A Chronology of Attempts to Bring the Burning of Books in Cuba
 to the Attention of the American Library Association

"There were many beautiful books, but as they contained nothing but superstitions and falsehoods of the Devil, we burnt them." -- Diego de LANDA, Bishop of Yucatan

Reports of book burning emerge from Cuba and are reported on the Friends of Cuban Libraries web site. See Friends of Cuban Libraries press release entitled "Library Books Burned, Buried, Dumped" (December 10, 1999) and "Library Books Burned, Buried, Dumped: A Mystery Solved?" (March 9, 2000), and the following post of September 21, 2002. (See full text at end of this report)

April 2003

Following the arrests of 75 dissidents in late March 2003, the trials excerpted below were held for defendants who had been involved in attempts to form independent libraries. The Cuban court records, later obtained and translated by the Florida State University Center for the Advancement of Human Rights and posted on the “Rule of Law in Cuba” web site at http://www.ruleoflawandcuba.fsu.edu/, document many of the titles taken from these residential libraries. The court records cited below also contain directions for the incineration of the books, or their destruction by other means, as follows.

(See many translations of Court Documents, with lists of the books that were burned, at the end of this report.)

http://lp-web.ala.org:8000/guest/archives/ALACOUN/log0312/msg00105.html

Council Colleagues:  With the recent volume of messages regarding Cuba on the Council list, I want to provide a very brief update on the joint IFC/IRC Task Force looking at this issue.  IFC Chair, Nancy C. Kranich and I (as IRC chair) appointed a joint Task Force on Cuba this fall in response to last summer's Council referral of an IRC resolution on these issues back to the two committees.  Peg Ottinger, Martin Garnar and Candace Morgan are the IFC representatives while Al Kagan, Anne Lipow and I (as convener) represent the IRC.  This group has been reviewing and examining a wide range of documents and reports from ALA, IFLA, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, plus materials provided by members, and other sources (including transcript copies that are said to be from some of trials of Cuban dissidents http://www.ruleoflawandcuba.fsu.edu/index.cfm 

“Information is the currency of democracy." -- Thomas Jefferson  "If information is the currency of democracy, then libraries are the banks." --Wendell Ford, former U.S. Senator 

Anne Grodzins Lipow (Term: 07/01/02 - 06/30/04)
Director Library Solutions Institute 2137 Oregon St. Berkeley, CA 94705
Tel: (510) 841-2636    Fax: (510) 841-2926
Al Kagan
IFC Chair  Nancy C. Kranich (2002–2004); 212-874-5860; nancy.kranich@nyu.edu
Candace D. Morgan (2001–2005), Fort Vancouver Regional Library, 707 SW Dolph Street, Portland, OR 97219; 360-699-8817; Fax: 360-693-2681
Margaret Anne Oettinger (2002–2004), 631-928-4387;
Martin Garnar (2003–2004), Regis University, Dayton Memorial Library, (303) 964-5459; Fax: (303) 964-5497

“I stand against any library or any librarian anywhere in the world being imprisoned or punished in any way
for the books they circulate. I plead with Castro and his government to immediately take their hands off
the independent librarians and release all those librarians in prison and send them back into Cuban culture
to inform the people.” Ray Bradbury
                                    -- Telephone call of 4:30 p.m. EDT, 27 June 20, day of keynote speech to ALA

• o: Intellectual Freedom Forum <IFFORUM@ala.org>
• Subject: [IFFORUM:2457] Open Question For Dan Wood
• From: WSkold <libertas@dialmaine.com>
• Date: Sun, 03 Jul 2005 18:45:39 -0400

• To: Intellectual Freedom Forum <IFFORUM@ala.org>
• Subject: [IFFORUM:2529] Cuba Book Burning Watch: Week 1
• From: WSkold <libertas@dialmaine.com>
• Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 07:19:50 -0400

We were talking about Fidel Mr. Castro's recurring crackdowns on those remarkably courageous Cubans who keep working to bring democracy to that grim island where dissenters, including independent librarians, are locked in cages, often for 20 or more years. Mr. Bradbury knew about the crackdowns, but until I told him, was not aware of Mr. Castro's kangaroo courts (while sentencing the "subversives") often ordering the burning of the independent libraries they raid, just like in "451." For example, on April 5, 2003, after Julio Valdes Guevara was sent away, the judge ruled: "As to the disposition of the photographic negatives, the audio cassette, medicines, books, magazines, pamphlets and the rest of the documents, they are to be destroyed by means of incineration because they lack usefulness." Hearing about this, Mr. Bradbury authorized me to convey this message from him to Fidel Castro: "I stand against any library or any librarian anywhere in the world being imprisoned or punished in any way for the books they circulate. I plead with Castro and his government to immediately take their hands off the independent librarians and release all those librarians in prison, and to send them back into Cuban culture to inform the people." Among the books destroyed through the years by Fidel's arsonists have been volumes on Martin Luther King Jr., the U.S. Constitution, and even a book by the late Jose Marti, who organized, and was killed in, the Cuban people's struggle for independence. . . .

From: WSkold
Sent: Friday, September 16, 2005 5:29 PM
Subject: AP Article on Sentencing Documents 2003

Here is a copy of the AP article from Sept 2, when FSU apparently had their press conference. I could not find in Lexis any other papers that ran articles, but Mr. Schlakman told me that other papers in Florida had articles. He said on Tuesday he would check his press files/kit from 2003.

I would go ahead and email this to Don Wood, those of you who have contacted him. My guess is that he will still refuse to accept it because the AP did not actually do an investigation to see if the documents were authentic (double standard) and because the US Interests Section is mentioned as helping them to obtain them. That is as well a concern for me, that I will ask Mr. Schlakman about.

September 2, 2003, Tuesday, BC cycle

SECTION: State and Regional
LENGTH: 596 words
HEADLINE: Officials: Cuban documents show dissidents received no justice
BYLINE: By JOHN PAIN, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: MIAMI

The sentencing documents of the 75 Cuban dissidents convicted in the Castro government's crackdown on opposition earlier this year show the lack of basic freedoms, human rights and impartial justice on the communist island, supporters of a university project said Tuesday.

The documents were obtained by Florida State University, which launched a Web site Tuesday containing the hundreds of pages of court records.

The university's Center for the Advancement of Human Rights worked with the U.S. Interests Section in Havana to get the documents but the center funded the Web site independently, university officials said.

"As a Cuban-American whose family escaped a totalitarian regime ... I know the price a society pays when it lacks freedom to speak, freedom to worship and freedom to dissent," Florida Supreme Court Justice Raoul Cantero said before a news conference at the university in Tallahassee.

The 75 defendants, including independent journalists, were sentenced in April for receiving money from the U.S. government and working with Washington to undermine the regime of Cuban President Fidel Castro. They received anywhere from six to 28 years in prison. None of the trials lasted more than a day.

"People are really getting arrested simply for disagreeing with their government," Cantero said at the news conference.

The goal of the Web site is to draw attention to the "very, very severe and we think draconian human rights abuses," according to Terry Coonan, the center's executive director. The site is also intended to invite people to advocacy, he said.

Carlos Rey, a law student from Miami, was one of the students who worked on developing the Web site this summer.

"This is not simply a Cuban issue," Rey said. "It's not simply a Cuban-American issue. It's a human issue."

Katia Tchourioukanova, who came to the United States from Russia six years ago, is studying education at Florida State. She also worked on the Web site.

"You don't have to be a political science major or a lawyer or a diplomat to become involved in the field of human rights and to try to make some difference," she said.

Lazaro Herrera, a spokesman with the Cuban Government Interests Section in Washington, declined comment Tuesday. Cuba's government has said the trials were necessary to protect itself from U.S.-funded attacks.

The sentencing documents detail how the defendants received money, computers, recording equipment and other help in Havana from the U.S. Interests Section, Washington's diplomatic outpost. The dissidents set up Web sites, talked on U.S.-funded radio stations and published articles to criticize the Cuban government, the documents said.

One journalist, Julio Cesar Galvez Rodriguez, was convicted of "trying to plant the seeds of uncertainty and distrust in the population about the revolutionary functioning of our social system." He was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, said the documents give a clear picture of the faults of the Cuban justice system.

"There is no actual process of reaching evidence and establishing fact," he said. "These are accusatory documents that are often ratified by the prosecution and defense attorneys."

"At the expense of the 75 political prisoners, the Castro regime has provided the world with an unfortunately tragic view of the state of affairs in Cuba today," said Mark Schlakman, program director of the university's center.

On the Net: Rule of Law and Cuba: www.ruleoflawandcuba.fsu.edu

From: owner-IFFORUM@ala.org [mailto:owner-IFFORUM@ala.org] On Behalf Of Walter Skold
Sent: Tuesday, October 18, 2005 12:29 PM
To: Intellectual Freedom Forum
Subject: [IFFORUM:4374] Book Burning: 2 Weeks and Waiting Mr. Wood....

Dear Mr. Wood,

A week ago now I wrote you a public question (see:

http://lp-web.ala.org:8000/guest/archives/IFFORUM/log0510/msg00064.html) in which I asked you when you are going to put the information about Cuban book burning on the page you edit. I also sent you the newspaper evidence that you had requested, from three reputable papers in Florida.

<>On the same day, a long article was published (see: (http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19814)* in which the evidence was laid out about Cuban book burning, including the testimony of the head researcher for Amnesty International. If you and the folks at the OIF wish to be considered censors of this news, so be it, but before I come to that conclusion I'll give you another week to respond, just in case you were on vacation last week. I also e-mailed the documents to every member of the OIF office.You have been presented with the evidence you requested sir, when will you post the link to you site or explain why the Amnesty researcher and Florida papers are lying or deceived?

 Sincerely, Walter Skold

(PS. I am sorry to say, but this issue will NOT go away. The credibility of your judgment is on the line, and you are a leading representative of our profession. To my knowledge you have never expressed admiration for Castro's regime - as have other Council members - so it is hard to figure out the continual silence of people who tell the rest of us about intellectual freedom....)

* From http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19814 is the following account of ALA investigation into the Cuban issue, including claims of book burning:

During the few months that committee looked into the situation in Cuba, the former president of the ALA and head of the task force, John W. Berry, claimed in an e-mail to the ALA Council that “The International Relations Office is currently investigating the group hosting these documents and is examining the veracity of the documents themselves.”

Here are the serious problems with this claim that ALA committee-members should be forced by Council members to explain:

1.) I called Mr. Mark Schlakman, who directs the FSU Center for Center for the Advancement of Human Rights. Not only did he provide me with three news articles from major Florida newspapers, the professional editors and journalist of which all apparently trusted validity of the Cuban court documents, but he also discussed the often-dangerous process by which these sorts of documents escape Cuba. Why couldn’t Mr. Wood find these press articles, and if he tried to verify the disputed documents, why didn’t he simply call FSU like I did?

2.) Mr. Berry said his task force was “investigating” the FSU center, but officials I spoke to there have no recollection of anyone from the ALA calling them to ask about the documents or how they judged them authentic. Mr. Berry, who did you ask about this group, Fidel Castro? How did you examine the veracity of these documents if you or a staffer never called the center that released them?

3.) Perhaps something of the zeal of this task force to get to the bottom of Cuban crimes is best revealed in this pathetic fact.  Mr. Berry claimed that his task force looked at reports written by Amnesty International (AI) and other human rights groups. That’s funny, I called one Holly Ackerman, the main Cuba researcher for Amnesty International in the US and herself an academic librarian, and she said no one from the ALA ever called her to ask about these documents. What is worse is this – Ms. Ackerman told me that she sent a personal letter to the committee and offered to help them with their investigation and to answer any questions they had. She told me that no one ever wrote her back. Essentially, the AI contact in the US was ignored by this dedicated task force! Even Ms. Ackerman was astounded, as she said that at least when groups or governments don’t want AI’s help they at least write back and say thank you for offering!  [Holly Ackerman told Steve Marquardt that ALA never contacted anyone at AIUSA or AI headquarters in London, in which event she, as the Cuba country specialist, would have been notified. – Steve Marquardt]

Now . . . there is the issue of the veracity of the book burning reports to return to.

First, Mr. Wood, Mrs. Ackerman spent 30 minutes explaining the detailed, careful and sometimes dangerous process by which the International Secretariat of AI goes about verifying documents like those smuggled from Cuba. She said the organization would never have concluded that these 75 people were prisoners of conscience if they did not have full confidence that the documents were authentic copies. She explained that because of intelligence officers infiltrating groups like the independent libraries, there is much danger, as well as disinformation, when it comes to information coming from Cuba. Also, the sources which AI have actually risk their freedom by helping to smuggle such documents out . . .

Secondly, you demanded from my colleagues and me at FREADOM articles from “legitimate” papers and now I have at least three of them. One of them is an editorial about the documents from the September 6, 2003 issue of the Sun-Sentinel, which include this:

“The charges, not the dissidents’ actions, are what is criminal. No human being, in any country on this planet, should be jailed for one second, let alone decades, for voicing an opinion.”

It seems pretty clear that Mr. Wood trusts the editorial judgments of this paper because jut two weeks ago he alerted his IFACTION readers about the story from the Sun-Sentinel (http://lp-web.ala.org:8000/guest/archives/IFACTION/log0509/msg00141.html) in which a local library director caved into pressure by a Cuban-American Democrat official to change the date of a showing of the movie “Motorcycle Diaries” which glorifies the mass murderer, Che.