Cuba’s Book World, Above and Below Ground

Neither magical, nor realism:
just the same old fictions about censorship of literature in Cuba

 (A response to “Cuba’s
Book World, Above and Below Ground,” by Monica Campbell, in The World, from the
BBC, PRI, and WGBH)

            Recycling is a great thing, but not
when it is a recycling of the same old disinformation about censorship of
literature in Cuba. As a frequent visitor to Cuba, and a professional writer, a
novelist and poet and teacher of creative writing in the US, I find this
article close to absurd, and clearly formed out of an old ideological formula
with barely a bit of original thought. It plays the same old game, an absurd
one I am frankly tired of. Indeed, it is clearly time for media depictions of
Cuba, as well as the US’s dysfunctional and brutal policy toward Cuba, to grow
up. It is time to take responsibility for the United States’ destructive
actions against Cuba.

            I am not going to sit and argue what
any educated person from this country should know; i.e., censorship and book
banning exists in the U.S.– ever heard of Arizona and the banning of classic
and useful books of Chicano history and literature, among other titles, in
2012? And the librotraficantes – the
caravans bringing these banned books into Arizona? I know there were 75 “dissidents”
arrested in Cuba, while we maintain a swollen prison system that encloses the
poor and people of color in indecent and often torturous conditions, where
indeed not all have access to education, to books (what are we up to now – 2.3
million in prison in the US? An outrage that shows how this “free” nation
punishes poverty rather than addresses it, and as well continues its racially
discriminatory arrests and sentencing). How about dissidents? Leonard Peltier of
the American Indian Movement has spent 36 years in jail; we’re still counting.
Faruk Muhti was a Palestinian activist who spent 2 years in detention in the U.S.
after living here for 20 years; though never charged with a crime, he did not
receive proper medical care, and died three weeks after his release from
detention. Joseph Dantica, the 81 year old uncle of celebrated Haitian American
writer Edwidge Danticat and a dissident
within Haiti, died in the hands of Homeland Security as he was applying for
asylum, after also being denied medical care. The list is enormous.

            In the extensive and well-used Cuban
library system, the diversity of titles is clear, and includes writers with
anticommunist views, such as the supposedly banned Mexican Carlos Fuentes, the Peruvian
Vargas Llosa, and the Cuban Cabrera Infante, who spent long years in exile (amusing
that the title of his best known novel, Tres
Tristes Tigres – three sad tigers – is what a number of Cuban friends have
gotten me to repeat rapidly as a tongue-twister to test my Spanish). The entire
argument that “independent” libraries are a necessity in order to read
“censored” books is a fraudulent one, that we in the United States are expected
to be gullible enough to accept, since we have not much firsthand knowledge.

            But very important is that this
campaign to make it appear that whatever Cubans read is censored, is part of an
old campaign that has already been refuted with an unqualified response from no
less than the American Library Association, which has been repeatedly pressured
by a group of anti-Cuban activists led by Robert Kent, of “Friends of Cuban
Libraries.” Campbell might read the 2006 report by Ann Sparanese ALA Councilor,
“Fiction and Fact about the ‘Independent Librarians’ of Cuba, ONCE AGAIN.”
Here’s Sparanese’s conclusion (which one can assume is representative of the
ALA, in that the Association rejected Kent’s requests) about the “little
libraries,” the private libraries Campbell puts forward as fighting the good
fight:

            “The bottom line is this: these
people are neither ‘independent’ nor ‘librarians.’ They were convicted of
taking money and support from the United States toward the goal of destabilizing
their own country. They are a paid political opposition, but they are not librarians.
They are pawns in the game of the unending quest by the United States
government for ‘regime change’ in Cuba.”

Read
the report in its entirety here: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=gmail&attid=0.2&thid=13862c54ba681665&mt=application/msword&url=https://mail.google.com/mail/ca/u/0/?ui%3D2%26ik%3D1762dc4421%26view%3Datt%26th%3D13862c54ba681665%26attid%3D0.2%26disp%3Dsafe%26realattid%3Df_h4d1go6u1%26zw&sig=AHIEtbQ_164b65EzDvq_YTbSjeEcqfuHQA&pli=1

            I know something of the frustrations
of writers in Cuba in trying to get published (though indeed I know much more
of the frustrations of writers here with the same goal). It is hard to get a
book published in Cuba because of the expenses associated with publishing. The
books that get published are often intelligently critical of various things in
Cuba. As all the arts are, film, visual arts… has the author ever gotten a real
view of Cuban cultural life? Is Campbell reduced to inserting a photo of police
in a car into a series of pictures showing books to push us to imagine that this
police car is speeding through the Havana heat to arrest someone reading The Death of Artemio Cruz? It only shows
me that there are some police in Cuba, though nothing like the constant
presence of police in neighborhoods I have lived in, though not always when
there is the need for them.

            That politics dominates what is
being sold at bookstalls, is not because of government policy, but rather for 2
likely reasons – one is that tourists with the money to buy books are enamored
with Fidel and Che and the Revolution, its battles and early years, and they swoop
up those books, many of which are old copies. As well, the economic problems of
producing new books limits to a great extent what is on those shelves. (By the
way, if the author ever read History Will
Absolve Me, she might understand something of the extraordinary brutality
of the Batista dictatorship and the inevitability of the uprising against it in
a country which had been in revolt against imperialism and dictatorship repeatedly
and for protracted periods since 1868.)

            Indeed, there is a publisher now in
the U.S. called Cubanabooks (see http://www.cubanabooks.org/
), which is publishing Cuban women in English, as Curbstone Press first published, in English, Nancy Alonso’s book, Closed for Repairs, a book of short
stories showing the extremely difficult economic conditions of the 90s after
the end of Soviet support, called the “Special Period;” the frustrations
regarding the ways the system did not function well; and the brilliance of the
Cuban people in surviving, and as well their exhaustion.

            Having inquired about bringing books
to Cuba, being moved by, for instance, the many poets there who tell me they
love U.S. poetry, but really don’t know anything past the 1950s: Ginsberg,
Ferlinghetti, etc.; I have been told – no pornography – which doesn’t exactly
grieve me  — and no books aimed at taking
down the Cuban government. Intelligent criticism and the reading of it, is not,
however, always and automatically punished as the author in her formulaic
article would have you believe.

            There seem to be independent
bookshops (as we get rid of ours, and have instead corporate bookshops).
Campbell’s dismissal of Rafael Hernandez’s focus on the embargo and the
economic reasons for the lack of titles is disingenuous at best, and is a
repetitive, dead-end argument. If indeed the economy were not a problem, the
extraordinary and precious papers of Cuban literary giants like Alejo
Carpentier and Nicolas Guillen would be preserved and digitalized, instead of
facing disintegration in the extreme heat and humidity of the Cuban climate. If
the U.S. is so interested in the actual limits of freedom which would exist in
a Cuba with enough money to have a vibrant publishing and book importing
industry, then it is time for U.S. policy to grow up and dare to see what the
Cubans would do if they were not utterly under the gun economically. No one I
have spoken to in Cuba ever defends every action of the Cuban government
(unlike some non-thinkers I have spoken to here who defend everything the U.S.
government has done), but I do believe our business is to develop a just, sane
policy toward Cuba that does not go against Cuban sovereignty. We seem to be
more careful (in certain instances) about taking action against governments who
are daily slaughtering their own people, than we do with interfering in Cuba.

            The frozen image Campbell has of
Cuba makes me wonder if she has even been there. Cuba is increasing private
enterprise every day and I highly doubt this will exclude bookstores. I could
swear I have seen independent bookstores – do independent businesses pay taxes
to the government? Yes, just as they do here (though we know our richest pay
the least). The many bookstores I have visited in Cuba are overloaded with
books on the shelves; in some instances, it is hard to tell without looking
closely at the copyright dates how old the books are because the books quickly
become weathered. There have been periods when writers and others in the arts
have suffered a great deal under government censorship, and this is indeed being
discussed in Cuba, and written about; but at this point there is tremendous
work being done to develop the economy, to make the government at all levels
more inclusive and representative. There is much to be done within Cuba, as
there is much to be done within the United States with our crumbling
educational system and massive prison system.

            I can say this without
qualifications: we need a new way of discussing and framing the Cuban
experience as we report on it back in our own communities.

            There are more holes,
disinformation, twisting around of the truth, in Campbell’s little article,
pleasing as ever to non-thinking, knee-jerkers on Cuban policy, than an
independent writer/teacher/editor has time to elaborate further upon. But here’s
what I know, as a writer from the U.S. who has visited Cuba numbers of time,
and works to bring other writers and people in the arts to Cuba: the Cubans are
indeed hungry for our intelligent ideas, our best literature, our engaged
conversation; for an economy capable of supporting the development of high
quality, thoughtfully critical Cuban literature in all disciplines; and for the
means to publish it.

            My question then is: How do we get
out of their way, and offer genuine support?

Anya
Achtenberg

Novelist,
Poet, Editor, Educator

North
Minneapolis, MN