Indigenous literacy program advances (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Thursday, June 14,  2007
BOLIVIA

Indigenous literacy program advances

[photo inset - Cuban literacy program brings results in Bolivia (above) and
other countries.   Mart�n Garat]

Mart�n Garat.  Jun 13, 2007
http://www.latinamericapress.org/article.asp?lanCode=1&artCode=5190

Aymara, Quechua and Guarani Bolivians learn to read and write in their
native languages.

�My hand shook when I wrote on the first day,� said Lorenza
Quispe, a student in a literacy program in the Jard�n
Bot�nico area of the capital, La Paz. She wrote the Spanish words
�t�, tomate, toro,� or �tea, tomato,
bull� at the end of the class.

Almost all of the female students in these 90-minute classes are over the
age of 50. They work for a park maintenance company in the capital.

Except for one, the female students are all dressed in the full skirts
common for Andean women. It is difficult for them to pronounce some of the
Spanish words because their Aymara and Quechua mother tongues reverse some
of the vowels used in Spanish.

�It�s difficult to learn at this age,� said Viviana,
who did not wish to give her last name. �We forget what we learn
quickly, and we have other things to worry about.�

Miriam Fuentes Castro teaches one of the courses in neighboring town El Alto
as a volunteer. �It�s a nice challenge to teach them to read
and write, but you have to advance slowly,� she said. �At
first, they didn�t know how to use pencils. We had many exercises.
Another problem is that they have responsibilities in their home, like
cooking dinner.�

Program underway throughout region
There are some 17,000 literacy centers throughout Bolivia as part of the
�Yo S� Puedo� program, a Cuban literacy program
currently in operation in Argentina, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Uruguay and
Venezuela.

Since March 2006, some 120,000 have graduated from the program, whose name
means �Yes I Can� in English, since March 2006. Benito Ayma,
Bolivia�s literacy director, the goal is to teach 1.2 million people
to read and write in the country. Another 13,000 literacy centers are
planned for the coming years.

The teaching materials are provided by the Cuban government on the condition
that participating countries agree to teach without excluding any sector or
individual and that the goal be the total eradication rather than only the
decrease of illiteracy (LP, Sept. 6, 2006).

Bolivian President Evo Morales� closest allies help support the
program: Cuban literacy specialists serve as advisors and Venezuela
provides funding.

�At a pace of six hours a week, the students learn to read and write
in three months,� said Leonardo Pacos, one of the program�s
Cuban advisors. �Our method is to assign a figure to each letter,
depending on how often it�s used. Vowels, for example, are used the
most frequently and have the figures 1 to 5.�

But the program does not only teach students how to read and write in
Spanish, but to do so in their native tongues.

In February, Bolivia also launched literacy classes in Quechua and Aymara. A
program will begin later this year in the Guarani language of southeastern
Bolivia. So far, there are some 9,000 adults enrolled in classes in native
languages, mostly in rural highland communities.

�We began in the cities and went out to the countryside after.
It�s difficult because we have limitations to get to the most
far-off communities,� Ayma said.

According to Bolivia�s 2001 national census, there were 60,000
illiterate Bolivians in El Alto alone. Literacy program officials attempted
doing their own household-by-household census, in order to find the
illiterate people, but it was not easy.