Vol. 71/No. 16      April 23, 2007

Eliades Acosta, until recently the director of the José Martí National Library here, reports that the Cuban delegation won further support at the last IFLA convention in rejecting this attack on Cuba. Some 4,000 delegates representing 115 countries attended that gathering, held last August in Seoul, south Korea.

A resolution condemning the “persecution of independent librarians in Cuba and the seizure and burning of their library collections” had originally gained the sponsorship of the Latvian and Lithuanian librarians associations and was due to be debated by the international convention. The resolution, in fact, was drafted by Robert Kent, a New York librarian and head of an outfit called “Friends of Cuban Libraries,” whose mission is to discredit the Cuban Revolution.

The “Friends of Cuban Libraries” has received money from the U.S.-financed Freedom House, and Kent has a long record of activity against the Cuban Revolution. None of the “independent librarians” are librarians. They are all members of small political groups on the island that oppose the revolution and are dependent on U.S. government funding.

Kent’s wild allegations that books by Mark Twain and George Orwell are banned, that the Cuban government burns books of which it disapproves, and imprisons and tortures “independent librarians” have been exposed and discredited over the years. Official American Library Association (ALA) and IFLA delegations to Cuba in 2001 confirmed that the “independent libraries” were a fraud, and the IFLA council voted to reject the allegations.

At the Seoul IFLA convention, Kent tried to enlist delegations from Eastern Europe. When the Lithuanian delegation contacted the Association of Cuban Librarians (ASCUBI), however, they were surprised to find that Kent’s claims were bogus and withdrew their support for the anti-Cuba resolution.

Acosta said, “I told them [Lithuanian librarians]: come to Cuba, see for yourselves, go to the falsely named independent libraries, then visit ours and draw your own conclusions.”

Emilija Banionyte, vice president of the Lithuanian library association, wrote to ASCUBI president Margarita Bellas, “We are terribly sorry for this misunderstanding. Hope you do understand that our intentions were to help you. We had no idea that Mr. Robert Kent is acting without your knowledge.” Banionyte also wrote to the Hungarian delegation about why they had withdrawn, stating that they had been duped by Kent’s “political game.”

Lacking the support of at least two national associations, the resolution could not even be put before the IFLA convention. At the 2005 convention in Oslo, Norway, Kent’s maneuver to garner the support of the Polish delegation also failed.

At the Seoul gathering the seven-member Cuban delegation, headed by Dr. Marta Terry, received messages of support from IFLA officials as well as Polish, Czech, Russian, and Chinese librarians. The Cubans "held an important meeting with the ALA, whose new president, Leslie Burger, accepted ASCUBI’s invitation to visit Cuba,” Acosta said.  
 
Cuba expands libraries, publishing
The problem faced by Cuban libraries is not government censorship but rather a lack of sufficient resources—largely due to the U.S. trade embargo—to meet the demand for books among a population that is highly literate because of Cuba’s socialist revolution.

A recent report titled “Impact of the U.S. government’s blockade on Cuban libraries, 2001-2005,” by Vilma Ponce Suárez and Nuria Pérez Matos of the José Martí National Library, details Washington’s visa denials and other obstacles to free exchanges between librarians, the limits to Cuba’s access to technology including internet access, and the blocking of donations to Cuban libraries.

Far from burning or suppressing books, Cuba continues to expand its library system and publishing efforts. Today there are 415 public libraries across the island, including in the most isolated areas, up from 389 in 2001. In 2003, nearly 9 million Cubans used the library services, borrowing 13.5 million books, according to the Ministry of Culture.

And this year’s Havana International Book Fair attracted more than half a million people. The fair traveled to 39 other cities before finally ending March 11 in Santiago de Cuba. Millions of books were sold on a vast range of subjects through the course of the fair.

Eliades Acosta has since taken a new assignment as head of the Committee on Culture of the Cuban Communist Party’s Central Committee. In signing off as director of the national library, he issued an open letter to Robert Kent, expressing his “pleasure and pride” in having exposed Washington’s lies against the Cuban Revolution and pledging to continue to do so

Supporters of Cuba’s libraries are now ready to take on Washington’s disinformation campaign at the June 21-27 ALA convention in Washington, D.C.
 
 
Related articles:
Letter from Eliades Acosta to Robert Kent  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home