Acosta was speaking to Militant reporters in the light of new efforts to breathe some life into the misnamed "Friends of Cuban Libraries" campaign, which charges the Cuban government with censorship and repression of "independent libraries." This campaign is part of Washington’s four-decade-long policy aimed at overthrowing the Cuban Revolution, which includes an unrelenting economic war, violent attacks by U.S.-based counterrevolutionaries, and a ceaseless propaganda effort to justify its aggression.

The U.S. government launched "Friends of Cuban Libraries" in 1999 under the guise of being a private initiative independent of Washington. Its main public spokesperson in the United States is Robert Kent, a reference librarian at the New York Public Library with a long history of activity against the Cuban revolution.

The campaign uses what is known as Track II of the Cuba Democracy Act of 1992, often called the Torricelli law after its chief congressional sponsor, which under the banner of the "free flow of ideas" provides for material support by the U.S. government to opponents of the Cuban Revolution. Freedom House and the Center for a Free Cuba are two organizations that receive U.S. government funding and channel resources to the so-called independent libraries.  
 
‘Libraries with no readers’
The campaign has been dealt blows by the efforts of serious librarians and others to get out the truth. Librarians from the United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries have responded to Acosta’s invitation and visited Cuba to see for themselves.

They discovered that these supposed libraries "have no books, no librarians and no readers," Acosta explained. "They’re what I call ‘virtual libraries,’ existing largely in propaganda and on the web."

The individuals who have designated their own homes and the books they have as libraries "are really a group of 100–200 people with a political project. One day they are a librarian, another day a journalist, another day a representative of a political party."

As a result, the American Library Association (ALA) and the Progressive Librarians Guild have publicly gone on record distancing themselves from this campaign. At its annual conference in 2001, the ALA refused to endorse the so-called independent libraries in Cuba and instead adopted a resolution opposing Washington’s efforts to "limit access to informational materials by Cuba’s libraries." In addition, the ALA international relations committee established a "protocol of cooperation" with the Cuban Library Association. The London-based Cuban Library Support Group has broadly disseminated information about the Cuban library system.

In most countries this anti-Cuba campaign has failed, Acosta said. But recently there have been moves in Sweden and the United States to resuscitate it. At last year’s book fair in Gothenburg, Sweden, a group called the Swedish International Liberal Center distributed leaflets in support of what it called the "free libraries" in Cuba. This organization--led by the youth group of the liberal People’s Party, one of the two main bourgeois parties in Sweden--has also distributed leaflets on the streets of Stockholm, the country’s capital, Acosta reported.

More recently James Cason, head of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, has agitated about a shipment of about 5,000 books sent to Cuba by the U.S. government that was held up at Cuban customs. Articles in the U.S. big-business media have reported that the Cuban government was keeping books by Martin Luther King, Jr., John Steinbeck, and Groucho Marx out of the country. The shipment was being sent to the "independent libraries," Cason said.

Over the past several months the U.S.-promoted campaign of provocations against Cuba has increased, culminating in a string of plane and ferry hijackings. Since March, 75 individuals, including several who identify themselves publicly as "independent librarians," have been arrested, tried, and convicted on charges of receiving money from Washington and collaborating with U.S. diplomats to subvert the Cuban Revolution (see accompanying article).

"The reality is that there are no banned books in Cuba," Acosta said. "Any social project that prohibits and censors books is doomed to fail--it won’t have a future." Referring to the annual 10-day book fair and cultural festival that draws hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Acosta noted, "Dictatorships never organize things such as the book fair in Havana. They maintain power in part by keeping people ignorant."

The library head gave the example of a recent visitor to Havana who questioned him about a list of books that, according to Robert Kent, were forbidden in Cuba. "The list contained books by George Orwell, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Mario Vargas Llosa, Reinaldo Arenas, and Octavio Paz. But we found most of the books cited in the library here," Acosta said.

"Nor do we have a problem with donations of books from abroad," he noted, expressing his appreciation of 5,000 books donated by a university in Mexico to five provincial libraries, and the donation by publishers in Andalusia, Spain, of a two-volume dictionary of all writers in Spanish to municipal and popular libraries in Cuba.

"What we reject are political donations where the U.S. government makes donations to opposition political forces it supports inside the country," he said.

Acosta showed us a stack of book lists he was presently working on. "We have an exchange with a library in Berkeley in California. We send them Cuban books and they send us books that we ourselves choose," he said. "We have already received about 117 books from these lists, many of them published by Ediciones Universal in Miami." Reading aloud from the list, Acosta mentioned books by Cuban authors critical of the revolution who now live outside the country: like El heraldo de las malas noticias (The bearer of bad news) by Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Historia de la otra revolución (Story of the other revolution) by Vicente Echerri, Informe contra mí mismo (Self-criticism) by Eliseo Alberto, books by Rafael Rojas and a whole list of others.

"We have asked for, and are still waiting for, another 280 books, such as Notas críticas de la revolución (Critical notes on the revolution) and Compañero, the Che [Guevara] biography by Jorge Castañeda."

Acosta pointed to the efforts being taken in Cuba to expand cultural links with Cubans, often critical of the revolution, now living abroad. He showed us three books, compilations of essays, poetry, and short stories, each jointly edited by a Cuban living on the island and a Cuban living abroad. "This series was financed by a cultural fund in Mexico and presented at the Guadalajara International Book Fair in Mexico in November last year," he said.

"The selection of essays is edited by Rafael Hernández and Rafael Rojas; the short stories by Jorge Fornet and Carlos Espinoza Domínguez; and the poetry by Jesús J. Barquet and Norberto Codina," he noted. Hernández, Fornet, and Codina are well-known authors resident in Havana; the other three live abroad.  
 
Expanding access to education
"Our problem," Acosta pointed out, "is not that we don’t want books, but that we don’t have the money to get the books we desperately want and need. From the earliest years of the revolution in 1959, our policy has been: ‘No le decimos al pueblo, cree. Le decimos, lee.’ [‘We don’t tell people to believe, we tell them--read.’] The problem is that we don’t have hard currency. Even at the book fair here, I wasn’t able to buy all the books we wanted for lack of funds."

Acosta was referring to the Havana International Book Fair, held in late January and early February, which drew a record 400,000 Cubans this year. The Cuban government and cultural and other organizations in Cuba have devoted major resources to the annual book fair, which has grown in attendance and since last year has been extended to other parts of the country. This year the book fair traveled to 30 cities in addition to Havana. This expansion is part of what is called the "battle of ideas" here--an effort, through more than 100 various programs, to broaden access by working people--especially those hardest hit by the economic crisis--to education and culture.

One of these projects is the effort to establish "popular libraries" in working-class neighborhoods and rural areas across the island. "There are now 12 popular libraries in four provinces of Cuba," Acosta said. "Each has 10 copies of 1,000 titles, as well as TVs, computers, and other resources. After evaluating this pilot program, we will start 200 more, to have libraries in communities that have been marginalized and especially need libraries like this one. The goal is to have 1,000 such libraries, but we will have to take this step by step."

Another project, called the "family library" program, is the publication of boxed sets of 25 classics of world and Cuban literature in inexpensive newsprint editions, an effort that was announced at the Havana book fair in 2002. The first set has been published and is on sale for 60 Cuban pesos--just over $2. It will be followed later this year by a set of 25 Cuban classics.

Knowledge of these facts has had an impact on a wide array of librarians around the world, including in the United States. A resolution adopted Jan. 17, 2000, by the Social Responsibilities Round Table (SRRT) of the ALA, for example, states that "this group of ‘independent librarians’ [in Cuba] are not librarians, but political dissidents of various professions apparently establishing centers of information in their homes or storefronts, and supported by funds and materials from such organizations as Freedom House, which is subsidized by the U.S. government." The document also says that "SRRT joins the British organization, Cuban Libraries Group, which advocates a positive program of interaction with, and support for, libraries and librarians in Cuba."
 
 
Related articles:
Cuban authorities arrest, convict 85 in response to U.S.-planned provocations
Washington adds restrictions on travel to Cuba  
 
 
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