Nicaraguan Literacy Campaign

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The Nicaraguan Literacy Campaign was later than many other countries in the region; therefore, they had good models and mentors to guide them to success. The coordinator of the campaign Father Fernando Cardenal and his team studied the experiences, and frequently corresponded with countries such as Brazil and Cuba.

There was a large mobilization of Nicaraguan citizens around the country for the training and awareness of the upcoming campaign in 1979. Volunteers came from all over the country to participate in the project. There were two types of volunteers in the project, those who could not leave for the countryside such as: housewives, government employees and workers; thus, they worked in urban neighbourhoods as Citizens’ Literacy Promoters (AP). The second and most important groups of volunteers under the Popular Literacy Army (EPA) were the youth that worked full-time in the rural and mountainous areas. The groups of influential youth who mostly came from secondary schools or universities, were named after the brigadistas that contributed to the Cuban Literacy Campaign. Like their Cuban mentors, the brigadistas did not only teach the rural peasants to read and write; but they were also integrated into the families, bridging the gap between the rural and urban citizens of the nation. Due to the fact that the young volunteers were as young as 12 years of age, many parents speculated on the idea of allowing them to participate.

Massive campaigns through the media and youth groups were organized in order to convince them. Other campaigns had to also be arranged to convince teachers to participate, due to the fact that a lot of them despised the idea of working closely with their students. Altogether, approximately 95,140.87 Nicaraguans actually volunteered in the campaign.

The campaign used a number of tactics to increase the participation and creativity of the illiterates during their learning process which included experiential learning, dialogue, group discussions and collective problem solving. However, these tactics were not as successful as perceived due to the fact that the training process of the volunteers was very brief and started a month before the actual campaign. The first stage of the training process consisted of a two week intensive workshop and those trained first would train the next group of volunteers. After the 3rd group was trained, schools and universities were closed down in order to train the remaining.

Literacy Congresses were held in order to evaluate the outcome of the literacy campaign. The evaluation illustrated impressive results considering the fact that a rocky road was taken to get to where they were. Altogether, about one-fifth of the population participated directly in the campaign and almost everyone was affected in at least an indirect way. Overall, illiteracy had reduced by about 37.39% with about 7% illiterates in the industrialized Pacific and 25.95% in the less developed regions. Even though illiteracy was still higher in the rural areas, they were more affected by the campaign with a major decrease of about 52.5%. The interaction between the rural and urban regions in Nicaragua was one of the most important results. Such interactions led to the integration of the once quite independent two regions, with a binding sense of nationalism throughout the country. The fact that every class, race, gender and age was involved, brought about a new perspective towards the distribution of power and wealth. Women also played a major role in the literacy campaign. Like the Cuban example, about 60% of the brigadistas were female and such a title made the women feel a sense of belonging and equalization in the revolutionary process of their country. Lastly, due to the great success of the campaign, Nicaragua made a substantial contribution in finding solutions for the eradication of illiteracy worldwide. In September 1980, UNESCO awarded Nicaragua with the “Nadezhda K. Krupskaya” award for their successful literacy campaign.

The successes of the 1980 Literacy campaign were however short lived as Daniel Ortega and the FSLN government were replaced by the United Nicaraguan Opposition (UNO) coalition headed by Violeta Chamorro. This change in government resulted in the contraction and elimination of social programs which directly affected the education system in Nicaragua. Although education (and health care) began its deterioration during 1988 with the economic reforms introduced by the Sandinista government, the problems were not as dramatic as they were after 1990. The UNO government no longer supplied students with the basic school supplies (such as notebooks, or writing utensils) and tuition was no longer free. This drastically affected the popular sector, as children from poor Nicaraguan families were forced to stay home because the family could not afford to send them to school.