Vol. 77/No. 43 December 2, 2013
BY ARMANDO HART
The Cuban Revolution triumphed on the threshold of the 1960s, in a country then subjugated to U.S. neocolonialism, in a world divided into spheres of influence by the victors of World War II. It emerged victorious in the peculiar framework of the ideological, cultural, and political conflict between the socialist ideal and the world capitalist system, and in the midst of the accentuated anticommunist campaign of the first fifteen years of the Cold War. In contrast to that international panorama, a popular expression was heard all over the country: “Si Fidel es comunista, que me pongan en la lista.” [If Fidel is a communist, then put me on the list.] That saying summed up the evolution that was taking place naturally in the patriotic consciousness of the vast majority of the people. This marked for all time the originality of our process, going back to the Cuban revolutionary tradition of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
From then on, education and culture were placed at the center of political and social activity and of the challenges facing a nation located “at the crossroads” of the world, which had adopted as its own the highest values of Western culture placing itself irrevocably on the side of the poor.
In those days of January 1959 I arrived at a building in Old Havana that had been the seat of the House of Representatives during the initial years of the Republic and later the Ministry of Education. I was twenty-eight years old. Inspired by Martí’s idea, “To be educated is the only way to be free,” I assumed the responsibility for guiding the radical transformation of education in Cuba on the basis of these objectives:
Extending instruction to the entire school-age population, and eradicating illiteracy in the adult population.
Promoting a general reform of instruction based on offering a scientific and rounded education combined with training in ethical and patriotic values inspired by Cuban culture rooted in Martí’s ideas.
Facilitating communication and strengthening ties between the family, the school, and the community as a central element of the educational process.
Promoting and fostering the people’s participation in the tasks of the ministry. Developing close relations with social and mass organizations.
Having administrative and technical decentralization in order to achieve these purposes.
In Cuba more than a million people were illiterate; 50 percent of the school-age children had no access to education; high school and university education were far more limited. That is why one of the first measures taken by the Ministry of Education of the revolutionary government was the creation of classrooms all over the country. Five thousand classrooms for nine thousand unemployed teachers could be created just with the financial resources available in the long list of “botellas” [payoffs] formerly handed out by the Ministry of Education of the old regime. When I told Fidel I was going to devote myself to creating five thousand classrooms, he pointed out that we should talk to the teachers and ask them to cut their salaries in half and thus create twice as many classrooms — ten thousand — with agreement that their salaries would then be raised gradually in a short number of years. That’s what was done.
Broadening educational services was a priority from the very first moments, clearly exemplified by the creation of the ten thousand new classrooms, the conversion of garrisons into schools, and the nationalization of private schools. …
An entire generation of young people, students, and teachers, of cadres of mass organizations, began their revolutionary lives, and their historic contributions to the country, in that literacy drive, which had its most immediate antecedents in the literacy efforts conducted by the Rebel Army during the insurrectional struggle.
During the 1961 campaign 300,000 Cubans were organized, among them more than 100,000 student brigadistas in the Conrado Benítez brigades, 121,000 popular literacy teachers, 35,000 teachers integrated as cadres and specialists, and 15,000 workers in the “Patria o muerte” brigades. To this we must add an untold number of workers in all areas, as well as administrative and service personnel, whose efforts were indispensable to assuring the material and organizational success of the campaign.
The high proportion of young people among that impressive mobilization of literacy teachers was an extremely important fact. That campaign became the first great mass undertaking by a new generation. Youth who were too young to participate in the struggle against the tyranny were given a no-less-heroic task at the triumph of the revolution: that of defending the country and the revolutionary program, one of whose points was the elimination of illiteracy. A legion of these youth went to every corner of the country—workbook, textbook, and lantern in hand—to teach reading and writing. They learned the first political lesson of their lives as literacy teachers. Our young students and teachers taught more than 700,000 Cubans, as they simultaneously learned from them that being rooted in the people as a whole is the fundamental thing in order to create and advance in a revolution.
The literacy campaign, in short, was an educational and cultural act that created revolutionary consciousness in new generations. It was part of the intense popular movement, with deep aspirations for the radical renovation the country was living through in the revolution’s early years. In those beautiful days, centuries of ignorance and exploitation came crashing down.
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