CHICAGO - Norberto Codina, editor of the Cuban magazine La Gaceta de Cuba and a well-known poet, has been invited to speak at more than a dozen universities in the New York and Chicago areas between October 6 and 20. Codina will be speaking on the theme of art and culture in Cuba today.

This will be Codina's second U.S. visit. In October of 1995, he did a successful series of lectures on the same subject in Los Angeles, Houston, New York, and Washington, D.C. He addressed audiences at numerous campuses and cultural institutions.

La Gaceta de Cuba is a leading forum for discussion in Cuba on culture, politics, and the challenges facing the revolution today. It has published contributions and lively exchanges on a range of topics, from the works of Cuban-American poets to Marxism in Latin America today, to attitudes toward gays in Cuba.

Codina's speaking engagements are being coordinated by Dr. Félix Masud-Piloto, director of the Center for Latino Research at DePaul University in Chicago. Codina has been asked to speak as part of a Latin American cultural festival at DePaul.

In the Chicago area the Cuban writer has also been invited by Frank Safford, director of Latin American-Caribbean Studies at Northwestern University; Beatriz Riefkohl, program coordinator of the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Chicago; and Lizzette Richardson, director of the Latino Center at Malcolm X College.

In New York, Codina has received invitations from Katherine Roberts-Hite, acting director of the Institute of Latin American and Iberian Studies at Columbia University; Frances Fox Piven, political science professor at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York; José Torres-Santiago, chairman of the Black and Puerto Rican Studies Program at Hunter College; and Brenda Greene, chair of the language and literature department at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn.

Before his U.S. visit, Codina will be attending a conference in Montreal on culture in Cuba, as well as speaking in other cities of Quebec, from September 22 to October 6.

Codina submitted his application for a U.S. visa, together with letters of invitation from professors in New York and Chicago, within the normal deadlines to receive his visa before departing for Canada September 22. Officials at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, however, later returned the invitation letters, claiming falsely that the professors had not indicated their telephone or fax numbers. The invitation letters have been resubmitted.

Masud-Piloto reported that the professors who invited Codina were contacting the U.S. State Department to protest the unjustified stalling and to ask that the Cuban writer be granted a visa on time.

-FRANK FORRESTAL  
 
 
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