In 1961 Cuba's President Fidel Castro told the United Nations: "Cuba will be the first country in the Americas to be able to decide to eliminate illiteracy in just a few months." Eleven months later 707,212 people had learned to read and had written letters to President Castro to prove it and say thank you. All these letters are bound and collected at the Museum of Literacy in Havana. Alphabetizing (which means both teaching someone to read and learning to read), we will win, was the main slogan.

The idea was that only with higher literacy and education levels would the revolution, now creating a new government and a new society, be able to solve Cuba's social problems. "No creer, leer!" was the message: don't just believe, read! More than 100,000 young people, mostly teens, some younger, formed the core of 268,000 literacy teachers. The youngest was 7, shown below in his uniform and in his literacy campaign ID card.

These young people went to live with families in order to teach them to read. The families were mostly poor peasants; the teachers, urbanites. The teachers learned as much as the students. The entire country was organized around the literacy effort, from building roads to devising and publishing textbooks, from public health to international relations. For instance: there was a sudden need for eye exams, and then eyeglasses. China supplied a lantern for each teacher, since the teaching took place after the day's work.

With the Bay of Pigs U.S. invasion that same year, several young teachers and their students were killed in acts of war and sabotage. There were many adjustments and additional people who joined in the campaign as it was not easy and the months were going by. But by December 1961 the campaign had succeeded, and a huge celebration was held in Revolution Square featuring many gigantic pencils waving in the air.

The two campaign textbooks, one a teachers' guide, linked reading to the issues facing Cuba. The very first word taught was OEA (OAS, the Organization of American States). This taught vowels and international political reality at the same time.

The letters to Fidel are as varied as their authors. The writer in the letter at left describes himself as 96 years old.

Luisa Campos, above, is the director of the Museum. The museum, which also houses the archives of the campaign, is a significant place for the many who were literacy teachers, "alfabetizadores." Everywhere you go you meet them, because their experiences molded them into a corps of national leadership.
 
 

Trinidad is a small and historical city with two libraries we visited. The books were rather old, reflecting the national shortage of cash due to the US blockade and the collapse of the Soviet Union, which had been Cuba's major support. The spaces were large, clean, better lit than these photos indicate, and in use. Librarians in our tour brought gifts.

This library is prominently located on Santa Clara's main plaza, where a final battle of the revolution was fought. Many libraries are in such prominent and capacious buildings.

This librarian was teaching this group of kids how to use an simple braille printing device. This particular group was sighted, but the idea was to educate them about braille and about the realities of being blind.

This rare book collection housed newpapers going back 100 years to the slavery period in Cuba as well as a shelf of rare volumes about slavery, including two by Fernando Ortiz, the father of Afrocuban studies and a contemporary of our own W.E.B. Dubois.

The students above right had each won prizes for their essays on José Martí, who was an intellectual and leader of Cuba's first liberation from Spain. Martí was very active while still a youth himself.

Kids at this particular library have put out a newsletter, Menique (named after a character in a Martí story), for many years.
 
 

This main room at the national library featured a card catalog (as did the other libraries) and also a temporary exhibit of large drawings including the one below, all by Candelario Ajuría, a Chinese Cuban in his 70s living today in Havana.

The library staff above expresses the effort to preserve and provide access to Cuba's national collections. Top left, assembling information for the web. Top right, repairing books with tried-and-true tools like glue and an electric iron. Bottom left, a woman works at automating the catalog. Bottom right, an explanation of the digitization setup: two PCs, two small scanners, and lots to digitize.
 
 

This library is open to teachers and others looking for educational related material, and it serves the ministry as well. This main room (there were several floors) featured two stories of books and a catwalk around the second level. The director here was very helpful in allocating staff time to searching their online database for records of President Castro's speeches and of regulations concerning the use of computers in education.
 
 

These two women are part of the Cuban Libraries Association which has an office and small library in the Institute for the Book in Havana. Marta Terry, on the right, is president, and former director of the National Library.  Reflecting Cuba's advances in literacy and libraries, Ms. Terry was for some years first vice president of IFLA, the International Federation of Library Associations.

Above right: The young man photographed here in the library was the son of the staffperson above. Above left: A photo hanging in a corner of the ASCUBI office is one of Cuba's most famous readers, known to all as Fidel.
 
 

One of Cuba's dictators had a replica of the US congress constructed to house his government. It is built of materials more valuable and appears more imperial than the one in Washington, D.C. Today it is part museum, part offices. In what was possibly a cloakroom, above right, there is now a cybercafé.

Six computers, on the Internet and with printing, are available for US$ 3 per half hour, US$ 5 per hour. This is very expensive for most Cubans but with the tourist economy there are dollars in Cuban pockets. Tourists also use this location. The charge mirrors the costs: Cuba has to buy computers in dollars, not pesos.
 
 

The Institute for the Book has set up a cybercafé with five computers on the Internet. Email appeared to be the number one application.
 
 

The business sectors that bring international trade and the research centers that are developing important or high tech products and services have computers in their offices. Libraries are not public computing sites yet. People not using computers for work are most likely to get online via the computer movement. This movement has established 74 youth computer clubs around the country. Three of these 74 are larger computer palaces, and this is Havana's.

Email and open machine time is advertized. Here people are crowding around the just-posted class lists. Classes start every four months.

Director of the Palace Simón Chung Saíz, in blue, with the vice-director. The Havana palace is in a former department store, so the dozen or so computers in the lobby are good advertizing to passers-by. Upstairs houses four classrooms, a room with special software for web and software development, a software manual library, along with the expected server closet.

The group on the left was reviewing an educational software game developed in Cuba to teach health. The three youth on the right, shown with the network administrator (in jacket) were learning software and web development.

Student protests and military battles have made their way up and down these steps. This is reflected in two sculptures in the first quadrangle you enter at the top of the steps.

This bookstore on the central plaza of Santa Clara is similar to others but particularly pleasant in furnishings and light as well as its books in multiple languages, The shop reflects the realities of "socialist commerce." First, since rents are not boosted in an open real estate market, space is a possibility. This store had a second floor suited to gatherings. Second, no operation can afford large inventories. Publishers do not even print enough books to be stored in great number before the eye of the consumer as you see in capitalist countries.
 
 

This restaurant was so delicious and friendly that it was easy to take a bunch of snapshots.  A full plate of pork and rice and beans was 20 pesos. On San Miguel, No. 9 entre Cuba y Villuendas in Santa Clara.
 
 

This style of vegetable farming was everywhere: long raised beds growing what a healthy person needs to eat. A counterpart to the large scale agriculture of bananas, fruit trees, and especially sugar cane. On the left they are building new beds and on the right, growing.
 
 

El Callejon de Hamel or Hamel Alley is the site of a huge multidimensional Afrocuban mural and, every Sunday, a packed-house concert or jam session.

Above left, behind the mustard colored figure, is painted on the wall is another portrayal of the double-headed axe and Shango. Above right, "If you can eat a yam..." A “ñame" is a particular type of yellow yam, a staple of Cuban cuisine. Spo this expression invites and challenges everyone to get down and enjoy the alley.
 
 

Along with literacy and computer literacy there is the question of how Cuba uses public space and artifacts to remember its past and define itself. This first photo is from Trinidad's Museum of the Struggle against the Bandits, which is in a region that was plagued in the early 1960s by bands of counterrevolutionaries and thugs. Photos and articles here commemorate those mostly young people who were killed in this struggle.

The museum shown above is in a small park, by a railroad. In fact, composed of the four original rail cars, the original bulldozer, the original site, some dynamic concrete shapes and an even more dynamic and clear guide, the museum IS the Battle of the Tren Blindado, or armored train. Batista's own planes had bombed the rail line. Molotov cocktails beneath the rail cars had demoralized the soldiers inside the traveling ammunitions depot. Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara arrived. Having gathered information, he then proceeded to disinform the Batista officer in charge: You are utterly surrounded. If you don't surrender, Batista will have you on a plate for the total destruction that will ensue. You have 15 minutes.

The officer surrendered (to 20 guerrillas) and it is said that when Batista heard, he began to pack his bags.

This most recent monument and plaza is dedicated to the battle for Elian Gonzalez. José Martí, holding a child, points at the U.S. Interests Section (the unofficial U.S. embassy, in the background). Between Martí and the U.S. Interest Section is a gathering spot that parallels the Malecón seawall. The bases of the pillars are decorated with plaques naming intellectuals from the United States, Mexico, Cuba and elsewhere.

The US-Cuba dialogue has many chapters. The monument above is just behind the sculpture of José Martí. On one side, the two nations stand side by side although not quite equal, 1898. The text: "The people of the island of Cuba are and have the right to be free and independent -- Joint resolution of the U.S. Congress, 19 April 1898." On the other side, a woman holding two drowned men. The text: "To the victims of the Maine who were sacrificed to the imperialist voracity in its ardor for seizing the island of Cuba -- February 1898 - February 1961."

"Historic pact between UC Berkeley, Cuban libraries encourages research, sharing materials," University of California at Berkeley press release September 6, 2000

Hisham Aidi, "Havana Healing: Castro's Minority Scholarship Plan," March 1, 2001 (from the U.S.)

Afrocuba Web (from the U.S.)

Fidel Castro's recent speeches and interviews

University of Havana

José Martí National Library