Throughout the 20th century, in response to campaigns occurring in other Latinoamérican countries, Brazilian states began their own literacy campaigns. Led by educators like Paulo Freire, the campaigns hoped to combat the high amounts of illiteracy in the countryside. Beginning in 1963, the campaigns were centered in rural areas. Paulo Freire's methods were widely popular due to the immediacy in which they seemed to work: as he claimed, a student could learn to read and write in 40 hours. The growing fear of communism and the rising power of the military led to the end of the campaigns in 1964 and the exile of Freire and others like him. The military government began new campaigns in the late 1970s to questionable improvements.