Independent Libraries in Cuba Defy Government's Lock on Information

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v47/i39/39a04001.htm Independent Libraries in Cuba Defy Government's Lock on Information The movement faces poverty and repression as it collects books from the outside world By MARION LLOYD San Juan y Martínez, Cuba The smattering of Catholic journals, poetry books, and yellowed Newsweeks that make up Valentin Almiral's provincial library seem an unlikely catalyst for revolution. But in a country where the government wields nearly absolute control over information, the former biology teacher's private collection represents a significant challenge to state authority. Mr. Almiral's Love, Peace, Democracy, and Freedom Library, housed in a concrete shack on the outskirts of this tobacco-growing town in western Cuba, is one of dozens of independent libraries that have opened in Cuba over the past three years to give scholars and other Cubans access to books that they can't always obtain elsewhere. Most of the libraries are little more than a bookshelf in the back room of somebody's home. But their content -- ranging from light fiction, like detective novels, to hard-core anti-Communist treatises -- and the long list of dissidents involved in the movement have made the Cuban government uncomfortable. "It's hard not to have the feeling that these people are conspiring with a superpower that has been plotting against Cuba for more than 40 years," says Eliades Acosta, the director of the state-run National Library, referring to the United States. He notes that the vast majority of the independent librarians are active members of opposition political parties. In addition, he says, many openly receive money from Miami-based exile groups to support their dissident activities, as well as help in coordinating book donations. The movement's founders, Berta Mexidor and Ramon Colas, deny that they have political motives, but acknowledge that the U.S. government helps the libraries with book donations. Both Ms. Mexidor and Mr. Colas, who are married, used to be professors. They say they are merely trying to supplement the offerings at state-run libraries, which have few texts critical of Communism. Scholars who want access to controversial texts at those libraries must be affiliated with a university and get written permission from administrators in their department, according to diplomatic sources and academics who spoke on condition of anonymity. Access to controversial books is further restricted by the university-admissions process. In order to be admitted to a university, students must prove that they have not been active in any dissident movement -- a requirement that screens out many Cubans interested in such books. New books of any kind have been hard to come by since the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1991, which deprived Cuba of its main supplier of textbooks and paper. "The latest books don't make it into the country," says Noedis Pita, an engineering student at the Jose Antonio Echeverria Polytechnic Institute, on the outskirts of Havana. Although the university -- like the University of Havana -- has an extensive main library and separate libraries in each department, she says her professors had to request copies of newer texts and then make photocopies of selected passages for their students. She studies at central Havana's century-old Masonic Library, which has an impressive stock of 36,000 books, but most date to before the 1959 Cuban revolution. Ms. Pita says censorship does not tend to inhibit the study of engineering, but friends in political science complain about their lack of access to books on subjects such as capitalist theory. "Many of the books are there, but only certain students can get access," she says. Students skirt the problem by requesting books from family members abroad. Then, if the books somehow slip by the censors who inspect incoming packages, the students circulate them secretly. Ms. Mexidor, who used to teach economics at the University of Las Tunas, in eastern Cuba, says that what the independent librarians want is freedom from censorship, so "ideology doesn't define what a person can read." She and Mr. Colas say they got the idea for the independent libraries from a remark Fidel Castro made in February 1998, during an international book fair. The Cuban president insisted that "there are no banned books in Cuba, just no money to buy them." The couple took those words at face value and began soliciting book donations from Latin America, Europe, and the United States. Today, they say, more than 80 such libraries operate around the island, with new ones opening almost weekly. In the process, however, the movement has attracted attention from the government, always a risky proposition. Soon after the couple opened the first library in their home, in March 1998, Mr. Colas, a former psychology professor, was fired from his job as director of a psychiatric hospital in Las Tunas. The couple were later evicted from their state-run housing in Las Tunas and sent to live on a nearby government farm -- a move that shut down their library. They later moved in with Ms. Mexidor's family, in Amancio, a farming town 60 miles from Las Tunas. Their story is typical of the other independent librarians, most of whom are academics or journalists who were fired from government jobs after becoming involved in opposition politics. In the past year, the police have detained half a dozen independent librarians, according to reports by the independent CubaNet news service and Amnesty International, and supporters say at least a dozen more have been threatened and harassed. In December, Julia Cecilia Delgado, a librarian and president of the Association for the Recovery of Human Values, a human-rights group, was sentenced to one year in jail for "disrespect," in what supporters assert is punishment for opening a library in her Havana home. In mid-March, five men said to belong to the government's Rapid Response brigades -- groups of young Communist Party activists who investigate "counterrevolutionaries" -- attacked Mr. Almiral's library here in San Juan y Martinez, ransacked the bookshelves, and beat up several patrons. After Mr. Almiral complained to the police, he says, the men returned the next night and threw sacks of excrement on the walls of the shack. Following appeals from independent librarians, the International Federation of Library Associations sent a delegation to Cuba in June 1999 to investigate the alleged human-rights abuses. In a September 1999 letter to President Castro, the organization concluded that "the Cuba government has responded to the independent libraries with a campaign of threats, intimidation, detentions, evictions ... and has deprived these people of their jobs." The letter urged Mr. Castro to respect freedom of information and freedom of expression, which it described as "the right of citizens in all countries of the world." Cuban-government officials say they have no knowledge of any attacks on independent libraries. They also deny any connection between the arrests and the library movement. But they are keenly aware of the movement's potential to attract unwanted international attention. "We're in the presence of a carefully disguised campaign, which has a big appeal in the world today under the guise of free access to information," says Mr. Acosta, the National Library director. He charges that the movement is based on the false pretense that certain books are unavailable at state libraries. "I challenge you to find a book on [the independent libraries'] shelves that I don't stock," he says. Critics note that even if a book is listed in the National Library's catalog, that does not mean it is available to the public. A Cuban college student who recently requested a copy of a novel by the exiled writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante was refused by the librarian, who said the book was "counterrevolutionary." George Orwell's classic anti-authoritarian novel 1984 is not listed in the library's card catalog. Mr. Acosta blames a budget crunch for the absence of certain books, saying that with limited funds he chooses to stock only those texts that "contribute to upholding the moral fabric of the Cuban state." He also justifies the need to restrict access to anti-Communist texts by saying, "We are in the midst of a war [with the United States]. These are not normal times." The debate over whether the U.S. trade embargo warrants the Cuban government's clampdown on information was the subject of an article in the April issue of American Libraries, the magazine of the American Library Association. The article took the form of a debate between Robert Kent, a humanities reference librarian at the New York Public Library and a leading advocate of the independent libraries, and Ann Sparanese, a librarian at the Englewood Public Library, in New Jersey, and a member of the library association's Social Responsibilities Round Table. Ms. Sparanese defended the Cuban government's position, arguing that the independent librarians were more interested in waging politics than in promoting reading. "This is not about libraries; it's not even about intellectual freedom," she argued, adding that none of the people involved in the movement were trained librarians. She also challenged Mr. Kent's assertion that book censorship is commonplace in Cuba, noting that the government did not confiscate any of the 4,000 books recently delivered to the island by Jarrett T. Barrios, a Democratic lawmaker in Massachusetts. Mr. Barrios notes, however, that most of the January shipment comprised children's books and medical texts with no political content. He says he was not aware of the independent libraries before his trip. But by going through official channels, he says, he ensured that the books would reach the widest audience. "We have strong feelings about politics, but we also want to encourage democracy from within," he says. U.S. officials in Cuba take a different view. The U.S. Interests Section in Havana, the only official representative of the U.S. government in Cuba, has actively supported the independent libraries, which officials say will broaden Cubans' knowledge of the outside world and help prepare them for life after Mr. Castro. The office makes monthly book deliveries to independent libraries around the island and weekly deliveries in the capital. The Martin Luther King II Library, an other independent library in San Juan y Martinez, recently received a shipment that included Tom Sawyer and a set of how-to texts on raising children. Alina Alvarez, the librarian, says she has since requested English-language primers and American-history texts. The books are in high demand in a country where nearly everyone either is planning to emigrate to the United States or is receiving money from relatives already there. The U.S. Interests Section also distributes books -- including Orwell's Animal Farm; The Power of the Powerless, by the president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel; and politically neutral textbooks -- to 1,200 people throughout the country. Many of the recipients are Cuban-government officials hungry for outside information, according to a diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity. Within its guarded compound, the U.S. office has also started offering free Internet access to a select group of Cuban dissidents. In Cuba, only government officials and academics usually have access to the Internet, and then only to certain sites. Still, the founders of the library movement say the bulk of their support comes from private contributors, not the U.S. government. Mr. Cabrera Infante, a former Cuban diplomat and winner of Spain's prestigious Cervantes literary award, helps coordinate donations from his home in London. The movement has also caught the attention of several delegates to the European Union, who have proposed shipping books en masse to the independent libraries. "We never expected the project to take off like this," says Mr. Colas. "But we have one big advantage. The project is concrete, and you can see the results, the books." The librarians complain that many books sent from abroad never make it past Cuban customs officials, who are charged with confiscating any material deemed a threat to the state. Francisco Perez Delgado, the son of Ms. Delgado, the jailed librarian, shows a half-empty box of books that arrived recently from Miami. He says the family received a notice from the government outlining which books it had confiscated as "counterrevolutionary." Most of them involved political theory. But other books manage to slip past the censors. His mother's library -- sitting on sagging wood shelves in the front room of the family's dingy, three-room Havana house -- includes titles like The End of an Era in Havana: In Whose Name Can a Revolution Cheat a People?, an anti-Communist tract by a pair of French journalists; On Liberty: The Voice of the Church in Cuba: 100 Epistolary Documents, by Friedrich A. Hagel; and the standard collection of poems by Jose Marti, Cuba's idolized martyr. The eclectic collection is typical of the independent libraries, which their directors insist are primarily designed to offer literary options, not to indoctrinate. They also note that not all of the independent libraries stock controversial books. The Martin Luther King II Library is one such example. "We don't have anything here that's banned," says Ms. Alvarez, whose husband is a well-known dissident. "They're mostly children's books. How can that be dangerous?" But other librarians acknowledge their political motives. "No book can start a war," says Mr. Almiral, who was fired from his teaching job after becoming involved in opposition politics. "But if we can open people's minds, they might start thinking certain thoughts, and that will inevitably lead to change." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ http://chronicle.com Section: International Page: A40 Copyright © 2001 by The Chronicle of Higher Education __________________________________________________________________________ Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. --- ************************************************************************** Subscribe to Freematt's Alerts: Pro-Individual Rights Issues Send a blank message to: freematt@coil.com with the words subscribe FA on the subject line. List is private and moderated (7-30 messages per week) Matthew Gaylor, (614) 313-5722 ICQ: 106212065 Archived at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fa/ **************************************************************************