UATRE’s
Rural Literacy Program (PAR) is achieving the objective set out by the
union’s General Secretary, Gerónimo Venegas: “To work tirelessly until there
isn’t a single rural worker that can’t read and write.” In 2002, a pilot
experience was conducted, through which the first five PAR Centers were
established and 109 people were taught to read and write. Today the Program
has 118 centers, which means that by the end of 2006, more than 7,000 fellow
workers will have learned to read and write.
Carolina
Llanos is Secretary of Women Issues at the Argentinean Association of Rural
Workers and Stevedores (UATRE). She’s 33 years old, married, with two
children: Rosario, 8, and Ezequiel, 10. Her eldest is already a very
promising musician, a bass drum and trumpet virtuoso -“he takes after me, no
doubt about it, his father is tone deaf,” she remarks beaming with motherly
pride.
Although
she was actually born in Robadal, a small town in the Province of Tucumán
with no schools or hospitals, she has adopted Santiago del Estero as her
home.
Her
grandparents and parents were all rural workers, although her mom, tired of
the poverty prevalent in Santiago del Estero, decided to go to Buenos Aires
to become a nurse. “My mom moved to the capital when she was very young. It
used to be common among rural families to send their children -in particular
their daughters- to stay with a relative in the city so that they could
learn a trade, find a job, and help their parents support the family. So
that was what she did: she worked and studied for two years until she
graduated. I admire my mom for having made that decision, which I’m sure was
not easy for her,” she remembers moved.
For her
part, Carolina left with her brother when she was twelve, to finish high
school, and during the holidays she worked in the harvests. Like her mom,
she later moved to Buenos Aires where she found work as a domestic worker
and a companion for elderly people, and earned her rural teacher’s degree.
“My father was a member and leader of the local union, so UATRE gave me a
place to live in Buenos Aires. Shortly after I graduated I started working
in UATRE’s social aid services, got married and had kids. In 1999, when
Rosario and Ezequiel were a little older, I was invited to participate in
union activities, so here I am.”
We talked
with this woman, who is committed to her history and to UATRE, who knows the
problems of rural working women, having experienced them first-hand, who
remembers how her grandfather was unable to retire because he was always
employed as an unregistered worker, and how her grandmother died without
knowing how to read or write.
-What problems do women workers face?
-Rural
women are discriminated from an early age, their discrimination starts in
their own homes. When they get a job they are generally employed informally,
without a contract, which means no social benefits. Because at the very
best, employers will only register male workers, the “heads of households.”
Even so, women are paid less, as it is considered that a woman’s salary is
merely a supplement of what her husband earns.
This
situation is changing thanks to the rural worker’s card, through which more
than 400 thousand rural workers have been formalized, and over 70 thousand
farmers have been registered in the National Register of Rural Workers and
Employers (RENATRE).
-And what about working conditions?
-There are
a lot of problems which are caused by the use of agrotoxic substances. From
UATRE’s work we now know that these substances affect women much more than
they do men.
Another big
issue is the problem of Repetitive Stress Injuries. This is a terrible
situation among peanut processing workers in the province of Córdoba. The
hands of these women workers are deformed, and they are in constant pain.
There we are working very hard, helping to organize them.
Together
with the Network of Rural Women, and under the guidance of our General
Secretary Gerónimo Venegas, we are making efforts to raise awareness among
rural women, to enable them to effectively transform their reality and put
an end to a system where injustice is accepted as natural, where it is
common to hear that “things have always been like that,” that “that’s the
way the boss wants it.” This is changing. It doesn’t work that way anymore,
things are not “how the boss wants them,” but rather how they should be,
like UATRE and the law stipulates.
-While the countryside is modernized with giant satellite-monitored
harvesting machines, many rural workers have never seen a school. Tell us
about the Rural Literacy Program (PAR)
-The
Program was started in the year 2002 in five provinces of northern
Argentina, although the process began with the UATRE 1998 National Congress,
with a survey of the congress participants representing each of the
provinces. Three demands resulted from this survey: training in agricultural
machinery operation, training in agrotoxic substances, and literacy
campaign.
In 2003,
UATRE signed a Framework Agreement with the National Ministry of Education
with the aim of joining efforts and working together to design and implement
the PAR. In addition, the National House of Representatives and the Senate
declared the PAR a matter of parliamentary interest, and it was also
declared a matter of provincial interest in the provinces of Santiago del
Estero, Jujuy and Misiones.
So far, 408
PAR Centers have been created throughout the country, where 7,411 rural
workers will be taught to read and write in 2006 .
|
Year |
PAR
Centers |
Number of beneficiaries |
|
2002 |
5 |
109 |
|
2003 |
91 |
1573 |
|
2004 |
95 |
1765 |
|
2005 |
99 |
1941 |
|
2006 |
118 |
2023 |
|
Total |
408 |
7411 |
Data for 2006 corresponds to number of people registered. |
-How long does it take to teach a person to read and write?
-Approximately twelve weeks, with classes three times a week, and one and a
half hours per class.
-How many people are there in each group?
-Ten to
fifteen, and these groups operate in what is called a PAR Center.
-How many facilitators does the PAR have?
-Some 150,
who are social activists. They receive special training at UATRE
headquarters, where they are also given all the teaching material they’ll
work with.
-Are they mostly women?
-Yes, and
they’re members of the UATRE National Women’s Network.
-How many women are there among the beneficiaries?
-Eighty
percent are women, because when families have to choose between a girl and a
boy, boys are the ones that are traditionally given the chance to go to
school. Moreover, women are more ready than men to accept their illiterate
condition.
-Who can benefit from the PAR?
-The
program is aimed at any person 15 years or older who can’t read or write.
-Gerónimo Venegas has repeatedly declared that the PAR and the Rural
Worker’s Card are two crucial instruments for the task of dignifying rural
families.
-Of course,
Venegas often says: “We don’t want children to be rural workers, and we
don’t want illiterate workers.” In a child worker we not only see a case of
exploitation, we also see a boy or a girl who is not going to school. With
the card we eradicate unregistered labor, but we also eliminate child labor,
and we have a chance to increase literacy in rural areas.
-In a way, the PAR is giving visibility to a problem that is not easy to
accept in a country like Argentina.
-Illiteracy
is an endemic problem in rural communities, and this situation serves a lot
of interests. We obviously cannot go by what statistics say, because many
people say they can read and write, but at best they only know how to sign,
they draw their name. People are afraid to admit to just anyone that they
are illiterate; they have been cheated for so long -even today- precisely
because they don’t know how to read and write, or because they let on that
they are illiterate, or, also because they don’t mention it and pretend they
know how to read by signing their name blindly and giving up their rights.
-A significant number of older women have learned to read and write with the
program.
-Yes, and
the oldest was 82 years old, a woman from the province of Jujuy, Palpala.
Francisca, or “Doña Pancha” as she is known, learned to read and write in
2002. Grandma Pancha says that it was like a blindfold had fallen from her
eyes, and that there’s no greater poverty than not knowing how to read and
write.
Testimonies
|
“At first I was ashamed to come to the group, but now
I want to learn so that my bosses won’t abuse me, because that was
what used to happen to me at work: they’d come and make me sign
papers. Now, I can read well enough to understand any document or
paycheck they give me.”
(José, Neuquén) |
|
“I’m an orphan. I grew up barefoot in hail and snow.
That’s how I grew up, suffering. Later, when I was a young woman I
worked with my fabrics, the quilts I sold, and with that I was able
to raise my children. That’s how I’ve suffered. And I suffered even
more because I didn’t know how to read, and I saw how people who
knew how to read pitied me. And I thank UATRE for teaching me to
read.
(Doña “Pancha”, Jujuy)
|
Gerardo Iglesias
© Rel-UITA
April 6, 2006
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