This paper contributes towards revealing the 'gap' that exists between what Peruvian literacy campaigns seek for 'illiterates' and what these 'illiterates' actually need. Although the discourse of recent governmental literacy programmes stresses the need to take into account the illiterates agency during the whole process, the neoliberal view of development and the idea of an autonomous model of literacy end up building an identity of the 'literate' based on hegemonic interests. The paper will compare this contradictory discourse with a case study of a bilingual Quechua and Spanish-speaking woman who only attended one year of schooling-and is probably conceived of as a 'functional illiterate' by the State-but has managed to position Spanish literacy practices within the core of her identity as a mother and a grandmother. The analysis of a literacy event within a context of migration will reveal how literacy appropriation may be related to cultural transmission and to affection.