Cuban Literacy at 50 Episode 3: Pedro Monzón

A public forum on Cuban Literacy at 50 was held in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney on Friday 15 April 2011. This post contains the presentations by Pedro Monzón. The speakers included:

• Ezequiel Morales, brigadista, Cuban Literacy Campaign, 1961; director, Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples, Granma province, Cuba
• Dr Eulalia Reyes, Venezuelan educator (Barcelona‐Venezuela & Brisbane)
• Viviana Ramírez, Chilean, senior teacher of Spanish, Qld Dept of Education
• HE Pedro Monzón, Cuban ambassador to Australia, Canberra and literacy speakers brigadista, Cuban Literacy Campaign, 1961

In 1961, barely two years after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, the country mobilised a mass literacy campaign with few parallels in the twentieth century. It has since been influential in national literacy campaigns in Chile during the Allende years and Sandinista Nicaragua, popular education in Colombia and El Salvador, and most recently in East Timor and Venezuela.