President Daniel Ortega declared on August 22 that Nicaragua is a "territory free of illiteracy" after reducing the level of illiteracy from 20.7% nationally to 3.56% with the help of Cuba and Venezuela. Minister of Education Miguel de Castilla presented Ortega with a certificate of national achievement resulting from implementation of the Cuban adult literacy plan "Yo Si Puedo" (Yes I Can). "Today the FSLN, again in power, comes to this plaza to definitively declare the nation free from illiteracy. That is the social justice project of Sandinismo in power," declared de Castilla.

The reduction of illiteracy to 3 per 100 residents "has made history," by achieving that level for the first time since independence from Spain in 1821, Ortega said in a celebration carried live on radio and television from the Plaza of the Revolution before hundreds of youth, students, and literacy teachers. "If the people have education and have culture, the people learn to defend their rights," said Ortega. Ortega said the government would not be satisfied until there is not "a single illiterate person" in the country. He pledged to teach literacy to the Miskito and the other original peoples, and said for them "we will continue with education plans until we eradicate illiteracy totally."

Ortega announced that the next objective of the National Literacy Campaign is to raise the population to the 6th grade level by 2015. He said the plan is to incorporate the newly literate into the education system and to raise the quality of primary, secondary, and university education as one of the pillars for future national development.

El Nuevo Diario reported that over one million Nicaraguans learned to read and write during the two literacy campaigns; that of 1980 and the current one. The current literacy campaign, named after Jose Marti and Fidel Castro, began in 2007 with help from Cuba. De Castilla stated that 75% of those taught to read and write were people between 15 and 30 years old who were excluded from the educational system under the neo-liberal governments from 1990-2007 which eliminated free education. The United Nations Education, Science and Culture Organization (UNESCO) has certified that Nicaragua is "illiteracy free."

The celebration was held on the 29th anniversary of the conclusion of the first literacy campaign during the revolutionary Sandinista government when illiteracy was reduced from 53% to 12%. Sandinista commitment to literacy began with Carlos Fonseca in Pancasan in 1967 when he instructed the guerrillas to teach peasants to read. Ortega noted that the Nicaraguan oligarchy and Somoza dictatorship were not interested in educating people. He said the oligarchy and dictatorship had an interest in keeping the people ignorant in order to have cheap labor.

Under the governments of Violeta Chamorro, Arnoldo Aleman and Enrique Bolaņos, illiteracy rose again to 30%. Ortega asked rhetorically why, with peace, no international economic crisis, and all the foreign aid received by the neo-liberal governments, were poverty and illiteracy so high? Ortega also said Nicaragua's enemies have changed. "The enemies of Nicaragua are not the Liberal Party families, neither are they the families of the Nicaraguan resistance, nor the Conservative Party. If people live in poverty, demanding a dignified house, who then are the great enemies? Poverty and ignorance," Ortega said. 
Nicaragua Network Hotline 25/8/09