By Marion Lloyd. Special to the
Houston Chronicle. May 26, 2001, 10:26PM
SAN JUAN Y MARTINEZ, Cuba -- The tiny display of Roman Catholic magazines
and children's books at the entrance to Alina Alvarez's crumbling, provincial
townhouse seems an unlikely staging ground for revolution.
But tell that to the Cuban government.
The social worker's modest book collection is one of dozens of independent
libraries that have sprung up across Cuba over the past three years. Most are
little more than a bookshelf in the back room of somebody's home.
But the libraries' content, ranging from detective novels to hard-core
anti-communist treatises, and the long list of dissidents involved in the
movement have made the Cuban government distinctly uncomfortable.
The libraries' founders have challenged what was long the backbone of Fidel
Castro's communist government -- absolute control over information.
"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,"
said Eliades Acosta, the director of the state-run National Library, referring
to the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba. He noted that one of the biggest advocates of
the library campaign is the Miami-based Center for Study of a National Option,
which is fighting for an end to Castro's government.
Supporters of the library movement deny they have political motives.
Instead, they say they are merely trying to supplement the offerings at
state-run libraries, where texts critical of communism are almost nonexistent.
New books also are hard to come by since the collapse of the Soviet Union in
1991, which cost Cuba its main supplier of textbooks and paper.
"Many of the independent librarians were political opponents, but this
has nothing to do with the project," said Gisela Delgado, a law student who
runs an independent library in her second-floor Havana apartment.
"This is not a political project," she said, "it's a cultural
project, to help people learn about their culture and the rest of the world."
The movement has its roots in a remark Castro made in February 1998 during
an international book fair. He insisted that "there are no banned books in
Cuba, just no money to buy them."
Two Cuban academics took those words at face value and began soliciting book
donations from throughout Latin America and the United States. Today, the
founders say, there are more than 80 such libraries operating throughout the
island.
Most visitors to the libraries do so undercover, for fear of alerting the
omnipresent government representatives in every neighborhood.
But the movement has attracted attention from the government, and in the
past year, police have detained several independent librarians, and supporters
claim at least a dozen more have been threatened and harassed. In December,
political activist Julia Cecilia Delgado was sentenced to one year in jail for "disrespect,"
in what supporters claim is punishment for opening a library in her Havana home.
Cuban officials deny that there is any connection between the arrests and
the independent libraries. But they are keenly aware of the potential of the
movement 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,"
said Acosta. He charged that the movement was based on the false pretense that
certain books were unavailable at state libraries. "I challenge you to find
a book on (the independent libraries') shelves that I don't stock," he
said.
Critics, including independent librarians in Cuba and their backers in the
United States, say that a book listed in the catalog at the National Library
does not necessarily mean it is available to the public.
"If a foreigner requests a book, any book, of course the library
officials will produce it. But if a Cuban asks for the same book, it's a
different story," said Robert Kent, a librarian at the New York Public
Library and founder of the independent group Friends of Cuba's Libraries, which
supports the independent library movement.
To test that theory, a reporter sent a Cuban student last month to request a
copy of a novel by exiled writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante, as well as George
Orwell's anti-authoritarian novel 1984. The student, who asked that he not be
named, said the librarian refused to give him Infante's Three Trapped Tigers,
arguing it was "counter-revolutionary."
The Orwell novel was not listed in the card catalog, the student said.
Acosta blames the budget crunch for the absence of certain books, saying
that with limited funds he chooses to stock those texts that "contribute to
upholding the moral fabric of the Cuban state."
U.S. officials in Cuba take a different attitude. The U.S. Interest Section
in Havana has been active in supporting the independent library movement, which
American officials say will broaden Cubans' knowledge of the outside world and
help prepare them for the eventual post-Castro government. The U.S. office
provides monthly book deliveries to independent libraries throughout the island
and weekly drop-offs in the capital.
Alvarez's Martin Luther King II library in San Juan y Martinez, a tobacco
town four hours southwest of Havana, recently received a shipment of Tom Sawyer
and a set of how-to texts on raising a child.
Alvarez said she has since requested English primers and American history
texts. The books are in heavy demand in a country where many people are
receiving money from relatives who have migrated to the United States or are
planning to leave.
The office also distributes books, ranging from Orwell's Animal Farm and
1984 to neutral text books, to 1,200 people throughout the country. Many
recipients are Cuban government officials hungry for outside information,
according to a diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity. The U.S. office
also has started offering free Internet access to a select group of Cuban
dissidents. In Cuba, only government officials and academics 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. Exiled novelist
Infante, a former Cuban diplomat and winner of Spain's prestigious Cervantes
literary award, is helping to coordinate donations from his base in London. The
movement also has caught the attention of several members of the European Union.
"We never expected the project to take off like this," said Ramon
Colas, a psychologist who co-founded the movement with his wife, Berta Mexidor,
a former economics professor, in early 1998.
"But we have one big advantage," Colas said. "The project is
concrete, and you can see the results, the books."
It hasn't all been smooth going. The librarians complain that many of the
books sent from abroad never make it past the Cuban customs officials, who are
charged with confiscating any material deemed a threat to the Cuban state.
Francisco Perez Delgado, the son of jailed librarian Julia Delgado, showed a
half-empty box of books that arrived recently from Miami. He said the family had
received a notice from the government outlining which books it had confiscated
as "counter-revolutionary."
Other books manage to slip past the censors. His mother's library --
compiled onto sagging wooden shelves in the front room of the family's
three-room Havana house -- includes titles such as The End of an Era in Havana:
In Whose Name Can a Revolution Cheat a People by a pair of French journalists as
well as a collection by Jose Martí, Cuba's idolized poet-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 the independent libraries stock
controversial books.
"We don't have anything here that's banned," said Alvarez, whose
husband is a well-known dissident. "They're mostly children books. How can
that be dangerous?"
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