Elementary education is free and compulsory for children in all Latin American countries yet some 12 million children are still without schools and throughout the continent there are 60 million illiterate adults (40% of the adult population). In their drive to wipe out illiteracy, governments have been helped since 1956 by UNESCO's Major Project for the Extension of Primary Education in Latin America. Village women in Mexico, where UNESCO helped to set up a regional Fundamental Education Centre for Latin America, learn to read and write in an improvised classroom