The central Honduran department of Francisco Morazán, whose capital is Tegucigalpa, became the seventeenth of the 18 regions of this Central American nation to achieve this goal on Wednesday, marking a momentous step toward the collective dream of a literate Honduras.

This declaration was made possible thanks to the Jose Manuel Flores Arguijo National Literacy Program, promoted by the government of President Xiomara Castro using the successful Cuban methodology “Yes, I Can.”

Learning to read and write has radically transformed the lives of every person who decided to participate in this program, emphasized Honduran Minister of Education Daniel Sponda during the declaration ceremony.

The Cuban ambassador to this Central American nation, Juan Loforte, affirmed that the true protagonists of this marvelous work of President Castro are those who have become literate, whose number exceeds half a million people who now know how to read and write, more than a thousand of whom are over 90 years old.

The 17 literate departments—the last one will be Gracias a Dios—managed to reduce their illiteracy rate below four percent, the threshold established by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization for granting this qualification.

The next stage of the well-known Cuban procedure establishes that literate adults can continue an accelerated elementary education process, which is also observed in the “Yes, I Can Continue: The Path to Post-Literacy” program.

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