[Marxism] Literacy campaign in Venezuela

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

LA Times, June 13, 2004
THE WORLD
In Venezuela, Words Spread Far and Wide
A literacy program teaches Spanish, the nation's official language, in 
isolated indigenous villages.
By Carol J. Williams, Times Staff Writer


ISLA PEDRO CAMEJO, Venezuela — In a thatch-roofed hut, two dozen 
barefoot adults and children, a few dogs and a monkey named Pepe cluster 
around the strange equipment that has arrived by canoe.

Behind the hut, which serves as the village schoolhouse, Alejandro 
Fernandez fires up a gas-powered generator with five or six pulls on the 
whipcord, then connects an extension cord to a television and VCR. The 
snowy display that signals no reception awes the indigenous Puinave 
assembly.

Teacher, handyman and rare link with the modern world, Fernandez pops in 
a cassette for the community's first Spanish-language instruction, which 
begins with a slogan from Cuban liberation hero Jose Marti: "To be 
cultured is to be free."

This remote island in the Orinoco River is one of the last and most 
isolated enclaves targeted in Venezuela's vaunted campaign against 
illiteracy, which in less than a year has taught 1.2 million people, 
from the slums and the jungles, to read and write in the national language.

By the program's end, the 36 families on Pedro Camejo should have 
mastered at least sixth-grade Spanish, augmenting their native Puinave 
and Curripaco languages, which have no written form and are little 
understood beyond the swift, muddy waters that surround their island.

Until Mission Robinson, the education drive that the government claims 
will virtually eradicate illiteracy nationwide by the end of June, many 
indigenous communities were deprived of more than knowledge. Ignorant of 
Spanish, the tongue of the conquistadors and Venezuela's only official 
language, residents in Pedro Camejo, for example, could rarely ask for 
social assistance or healthcare when they made their way to the nearest 
city, Puerto Ayacucho, a two-hour drive or three-day walk beyond the 
mainland canoe landing.

full: 
<http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-literacy13jun13,1,3697942.story?coll=la-home-headlines>

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