On September 8, International Literacy Day is celebrated worldwide. This date has been gaining importance since the UN approved its commemoration in 1965. The objective of this day is to evaluate how the literacy rate has improved in the member countries, in pursuit of the achievement of Agenda 2030 and its Sustainable Development Goals.
When UNESCO declared the International Literacy Day, we all knew how to read and write in Cuba. Since 1961 we have been proud to be a people free of illiteracy. The celebration of this day, for the world, means continuing to fight for the elimination of illiteracy in the most vulnerable communities, so that there are no corners of the planet left that are not reached by the lights of the books.
We Cubans, who already have a December 22nd to celebrate, could dedicate this day to thinking about how to be better students and better teachers, to honor the history of our grandparents. Today I want to think about my grandmother, who was a teacher of normal schooling and who used to paint the güiras to teach geography to the children of her little school in Pinarito de Cambute. Today, let's think about the men and women who left their families to become literate, about the teenagers who left the bluff cities in their hands, about the upper class girls who fell in love with the idea of teaching and left for the hills without their parents' consent, about the murdered teachers, about the peasants dazzled by the miracle of letters, about the romances, about the fights, about the courage of the literacy workers and about the children who were born from the love between peasants and teachers.
And like all the islands, ours has its mysteries and gives us today the possibility of being literacy workers. Since 2017, UNESCO has proclaimed that this day will also be a day of digital literacy, which means the ability of people to understand and use new communication technologies in a profitable way. Although we were pioneers with the pencil, the primer and the manual, we still have a long way to go in this other literacy.
Those of us who would have liked to live that adventure are now, even in difficult conditions, leading a digital campaign. A necessary literacy that, contrary to what is sometimes thought, will save the world from incommunication. And so, by teaching our old masters, new and old ways will be mixed