November 16, 2000 - Independent Libraries in Cuba

I was intrigued to learn about a new phenomenon in Cuba: private libraries. According to a November 8, 2000 article in the Denver Post, more than 60 independent libraries recently have sprung into being.

Officially, there is no censorship on Castro's island. In fact, the "many donations of books sent from Mexico, Spain, and the United States are seized by custom officials without explanation."

Similarly, there is no known list of prescribed titles. Yet it is well known that George Orwell's "Animal Farm" (described in the article as "the 1945 anti-Stalinist fable of an uprising by oppressed farm animals") is strongly disliked by Castro. Moreover, in Cuba, book distribution is controlled by the government. So there's no censorship -- but no choice, either, at least not through official channels.

The independent libraries, while certainly not endorsed by the government, aren't shut down either. Owners of the libraries -- which usually consist of some 500-2000 books and periodicals -- are considered dissidents. This isn't, incidentally, a money-making proposition. The books are made available to readers for free.

I have two distinct reactions to this story. First, it's hard not to feel both pride and sympathy. American libraries have many books that our political leaders don't want you to read. Yet nobody stops you from doing so, and in fact, such books may be bestsellers. It's hard for the voracious American reader to imagine having to sneak around in order to find such "discouraged" titles as American detective stories.

It is surely a sign of enlightened government that the United States not only makes no attempt to limit what information may be made available to the public, government itself funds libraries of many kinds. Those poor Cubans are information deprived.

But there's another way to look at this.

Public libraries mostly buy materials that are published by mainstream American publishers. Over the past 10 years or so, many of those publishers have been gobbled up by conglomerates. Those conglomerates live for profit. The ideal book, the blockbuster, comes out with the movie rights already tied up.

While there are exceptions, most of the titles published in this country in fact have a fairly narrow range of subjects and perspectives.

My wife, who spent 9 months in Yugoslavia when it was still unified under Tito, reported that an astonishing number of Slavs were intimately familiar with American writers. Their knowledge often far surpassed her own, and she's a big reader.

But my point is not just that people outside our country often display more familiarity with our body of literature than we do. My point is that we do not reciprocate.

Can you name two Slavic poets? One modern Greek novelist? Any Brazilian historians? A single Swedish science fiction author? How about fictional Arab detectives?

What you find in American libraries is mostly American literature, choices restricted by market influences that may reflect just as parochial a perspective as that imposed by Castro. What you find in the American population of readers is an ignorance of world literature that may in fact be greater than that of Cuba's.

To put it another way, in Cuba, there are people who risk their freedom in order to read critiques of the Cuban Revolution. In America, in the midst of the wide-open global marketplace, we have people whose literary ambition peaked around "6 Weeks to Thinner Thighs." It makes you think.