On December 22, 1961, Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz announced to the world the successful culmination of the Literacy Campaign. Cuba was proclaimed a Territory Free of Illiteracy, and this date was declared Educator's Day.
Sixty-four years ago, on that day in Revolution Square, Fidel said: “We have won a great battle, and it must be called a battle, because the victory against illiteracy in our country has been achieved through a great battle, with all the rules of a great battle. A battle that was begun by the teachers, continued by the popular literacy volunteers, and which gained extraordinary and decisive momentum when our youth, integrated into the “Conrado Benítez” Literacy Army, joined the fight.”
“Through plains and mountains the brigadista goes…” went the anthem that these young people, many of them teenagers who had never left their homes and cities, constantly sang. They proudly wore on their shoulders the emblem bearing the face of Conrado Benítez, a young volunteer teacher murdered by counterrevolutionary gangs, who would soon after also take the lives of brigadista Manuel Azcunce and the peasant Pedro Lantigua, before being eliminated by the Rebel Army and the militias.
The brigadistas arrived in Havana from all over, on passenger or sugarcane trains, in trucks or buses, and on that day, the 22nd, in their “Conrado Benítez” brigadista uniforms and with not a trace of fatigue on their youthful faces, they gathered in the Plaza de la Revolución to declare Cuba a Territory Free of Illiteracy.
A veritable army of literacy brigade members had spearheaded the feat of reducing illiteracy in the country to 3.9 percent of its total population. This included 25,000 Haitians in agricultural areas of Oriente and Camagüey who did not speak Spanish, people with physical and mental disabilities, and the elderly or those in poor health, all deemed unfit to learn to read and write.
The people of Havana, responding to the call of the leader of the Revolution, Fidel Castro, welcomed the brigade members into their homes and accompanied them early in the morning to take their posts in the Plaza. In less than a year, 707,000 Cubans had been taught to read and write, placing our country among the nations with the lowest illiteracy rates in the world.
This extraordinary revolutionary achievement was the work of a powerful force, comprised of approximately 100,000 Conrado Benítez Brigade members, 121,000 Popular Literacy Workers, 15,000 Homeland or Death Brigade members, and 35,000 volunteer teachers, totaling 271,000 direct educators. This, together with education officials, political cadres from the Young Rebels, and administrative workers, raises the impressive figure to a total of more than 300,000 full-time participants in the Campaign.
Only half of school-age children attended classes before the triumph of the Revolution, which is why one of the first tasks undertaken by the Revolutionary Government was the creation, in March 1959, of the National Commission for Literacy and Fundamental Education.
In compliance with the Moncada Program for the 1960-1961 school year, 15,000 classrooms were created in rural areas, while enrollment reached a total of 1,118,942 students. However, many more volunteer teachers were needed, and in many areas, there were no schools.
On April 22, 1960, Fidel Castro stated: "We need a thousand teachers who want to dedicate themselves to teaching peasant children. We need their help to improve the education of our people and for the peasants to learn to read and become useful men for any task." Thus, the Volunteer Teachers program was born.
Months later, in his speech on September 26, 1960, before the United Nations, Fidel Castro announced: "Next year, our people intend to wage their great battle against illiteracy, with the ambitious goal of teaching every last illiterate person to read and write."
The third year of the Revolution, 1961, was decisive for the history of the Cuban people. The proclamation of the socialist character of the Revolution, the victory at Playa Girón, and other important events were complemented by the successful Literacy Campaign, which shaped hundreds of thousands of young people.
In response to Fidel's assertion that “this capacity to create, this sacrifice, this generosity of one another, this brotherhood that reigns today among our people—that is Socialism!” the battle cry of “pencil, primer, manual, teach literacy, teach literacy!” arose spontaneously in the Plaza.
“Fidel, tell us what else we have to do!” was the new slogan chanted by hundreds of thousands of young people who would later become professionals, scientists, or skilled workers—pillars of the Revolution's achievements—and whose legacy their children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren carry on today in the face of new and more difficult challenges, confident of continuing to triumph.