With the incorporation of Pucarani, there are now 164 municipalities (of the country’s 327) in that category, where the population has learned how to read and write with this method, that has proved equally successful in other Latin American nations, reports Granma digital newspaper.

According to the program’s director general in Bolivia, Benito Ayma, the plan is now 84 percent completed, 26 months after the start of the campaign.

He pointed out that 541,279 people have graduated from March 2006 to date –most of them women- and that another 150,335 are attending class.

Ayma stressed that the goal is to teach 823,256 people how to read and write by the end of 2008, when Bolivia will become the third country in Latin America to be free of that social scourge, after Cuba (1961) and Venezuela (2005).

He highlighted that Tolata-Cochabamba was the first Bolivian municipality to be free of illiteracy; Cobija-Pando, the first capital; Oruro, the first department; and Cercado-Cochabamba, the first important capital.

(www.cubanews.ain.cu)