BY MARY-ALICE WATERS  
On behalf of Pathfinder Press, I would like to express our appreciation to the rector of the National University of Equatorial Guinea for the initiative that has been taken by the young and vital institution he heads to organize the first national book fair of Equatorial Guinea under the banner “Leer es Crecer” [To read is to grow].

We want to thank the vice-minister of education and the government of Equatorial Guinea for their support.

To the minister, the rector, the vice-rector, the dean, the members of the organizing committee, and so many others at the university here, we say thank you for the opportunity to share this moment in history with you. It is an honor.

Pathfinder Press, which is based in the United States, accepted the invitation to participate in this event for two reasons.

Most important, for us it is an opportunity to learn. Even though our presence at this book fair here in Equatorial Guinea is a first, it is not unusual. Whenever possible Pathfinder takes part in book fairs and similar cultural events not only throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe, but around the globe—from Harare to Tehran, from Guadalajara to Havana, Caracas, and Buenos Aires. What we learn from our experiences here—such as the October 12 Independence Day celebration in Evinayong marking the end of colonial rule, a visit to the port of Luba yesterday to learn another part of the history, and future, of the country, and participating in this first Equatorial Guinean book fair—will help us transmit the reality of the world in which we live more accurately and more richly through the books and pamphlets we publish.  
 
Transforming world order
The second reason we welcomed the invitation to participate in this exchange is that our presence here helps underline that there are ordinary people in the United States who do not start from a desire to protect the relative wealth and abundance of resources consumed in the most economically developed countries. There are many, like ourselves, who understand that American and European development exists in substantial part because billions the world over live in crushing poverty. We start with the world and how to transform the international economic order, which is the source of this reality.

We also hope to underline by our presence that you are not alone in your efforts to transform your country. To make it part of a world in which all have access to the benefits of electricity, including the ability to read and study at night, safe water to drink, paved roads that are passable year round, and modern means of communication. The installation of each new tower extending the cell phone system here is indeed a cause for celebration.

You are not alone in your efforts to assure that health care is accessible to all, as well as the kind of education this university strives to assure. To put it in the words of one of Pathfinder’s most popular titles, The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning, “Until society is reorganized so that education is a human activity from the time we are very young until the time we die, there will be no education worthy of working, creating humanity.”

It is to this end that Pathfinder’s publishing program is organized.

The books we publish—history, sociology, philosophy, culture, politics in the modern world—are directed first and foremost at working people and youth within the United States. The largest part of these books are edited and printed in English, but more and more frequently our new titles are published in Spanish and sometimes in French as well. The growing numbers of Spanish-speaking immigrants from throughout the Americas make this a necessity, while the swelling ranks of immigrants from numerous countries of West and Central Africa are among the most eager readers of our titles in French.

To introduce Pathfinder Press to you today, I want to mention four other titles, all available here during the book fair, that are indicative of who we are.  
 
Four titles
First. How Far We Slaves Have Come!, which features the speech given by Nelson Mandela when he visited Cuba in 1991 to thank the Cuban people for their irreplaceable contribution to the struggle against the apartheid regime of South Africa. It also includes the response to that speech by Cuban president Fidel Castro.

As Mandela expressed it on that occasion: “We in Africa are used to being victims of countries wanting to carve up our territory or subvert our sovereignty. It is unparalleled in African history to have another people rise to the defense of one of us.”

The defeat of the white-supremacist South African army in the historic battle of Cuito Cuanavale, for which the Cuban internationalists at the side of the Angolans were primarily responsible, said Mandela, “was a milestone in the history of the struggle for southern African liberation.” And he steadfastly affirmed his admiration for “the sacrifices of the Cuban people in maintaining their independence and sovereignty in the face of a vicious, imperialist-orchestrated campaign to destroy the impressive gains made in the Cuban Revolution.”

How Far We Slaves Have Come!, published in both English and Spanish, is one of Pathfinder’s titles that is most widely read and used in the United States, including in university and high school classes.

Second. Pathfinder has published and kept in print for nearly twenty years (something most publishers don’t do for their soon-out-of-print titles) several collections of speeches by the Burkinabè leader Thomas Sankara. In English we have the book Thomas Sankara Speaks, and in French Oser inventer l’avenir, as well as smaller selections of speeches available in three languages.

Without a doubt, the most popular is Women’s Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle, Sankara’s powerful speeches to the women of Burkina Faso, published in French, English, and Spanish. As Sankara said on International Women’s Day, March 8, in 1987, “The struggle of the Burkinabè women is part of a worldwide struggle of all women, and beyond that, part of the struggle for the rehabilitation of our continent.”  
 
Opening a window on Cuba, Africa
Third. From the Escambray to the Congo will be presented here this afternoon by its author, who is known to many of you—Víctor Dreke, today Cuba’s ambassador to Equatorial Guinea.

I want to take the occasion to thank the ambassador and the compañeros of the Cuban embassy here—who have done much to support and promote this event—for the opportunity to present From the Escambray to the Congo for the first time in a country of Africa. It is important, because even some of you who have met and talked with Ambassador Dreke are not aware of the history of his efforts on behalf of the liberation struggles of the continent. Those efforts began some forty years ago this year, with his place as second-in-command to Ernesto Che Guevara leading the Cuban volunteers who supported the anti-imperialist struggle of the people of the Congo.

I want to add only one point. From the Escambray to the Congo, which also opens a window on the struggles of the Cuban people to defend their independence and sovereignty—a struggle, as we are learning, with many links to the history and battles of the people of Equatorial Guinea—is used in numerous universities in the United States and has sold widely to thousands of young people of African descent especially. It is a measure of their deep interest in their own African roots, the history and legacy of slavery, and the struggles of the peoples of their historic homelands.

Fourth. It was the thirst for this knowledge that the outstanding American leader Malcolm X was responding to some four decades ago as he addressed those whose consciousness was being profoundly transformed by the mass struggle that brought down the apartheid-like system of racist segregation in the U.S. South. In one of his most famous speeches, which Pathfinder has published in Malcolm X on Afro-American History, he makes a powerful appeal to Afro-Americans to learn about and take pride in their African roots and the contributions of their ancestors—whose hands were “the hands that forged civilization.”

To finish, we hope that above all the presence here of Pathfinder’s books and its representatives—who are ourselves indicative of the diversity of historical origins of peoples of the U.S.—will help you have a richer comprehension of the political, historical, social, and class differentiations within the American reality.

We hope we will take with us a new knowledge of your history and reality today, and will be able to communicate that to a not insignificant number of people in the United States and around the world.

And we hope the activities we will share with you in the days to come will lead to new and even richer exchanges in the future.
 
 
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‘To read is to grow’ is banner at book fair in Central African nation of Equatorial Guinea  
 
 
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