The three Cuban teachers have been in New Zealand since April 2003. They are working on a program to teach reading and writing being developed by Te Wananga o Aotearoa (the University of New Zealand). The Maori-based school, established a decade ago in the town of Te Awamutu, has grown rapidly to become the country’s largest tertiary educational institution. It provides courses by correspondence, over the Internet, and at satellite campuses throughout the country, attracting Maori and Pacific Islander adult students in particular. Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand, and people from the Pacific islands, are oppressed nationalities in New Zealand and comprise a major part of the working class.

Currently there are 10 Cuban literacy teachers working on developing the Greenlight Learning For Life program at the wananga. Eight of the teachers participated in the July 25 meeting, which was attended by around 50 people.

While official statistics purport that 99 percent of the population of New Zealand is literate, Marcia Krawll, the coordinator of the Greenlight program, told the meeting that “the statistics are not reality.”

A survey by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that 45 percent of New Zealand adults have literacy levels below what is “required to meet the demands of everyday life.” Functional illiteracy is disproportionately higher among Maori and Pacific Islanders.

Already demand for the literacy program was greater than could be met, Krawll said, with 5,000 people participating in the pilot course.

The courses being developed by the Cuban instructors aim to teach adults “how to read and write, and learn and think, in the least possible time,” Zamora said.

“You can’t just translate literacy courses developed in Cuba,” Ponce added, explaining why the Cubans had come to New Zealand to develop the program. “Each country and each language has its own characteristics,” she noted. Even in Spanish-speaking countries, like Venezuela and Mexico, where Cuban teachers are aiding local literacy campaigns, “You still have to put it into context,” she said, because some of the vocabulary is different. About 1 million people in Venezuela have already completed the literacy program, Ponce said.

However, she added, “This is the first time we have done this in a developed country like New Zealand.”

Jesús, one of seven additional Cuban teachers who arrived at the Te Awamutu wananga in April, had been part of the literacy program in Venezuela. “If countries ask, we help for as long as they want our help,” he told the meeting. In addition to collaborating to prepare the literacy program in New Zealand, he said, “We want to help train literacy workers here to carry on. We didn’t come to stay,” he said. “We have a lot to do in other countries.”

Asked about the latest measures imposed by Washington against Cuba, which include new restrictions on Cuban-Americans visiting the island or sending cash remittances to relatives there, Ponce said that the Cuban Revolution has had to combat Washington’s unremitting hostility and trade sanctions for 45 years. “Since June 30 they have worsened the measures against Cuba,” she stated. “But we have confronted more difficult situations than the current one, and we will get over this one, too.”

During all the critical periods the Cuban Revolution has faced, she said, “we have never closed one school or hospital. Because the government puts a priority on study and education, the Cuban people are a very educated people.”

“I lived part of my life under Batista,” added Zamora, referring to the U.S.-backed dictator who ruled Cuba prior to the 1959 revolution. “Then we had private schools and discrimination. Now we have equal rights for all.”

The participation of the Cuban teachers in the Greenlight literacy program hit the headlines here last October when member of parliament Rodney Hide of the right-wing Act party denounced the wananga’s collaboration with the Cuban government. “I am staggered that people think we could learn anything from Cuba other than what a failure socialism has proved to be,” Hide said, calling Cuba “a basket case” and its literacy efforts “indoctrination.”

The attack was met by a rapid response from supporters of the Cuban Revolution, defenders of Maori rights, and participants in the wananga course. Prominently reported was a reply by Cuba’s ambassador to New Zealand, Miguel Angel Ramírez, who is based in Indonesia. Responding to Hide’s denigration of Cuba’s socialist course, he said, “This has been the only system that has been able to guarantee free education, free health care, and social justice for the whole population and not for an exclusive elite.”  
 
 
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