| New from Pathfinder: ALDABONAZO: INSIDE THE CUBAN REVOLUTIONARY UNDERGROUND, 1952-58 |
This account of the struggle to overthrow the U.S.-backed Fulgencio Batista dictatorship, spearheaded by the July 26 Movement and the Rebel Army under the leadership of Fidel Castro, recounts the events from the perspective of revolutionary cadres organized in the cities.
The Militant has been publishing a series of excerpts from the book. This week’s selection is taken from the final chapter, “1958: From Prison—The Isle of Pines to Victory.” In it Hart describes the last months of 1958, when the Rebel Army launched its final offensive against the Batista regime. On Jan. 1, 1959, the dictator fled as the revolutionary forces entered Havana. Hart, along with other leaders of the July 26 Movement locked up on the Isle of Pines, organized the prisoners to take over the prison compound and joined the insurrection.
Hart, then 28 years old, became the minister of education in the revolutionary government. Hart oversaw the mass literacy campaign launched by the new government in 1960, through which tens of thousands of young volunteers from the cities went into the countryside, helping to wipe out illiteracy in Cuba within a year and transforming themselves in the process. The following account describes the literacy campaign.
Copyright © 2004 by Pathfinder Press, reprinted by permission.
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 [José] Martí’s1 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:
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”2 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.
I called on the specialists and educators of the country to cooperate in all these endeavors. The patriotic tradition of Cuban education inspired our policy. In fact, from my post as minister, I had the privilege of becoming a pupil of the best teachers in Cuba.
In 1960, at the United Nations General Assembly, Fidel announced that a national campaign against illiteracy was being organized, and that in 1961 Cuba would be free of that scourge that humanity suffered and still suffers today.
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.
With the noblest of passions, the people brought tumbling down the old economic and social structures, the old customs, and the decrepit ideas that had accumulated over centuries of history but had no roots or strength in the consciousness of our nation. They were thus unable to withstand the growing momentum of the socialist revolution.
On December 22 of that same historic year—historic because in 1961 we also triumphed over imperialism at Girón3—Fidel proclaimed in the Plaza of the Revolution that we had won the battle against illiteracy. The Cuban educational and cultural process took on exemplary national and international significance. That’s why he was able to say: “There is no moment more solemn and thrilling, no instant of greater joy, no minute of more legitimate pride and glory than this one, in which four and a half centuries of ignorance have been toppled.”
The tens of thousands of literacy brigadistas gathered in the Plaza of the Revolution chanted in unison: “Fidel, Fidel, tell us what else we need to do!” His answer was: “Now you must become teachers, artists, professors, technicians, engineers, and specialists in the most diverse disciplines of science and culture.”
For the first time in our history, bringing education and culture to the masses became a problem that demanded a practical solution.
Thus, alongside the image of José Martí was born the educational, cultural, and scientific movement generated by the Cuban Revolution that for more than four decades has been its backbone. It is decisive to the country’s independence, and is Cuba’s calling card to the world.
1José Martí, main leader of Cuba’s wars for independence against Spain and outstanding anti-imperialist, regarded as Cuba’s national hero. Died in combat on May 19, 1895.
2Literally “bottles.” A term used popularly to describe the corrupt payments to persons who were on the payroll but never did any work. [AH]
3The U.S.-organized mercenary invasion at Playa Girón (the Bay of Pigs) on Cuba’s southern coast, took place April 17, 1961. It was defeated within 72 hours by Cuba’s militia and Revolutionary Armed Forces.
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