Cuban Literacy Campaign

The Cuban literacy campaign was Fidel Castro's 1961 bold educational initiative to eradicate illiteracy in Cuba in one year by bridging the gap between the largely urban educated elite and the island's predominantly illiterate rural workers. The program linked basic literacy to the political education of the people under Castro's newly established revolutionary government. The Cuban literacy campaign not only reduced illiteracy significantly but also united the people around a common cause.

The Cuban literacy campaign officially began on New Year's Eve in 1960 in the capital city, Havana, with Castro's promise before a crowd of 10,000 educators and dignitaries to organize an Army of Education. Prior to this announcement, in September 1960, Castro had declared before the General Assembly of the United Nations his plan to launch a national program with the goal of teaching every illiterate Cuban to read and write. By April 1961, literary foot soldiers were immersed in an intensive training program in Varadero. Then, armed with teacher manuals titled Alfabeticemos (Let's Alphabetize) and student textbooks bearing the campaign's slogan Venceremos (We will win), they spread out across the country in the single-minded pursuit of teaching basic literacy to every person on the island. Posters dotted the nation proclaiming, “Young men and women, join the Army of the Young Literacy Teachers….A home of a family of peasants who cannot either read or write is waiting for you now … DON'T LET THEM DOWN!”Literate men, women, and even children volunteered to teach. Radio and television played a role by airing advertisements supporting the campaign. Coca-Cola ads encouraged literate people to take refreshing breaks with illiterate people with Cokes and paper and pencils in hand. Slogans, such as “Each one teach one”and “Every home a school,”propelled the program.

Ironically, during the year of the campaign, schools were closed for 8 months, so that the people could learn how to read and to write. Brigades of people, known as brigadistas, worked as teachers. Teachers from the urban areas moved into the homes of farmers in the country. When houses were too small to accommodate these itinerant teachers, hammocks were provided by the government and teachers slept outside the homes of their pupils. China produced over 100,000 Coleman lantern remakes that were also given by the government to the literary workers to teach reading at night. The lanterns, along with red flags, became symbols for the campaign. The lanterns were hung outside of houses once every member of the family was literate;the flags were hoisted in town squares once an entire village had become literate. The program was national in scope and sought to raise not only the literacy rate but also the political consciousness of the people. Civic education underpinned the entire skill-based part of the program. In sum, approximately 271,000 literate Cubans took to the streets and to the countryside and taught roughly 979,207 illiterate residents of the island basic literacy. And in the process, the political philosophy of Castro was widely disseminated.

The Cuban literacy campaign was interrupted briefly during the Bay of Pigs in April, when for 72 hours, many teachers became soldiers. In total, 42 teachers died during the entire program, including Manuel Ascunce Domenesch and Conrado Benítez, who were murdered by anti-Castro forces. The campaign claimed them as martyrs, further galvanizing the island around the project's aims.

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