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As a service to editorial writers and members of the press, we have gathered some of the many news articles and editorials that have been written about the Independent Library movement in Cuba since it begain in 1989. This page has excerpts from news articles and TV reports, with some additional url links at the end. Copyrights are held by the publications cited. 

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New York Times: A Cuban revolution, in reading

NEW YORK, Feb. 22, 2005 (New York Times/David Gonzalez) - With all the shirts adorned with the solemn face of the Argentine-born revolutionary Che Guevara being sold in the city's souvenir shops, one would think he had once adopted New York and not Cuba as his home. That thought - not to mention that face - puzzles some Latins in Manhattan whose families had no choice but to leave Havana after the Cuban revolution.

More than 45 years later, these exiles are still here, Fidel Castro is still there, and Che is all over as fashion statement. But a group of these Cuban-Americans - whose politics range from liberal to conservative - decided to make their own statement. At the beginning of this year, members of the Cuban Cultural Center, an arts group that usually sponsors exhibitions and concerts, adopted an independent library in Cuba.

They chose one in Las Tunas, Cuba, the Felix Varela Independent Library, which is named for a Cuban priest famous for his work for immigrants and the Roman Catholic church in Lower Manhattan in the 1800's. The library itself, like some 100 others that have been founded since 1998, offers Cubans an alternative to the official media or state-run libraries. They carry newspapers and magazines from around the world or books considered taboo by the regime - like "Animal Farm" by George Orwell.

"I know firsthand what it is not having something interesting to read," said the jazz saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera, who left Cuba in 1980 and who voted to adopt the library. "I know what it is like to have to hide to read something that the government calls subversive."

Almost two years ago, about 11 independent librarians in Cuba were among 75 dissidents, journalists and others arrested and given prison sentences of up to 28 years for essentially collaborating with enemies of the state. Most are still in jail, despite an international outcry.

Although New York is home to magnificent libraries, world-class publishers and fierce champions of free expression, the cultural center is the only group in the city so far to adopt an independent library. They hope their action will send a dual message.

"It's not just about sending whatever books we can, but we want the people in Cuba to know they are not alone and that someone here recognizes what they are going through," said Rafael Pi Roman, an anchor on Channel 13 who belongs to the cultural group. "The dilemma is, we are doing this in a city where people have too often seen Fidel Castro as a romantic figure."

The main advocate for the independent libraries is Robert Kent, a reference librarian at the New York Public Library (whose gift shop drew exile protests last year for selling watches emblazoned with Che's face). He visited Cuba often in the 1990's, and began taking books there, ultimately with the aid of some exile organizations. His work recently led the Cuban government to accuse him of being "Roberto X," a spy conspiring to assassinate a high-ranking official.

"I'm still trying to figure out who's cashing all my C.I.A. paychecks," he said jokingly.

He is earnest, however, in insisting that librarians must defend intellectual freedom or risk tarring their reputation. He and his supporters hope to persuade members of the American Library Association, a national group whose members issued a statement last year that expressed "deep concern" over the dissident arrests as well as over the United States embargo against the island. While the group said the reasons for and conditions of the dissidents' detention should be fully investigated by human rights investigators, it did not urge the dissidents' immediate release.

"You don't throw people in the slammer for expressing ideas," said John W. Berry, the chair of the A.L.A.'s international relations committee. "In this case it was complicated by Cuban law and the notion that some of the dissidents were accused of accepting money and material from the U.S. government in an effort that, in the Cuban government's mind, was seen as undermining their government."

Mark Rosenzweig, a library association member who directs the Reference Center for Marxist Studies, an archive of Communist Party documents, said those arrested were political partisans in cahoots with the United States government.

"These people were caught up in an unfortunate affair set up by the regime change experts in the United States," said Mr. Rosenzweig, whose archive is in the same West 23rd Street building as the Communist Party USA. "I can't say they got what they deserved, but they ended up violating the laws of the Cuban state. They were tried in trials which to the best of my knowledge conformed to the principles of Cuban legality."

Human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch - which for years have been denied entry into Cuba - have no doubts about what happened in 2003 and have repeatedly called for the release of people they consider prisoners of conscience. But they know that any criticism they make of the Cuban regime will be countered by praise for Cuba's gains in health and education.

"Cuba continues to violate the fundamental civil and political rights of a good many of its citizens," said William F. Schulz, the executive director of Amnesty International USA. "Yet there is considerable ambivalence about Cuban political prisoners in general from those who are often traditionally advocates for human rights victims."

The members of the Cuban Cultural Center have encountered those attitudes. Pablo Medina said that until recent years he faced a frustrating response at the New School University, where he teaches creative writing. "The attitude there, a place which is traditionally known as a neo-Marxist enclave, was a reticence to look at the Cuban question," he said. "It was difficult to open people's eyes or get anyone to listen to you."

He said the arrival of former Senator Bob Kerrey as university president in 2001 signaled a shift at the college, which in the 1930's became a haven for European scholars fleeing totalitarian regimes.

"The response from others used to be 'I don't know what is happening' or that economically the Cuban people were better off," Mr. Medina said. "But after the dissident arrests in 2003, I got a call from Kerrey asking what he could do. So we gave the University in Exile Award to five Cuban dissidents."

Some members of the cultural group think that as more people in traditionally liberal circles begin to see what is happening in Cuba's dissident movement, they will realize that the idea of opposition to Mr. Castro goes far beyond old stereotypes of right-wing tropical exiles screaming for the cameras. The group itself is nonpartisan, and its members range from liberal to conservative.

"I have no idea what the politics are of anybody is in this room," Mr. Pi Roman said. "But none of us would say there should be human rights for Cuba but not for those people who are on the other side. None of us would have supported apartheid. One thing is sure: There is no hypocrisy. If you are for human rights for some, you have to be for human rights for all."

IFLA protests Cuban Internet crackdown

NEW YORK, January 19, 2004 (Friends of Cuban Libraries) - On January 16 the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) expressed "deep concern" over the Cuban government's latest effort to restrict Internet access on the island.  In its report, IFLA's intellectual freedom committee, known by the acronym FAIFE, protested a new law which prohibits Cuban citizens from surfing the Internet through the telephone service available to the general public. Instead, home-based Internet access will be limited to a small group, such as foreign investors, who subscribe to a separate telephone service paid for in dollars, which few Cubans can afford.

IFLA's new statement is the latest in a series of reports issued by the global librarians' association with regard to intellectual freedom in Cuba. As recently as May, 2003, IFLA had expressed concern over the arrest of Cuban citizens, including members of the island's pioneering independent library movement, who were sentenced to lengthy prison terms after one-day trials. "Once again," notes the new report, "IFLA and its worldwide membership urge the Cuban Government to respect, defend and promote the basic human rights defined in Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We urge the Cuban Government to eliminate all obstacles to access to the Internet imposed by its policies." The full text of the IFLA report can be read on the Internet at: (www.ifla.org/V/press/cuba160104.htm).

Except for a small segment of the population, Internet access in Cuba had already been illegal before the newly-enacted decree, and one government official had branded the Internet as an "instrument of the devil." But some enterprising Cubans had managed to evade the ban by using the public telephone system and illegally-acquired passwords to surf the Net. With the enactment of the new law, however, it will be easier for the government to carry out its vow to track down and prosecute anyone who logs onto the Internet without authorization.

The new law cracking down on home-based Internet use is only one segment of a broader government campaign to restrict communications between Cuba and the outside world. In recent weeks the police, in coordination with Cuba's nationwide system of block committees, have renewed their efforts to locate and tear down the unauthorized satellite antennas used by some Cuban homeowners to view foreign television stations. Registered computers can be legally purchased only at government-owned stores, and the baggage of arriving foreign visitors is often x-rayed to prevent the importation of "illegal" high tech equipment. The regime is also conducting a campaign called "Operation Windows" to register all computers on the island, both publicly and privately owned. Many Cubans, fearing that Operation Windows will be followed by a general confiscation of home-owned computers, are hiding their high tech equipment from the police and the block committees.

In response to intense foreign press coverage, the Cuban Minister of Information and Communications, Ignacio González Planas, denied that Cuba is tightening access to the Internet. In an interview with the official press ("Digitalization and Internet Access Will Continue to Grow,"      Juventud Rebelde, Jan. 18), González Planas defended the new law as a reasonable effort to oppose "hackers, Trojan horses, illegalities in the use of the Internet, [and] pornography..."  The Minister asserted that "everywhere, every day, measures are taken [in other countries] to prevent disorder, which is essential if the Web is to function well.  When we ourselves take certain basic measures to control illegality, criticism immediately flares up from people claiming to be worried about the 'freedom' of the Cubans, even though [the critics] could confirm for themselves, although it pains them to do so, that the Cuban people are the freest people on Earth."

BBC program features Cuban libraries

NEW YORK, August 27, 2002 (Friends of Cuban Libraries) - On May 1 the Meridian Writing program of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) aired a program on Cuba's independent library movement.  Printed below is the text of the broadcast, which was presented by Daniel Schweimler, the BBC's resident correspondent in Havana.

[Introduction by the BBC]: "A few years ago at a book fair in Cuba President Fidel Castro protested that the narrow range of books in the country's public libraries wasn't the result of censorship or banning, merely a shortage of funds. Two of his fellow citizens [Ramon Colas and Berta Mexidor] decided to put that statement to the test by making their private book collection publicly available. The project was such a success that across the island there are now more than sixty libraries run from private homes, stocking everything from children's fiction to books on religion and mysticism to works by Cuban writers in exile. The BBC's correspondent in Havana, Daniel Schweimler, set off to discover how they work.

[Daniel Schweimler]: "The Argentine journalist Jacobo Timerman wrote that 'if it's true that every Cuban knows how to read and write, it is likewise true that every Cuban has nothing to read and must be very cautious about what he writes.' Shortly after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, he sent thousands of volunteers into the mountains and the inner cities to teach the people to read and write. Cuba now has one of the best literacy rates in the developing world. Most Cubans are unable to get access to words such as these written by one of the best Cuban writers of recent years, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, now living in exile in London:

[Voice of Cabrera Infante]: " 'One third of the [...inaudible], which is the tragic story of my country, from island to garrison, from brothel to barracks, from tropical paradise to hell on earth. It was in fact a sad book, but everywhere readers complimented me on how funny it was.'

[Daniel Schweimler]: "Four years ago President Castro said there were no banned books in Cuba, just a shortage of money to buy them. So his words were put to the test by a couple living in the East of the island, who opened up an independent library in their own home. The seed was planted, and there are now more than sixty libraries across Cuba. They are, for now at least, tolerated by the authorities, but many of the owners have been detained or had books taken from them. Ricardo Gonzalez has about two thousand books in his home in the West of Havana.

[Ricardo Gonzales, in translated voiceover]: " 'You can see that in this library we are in the roof is broken, the shelves are made from bits of old wood. But nevertheless people come, because that signifies freedom. But the freedom is limited by the repressive organs of the Cuban state.'

[Daniel Schweimler]: "The state-run libraries and bookshops are full of works about the Cuban Revolution, books by and about President Castro and the Argentine revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, great Cuban writers of the past such as Alejo Carpentier and Nicolas Guillen, and classic Spanish literature. But they contain nothing the Communist authorities might regard as counterrevolutionary or subversive. George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm, for instance. Ricardo Gonzalez again:

[Ricardo Gonzalez, in translated voiceover]: " 'The readers are returning to the library. But we have always had a few readers at this library, the Jorge Manach [Library], who kept coming even during the worst times of repression to borrow books and then circulate them to a wider audience.'

[Daniel Schweimler]: "The books are given by foreign tourists, embassies and aid organizations abroad. Cubans who leave the country often donate their collections. The service is free, the standard security measures taken to ensure that the books are returned. The biggest problem, according to Gisela Delgado, who runs a library in the center of Havana, is for borrowers to overcome their fear.

[Gisela Delgado, in translated voiceover]: " 'We're doing an enormous amount of work here to try and make available uncensored literature to the Cuban people. At the same time we are seeing a cultural revolution, since a lot of people are losing their fear. They are reading these famous books, which they've been told were banned. Then they are writing their own testimonies, free from the terrible censorship they have suffered these past 43 years.'

[Daniel Schweimler]: "She says that in four years she has not lost a single book, and all, including the children's books, are looked after and returned in good condition. Customers borrow works on a whole range of subjects, but she says by far the most popular are those which talk about modern-day Cuba from a perspective other than that put forward by the government. Andres Oppenheimer's 'Castro's Final Hour' is one example.

[Unidentified reader of a selection from Oppenheimer's book]: " 'Only fear of the unknown prevented a popular rebellion. Only the failure of U.S. policymakers and Cuban exile leaders to allay these fears, and perhaps even to recognize some of the early social gains of the Revolution, kept the Cuban people from turning their discontent into active defiance.'

[Daniel Schweimler]: "Victor Rolando Arroyo, director of a library in the western city of Pinar del Rio, says repression in the provinces is tougher.

[Victor Roland Arroyo, in translated voiceover]: " 'Some of our libraries have been attacked during the night. Individuals have gone to the libraries and taken books away. These are people we recognize. We know who they are and have reported them, but the authorities have taken no action against these thugs.'

[Daniel Schweimler]: "Public transport is poor, and many readers live in isolated communities. So Victor has formed a team to solve the problem.

[Victor Rolando Arroyo, in translated voiceover]: " 'We have a group of volunteers, some on foot and others with bicycles, who cover the region making contacts, offering books. What they do is explain which books they have and what they are about. What all this does is encourage people to read more.'

[Daniel Schweimler]: "The Cuban authorities view all those who oppose them as counterrevolutionaries, often in the pay of the government's enemies in the United States. The librarians say they are the peaceful vanguard of a force working for democratic change in Cuba. The authorities distrustfully, cautiously, are allowing the libraries to operate, having themselves created a reading public with an appetite that is not easily satisfied."

[End of radio segment]  (NOTE: Two of the volunteer librarians interviewed on the BBC program have received international awards for their work in defense of intellectual freedom. Gisela Delgado was awarded the Swedish Liberal Party's Democracy Prize, and Human Rights Watch named Victor Rolando Arroyo as a winner of the Hellman-Hammett Prize, an annual award given to persecuted writers and other defenders of intellectual freedom).

"Tiny, renegade libraries offer view of world": Atlanta Constitution


NEW YORK, May 15 (Friends of Cuban Libraries) - In yet another example of growing interest in a uniquely Cuban contribution to the worldwide human rights movement, Mike Williams of the Atlanta Constitution published an article on the island's independent libraries  in the May 14 edition of the newspaper ("Tiny, Renegade Libraries Offer View of the World"). As George Stephanopoulos did on Monday's "Good Morning America" television program, the journalist interviewed Gisela Delgado, the director of Havana's Dulce Maria Loynaz Library and the national director of the independent library movement.

"Some people won't come here because they are scared," stated Ms. Delgado. "In Cuba the state controls everything, and there is no freedom of expression." The journalist described the expansion of the independent
library movement since its founding in 1998, noting that the more than 10,000 patrons of the libraries are eager to read books that are banned or unavailable in Cuba's state-owned institutions.

 A Google Search Will Find More; We will add more soon. Call or write for more if you need them.

"Independent Libraries Mix Politics, Culture in Cuba," by Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, Aug. 3, 2000, A26. A follow-up letter-to-the-editor written by the Friends was published in the Post on Aug.10 , 2000.

"Cuban Private Libraries Have Novels," by Vivian Sequera, Associated Press, Nov. 8, 2000 (www.cubanet.org/CNews/y00/nov00/08e2htm).