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A nti-illiteracy center— M exican adults learning to read and write. M e x ic o and the 3 R7s A y o a r-u u d -u -h a ll-o ld illite r a c y is p u t e ffo r t to redu ce o n a p e r m a n e n t b a sis. By CAM ILLE M . C IA N F A R R A Mexico C ity. ARMEN NAVARRO, 48 years old and a maid in a Mexico City household, was inconsolable. Because she was illiterate, she wept each time another letter arrived from her husband who had gone to the United States to work as a farmhand. A s the stacks of unread letters grew larger, Carmen grew sadder. Then one day in the market place-she stopped to watch a pup pet show in which a poor, uneducated man became rich and fam ous because he had enrolled in one of the centers of instruc tion provided for people of all ages by the Secretary of Education in the department’s year-and-a-half-old fight to lower Mexico's 60 p ercen t illiteracy rate. ^>flie next day Carmen followed the ex' ample of the Mexican Horatio Alger and, after several months of- receiving instruc tion in the three R’s, two hours each day, she successfully passed her “graduating” examination. It consisted of writing her first letter to her husband. Though Carmen considered the appearunce of the puppet show in the market place a happy incident for her, actually it was part of a carefully planned propa ganda campaign geared to the minds and milieu of Mexico's underprivileged Car mens and Carloses. C began as a temporary experiment, has encouraged the President to make it a permanent plan by means of -a decree effective next March 21. Once snared, the culture seekers pre sented a problem unknown in the Little Red School House in the United States. Before the majority of them could be taught to read and write Spanish, they had first to m aster their own Indian dia lect. In thousands of remote villages fiftytwo pre-Spanish Conquest languages are still spoken. It was a huge task that Secretary of Education Jaime Torres Bodet took, but undaunted, he immediately set about bringing in from every region bilingual inhabitants who were instructed in teaching methods and simple history and geography. Then, he sent them back to become the nuclei of education in their communities. u NDER the anti-illiteracy law each able-bodied Mexican citizen between the ages of 18 and 60 who reads and writes Spanish m ust impart elem entary learning to at least one illiterate. The penalty for avoiding his duty is the refusal of civil servants to provide him with the things he needs. Thus, a lazy literate may be unable to secure a marriage or driver’s license, and his house may burn down because city firemen will not rush to his aid. As the jR iA D IO blurbs inserted between pop thing works out, though, busy Mexicans ular programs have caught the ear of with a desire to cooperate donate money many Mexicans—rabid radio fans. P las to the teaching centers in their communi tered everywhere are arresting posters de ties so that indirectly they are educating picting a proud youth teaching his aged many more than the one illiterate required m oth er to read and w rite,'or another one by law. Since the Federal budget for the of the 1,000,000 placards with equally di project is only $200,000, the bulk of the rect appeal that have been distributed project is carried by the communities and throughout the most accessible regions. private individuals. Where the only communication w ith the The interest and enthusiasm with which outside world is a mule trail over moun the traditionally impassive Mexican Indian tain ranges, army planes have dropped has received the campaign has amazed and 7,000,000 leaflets upon the startled M ex delighted the President, whose brain child icans living in tiny remote villages the it was, and the Secretary of Education, who has worked tirelessly to make it a length and width of the land. Through these propaganda means 1,730,- success. Torres Bodet, on one of his prop 821 unlettered Mexicans have been lured aganda tours, personally taught an Indian since August, 1944, to the 45,000 coop mother to write the name of her sm all son erative anti-illiteracy centers. Recently Julio, and confessed to being far fxom dry-eyed after w itnessing the woman's 278,000 of them graduated. The success of the campaign, which flood of happy tears. ' THE' NEW YORK TIME
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