The Cuban Literacy Campaign of 1961: A New Modus Operandi for the Revolutionary Government—and Others?

The national literacy campaign was the first major – and most successful - campaign of the new revolutionary government. In one year, 300,000 mostly urban middle class Cubans were mobilized to teach roughly one million illiterate, mostly rural fellow citizens how to read and write and, talk about the revolution. It was a central part of the transformation of political culture that followed the overthrow of the Batista regime. The eradication of illiteracy was an old demand that had been on the political agenda since the first US occupation in 1899 but despite valuable previous attempts throughout the Republic only the revolution with its specific approach of mass mobilization was able to succeed. It thus represents an interesting case study of continuities and ruptures in Cuba’s 20^th century.  In this talk I will examine the inner mechanisms of the campaign based on my recent research at its archive in Havana and interviews in Cuba. Race, class and gender implications of the campaign will be addressed as well as the influences that played a role in its design and those it had on subsequent attempts to fight illiteracy elsewhere. Finally, the shifting orientation from an educational model heavily influenced by its Northern neighbor to one that cooperated closely with Eastern Europe comes into dialogue with transnational research that explores the history of socialisms in the Americas.