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Some Signers of the Read A Burned Book
Statement
Carlos Franqui Armando Valladares Hector Palacios Ruiz Carlos Alberto Montaner Prof. Carlos Eire Nat Hentoff Kathlyn Gay Andrei Codrescu Carolina Garcia-Auilera Anna Maulina David Landau Humberto Colas Berta Mexidor Sandy Berman Dr. Steve Marquardt Carlos Franqui Statement Castro can destroy
everything, except for books. He may censor, ban or even burn them, but
the ideas contained in books can never be destroyed. As José
Martí once said, paper trenches are stronger than those
built in stone."
Kathlyn Gay Statement: Thousands of Cubans
have risked their lives to reach American soil and freedom.
Ideally, freedom includes access to published material without coercion. That freedom does not exist in Cuba where books are deliberately burned to suppress ideas and information. FREADOM is one organization standing up for Cuban librarians and others who have been jailed for supporting the FREADOM to read. It’s an act of freedom to find intact copies of books that have been burned or banned (in Cuba as well as the United States and elsewhere), to open the pages, and to READ—whether or not one agrees with the content.— Kathlyn Gay, prolific
author, who wrote
"Leaving Cuba: Operation Pedro" |
My name is
Gisela Delgado Sablon, Director of the My name is Gisela Delgado Sablon, Director of the Independent Libraries of Cuba Project, a project that was born on March 3, 1998 and that has as its goal to promote free reading among the Cuban population. This project arose as a response to remarks made by Pres. Fidel Castro when he was asked by a journalist "are there banned books in Cuba?" and he responded that there were not, that what was lacking was money with which to buy books. This is of course false, without a doubt this is a totalitarian country in which, since the triumph of the revolution in 1959, many books have been banned so that today, in the National Library, there exists a place where banned books are housed that the population has no access to due to the official state censorship in place since January 1, 1959. And that is how it has been for all these years, the Cuban people have been forbidden from having access to diverse literature. In our homes, the homes of many of us who promote liberty and the defense of human rights in Cuba, books are frequently confiscated, hundreds of books that deal with human rights and with liberty. Among those books have been books about Martin Luther King Jr., the great American civic fighter who fought for the rights of blacks. This is contradictory, since in Cuba there exists a Martin Luther King center, and yet these books are regarded as dangerous to society. And the result is that the population has no access to them, and like with these books, the people have no access to the literaturethey choose to read, but instead only to what the government designates for them to read. However, today, the growing and alternative project that I direct, emerges in that space that has been abandoned by the Cuban government, because the Cuban government otherwise would have a monopoly on information. Therefore, the Cuban government regards this initiative as an enemy to its interests, and as a mercenary project and try to discredit us. Yet many individuals from throughout the world have been able to visit us and see with their own eyes that what these small libraries are doing is sharing liberty with the Cuban nation, and they no doubt make comparisons between what we offer and what can be obtained at the official government libraries. For this simple exercise, many librarians are today still imprisoned. For the exercise of a right that is consecrated in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19, that citizens have the right to receive and disseminate information through any means. We do not have an exact calculation of the books that have been confiscated or those that are banned. They have not told the Cuban people what books they confiscate and which they allow to enter the country. But we know that for example, we have no access to books by Vargas Llosa, they are not present in any bookstore or library. Literature by Cubans living in exile, is never known inside of Cuba, authors such as Cabrera Infante, Sardui, Reynaldo Arenas, and like so many others. The most recent case is Raul Rivera, who is someone that while he was aligned with the government and affiliated with the Union of Cuban Writers, his works were published and disseminated here. However, once he decided he could no longer collaborate with the government, all his literature was censored throughout the island. I'd also like to point out that in Cuba the entire system and society is highly politicized and ideologized, shaped in this way by the Communist Party. If you do not obey their directives, and there exist groups of censors to enforce this, then you will not be able to write and see your works published in this society, because there is only one idea, only one concept of right, that of Communism as Fidel understands it. Anything that differs from his ideas, that does not meet their criteria, has no value, even if from a literary standpoint it may have value, for them it does not and it is material that is not publishable in our country. And there are many authors outside of Cuba that are witness and examples of what I attest, and who undoubtedly have lived the martyrdom of being censored, of feeling imprisoned themselves as well, and those authors would be the people best placed to speak out against the censorship to which I am referring. The way the books are confiscated is that many of them are confiscated upon entry into the country at customs.] The official reason is that the books are counterrevolutionary, that is the name they give to them. I have in my hands confiscation orders by Cuban customs, where they tell me that books sent to me from abroad have been confiscated because they are counterrevolutionary and because they threaten the interests of the Cuban nation. How can a book threaten the nation when it contains poetry, stories, or the personal experiences of its author? To the young people in the United States, and to many young people that have come here to visit us to try to learn more about the Cuban reality, and have met with us to give us a book or two, frequently even from their personal collections, I would like to say thank you, we are grateful to you, and the Cuban nation is grateful to you for your solidarity and support. The relationship between the Cuban people and the American people has been a very close and ancient one, and it is renewed every generation, and this is what these young Americans are doing through their support, and we thank them for their friendship and for their support to our project. I applaud them for defending the basic liberties that all peoples should enjoy. Statement given from Havana, Cuba, over the phone, on January 18, 2007. It was recorded and then translated into English by a close friend of both Senora Sablon and FREADOM. |