Erica Soler
In 1961, Cuba exercised a unique strategy to campaign for literacy in the fight for equality amongst its citizens. Fidel Castro, the leader of Cuba, summoned students to assist in the efforts to promote literacy by volunteering to serve as teachers. The main objective of the campaign was to abolish illiteracy by granting every Cuban the accessibility of learning to read and write. Due to the alarming rate of illiteracy in the urban and rural areas of Cuba, the utmost concentration to teach literacy was placed in these areas. Having citizens teach citizens was an unusual concept yet, it proved to surprisingly be very efficient resulting in thousands of Cubans achieving literacy while also affording the teachers themselves, with a sense of individuality, freedom and independence.
Education was ordinarily denied to the poor citizens of Cuba due to the lack of educational institutions and non-existent instructional teachers. The deficiency of education ultimately produced thousands of illiterate citizens. The majority of these citizens were or had been agricultural workers whose priority was to earn a living wage. Cubans were distinguished by the areas in which they resided, the illiterate citizens resided in the urban and rural areas whereas the literate resided in the city and suburban areas. By focusing on the equalization of all citizens, social classes based on literacy would be eliminated. Dougherty (2016) explains “To be equal would require that they have a greater understanding of each other and a unified identity as Cubans” (para 6). By lifting the divide caused by illiteracy, literacy among the citizens of Cuba could be established in unison. Literacy would be the starting place, where all Cubans would come together to represent the country as a whole.
Upon the launch of the campaign, 250,000 citizens immediately showed their willingness to volunteer as teachers. Of the volunteers, 100,000 were under the age of 18 and more than half of them were women. During this time, women typically took on a customary role as homemakers. Fernandes (2011) describes the inferiority for girls growing up in Cuba, “Young women in general were subject to the norms of patriarchy. They were not expected to excel at their studies. They were confined to the house, and their futures were limited to what their parents decided for them” (para.7). The women of Cuba lacked purpose in their lives generated by not being treated as equal citizens. Their lives, virtually dictated from very early on left these young girls with never having experienced any sense of freedom. This revolutionary literacy campaign shifted the roles for women in Cuba, Murphy (2011) uses the first-hand accounts of some of the women volunteers in her documentary “Maestra” as she explains the transformation which ensued in them, “The campaign changed the roles for women providing them the independence of literacy” (Murphy, 2011). Women found empowerment in their collaboration to establish literacy. Many of these women merely young girls at the time, made a huge sacrifice to leave their homes, families and lives as they knew it. Never having been away from home before, they maintained the determination to see their task through to the end. The service they provided to the campaign gave them the purpose they were deprived of.
Parents faced extreme difficulty in granting their children permission to assist in the campaign for fear of their safety and well-being, nonetheless, allowing them to partake as to not disobey Fidel Castro. Student teachers faced many adversities while on assignment, some of which consisted of, living with strangers, succumbing to living conditions with no electricity or running water, creating make shift classrooms out of kitchen tables, dealing with rejection, but the worst of all, came with risking themselves in front of harm’s way as insurgents invaded areas of Cuba in 1961. Aside from the many challenges which presented, these young student teachers remained consistently loyal to their assignments. Ironically, they were more determined than ever. They could not fathom walking away from their duties at this point. The unthinkable had begun to occur, as they had established relationships with the people they were teaching. Shadowing their daily lives gave them a deeper understanding to their illiteracy, with this came the eagerness to make a difference. The goal for these teacher volunteers was to walk away having accomplished aiding in the equalization of Cuba.
The literacy instruction began with vowels and consonants, which moved onto teaching citizens how to write and sign their own names. There were cases of elderly people who had never read or written anything in their entire lives, having relied on the use of their thumbprint as a means to their signatory. For these and many other cases, literacy was achieved in rewarding the opportunity to read and sign their names for the very first time. The Cuban literacy campaign lasting almost a year left its mark in history as one of the greatest revolutionary campaigns for literacy in Cuba. Murphy (2011) and Dougherty (2016) both report the victorious outcome of the Cuban literacy campaign, according to Murphy (2011) “707,000 Cubans learned to read and write in 1961” (Murphy, 2011), as a result of the campaign Dougherty (2016) exclaims “each formerly illiterate person wrote a letter to Castro saying he or she could now read and write!” (para. 4). What began as a far-fetched concept emanated into one of the highest literacy rates in the Western Hemisphere. Profound opportunities originated for the women teachers who volunteered. They essentially went on to become successful professionals, forever changing the outlook on the roles for women in Cuba. Fidel Castro mobilized the unimaginable, in delivering a successful campaign from which equalization derived, basic literacy and understanding was entrenched amid all of the people in Cuba.
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