Cuba's Literacy Campaign was a valiant effort to transform Cuba's political culture. But despite it's initial successes, this model was not applied successfully in future circumstances. This article examines the reasons why.

1. READING, WRITING & REVOLUTION
Political Socialization & the Literacy Campaign in Cuba
by Craig Collins, Ph.D.
Latin America Studies Conference
December, 1985
*A NOTE TO THE READER: Since this article was written in late 1985, a
lot has changed in Cuba & the world. The collapse of the Soviet Union
deprived Cuba of its most important economic, political and military ally
and intensified the US effort to isolate Cuba and force it to abandon its
revolutionary commitment to political sovereignty and socialism. At the
same time, several Latin American countries (especially Venezuela) have
expressed their support for the anti-imperialist politics of Cuba. These new
conditions have prompted major reforms inside Cuba as Castro and his
aging generation of revolutionary elites are replaced with a new generation
that must rethink and restructure Cuba's economic and political system to
cope with the new conditions of the 21st century. The article's age prevents
it from undertaking an analysis of how these changes are affecting the
process of political socialization inside Cuba.
Upon capturing state power, Third World revolutionary governments
commonly face a host of formidable problems. They must make good on
their promises of ending backwardness and poverty while defending the
regime from internal subversion and external hostility. To accomplish these
difficult tasks, they must enlist the active support of a population steeped in
a tradition of political apathy and cynicism, and unskilled in the operation of
modern technology. This uneducated and skeptical population must be
convinced that the new regime deserves their support; but, beyond that, they
must be convinced of the need to transform themselves: to turn their apathy
into action; their ignorance into knowledge; and their isolation into unity.
How can this be done? Central to this process is the mode of political
socialization. The success or failure of a revolution may be determined by
the effectiveness of the political socialization process created by the
country's new leadership. Under revolutionary conditions, political
socialization is a process of both education and re-education; and, by nature,
it is new and experimental. Its goal is the complete transformation of a
traditional subject political culture into a revolutionary participant political

2. culture. If it fails to make this transformation, the revolution will fail as well,
or find itself frozen midstream.
This paper will examine a single revolution's earliest attempt to formulate an
effective mode of political socialization. It will examine this process from
both the objective environment which surrounded and conditioned its
formation, and from the subjective decisions and choices made by the key
actors involved. Finally, it will make some tentative assessments of the
success or failure of this mode of political socialization in historical
retrospect.
After Fidel Castro's guerilla army came to power in 1959, he committed his
new regime to a total transformation of Cuban society. However, Cuba's
political culture presented a formidable barrier to Castro's vision of a new
Cuba. The revolutionary government inherited an educational system and
political culture that had provided the Bautista dictatorship with a tiny,
corrupt educated elite and a general population of docile and ignorant
citizens.
Castro realized that the Revolution would inevitably suffocate if it remained
surrounded by a political culture steeped in ignorance and political apathy.
His promises of a prosperous, independent Cuba required more than the
passive good wishes of the island's population. It demanded active,
enthusiastic, widespread involvement in changing the socio-economic
inequalities of traditional Cuban society. It also demanded a population
educated to develop and operate modern agricultural and industrial
technology. Thus Castro faced the task of convincing the Cuban people that
the revolutionary regime could not transform Cuban society without their
active, educated support and involvement. As Fidel put it:
"On January 1st, 1959 many people thought they had stepped into a world
of riches. What they had really done was to win the opportunity to start
creating--in the midst of underdevelopment, poverty, ignorance & misery--
the wealth and well being of the future." 1
For Castro, this historic opportunity would be lost if the people could not be
educated, and their commitment and enthusiasm for the Revolution secured.
Hence, education stood at the very heart of the process of creating a new
political culture and a new society. In Castro's words, "All revolution is an
extraordinary process of education. Revolution and education are the same

3. thing." 2
Cuba's initial experiment in creating a new form of political socialization
arose out of the government's first attempts to overcome widespread
ignorance and illiteracy while mobilizing active enthusiasm for the new
regime's revolutionary goals. Speaking before the UN General Assembly in
1960 Castro declared:
"Next year our people propose to launch an all-out offensive against
illiteracy with the ambitious goal of teaching every illiterate person to read
and write. Organizations of teachers, students, and workers--the entire
population--are preparing themselves for an intensive campaign; and within
a few months Cuba will be the first country in the Americas to be able to
claim that it has not a single illiterate inhabitant."3
Many historians and analysts of the Cuban Literacy Campaign have failed to
recognize its dual nature. They have viewed it simply as a crash program to
overcome illiteracy. But the object of the Literacy Campaign was far more
ambitious and politically strategic. The Literacy Campaign was used by the
revolutionary leadership as a tool for transforming the images, values, and
behavior of Cuba's citizens. The Campaign was Castro's first experiment
with a new mode of political socialization. An experiment which, because of
its success, became a crucial formative episode in a historical process which
shaped the revolutionary elite's commitment to a specific style of political
socialization--a style which became institutionalized and persisted for
decades despite its loss of effectiveness. The Literacy Campaign will be
examined as a prototype of the many government-orchestrated mass
mobilizations that followed in its wake. From this vantage point, the
Campaign will be assessed as an institutionalized style of political
socialization and social transformation.
In 1959, as Cuban guerillas toppled Bautista and paraded in victory through
the streets of Havana, an American professor, Herman Hyman, stimulated
the development of political socialization as a specific field of inquiry in
American political science. Hyman described political socialization as, "a
continuous learning process involving both emotional learning and
manifest political indoctrination, and as being mediated by all of the
participations and experiences of the individual.4 The result of political
socialization, is a set of orientations--cognitive, affective, and evaluative-
-toward the political system."5

4. The sources of these attitudes are many: they may be specific or diffuse,
latent or manifest, formal or informal, planned or unplanned, and may take
place at every stage of the individual's life. However, Hyman describes
political socialization as a gradual process which tends to perpetuate
political cultures and structures through time.6 Generally speaking, Hyman
is right. Gradualness and perpetualization of traditional political values are
the usual characteristics of political socialization.
However, revolutionary governments like China and Cuba seized power
surrounded by a traditional political culture antithetical to the revolutionary
aspirations of the new regime. Thus, the new leadership comes to view this
traditional set of political attitudes, orientations, beliefs, and behaviors as a
formidable enemy. An enemy that can kill the revolutionary process in its
infancy unless it is uprooted, and a new political culture planted in its place.
By 1960, the Cuban government was searching for a way to uproot Cuba's
traditional patterns of political socialization and replace them with a new
mode of socialization that would embrace, in both form and content, the
regime's vision of a new Cuba and a new man. The Literacy Campaign was
Castro's initial weapon in this battle. It was designed to accomplish far more
than teaching people to read. It was seen as a method of infusing the Cuban
people with a sense of national pride, solidarity, and enthusiasm for the new
government and its revolutionary goals. According to one Cuban educator,
the Literacy Campaign had the following consequences:
"Our campaign has put the youth of Cuba in direct contact, on a daily and
prolonged basis (for almost a year), with the peasants and mountain folk,
the poorest and most isolated people on the island. Almost 100,000 teachers
and students, aided by more than 170,000 adult volunteers, have launched a
true movement for national fusion. This extensive experience in communal
life cannot help but greatly increase understanding among the various
classes and strata of the population. But in our view there is something
more; (during the campaign) the entire populace could participate in the
tasks of the revolution. The revolution no longer was a phenomenon
reserved for a small group--zealous and active; it was converted into a true
mass movement."7
Thus the Literacy Campaign was designed to transform all of the traditional
conduits of political socialization--the family, schools, peer groups,

5. workplaces, media and government institutions--into social allies of the
Revolution. It was the first of the great revolutionary mobilization efforts
organized to involve all Cubans, regardless of age, sex, occupation,
education, social class or place of residence.
If you were illiterate, you could study; if you were literate, you could teach.
One revolutionary poster proclaimed: "Whoever you are, wherever you are,
this is your campaign, participate in whatever way you can." Of the 5
million Cubans old enough to have been affected by the Literacy Campaign,
1.25 million were actively drawn into the process as students or teachers.
Richard Fagen estimates that, when you add to these direct participants the
hundreds of thousands who were linked to some form of organized support
for the campaign, it is probably safe to say the campaign affected in some
real way the lives of most Cubans who by 1961 were old enough to have
even minimal political awareness.8
The popular enthusiasm for the Campaign was probably the product of
several factors. First, Fidel's government was at the peak of its popularity.
After toppling the hated Bautista dictatorship only a year before, Castro had
just repelled a CIA-sponsored invasion at Playa Giron (the Bay of Pigs) as
the Literacy Campaign began. Also, as a direct attack on one of the most
obvious, shameful and widely condemned legacies of the old educational
system, the campaign against illiteracy enjoyed substantial popular support
in its own right.
Castro's government had little trouble linking Cuba's old educational system-
-notorious for its fiscal neglect, pedagogical incompetence, and bureaucratic
corruption--to Cuba's legacy of underdevelopment, dictatorship, and foreign
exploitation. Castro charged that the old education system served only a tiny
urban elite whose children attended private or church sponsored schools
while poor children--if they attended school at all--went to second rate
public schools known for their irrelevance, incompetence, and corruption.
Fidel argued that Cuba's bankrupt educational system had left the people
ignorant and apathetic. This ignorance and apathy served only the domestic
tyrants and foreign imperialists who stood to profit by keeping Cuba
vulnerable to exploitation and incapable of independent economic
development.
While not everyone agreed with Castro's analysis of the problem, even his
diehard opponents found it hard to muster a strong argument against

6. improving education and ending illiteracy. The facts tended to reinforce the
revolutionary analysis of Cuba's educational crisis. Despite Cuba's relatively
affluent position vis-a-vis most Latin American countries, Cuban education
had deteriorated since the 1920s and had fallen well below the average level
for most of Latin America. Relative to total population, there was more
primary education for Cubans in 1923 than in 1953. By 1955, all but three
countries in Latin America were claiming higher primary enrollment than
Cuba. The average primary enrollment for Latin America was 64%, while
Cuba's stood only at 51%. The 1953 census showed that one of every four
Cubans over 9 years of age had never been to school, while half of those
who had attended dropped out before sixth grade. Over 25% of all Cubans
were illiterate, while another 50% were, at best, semi-illiterate.10
By linking these conditions to Cuba's legacy of oppression,
underdevelopment, and Yankee exploitation, the new regime was able to
infuse the Literacy Campaign with revolutionary fervor and widespread
popularity. Indeed, the Literacy Campaign was designed to be, and in fact
became, a national crusade with a scope, duration, and intensity rare at any
time or place except under conditions of war. Hence, it wasn't surprising that
the guerrilla regime adopted military language to characterize the campaign.
Mass organizations of teachers were deemed brigades who formed a literacy
army whose goal was to crush the enemy of illiteracy. The campaign was
portrayed by government and press as a national emergency, a battle, and a
triumphal march. Speaking to the young literacy brigadistas departing to the
countryside Castro said:
"For there are two armies in our nation: one armed with rifles; one armed
with books. The revolution needs both of these armies. Heroism is just as
necessary to defeat illiteracy as it is to conquer the mercenaries of
imperialism. The battle that defeats ignorance will give our country more
glory than any military battle we have waged so far."11
According to Richard Fagen's account, when young volunteers were sent by
the hundreds to the Playa Giron (Bay of Pigs) area to work, they arrived by
way of a mock invasion, on beaches still littered with the residue of battle.
While airplanes bombarded the shore with booklets and instruction
materials, the brigadistas disembarked from small boats armed with giant
pencils and notebooks. Through such appeals to national pride and
patriotism the leadership sought to inspire awareness of the campaign and
enlist enthusiasm and participation throughout the social structure and in

7. every corner of the island.12
One of the most effective contributions to the campaign's publicity blitz and
motivational effort came from new literates themselves. As part of their final
exam, each student was required to write a letter to Fidel, countersigned by
their teacher. Many letters were given wide publicity, as each province
competed for the honor of being the first to achieve 100% literacy. These
letters seemed to serve at least two purposes. First they gave special
importance and individuality to the final achievement of literacy. Second,
for the public, it helped humanize the mass of statistics, giving the campaign
drama, variety, and special meaning.
Thus, in the course of making Cuba a nation of literates, the Revolution
began to transform the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that characterized
Cuba's traditional political culture of cynicism, isolation, and apathy into a
revolutionary culture based on pride, enthusiasm, and unity.
Richard Fagen points out that, for most Cubans, the Literacy Campaign's
impact was influential because of the newness of the experience. For the first
time, urban children were meeting older peasants and living the life of the
rural poor; isolated villagers were becoming acquainted with a revolution
personified by a fresh-faced literacy volunteer; illiterates were becoming
students and readers for the first time in their lives; families were forced to
part with their idealistic adolescents for a noble cause; and peasant
youngsters lived, played, worked and studied alongside city children.
Throughout the island, people who had always avoided political
involvement and viewed government with a mixture of hostility and
suspicion, found themselves tied by family and friendship to a massive
governmental campaign.13
In general, these experiences proved to be overwhelmingly positive; and, for
many, the campaign became a central formative experience in their lives.
For the brigadistas and their students, the nine-month campaign was an
intensive, intimate, and often rewarding experience whose effects would not
be easily forgotten. During my visit to the island in 1975, I met many people
who remembered the literacy campaign with great clarity, fondness, and
nostalgia. They spoke of pride; how much they'd learned about the
conditions of Cuba's rural poor as literary workers; and how exciting and fun
it had been to be with their friends on a noble adventure. One peasant
woman, now a local schoolteacher, spoke of how learning to read had

8. transformed her life; and of her gratitude to Fidel and the young brigadista
who had taught her to read.
It was clear from my experience that, 15 years after the Campaign, the
cognitive, effective, and evaluative perceptions of the Cuban people had
been altered significantly by this event. There seemed little doubt that, as an
initial experiment in re-socializing the Cuban people, the Literacy Campaign
had been an overwhelming success. However, the same cannot be said for
the constant barrage of government-orchestrated campaigns that have
followed in its wake. While the format for these campaigns is clearly
modeled after the Literacy Campaign, they no longer inspire enthusiasm,
learning, unity, or national pride among many Cubans.
After the overwhelming success of the Literacy Campaign mass
mobilizations became a routine feature of Cuban life, quickly losing their
newness. Over the decades, the revolutionary elite has mobilized the Cuban
people to struggle against colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism,
counter-revolution, racism, male chauvinism, bureaucratism, sectarianism,
property destruction, absenteeism, poor housing, military unpreparedness,
low productivity, food/clothing/and fuel shortages and much, much more. In
fact "La Lucha" (The Struggle), which usually means some form of self-
sacrifice and voluntary effort, stands at the core of Cuban revolutionary
ideology. Struggle, sacrifice, and obedience have become the essential
environment in which Cuba's new communist man will be formed; the
crucible for testing each individual's loyalty to the regime and commitment
to the Revolution. Speaking to the subject of creating the new man through
mass participation, an editorial in Granma (the official government
newspaper) had this to say:
"[All of our campaigns] no matter at what moment or in what sector they
have taken place, have aided in the fundamental task: the formulation of a
new man, a man with a profound consciousness of his role in society and of
his duties and social responsibilities, a man capable of constructing
Communism and living with it. We see the new man as arising from the huge
educational campaigns that the revolution has started, from our troops'
voluntary laborers [a host of social programs are named]. This conception
obliges the revolution to develop plans involving increased participation by
the masses in the execution of diverse tasks. On the road to Communism, the
masses will daily have to increase their participation in societal tasks,
paying more attention to the management and direction of these

9. activities."14
While Cuban leaders seemed dedicated to the idea that constant mass
involvement in government-directed campaigns would create the ideal
communist man, I found substantial evidence to the contrary. Despite the
popularity and success of the Literacy Campaign, Cubans have become
bitter and cynical toward government and politics over the last 25 years.
Many Cubans I met seemed tired of the endless calls for volunteering their
labor; and angered by further rationing of what little material goods they
have to help Cuba's balance of payments. Also, many openly opposed
sending their sons off to fight in Angola or Ethiopia. In recent years, the
throngs of Cubans who filled the Peruvian Embassy, and the 20,000 who
fled the island for the U.S. by boat, testify to the fact that there is mass
dissatisfaction with the New Cuban Society. The present generation of
Cubans docking on the shores of Miami is the same one that spent its youth
teaching peasants to read and participating in an endless series of
revolutionary campaigns. The modern Cuban emigrant isn't from the old
landowning "gusano" class, these are children of the revolution. Clearly the
revolutionary model of political socialization is failing.
In spite of some remarkable progress by the Revolution in education, the
drop-out rate in Cuban schools has been rapidly climbing over the last 20
years. The great efforts made by the Revolution to attract young farmers and
workers into vocational and technological schools (especially agricultural
ones) was enormously successful in the mid-1960s. But, since then, the
number has dramatically dropped; by 1972, some agricultural schools were
empty. By 1971, language schools had become far more popular than
agricultural schools (there were 24,033 students in language schools and
only 7,757 registered in agricultural schools).15 Castro himself admitted that
moral incentives and revolutionary motivation seemed to have failed: "Who
wants to work in the countryside? [It] is rough, it is poor--it doesn't change
from one year to the next [and will stay like it is] for years to come."16 The
overall drop-out rate has been extremely high as well. Statistics show that
79% of those children entering elementary school in 1965 did not finish in
1971. The drop-out rate in rural areas was 88%. For junior high the overall
record was slightly worse.17
Despite countless education campaigns modeled after the Literacy
Campaign, the statistics on Cuban education continue to worsen. The
situation is mirrored in the economic sphere as well. In 1967, Fidel held

10. great hope for the economic miracles that would be performed by the
generation that would grow up during the Literacy Campaign:
"It is precisely in these virgin minds of the new generation which has grown
up with the Revolution that we can find the fewest of these ideas of the past
and perceive most clearly revolutionary ideas. A mass of hundreds of
thousands of young people [will be able to] work and produce with entirely
new conceptions. [They will be] capable of doubling and even tripling the
output of traditional workers, and these young people will do it not with the
idea that their work is going to solve personal problems, but in the belief
that it will provide a definitive solution to the problems of the whole
society."18
However, despite constant calls for voluntary labor campaigns designed to
mobilize and inspire the new Cuban worker to sacrifice and work harder for
the Revolution, labor absenteeism continued to decrease and productivity
continued to fall as the new generation filled the workforce.
Castro's government attempted widespread voluntary labor mobilizations
throughout the late 1960s. Using the same rhetoric and appeals to national
pride, struggle, victory over imperialism, collective effort, etc., found in the
literacy Campaign, the leadership successfully mobilized greater and greater
number of people into huge voluntary work brigades. Increases in the
mobilization of voluntary labor (mostly urbanites in non-productive jobs) for
sugar and other harvests went from 106,000 in 1966 to 302,000 in 1968, and
to 700,000 in 1970.19
However, poor organization of voluntary work and the lack of skills of
volunteers resulted in considerable waste of time and resources. Voluntary
labor was often recruited without any real need for it; in many cases
volunteers spent hours waiting to be transported to fields only to remain idle
upon arriving because of lack of needed tools. The fizzle of the heavily
publicized 10 million ton sugar harvest mobilization of 1970 (and the
subsequent dramatic increase in workers absenteeism to 20%) made evident
the gross failure of government-orchestrated voluntary labor campaigns.20
By 1975, many workers I talked with considered these voluntary campaigns
uninspiring and wasteful. Indeed, by that time, many of these "voluntary"
campaigns had become considerably less voluntary. Government-induced
peer group pressure was used in combination with subtle modes of coercion

11. in order to "get out the troops." By not participating you could lose your
place on waiting lists for new houses, better jobs, or transfers to a preferred
living area. These measures, used in ever-greater frequency, reflected the
government's inability to inspire the kind of voluntary commitment,
solidarity, and enthusiasm it had once achieved through the Literacy
Campaign.
Once routinized, bureaucratized and institutionalized, government-
orchestrated campaigns modeled after he Literacy Campaign ceased to
perform their desired function of revolutionary political socialization.
However, it is probably true that the routinization and institutionalization of
voluntary campaigns are not solely to blame for the failure of this mode of
political socialization. At least two other factors must bear significant
responsibility as well.
First, this method of political socialization has an inherent contradiction
which Cuba has never successfully resolved. Government-orchestrated mass
campaigns are elitist and dictatorial in essence, but democratic and populist
in rhetoric. Asking people to make great sacrifices without involving them in
the decision-making process may work well under emergency conditions, or
in periods of national triumph and euphoria. However, top-down calls for
sacrifice and participation may be resisted in peacetime; especially when the
rhetoric of democracy is used, while its absence in reality is obvious.
The Castro regime has never significantly democratized its national
decision-making process. The charismatic personality of Fidel still jealously
guards the citadels of political and economic power. Despite efforts at
"Peoples' Power" organized dissent and opposition has not been tolerated. In
the absence of democratic debate and tolerance for organized opposing
views, many people feel alienated from political activity and cynical about
their ability to effect any change in national policy. Thus, as time passed, the
unchanging top-down nature of the Cuban system made the democratic-
populist slogans used to mobilize and inspire Cubans ring ever more hollow
with each passing year.
Second, and perhaps most crucial of all, Cuba's transformation into a
prosperous, independent socialist state has not been successful. Twenty five
years after the revolution, the Cuban economy remains dependent upon
exporting only few unstable primary products for its survival. It receives
approximately $9 million a day in foreign assistance from the Soviet Bloc,

12. giving it the highest per capita aid ratio in Latin America. While Soviet aid
allows Castro to continue basic social programs and keep the island
economically afloat, economic prosperity seems as illusive as ever. Again
and again, unrealistically high economic targets have been set, promises
have been made that could not be kept, hopes have been raised only to be
disappointed. Today, Cubans have a clear sense that they are economically,
politically, and militarily dependent on the Soviet Union. Their enthusiasm
for national pride and independence can only suffer under such conditions.
Two-and-a-half decades of sacrifice and voluntary participation seems to
have moved the island no closer to national independence or economic self-
sufficiency. Moral incentives and revolutionary enthusiasm inevitably wane
under such stress. Hence, the Castro government has been forced to partially
abandon mass voluntary campaigns and replace them with some mixture of
state coercion and material incentives. The late 70s and early 80s have
witnessed a steady retreat from the Great Revolutionary Campaigns so
characteristic in the 60s and early 70s. Castro's government seems to be
quietly withdrawing its support from the mass campaign as an
institutionalized mode of political socialization. It has been replaced with an
ever-expanding state bureaucracy on the Soviet model, and a clear structure
of rewards and punishments for compulsory political and economy activity.
Castro's retreat from the mode of revolutionary political socialization born
during the Literacy Campaign is symptomatic of the general malaise of the
Cuban Revolution. Economic stagnation, and political commandism have
steadily eroded Cuba's initial attempts to create a political culture actively
committed to the revolutionary democratic transformation of the society and
the individual. The retreat to bureaucratic regimentation and coercion is
symptomatic of a revolutionary process frozen mid-stream.
**************** Footnotes ****************
1) Granma, Weekly Review, Dec. 15, 1968, p. 3.
2) Universidad Popular, 6th series, Educacion y Revolucion (Havana:
Imprenta National de Cuba, Apr. 1961), p. 271.
3) United Nations Official Records of General Assembly, 15th Session, Pt. I,
Vol. I, (New York, Sept. 20-Oct. 17, 1960)
4) James A. Bill and Robert L. Hardgrave, Jr., Comparative Politics: The
Quest for Theory (University Press of America, 1981), p. 99.
5) Ibid.

13. 6) Ibid.
7) Quoted in Richard R. Fagen, The Transformation of Political Culture in
Cuba, (Stanford University Press, 1969), p. 59.
8) Ibid, p. 55.
9) Richard Jolly, "Education: The Pre-Revolutionary Background," Chap. 4
in Dudley Seers; ed., Cuba: The Economic and Social Revolution (Chapel
Hill, N.C., 1964), p. 168.
10) Ibid., p. 164-167.
11) Quoted in Fagen, The Transformation of Political Culture in Cuba, p.
181.
12) Ibid., p. 56.
13) Ibid., p. 61.
14) Granma, Weekly Review, Sept. 27, 1966, p. 2.
15) Carmelo Mesa-Lago, Cuba in the 1970s, (University of New Mexico
Press, Albuquerque, N.M., 1974), p. 94.
16) Fidel Castro, “Speech at the Final Session of the 2nd Congress of the
young Communist League,” Granma, Weekly Review, Apr. 16, 1972, pp.
2-4.
17) Mesa-Lago, Cuba in the 1970s, p. 93.
18) Quoted in, Leo Huberman and Paul Sweezy, Socialism in Cuba,
(Monthly Review Press, N.Y., 1969), pp. 150-1.
19) Carmelo Mesa-Lago, The Economy of Socialist Cuba, (University of
New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, N.M., 1981), p. 129.
20) Ibid.