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CUBA
NEWS
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Libraries Founder Fights Castro From Afar
By GEORGE GEDDA. Wed Sep 3.
WASHINGTON - Ramon Colas has a clear memory of
the day when a few words from Fidel Castro changed
his life.
Colas, long an opponent of Cuba's revolution,
recalled that Castro was asked by a reporter in
early 1998 whether there were any prohibited books
on the island.
"In Cuba," Castro replied, "there
are no prohibited books. What is lacking is the
money to buy them."
As Colas saw it, the response was "a spark
from God. We found in his words a fissure, an
opening, a huge pore that we could penetrate."
He knew that the typical library in Cuba featured
the writings of Marx, Engels, Castro and Che Guevara.
The works of those with different views - Camus,
Solzhenitsyn and Adam Smith - were not.
Colas decided to start his own public library
- albeit a modest one - at his home in the eastern
province of Las Tunas. It would be unlike any
other library on the island.
During a brief visit to Washington recently,
Colas, now 41, described to a reporter his experience
as Cuba's first independent librarian, his subsequent
clashes with Cuban authorities, the suffering
he and his family endured - and how his challenge
to the regime eventually forced him into exile.
It was on March 3, 1998, that Colas, a psychologist,
placed a sign in large black letters in front
of his house. On it was the Castro quote asserting
his no-censorship policy. Further down was another
sign: "Independent Library."
As Colas described it: "I used Fidel's words
to protect myself."
He started with more than a thousand books, many
of them brought into the country by a friend authorized
to travel abroad. Other materials had been provided
by the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana.
Colas, an intense man who is the son of peasants,
said word of his audacious initiative spread quickly.
Within 12 days, a counterpart library opened in
Cuba's second largest city, Santiago. Before long,
all 14 provinces had one.
From abroad, books started coming in from Sweden,
the United States, Colombia, Costa Rica, Argentina,
Canada, Spain, Puerto Rico and Mexico.
In time, the authorities started cracking down.
Colas, who had become a traveling salesman on
behalf of his idea, was told to stay home.
His wife was fired from her job as an accounting
professor. His two children, then 14 and 8, were
shunned by their friends and were warned by school
authorities that education in Cuba was exclusively
for supporters of the revolution.
Colas applied for political asylum. The family
received their U.S. visas in October 2000. The
Cuban government granted them permission to leave
in December 2001.
But his campaign for independent libraries persists,
and he wants the Bush administration to embrace
it.
Cuban authorities, not surprisingly, saw Colas'
efforts on the island as a counterrevolutionary
ploy that enjoyed covert U.S. backing.
Roughly 15 independent libraries were shut down
and their inventory confiscated during a broad-based
crackdown on dissidents last March. The directors
of each library were given long prison terms,
including Colas' successor in Las Tunas.
"The independent libraries have ... demonstrated
they are receiving money to subvert the institutional
order of Cuba," said Eliades Acosta, Cuba's
director of national libraries. The Bush administration
denies Cuba's allegations of U.S. involvement.
Colas brightens when he talks about his post-Cuba
life. He has traveled to Europe ("I never
thought I would ever see Paris"), and says
his fellow Cuban-Americans in South Florida have
treated him royally.
"Even today there are people who worry that
I might need something. Everything that I have
in my house with the exception of a television
was a gift from the people of Miami," he
says.
He works as a researcher at the University of
Miami. He met with President Bush at the White
House in May as part of Cuban Independence Day
activities.
But, were it not for his family, he would have
stayed behind to fight for his cause.
"I never wanted to leave Cuba," he
says.
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