Alfabeticemos! Let’s Teach Literacy!

The Cuban revolutionary government prioritized education reform as the key to lifting the country out of underdevelopment and creating a new political culture of participatory democracy, epitomized by the 1961 literacy campaign. Fidel Castro’s opponents, however, regarded this campaign as evidence of the “communist indoctrination” by the government of young Cubans and were therefore determined to “save” as many children as possible by sending them to Miami until Castro was ousted. This chapter takes a detailed look at how the battle for the hearts and minds of the next generation unfolded with the mobilization of 100,000 teenagers as literacy brigadistas to teach in the mountains and remote parts of the island. It examines the objectives of the campaign, the recruitment propaganda used to mobilize the Conrado Benítez brigades, how the campaign affected relations between parents and children, and the impact that participation in the campaign had on a generation of revolutionary youth.