Militant/Martín Koppel

Book fair in Havana has attracted many Cuban publishers and 52 from outside Cuba. The event has drawn tens of thousands of visitors in first days. Above, Pathfinder booth.

At the opening ceremony, Iroel Sánchez, president of the Cuban Book Institute and chair of the book fair’s organizing committee, reported that this year the event is again being extended geographically. Last year, for the first time, the Havana-based fair was put on the road to 19 other cities around the island. This year it will be more truly countrywide, traveling to 30 cities in coming weeks and winding up March 2 in Guantánamo, near the eastern tip of the island. This expansion, he said, is a response to the growing and seemingly insatiable demand of the Cuban reader.

Abel Prieto, the minister of culture, said the book fair is part of an ongoing "revolution in education and culture" today, one of the real achievements of the Cuban Revolution. He pointed to initiatives in recent years such as expanded use of television--including the popular University for All program--as an educational tool; the increased training of art instructors; and "family libraries."

The family library is a government-sponsored program to publish boxed sets of 25 classics of world literature, printed on newsprint to make them affordable to working people. "Our immediate goal is for every household to have one of these sets, and then to move on to produce similar sets of Cuban literature," Prieto said.

"At a time when the international book market has been contracting," he said, "when the prices of books have been skyrocketing so that only a minority have access to them, where the economy has been worsening--in this world context, Cuba, a country still blockaded [by Washington], has made advances. Last year 2.5 million books were sold at the book fair nationwide; this year we expect between 3 and 4 million copies to be sold."

Through these educational efforts, Prieto said, we are placing Cuba in the «vanguard of cultural resistance» in the world.

Also speaking were Cuban poet and essayist Pablo Armando Fernández, the fair’s honored author this year, and Francisco Pareja, representing the Andean countries--Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela--to whom the 12th international book fair is dedicated. Cuban president Fidel Castro and other government leaders were present at the opening.  
 
Opening days
The first weekend the fair was jammed with visitors of all ages interested in books. They browsed the stands, attended book launchings, went to poetry readings, and lined up at stalls selling affordable titles in Cuban pesos. Thousands of children with parents in tow thronged the children’s pavilion, snapping up a wide array of titles.

Every evening the fair hosts concerts by Cuban musicians. Throughout Havana, art and photo exhibitions, film showings, and theatrical productions are being held to coincide with the fair.

This year fair organizers have also scheduled a series of forums on various themes. One is on the work of Cuban national hero José Martí, the anti-imperialist leader and outstanding writer, the 150th anniversary of whose birth is being marked this year. Other topics include the world economy, education, and the expansion of access to culture in Cuba. The first forum, "The World After September 11," featured U.S. academic James Petras. A lively discussion from the floor followed the panel presentation.

Among the first books to be launched at the fair is Cicatrices en la memoria (Scarred Memories), just released by the Capitán San Luis publishing house of the Ministry of the Interior. It is a collection of 18 short stories and poems by prominent Cuban writers and illustrations by 18 well-known artists. The contents have as their common theme the Cuban people’s struggle to defend their revolution from U.S.-backed counterrevolutionary organizations, which for more than four decades have carried out acts of terror against the revolution. The featured speakers were Roberto Fernández Retamar, president of Cuba’s Casa de las Américas cultural center and author of the book’s foreword, and Ricardo Alarcón, president of the National Assembly, who wrote the epilogue.

Other books being presented here range from collections of poetry by contemporary Ecuadoran writer Jorge Enrique Adoum to works by German novelist Heinrich Böll to classics such as Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.

One launching being featured is for the Spanish-language edition of Conflicting Missions by Piero Gleijeses. The book, published in English in the United States last year, documents revolutionary Cuba’s internationalist support for and participation in national liberation struggles from Algeria to Angola, and Washington’s efforts to crush these freedom struggles. Other books on political topics range from El Partido de los Independientes de Color (The Party of Independents of Color) by Sivio Castro, the history of an independent Black political party in Cuba in the early 20th century; to Ten Days That Shook The World by John Reed, an eyewitness narrative of the October 1917 Russian Revolution. Several new titles are firsthand accounts by combatants in Cuba’s revolutionary war in the 1950s to overthrow the Batista dictatorship.

A popular title this year is a collection of cartoons by Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, one of five Cuban revolutionaries imprisoned in the United States on frame-up charges because of their work infiltrating and gathering information on U.S.-based counterrevolutionary groups organizing attacks on Cuba. Hernández is serving two life terms.  
 
Interest in Pathfinder titles
Pathfinder Press, one of 52 non-Cuban publishers at this year’s Havana book fair, is organizing presentations of three new titles. One is Marianas in Combat: Teté Puebla and the Mariana Grajales Women’s Platoon in Cuba’s Revolutionary War, 1956-58, in both English and Spanish editions. The book is an interview with Puebla, who was second in command of the women’s platoon in the Rebel Army, which was led by Fidel Castro. She is currently a general in Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces.

A second title is Malcolm X Talks to Young People, also both in English and Spanish. The launching is being organized jointly with Casa Editora Abril, publishing house of the Union of Young Communists, which has just released a Cuban edition of Malcolm X habla a la juventud.

Pathfinder is also presenting October 1962: The ‘Missile’ Crisis as Seen from Cuba by Tomás Diez Acosta. The Spanish edition is published by Editora Política of Havana.

Pathfinder’s booth has been a hive of activity each day from the moment the fair’s doors open at 10:00 a.m. to when they close at 8:00 p.m. Many who visit to look at Pathfinder’s range of titles also take the opportunity to discuss politics with the volunteers staffing the stand, who include communist workers and youth from Australia, Canada, Iceland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

Many Cubans stopping at the booth go straight for the new Malcolm X habla a la juventud. Dennis Rodríguez, who works for the electrical company in East Havana, said he had previously read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, published in Cuba in 1974 and long out of print, and had seen the Hollywood film by Spike Lee. Rodríguez was eager to read what Malcolm had to say in speeches and interviews during the last year of his life. Browsing through the book, he commented with interest on a February 1965 interview in which Malcolm argued that capitalism is getting weaker, and he enjoyed the U.S.-born revolutionary’s metaphor of U.S. imperialism evolving from an eagle to a scavenging vulture that can be defeated in struggle.

Adriana Bernales, a student at the University of Havana, was one of many who came seeking an explanation of the impending U.S.-led war in the Mideast. "Do you think it’s because of Bush’s oil interests?" she asked. She was interested in getting the issue of the magazine Nueva Internacional featuring "The Opening Guns of World War III: Washington’s Assault on Iraq" by Jack Barnes, an analysis of the 1991 Gulf War and its outcome.

A number of people who had visited the Pathfinder booth in previous years returned to pick up on unfinished discussions and to address new questions uppermost in their minds, from the employer-led efforts to overthrow the government of Venezuela to new developments in the class struggle in the United States.