The Center for Local and Community Development (Cedel in Spanish) is a Cuban research and development institution that offers scientific and technical services in the area of local development.

Las Tunas, Cuba.- In dialogue with its rector, Ada Guzón Camporredondo, she shared several reflections on the subject and the solutions it can provide in the current context.

"Many of the problems of strategic importance may have a solution or mitigation from the municipalities themselves, in correspondence with the capacity of the territories to implement local development processes," said Camporredondo.

Faced with the epidemiological situation in the nation, the director of Cedel said that “in the face of the need to develop a strategy for the recovery stage of the crisis caused by the pandemic, in the midst of a complex and uncertain international context and dealing with the effects of the increase of actions of the United States Government against Cuba, the local level is ratified as a reservoir of potentialities and a space for resilience and the construction of viable and innovative alternatives, resulting in an essential complement to the development of the country."

Ada Margarita Guzón Camporredondo refers that these actions make possible agricultural productions, Urban and Suburban Agriculture, mini-industries; even the longed-for chaining of their local companies with others of national subordination.

"Untying the knots that limit the productive forces is also an incentive for the promotion of local productive systems and the strengthening and diversification of the municipal economic base," Guzón highlights. All this, through "taking advantage of local potential, stimulating synergies with objective projects and introducing results of science and appropriate technologies that condition favorable bases to sustain innovation."

Cedel belongs to the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment. It investigates and intervenes in actions to promote local development. To achieve effective results in this section, Camporredondo says, “a robust and creative institutional cooperation is needed, capable of leading participatory processes of sustainable development and responding to the accumulated and new demands of society.

“It is vital to have as a support a comprehensive planning system and the legal-normative base appropriate to the current regulations, and in unison, we stimulate the production of financial resources in the territory itself. In parallel, we consolidate the bases of popular, committed and responsible participation by producing in relation to the work assigned", that is the essence.

On that same guideline, the specialist advocated "the performance of a new role and make use of the autonomy granted by the Constitution of the Republic in the municipal setting; which will depend, on the one hand, on the level of preparation and innovation capacities that the territory develops and, on the other, on the coexistence of policies -national, sectoral, regional- within the legal framework, as well as the application of models, platforms and decisions that are made at the corresponding level.”

So, we talk about "getting closer to the ideal means deploying development processes that respond to local and national interests, mechanisms that the country undoubtedly needs a lot today," she concluded.