By Laurie Goering. Tribune Foreign Correspondent.
Chicago Tribune. February 1, 2001
HAVANA -- The decrepit old bookstore that long graced the end of Obispo
Street, a tiny place stocked mainly with faded communist texts, has given way to
something you probably wouldn't expect in Cuba: Borders South.
Actually La Moderna Poesia, or Modern Poetry bookstore, has nothing to do
with the glitzy superstore to the north, but the resemblance is clearly
intentional.
Beautifully arranged books grace the new store's huge display windows.
Inside there's a coffee and soft drink bar, a CD section, a slim shelf of videos
and a display of posters--mostly Che Guevara, Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Minh.
If you have dollars--the store doesn't accept Cuban pesos--you can choose
from a "Mission: Impossible" movie book, Charles Dickens' "Great
Expectations" or any number of Spanish bodice-rippers. There's even Amando
Carranza's text on "How to Set Up a Profitable and Sustainable Business,"
not something generally encouraged in Cuba's state-run economy.
Clearly, the variety of books available for sale is broader than it once
was, a testament to growing international trade, Cuba's economic recovery after
the fall of the Soviet Union and the explosive growth of tourism.
This week, the island will host its 10th international book fair, with 1,400
titles on sale from Cuba, Mexico, France, Argentina, Spain and other nations. "In
Cuba, the book is part of daily life, a treasured, invaluable item,"
Granma, the Communist Party newspaper, noted.
If a complete complement of titles is lacking, the article suggests, that's
largely because of the economic downturn in the early 1990s and because of the
U.S. embargo. "There are no banned books in Cuba. There just isn't any
money to buy them," Castro once said.
But controversial titles remain conspicuously absent in dollar and peso
bookstores, state and school libraries, and several dozen independent libraries.
Although Cuba has no single law regulating books, general rules restrict the
possession or sale of materials perceived as counterrevolutionary.
Over the years that standard has been used to restrict or exclude
international texts on human rights, tomes by Cuban exiles, religious
publications and novels with controversial political themes.
George Orwell's "1984," for instance, has not found a warm
reception in Cuba. Nor has "Fidel's Final Hour" by Andres Oppenheimer,
a Miami journalist who is banned from the island.
That doesn't mean some authors don't push the line.
Cuban writer Pedro Juan Gutierrez has admitted that his novel, "Dirty
Trilogy of Havana," is based largely on his own painful experiences during
Cuba's economic meltdown in the years after the fall of the Soviet Union. But he
is not in jail, and his highly critical book is not banned.
Similarly, controversial books brought into Cuba may be seized or allowed in
based largely on who is carrying them, analysts say. "It depends a lot on
the context," said Max Castro, a Cuban affairs expert at the University of
Miami. "The same thing that might make it to a bookstore on its own might
be banned if it was brought by someone carrying stuff for Frank Calzon," a
top Washington critic of Cuba's regime.
At the new Modern Poetry store, shelves are filled with the classics: Homer,
Virgil, Cervantes, Dickens and Poe. William Shakespeare makes the cut, as does
Khalil Gibran, Julius Caesar and even the Marquis de Sade. Modern Cuban novels,
however, are few.
Numerous titles are clearly non-political, focused on everything from kung
fu to tree grafting and raising hamsters. Despite the Cuban government's
uneasiness with creeping U.S. culture, Modern Poetry also features books on
American idols from Bruce Springsteen to James Dean.
For a high-tech touch, one can buy guidebooks to Linux, or, for the slightly
less progressive, COBOL or Windows 95.
The bookstore's social and humanities section features titles right out of
Cuba's most traditional political genre: "Capitalism in Crisis," "Neoliberalism
in Crisis," "CIA Targets Fidel" and "Island Under Seige: The
U.S. Blockade of Cuba."
But one can also buy some oddities, from the "Tibetan Book of the Dead"
to a practical guide on organizing the family finances, which touches on
overseeing stock funds, pension plans and loans, none of which is available in
Cuba.
Private donors of books to the island have for the most part avoided
stepping on political toes. Oxfam America, a relief organization better known
for its food and community projects, earlier this month donated 3,000 mostly new
volumes to the island's libraries, half of them textbooks, dictionaries and
atlases.
The other half of the shipment included children's books and novels, from "Little
Women" to Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein." "We didn't throw in
any challenges," admits Adrienne Smith, a spokeswoman.
Instead, with many textbooks on the island outdated and novels like "The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" falling apart from age and use in the
National Library, the group wanted to simply update collections, Smith said,
something cash-strapped Cuba hasn't always been able to afford.
"We wanted to feed a different kind of hunger," she said.
Cuba, which continues to have one of the highest literacy rates in Latin
America, has an odd relationship with literature. For the most part, books are
cheaper here than in much of Latin America and thus more readily available,
especially as the nation has recovered from its deep 1990s recession.
But while most Cubans have access to public or private libraries that
include at least occasional controversial texts, actually reading them is
another matter. Being seen with a copy of a controversial book can earn a Cuban
demerits for lack of revolutionary fervor. State libraries restrict access to
certain volumes on a need-to-know basis.
In Havana, the revolutionary classics are still the books in greatest public
evidence.
Around Old Havana's Plaza de Armas, book vendors set up racks of faded used
books each morning and little has changed in the 40 years since the Cuban
Revolution.
On nearly every rack there's a copy of Fidel Castro's "History Will
Absolve Me." There is Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto." There
are photo books of Vladimir Lenin. There is nearly every word that ever passed
from the pen of Jose Marti, Cuba's favorite 19th Century poet and nationalist
hero. There is, incongruously, a crumbling copy of Dale Carnegie's "How to
Make Friends and Influence People."
Ernest Hemingway, a popular former resident, wins space for "The Snows
of Kilimanjaro" and "To Have and Have Not." Gabriel Garcia
Marquez, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1982 and a friend of Cuba,
also makes the cut, as does Graham Greene.
But the majority of books, decades after his death, still hail the island's
dashing revolutionary hero: "Che Guevara and the FBI," "Thinking
of Che," "They Fought with Che," "Che--the Sportsman,"
the "Diary of Che in Bolivia," "Che: A New Battle," and,
recalling his brief, mostly forgotten stint as head of Cuba's national banking
system, the "Economic Thoughts of Ernesto Che Guevara."
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