BY TONY HUNT
LONDON - One hundred people attended the grand re- opening of the London Pathfinder bookshop here November 11. The store was recently repaired and redecorated after extensive flood damage eight months ago.
Cuban artist José Delarra, a founding member of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, was a special guest at the event. He gave a lively presentation and answered questions on his work and on the place of art and culture in the Cuban revolutionary process. On display in the bookstore, where they will remain for two weeks for public viewing, were some of Delarra's paintings. Participants at the re-opening were able to meet the artist personally and discuss his work.
The event raised 600 ($930) for the bookshop reconstruction fund.
Railway track worker Shellia Kennedy, who recently attended the United Nations forum on women's rights in Beijing, China, chaired the meeting.
Car worker Ian Grant, who led the reconstruction project, opened the program. Since the flooding last April, he said, the bookshop had remained open thanks to the voluntary efforts of supporters to clear away the debris and salvage the stock. "Hundreds of hours have been spent in wrangles with insurance companies, planning improvements, and implementing the refurbishment," Grant stated. "The strength and power of volunteer labor as championed by Che Guevara and practiced in Cuba was the driving force behind this effort."
Sandy Jeffrey, one of several Cuba Solidarity Campaign activists at the meeting, described how one Friday she had attended a Militant Labor Forum at the Pathfinder bookshop to hear an eyewitness report on the women's rights meeting in Beijing, which Kennedy presented. Inspired, Jeffrey signed up for the reconstruction effort. She joined several others from different countries.
"We valued collective, not individual, achievement," she told the grand re-opening. "We worked to high quality standards and there was no such thing as `women's work' or `men's work.' "
Delarra closed the program. The most important event in his life as an artist, Delarra said, was the revolution in 1959 that overthrew the tyranny of Fulgencio Batista. The revolutionary government's measures paved the way for a growth in art and culture. National institutes for each art form, schools of fine art in each province, and yearly international cultural festivals were created, "which continue today despite the economic difficulties."
The literacy campaign in the early days of the revolution, the Cuban artist said, and the growing access to education for working people were at the heart of this progress. "Before the revolution there were 17,000 university students," he stated. "Today there are 200,000." It is these revolutionary conquests, Delarra said, that have opened the way for the "hundreds of Cuban artists around the world who are leaving the imprint of our art and culture."