Ernesto Che Guevara

Image taken from:  http://trcs.wikispaces.com/file/view/che_guevara.jpg/41147947/che_guevara.jpg

Ernesto “Che” Guevara was a leader in Latin America who was born in Argentina.  He was a doctor.

When he was young, he travelled through South America on his motor bike and wrote in his journal.  While travelling, he was saddened by how poor people were wherever he visited.

He decided that he would give all his time and energy to work to change that. He is called a “revolutionary” because he wanted to change the way people worked and viewed the world.  He travelled to do political work in many countries until he helped to win a battle in Cuba, called the Cuban Revolution. He worked in the government there for a few years and then travelled to other countries to do similar work there.

Questions

1)   Che noticed that more than not even half of the Cuban people could read or write when he got there in 1959, meaning that many people were illiterate.  He started a program to make sure that everyone had a chance to learn to read and write.

Do this:  Interview family members:  Ask them why they think is it important to be able to read and write.  After listening to their answers, answer the question yourself.  What do you think?

2)  Pick a few countries in South America and go to:

 http://www.infoplease.com/atlas/southamerica.html

Click on a map of any country in South America.  To the left of each country, on the screen, look for a section called, “More facts and figures” to find theliteracy rate.

Compare the rates of three or more countries. Make a bar or pie graph if you wish at:

http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph/

With Che’s vision and the hard work of many people, today Cuba enjoys a literacy rate of over 99.8% (that’s almost 100%, meaning that everyone can read and write.  How does this compare with other nations in South America?