|
NICARAGUA: Literacy Campaign Changing
Women’s Lives
By José Adán Silva
MANAGUA (IPS) - Lorena Castillo was 10
years old when she was told that her lot in
life was to become a good homemaker and a
devoted wife and mother. But she would learn
none of that at school, her father said when
she asked to be allowed to go with her
brothers to the school in her rural
Nicaraguan village.
Castillo, who is from Chontales, 140 km
northwest of the capital, was born into a
heavily patriarchal home environment, where
her father ruled the roost and decided the
fate of his sons and daughters.
Three decades later, Castillo discovered
that another world existed out there, and
that life would have been different for her
if only she could have learned to read and
write when she was a little girl who dreamt
of becoming a teacher.
Now, at the age of 40, she has completed an
adult literacy course led by a 21-year-old
volunteer who came out from Managua and
opened up a world of new knowledge and
experiences for her.
"I already wrote my first letter to my son,
and I can understand some of the news,"
Castillo, who has scraped by as a domestic
for 30 years, told IPS with obvious pride.
There are thousands of women in Nicaragua
who are just now seeing their horizons
expand thanks to an ambitious literacy
campaign carried out by the leftwing
Sandinista government.
Education Minister Miguel De Castilla told
IPS that the administration of Daniel Ortega
has been working since the beginning of its
term in 2007 on a massive literacy campaign,
with the aim of declaring the country free
of illiteracy on Jul. 19 - the 30th
anniversary of the toppling of the 43-year
Somoza family dictatorship by the Sandinista
guerrillas.
The goal is for 772,000 illiterate
Nicaraguans over 15 – 52 percent of whom are
women - to complete their primary school
education.
This is not the first Sandinista government
to attempt to eradicate illiteracy. The
so-called National Literacy Crusade was
launched in 1980, a year after the triumph
of the Sandinista Revolution, and reduced
illiteracy from 52 to 12.9 percent of the
population in one year.
According to official figures from the
National Institute of Information on
Development, over half a million
Nicaraguans, out of a total population of
5.3 million at that time, were illiterate in
2005.
Today, the target is to bring the illiteracy
rate below five percent – the threshold set
by the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organisation
(UNESCO) to declare a country free of
illiteracy.
The current literacy campaign has 54,000
volunteers, 95 percent of whom are under the
age of 30 and around 60 percent of whom are
women. So far, 433,734 people have been
taught to read and write, said De Castilla.
Through the campaign giving illiterate
adults access to the educational system, the
government is trying to advance towards the
first three Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
adopted by the international community in
2000, with a 2015 deadline: eradicate
extreme poverty and hunger, achieve
universal primary education, and promote
gender equality and empowerment of women.
To fulfil the second MDG, Nicaragua would
have to reach 100 percent primary school
coverage, up from 75 percent of children
enrolled in 1998 and 80 percent in 2006,
according to the most recent report on
Nicaragua’s progress towards the MDGs.
"The idea is not only to teach men and women
to read and write, but to teach them to
think in a different way," said the
minister. "A literate person has a better
chance of escaping poverty than an
illiterate person."
From illiterate to teacher of thousands
Elba Rivera understands as well as anyone
the meaning of what De Castilla says about
education and poverty. She learned how to
read and write in the 1980 campaign, thanks
to which she was able to leave her life of
rural poverty behind, and go on to earn a
university degree in Nicaragua and a
graduate degree in Germany.
Like Lorena Castillo, Rivera was kept from
studying by her father’s cultural prejudices
and sexist attitudes about the role of women
in the countryside. She was 17 when she
first held a pencil and learned to write her
name.
Rivera is now director and founder of the
Jan Amus Comenius school in the rural
province of Nueva Guinea, 280 km southwest
of Managua.
"I realised that the best way to help a
country get ahead is by educating its
people, and that is why I work hard every
day to teach boys and girls, men and women,
that we are all equal and that we all have
the same rights," she told IPS.
More than 10,000 peasant farmers of all ages
have benefited from Rivera’s programme.
Rivera is one of eight women activists from
around the globe who will have a chance to
present their ideas on education, health and
poverty in the developing South to the
leaders of the Group of Eight (G8) richest
countries at their next annual summit in
July.
The others are Rokeya Kabir from Bangladesh,
Miranda Akhvlediani from Georgia, Jiraporn
Limpananont from Thailand, Leonor Magtolis
Briones from the Philippines, Sandhya
Venkateswaran from India, Dorothy Ngoma from
Malawi and Kadiatou Baby Maiga from Mali.
The women, selected by the global aid agency
Oxfam International, have changed the lives
of thousands of women through their
innovative initiatives.
Rivera supports the literacy campaign that
will teach over 400,000 women to read and
write, but said much more is needed to
achieve true gender equality in Nicaragua.
"There is no doubt that literacy changes the
lives of women," she said. "In my village,
it was always said that women shouldn’t go
to school because it was their duty to take
care of their husbands. That has changed,
which is a major accomplishment.
"The government’s effort to teach tens of
thousands of women to read and to help them
learn their rights is a good thing, but I
think that a broader vision is needed to
overcome the sexist perception that women
learn to read in order to help their kids
with their homework," she said.
"Fighting illiteracy is an excellent idea,
but it’s not enough to just teach people to
read and write; the methods and the
reproduction of sexist concepts in education
must be changed - there are still teachers
here who depict women as the weaker sex,"
she complained.
According to Juanita Jiménez, a leader of
the Autonomous Women's Movement in Nicaragua
(MAM), the idea of a literacy campaign is a
positive step, but not sufficient for the
country to live up to its comments in the
fight against gender inequality.
"It is one thing to teach women to read and
write, and another to promote gender
equality and autonomy," she told IPS. "In
that sense, a literacy campaign is worthless
if the same government trods on the rights
of women."
Challenges faced by women’s rights activists
Jiménez said that on one hand the government
publicises its progress in terms of
educating girls and women, while on the
other it harasses feminist activists "and
restricts women’s right to health and life
by making therapeutic abortion illegal."
Last year, the Sandinista government began
to clamp down on women’s rights
organisations like MAM because of their
criticism of decisions and moves made by
Ortega, even when he was the leader of the
opposition, such as when he lined up
Sandinista votes in 2006 to repeal the law
on therapeutic abortion – i.e., to save a
pregnant woman’s life - a step that women’s
rights activists are fighting hard to
overrule.
The harassment has included raids on the
offices of several NGOs and the confiscation
of their files and computers amid
allegations that they had supported illegal
abortions and engaged in improper financial
dealings.
Activists see the persecution as a reaction
to women’s rights groups’ attempts to get
Ortega investigated or tried when his
stepdaughter Zoilámerica Narváez accused him
in 1998 of sexually abusing her from 1978,
when she was 11 years old, until the end of
his first term (1985-1990).
Ortega gave up his legislative immunity from
prosecution in late 2001, but a court
declared that the statute of limitations had
expired, thus paving the way for his
comeback as president in 2007.
Jiménez said the women’s movement taught
more than 15,000 women – victims of domestic
abuse – to read and write since 1990, when
the Sandinistas lost power after 10 years of
armed conflict with the U.S.-financed
"contra" guerrillas.
Although the activist said the goals for
female literacy are praiseworthy in a
country with a heavily machista culture, she
believes the country’s poverty and lack of
resources will make it impossible to meet
the MDGs by 2015.
"The figures for access to education have
remained steady, but school dropout rates
for girls show we are not doing well," she
said.
A 2006 study by the U.N. Development
Programme (UNDP) revealed that for every 10
children who enrolled in primary school,
only four completed it six years later.
Figures from the Education Ministry and the
non-governmental Forum on Education and
Human Development indicate that 700,000
schoolchildren are outside of the
educational system this year.
Some 200,000 school-age children dropped out
of school and 500,000 did not enroll in
2009, in a country where education is
universal and free, but not obligatory.
Official statistics show that more boys than
girls drop out of primary school: 55 percent
of girls complete their primary education,
compared to 45 percent of boys, who are
often pulled out early to work and help
support their families.
The government acknowledges that the
country’s high poverty rates do not offer
the best conditions to students, and that
the Education Ministry does not have enough
public schools or teachers to cover the
needs.
The Ministry reports a classroom deficit of
57 percent nationwide, and says that out of
27,854 existing classrooms, only 12,181 are
in good condition, and that out of 10,000
teachers needed this year, only 2,500 had
been hired.
Nicaragua has a population of 5.7 million,
47 percent of whom are living on two dollars
a day or less, according to official
figures. It is the poorest country in
Central America, and one of the poorest in
the Americas.
Marisol Jarquín believes literacy is
essential to improving the conditions of
women’s lives.
The young volunteer from San Carlos, a town
on Nicaragua’s southern border, 300 km from
Managua, says there is nothing that pleases
her more than reading the letters written to
her by the peasant women she has taught,
when they finish their basic education
course.
"Poverty, violence, whatever; but a woman’s
life is changed when she starts reading, and
this is the best contribution that I can
make to my country, to eliminate violence
and poverty," said Jarquín.
|
