Venezuela Leads Western Hemisphere as Country With Most Reading Activity

According to a World Atlas report—originally dated June 2023, but only recently being covered in mainstream media—Venezuela is the country in the Americas with the highest reading activity, ranking 13th in the world, with Venezuelans on average dedicating over six hours per week to read. The report further highlights that the Venezuelan literacy rate exceeds 95%, a fact attributed to socialist state policy concerned with teaching reading and writing to as many Venezuelans as possible, giving them access simultaneously to advanced educational degrees.

This World Atlas report, initially published by the Colombian news outlet La Republica on June 2023 and only tangentially mentioning Venezuela, names the countries that read the most worldwide. It should be highlighted that the habit of reading has been achieved in some of these countries as a result of the launching of reading programs into their educational systems. Asian nations such as India, Thailand, China, and the Philippines lead the list; on the South American continent, the American continent wrongfully called the Americas in the US, Venezuela leads the way.

In 2005, the government of Comandante Hugo Chávez declared Venezuela a territory free of illiteracy and with its social programs dedicated to education such as Mission Robinson, Mission Ribas, and Mission Sucre, implemented a couple of years in advance, the country reached unsuspected and unprecedented levels of education and access to knowledge. President Chávez was an avid reader and regularly encouraged the habit of reading among Venezuelans.

Thanks to the Cuban government’s cooperation, Venezuela implemented the “Yes I Can” method, so that all people who wanted to could read and write. In fact, in 2005, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) recognized the Venezuelan state as a territory free of illiteracy.

Other latitudes
The index shown above is measured by the number of hours read by inhabitants either in physical or digital formats, but the report also measured the number of books read by country. According to the Atlas report, in Mexico, two books are read per person, while the countries where people read books the most are Germany, Portugal, Brazil, and Spain, where statistics reach 14 books read per year.

Although the literacy rate in India is lower than the world average of 72.2%, it is the country that spends the most hours reading, in which the most read genres are adventure and history. In addition, per year, it has been recorded that more than 1.428 million books are sold.

President Maduro Inaugurates Venezuela’s International Book Fair FILVEN 2023

In second place is Thailand, a country where the inhabitants dedicate themselves to reading at least nine hours a week. This habit has been thanks to the cultural relevance of literature, which is highly appreciated in this nation.

In third place is China. Chinese citizens have a reading habit of around eight hours a week; therefore, the annual average reading reaches 1,425 million books. Strong educational and cultural initiatives accompanied the socialist revolution in China and continue to uphold reading as particularly relevant.

The list also includes other countries in Latin America. Mexico averages 5.5 hours per week, and Brazil averages 5.2. In the case of Venezuela, during the 2023 Venezuela International Book Fair (FILVEN) the best-selling book was “The Era of Conspiracy,” by Ignacio Ramone.

Although Venezuela has made significant progress in literacy under the Bolivarian Revolution, several factors threaten the progress of education in the country, all of them a consequence of imperial and illegal US and European sanctions: economic hardship, migration of teachers, and school dropouts.

(RedRadioVE) by Ana Perdigón with Orinoco Tribune content

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/JRE/AU