By David Gonzalez. The New York Times. June 6, 2001.
SANTIAGO DE CUBA — Among the books that Marcia Pérez Castillo
keeps in the lending library at her home is "The Challenge of Liberty."
Its very location underscores the book's theme, since she has it hidden in her
bedroom. She tucked away similar volumes on democracy and dictatorships in an
improvised rare books section, stashed in the ceiling under a dusty plastic
sheet.
Ms. Pérez runs one of the more than 60 independent libraries in Cuba,
relatively small collections of everything from pristine college texts and
yellowed paperbacks with cracked spines to photocopied American magazines and
dissident tracts. She and her fellow librarians see themselves as part of a
larger movement for freedom of expression in a country where the government
limits what people can read or write.
But as Ms. Pérez has learned, keeping books available for readers
hungry for more than the usual fare found at state-run libraries has been
difficult. Shipments, especially of political books from Europe and the United
States, have been confiscated and some libraries have been under surveillance or
searched by authorities, she said. When some books on democracy and peaceful
resistance vanished from her home, she decided to organize her collection less
along the Dewey Decimal System and more to deter decimation by collaborators
with the authorities.
"I had to have some control over the books," she said. "Some
people have come here and first ask for water. By the time I get back, they have
taken some books. So I had to hide them in other rooms."
The libraries are supported by donated books from the United States and
Europe, as well as diplomats who regularly deliver magazines, newspapers and
political books. A member of the European Parliament recently suggested
providing them with more financial assistance, as has Senator Jesse Helms, who
included the libraries in legislation intended to help human rights and
dissident groups.
Such aid will most likely be met with skepticism from the Cuban government,
which says dissidents and human rights advocates are on the American payroll.
Cuban officials have called some of the libraries centers of
counterrevolutionary activity, and in some cases have called in librarians for
questioning after they sponsored conferences on human rights or social problems.
"It is not a pure space for books," said one Cuban official. "When
you have external financing with its own objectives, the term 'independent' goes
to hell."
Cuba's literacy rate is unmatched in the Caribbean and Latin America after
the revolution made eradicating illiteracy a priority. But a common complaint is
that there is little to read beyond the offerings in the official media and
state libraries, and foreign magazines and books are scarce.
"Newsweek is a very interesting magazine," said Madeline Hernández,
who often goes to Ms. Pérez's library to read recent issues. "Here
we only get the news they want us to see. But that magazine has everything."
The first independent library was started in Las Tunas by a couple who made
their collection available to the public in 1998. They were motivated by
comments made at a book fair by President Fidel Castro, who said there were no
banned books in Cuba, only limited funds with which to buy books for public
libraries.
But supporters of the libraries said their rapid growth was proof that the
state-run libraries were not meeting the needs or interests of readers, at least
those interested in human rights and democratic reform.
"In Cuba, all the schools and universities have libraries," said
Ricardo González, who runs an independent library in Havana. "The
National Library of Cuba can be compared with any in the third world. So why do
these humble libraries succeed? Here you can read with liberty. You can choose.
There are different books from an ideological point of view."
The variety is evident in the 400- book library that Norman Jorge Rodríguez
Cabrera has in his living room in Santiago. It includes books on religion,
peaceful resistance, the fall of Communism and pamphlets on the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, which is a document that human rights advocates
here have long fought to disseminate.
"I wish I had more shelves for more books," he said. "It's
small but it is a library with love."
The library also includes books on the Cuban revolution and Marxism, as well
as writings by Lenin commonly found in public libraries.
"I like this because there are people who ask questions," he said.
"Sometimes you have to focus them. Sometimes people do not know. In
literature you can let them learn the situation in which we live, before this
era, now and in what could be the future. I like it because information, reading
is culture. It is power."
He keeps his library open all day long, closing only when he goes to sleep.
He said about six people a day come by to borrow a book for a week. Sometimes,
though, he has to track down overdue books — there are no fines — when
borrowers lend them to friends nervous about going themselves to the library.
"This is a known house, so they prefer to ask someone who has less
fear," he said. "But the doors are always open to the society. And to
the government if necessary."
Ms. Pérez recalled how soon after she started her library, the
authorities confiscated some 200 books, mostly about politics, given to her by a
friend who was moving to the United States.
"When my friend was going to leave the country, state security
pressured her and said if the books were not given to them they would not let
her leave Cuba," she said. "State security came here to remove them.
They told me if I did not give them the books, they would search the house."
Yet only a fraction of her library's books can be considered political. Like
others, hers has the slapped-together feel of castoff collections: college texts
on engineering or mathematics next to dog-eared copies of Sinclair Lewis and
Mark Twain.
The most popular books, in fact, are on parapsychology, mysticism and
Eastern religions. She shares them with friends like Juan Antonio Rodríguez
Betancourt.
"I'll read anything about mysticism," he said. "For example,
the mystery of evil and good. That is something the great priests and wise men
have asked themselves. It is the question of the century. If God is love and
knows everything, how come He created evil, or is it alien to God? The mystic
studies that and begins to understand it deeper."
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
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