|
Cuban libraries in need
- where's ALA?
Myriam Márquez.
Published June 24, 2004 in The
Orlando Sentinel, FL.
Ramon Colas will set up his booth at the
American Library Association's annual reading-fest
today in Orlando, hoping to drive home to
the nation's librarians that freedom to
read what one wants without fear of government
persecution is not just an American value.
It's a basic human right and a universal
want.
Except in Cuba, where Colas was forced
to leave 2½ years ago after the communist
government arrested him several times for
starting the island's first independent
library movement.
One would think the ALA would embrace Colas'
agenda of free speech for all. Certainly
for the sake of consistency one can't rail
against the Patriot Act's potential excesses
here at home and then look the other way
when it comes to the real threats to freedom
to read in Cuba. It particularly irks me
because I've been a big supporter of the
ALA and haven't missed an opportunity to
criticize the Patriot Act's tactics post
9-11.
The act, passed in a rush after the 9-11
terrorist attacks, lacks the checks and
balances that any nation that values democracy
should embrace. Allowing the government
to check on any library patron's reading
habits is simply un-American.
The Patriot Act allows searches based on
what amounts to a hunch, and it's ripe for
abuse. It's illegal for librarians to dare
tell their public boards if the government
has sought any records, even without naming
names. That's how far the Patriot Act goes
on the pretense of keeping us "safe."
It's the same kind of argument that totalitarian
regimes use to put a lid on dissent, which
is why Colas' plea to the ALA to condemn
Cuba for imprisoning dissidents, among them
as many as 17 people who ran independent
libraries from their homes, is so compelling.
And the ALA's response of a mealy-mouthed
resolution supporting the end of the embargo
and expressing "deep concern"
about Cuba's long prison terms for dissidents
smacks of hypocrisy. Deep concern doesn't
begin to cover it.
Writers, journalists, civil libertarians
and even left-wing glitterati from Europe
and Latin America have come forward to condemn
Cuba outright for its crackdown on 75 dissidents,
writers and librarians who received sentences
averaging almost 20 years each in 2003.
Their big crime was to stray from government-approved
thinking.
Colas, a psychologist, notes that independent
libraries in Cuba carry all sorts of books,
from those written by Fidel Castro, Che
Guevara and Vladimir Lenin to those penned
by the former Czech President Vaclav Havel,
whose The Power of the Powerless is every
freedom fighter's bible.
Apparently, ALA members don't want to be
seen as taking a position that appears to
side with the Cuban exile community. But
Colas isn't asking the ALA to do anything
other than condemn a government attack that
no free-thinking person would accept.
The embargo shouldn't even be an issue,
as far as freedom to read goes. Not when
Castro himself made a big to-do in 1998,
just after the pope's visit to Cuba, saying
on government-controlled TV that Cuba didn't
ban books, it simply didn't have money to
buy books.
Colas took the comandante at his word and
started a movement of home libraries that
today get hundreds of free books from visitors
to the island from as far away as Sweden,
France and Spain. For Castro to call the
independent libraries, which also get books
from the U.S. Interests Section in Havana,
part of a plot to end his regime is to admit
that his regime hangs on a thread of lies.
What's to fear from sharing different points
of view, wherever they come from, if you
can defend your point with the facts?
"It's lamentable that throughout the
world famous people and writers have come
out to criticize the regime in Havana and
condemn its actions, but this nation's librarians,
through their organization, have remained
silent," Colas told me Wednesday. "The
concept we are defending is very basic and
universal. Let people read what they want
without intervention, without political
or ideological impositions."
If America's premier organization for defending
free speech can't make that connection,
it loses all credibility on the Patriot
Act.
Myriam Marquez can be reached at mmarquez@orlandosentinel.com.
© 2004
Orlando Sentinel Communications
|
