BY RON RICHARDS

The following articles were sent in by supporters of Pathfinder Press, the Militant, and Perspectiva Mundial from around the world. The Militant encourages others to send in short articles, anecdotes, and photographs for this column. Next week the Militant will run the monthly chart of book sales by Pathfinder distributors.

BY RON RICHARDS

LARES, Puerto Rico - The sales of Pathfinder literature at the annual commemoration of the 1868 Grito de Lares pro- independence uprising got off to a good start. As we pulled the boxes of books out of the trunk and untied the tables on top of the car, a person came up and said, "I want to buy the Malcolm X book." By the time the tables came down, after 10 hours of sales in the intense heat of a tropical sun, the sales count stood at 40 single copies of Perspectiva Mundial, 5 subscriptions to the Spanish-language magazine, and 27 Pathfinder titles worth $309. This was one of the best one-day sales in Puerto Rico in the last 10 years.

The next day a Pathfinder table at the Río Piedras campus of the University of Puerto Rico resulted in sales of five single copies of Perspectiva Mundial, two subs, and six books. These tables were staffed by socialists who live in New York, Chicago, and Miami as well as Puerto Rico.

The two best-selling books were the Spanish-language editions of the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels and Socialism and Man in Cuba by Ernesto Che Guevara. Four copies of each were sold. Of the 33 books sold in the two days, 18 were about the Cuban revolution.

We also sold three copies of the issue of Nueva Internacional with the article "Opening Guns of World War III: Washington's Assault on Iraq," and copies of The Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara in both Spanish and English.

At the Grito de Lares events, crowds of independence supporters filled the narrow streets around the Plaza de la revolución all day. Dozens of artisans sell T-shirts and hand- made goods decorated with Puerto Rican flags and other pro- independence motifs. The Pathfinder table was the only major vendor of books.

BY FELICITY COGGAN

AUCKLAND, New Zealand -Pathfinder supporters are organizing to follow up a number of new contacts met at a booksellers' gathering here in late July. The conference, organized annually by the National Booksellers Association, was attended by 51 booksellers from around the country.

An Auckland bookshop specializing in foreign language titles to serve the city's growing immigrant population has expressed interest in acquiring Pathfinder titles in Spanish and French. Books Pasifika, which specializes in Maori and Pacific Island history and culture, plans to include a number of Pathfinder titles - especially those on South Africa and Malcolm X - in their regular database mailing to libraries in New Zealand, the Pacific, the West Coast of the United States, and Europe.

School Supplies, which distributes to high school libraries and teachers from 11 branches around New Zealand, has prepared a two-sided promotional flier devoted to Pathfinder for its next mailing. The flier titled "Primary Source Materials from Pathfinder Press" highlights books on South Africa, Malcolm X, the Russian revolution, women's rights, the Palestinian struggle, and The Truth about Yugoslavia. It will be mailed to high school history and social studies departments all over the country.

BY NELL WHEELER

NEWARK, New Jersey - Eighty participants turned out to celebrate the grand opening of the new Pathfinder bookstore here September 22. Bookstore manager Bob Miller explained that since 1975 there has been a Pathfinder bookstore in Newark, but until now it had been located on the second floor. The day before, as volunteers set books up on the shelves, "for the first time in 23 years passersby could, and did, look through the windows to see the whole range of titles."

Mámud Shirvani, coauthor of the introduction for To See the Dawn: Baku, 1920 -First Congress of the Peoples of the East, gave the keynote address at the gathering. Shirvani discussed the current situation in the Middle East and the worldwide reach of Pathfinder. "Increasing book sales here and abroad indicate the class is arming itself for struggle," Shirvani said. "Kurdish political activists in France have translated `Opening Guns of World War IIÍ and are distributing it themselves," he added, referring to an article from the Marxist magazine New International.

Kathy Fitzgerald, a volunteer at the Newark bookstore, spoke about the need to raise funds to complete the project and also to make and pay pledges for the Pathfinder Fund. More than $1,500 was raised, meeting all outstanding construction expenses.

Chris Kozlowski, a young worker who lives in Edison, New Jersey, was at the New Brunswick Book Fair, and then came to the opening the next day. He bought five titles on Cuba and a Pathfinder Readers Club membership, as well as a Militant subscription. In his view, "economic circumstances are getting to the point where they will provoke a crisis. The workers will start to look for an alternative, for some way out of this system."

Bud Haithcoath, a United Auto Workers member at Ford, helped staff the book table in New Brunswick and also attended the opening. In describing the immediate and large response to a murder at the hands of a cop in New Brunswick, Haithcoath said, "More people are becoming politically motivated and are fighting back against that kind of attack and don't accept that some people are somehow less human than others. And that's good, because police brutality will probably rise as the bosses and the government try to keep things under control."  
 
 
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