ABSTRACT
Cuban efforts since 1959 to break out of underdevelopment, to create the socialist ‘new man,’ and to achieve a more just, egalitarian society have all placed a high priority on rural education. With the triumph of the guerrillas, rural education programmes for youths and adults, both in the formal school system and in the non-formal, out-of-school educational sector, have experienced a radical transformation. Under the Batista dictatorship, the scant, impoverished, and generally neglected rural educational programmes clearly indicated the power and dominance of urban commercial and political elites over the rural masses. As in most of Latin America yet today, the peasantry or rural working class was integrated into national society in a way that denied them access to institutions and knowledge essential for economic advancement and social mobility.
