lunch there, and we have a sugarcane juice processing machine with sales of over two thousand pesos a day."
The UBPC has 64 workers and 1,500 hectares, of which 1,200 are dedicated to sugar cane agriculture and the rest to livestock and various crops; and it is a cooperative that has never stopped making money or paying workers, as there is always work."
"Our cooperative had many problems with animal damage, but that is over, now we demand rigorously and apply the decree-law with those who do not take care of their animals, but first we discuss with them in the best of ways, we make them aware so that they take care of their cattle and that is why there is no theft and slaughter of livestock or theft of other types."
"Now, being demanding does not mean mistreating anyone, on the contrary, any problem in the community belongs to the cooperative and we solve it, we look for material resources to repair the houses and that is why we have become a big family."
Richard is a leader in the community of Charco Piedra. Even though he is only 27 years old, people admire and respect him, and they trust him with any problem which makes him very happy because he is also studying the second year of Agronomy at the University of Las Tunas, and together with his wife and two children he has a full life in the same place where he was born, with the first cries of dawn.
