Vol. 71/No. 46      December 10, 2007

Organizers report that nearly one million books were on display or for sale at the 10-day event. Publishing houses from 25 countries participated, as did 263 international guests.

The largest international delegation came from Argentina, the country of honor this year. Argentina was represented by some 124 writers and artists who made presentations and performed throughout the fair. Other sizeable delegations came from Cuba and the United States. Some 22 writers and political activists, mostly from the United States, spoke as part of the five-day running forum on the fair’s central theme, “United States: A possible revolution.” The political questions posed by that topic filtered through every aspect of the fair. (See articles in last two issues of the Militant.)

Every day there were book presentations, dance performances, film showings, concerts, and art workshops—more than 800 events in all. A children’s tent hosted programs for schoolchildren to read together and write stories. Nightly tango classes in honor of Argentina drew dozens.

The book fair registered the expansion of publishing, literacy, and cultural activity here. Some 150 Venezuelan publishing houses participated, a number of them opened in the last two years. More than 300 Venezuelan authors and others gave presentations.

Speaking at the opening ceremony November 9, Minister of Culture Francisco Sesto said that the ministry of culture had recently opened a print shop with the capacity to produce 25 million books a year, and that government-subsidized bookstores have been opened in every state.

A scaled-down version of the fair toured the country for a month beforehand, featuring talks on this year’s theme, workshops related to resistance by indigenous peoples, movie showings, book presentations, and musical performances. Seven working-class neighborhoods on the outskirts of Caracas hosted the fair in the days before the formal opening in a large park in the eastern part of the city.  
 
Discussions on constitution
Fair activities were marked by the political polarization leading up to a December 2 referendum on 69 proposed amendments to Venezuela’s constitution.

The book fair took place as pro-imperialist opposition forces organized daily marches, while supporters of the amendments responded with several large mobilizations. Many students came by after marching either for or against the changes, sparking lively discussions.

As part of answering opposition charges that the contents of the amendments—which include eliminating the presidential term limit, shortening the workday with no cut in pay for both public and private sector workers, and providing pensions and social security protections for self-employed workers—are not widely known, government supporters launched an educational campaign to win support for the measures. Volunteers staffing the fair passed out newspapers with the text of the changes. Speakers at several programs tied the books being presented to the proposed amendments, often arguing for their adoption.

At a November 10 presentation of a collection of children’s books that are bilingual in Spanish and indigenous languages, anthropologist Marie-Claude Mattéi-Muller said that efforts to preserve indigenous cultures and languages will be strengthened by a constitutional amendment acknowledging Venezuela’s mixed African, indigenous, and Spanish heritage.

At a November 12 launch of a new edition of the Communist Manifesto, professor Ramón Losada contrasted the proposed amendment on property rights with the program presented by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in that founding document of the modern revolutionary workers movement. The constitutional amendment, Losada noted, recognizes five forms of property: social, collective, public, mixed, and private. Expressing his support for the government of President Hugo Chávez, Losada nonetheless emphasized that in the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels point to the necessity of eliminating private ownership of the means of production.

Losada wrote the introduction to the new edition, which is the first in the Basic Library of Revolutionary Thought collection, to be published by Venezuelan editorial house Monte Avila.  
 
Pathfinder book presentations
During the fair, Monte Avila also released new editions of two titles published by New York-based Pathfinder Press—Cuba and the Coming American Revolution by Jack Barnes and Malcolm X Talks to Young People. They are part of Monte Avila’s Free Millennium collection, which also includes The Economic Thought of Ernesto Che Guevara by Carlos Tablada, Beyond Capital by Michael Lebowitz, Terror as U.S. Foreign Policy by Noam Chomsky, and Cuba and Twenty-first Century Socialism by Heinz Dieterich.

Chairing a November 13 presentation of the new 2007 edition of Cuba and the Coming American Revolution, released simultaneously by Pathfinder and the Venezuelan publishing house, Monte Avila editorial chief Carolina Alvarez cited Barnes’s description of the political polarization in the United States in 1961 when U.S.-organized mercenaries invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. “There are moments in history when everything ceases to be ‘normal,’” Barnes said, when “neutral ground seems to disappear.” Monte Avila had decided to publish the book, Alvarez said, at a time in Venezuela when likewise “nothing is normal.”

“There are three central themes to this book,” she said, “One, that it is possible to stand up to great obstacles and win; two, the example of the Cuban Revolution; and three, the importance of organization.”

Other panelists at the presentation, attended by more than 75 people, were Enrique Ramos, founder of Venezuela’s National Institute of Youth and advisor to the dean of the National Experimental University of the Armed Forces; Hilario Rosette, a journalist with Alma Mater, the newspaper of Cuba’s Federation of University Students; and Olympia Newton, editor of the Militant.

Speakers at the November 11 presentation of a new edition of Malcolm X Talks to Young People included Oscar Fuentes of the Bolivarian Students Federation and the Cimarron Movement, a nationwide organization of Afro-Venezuelans, and Loretta Van Pelt, a member of the Young Socialists in the United States. Yoel Barrios, responsible for organizing members of Cuba’s Union of Young Communists (UJC) on internationalist missions in Venezuela, gave extended remarks from the floor.

“By studying Malcolm we can better understand how people transform themselves,” said Barrios. Malcolm “was a product of capitalism.” Drawing a parallel between Malcolm’s political transformation and the process of radicalization unfolding here, Barrios described the work of UJC cadres in Venezuela combating youth drug addiction and alienation.

Pathfinder presented The First and Second Declarations of Havana on November 12. Panelists were Idol Gallardo from the Caracas Municipal Youth Institute; Zuleica Romay, vice president of the ALBA Cultural Fund; and Róger Calero from the Socialist Workers Party in the United States. Pathfinder president Mary-Alice Waters chaired.

“I am of the generation of Cubans who went to the Plaza of the Revolution in the arms of our parents,” said Romay, referring to the mass mobilizations that adopted the declarations in 1960 and 1962. Rereading them, she said, “you can see why the Empire is so afraid of Cuba—when the documents speak of peasants, of workers, of taking political power, at the same time they speak of the movement by Blacks for their rights in the United States.”

The panel sparked a lively discussion on the differing and evolving historical contexts in which terms such as Black, Afro-descendent, Afro-Cuban, and African American have been used in the United States, Cuba, and Venezuela.

On November 16 Pathfinder presented new editions of Women’s Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle and We Are Heirs of the World’s Revolutions by Thomas Sankara, leader of the revolution in the West African country of Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987. Some 35 people attended, including a large number of Afro-descendent women who were especially eager to discuss the example of the Burkina Faso revolution and the impetus it gave to women’s emancipation struggles. A presentation by Omari Musa, a Miami-based garment worker and longtime activist in the fight for Black rights, elicited many questions, and discussion continued past the fair’s closing time.

Other book fair events included poetry readings, writing workshops, and nightly performances of African and indigenous dance. A rock concert the final night closed the festival. The expanding thirst for reading and study registered throughout the 10 days of events reflect the sharpening class struggle and heightened political debate here in Venezuela.
 
 
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Revolutionary books are popular in Caracas  
 
 
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