I've said before that we as Americans take alot of things for granted sometimes. If you need eggs, you can buy a dozen easily, usually from a Kwik Mart a block or so away. Need new shoes? Not a problem, a quick trip to the Payless and you are set.
Visit any library and you will not only find the works of Walt Whitman and Twain but you can also pick up the Communist Manifesto, Mao, the works of Marx. There's nothing stopping you from reading anything, anything, you want.
Cuba supposedly has an incredible literacy rate thanks to the Revolution. But, as I've also stated before, what good is knowing how to read if you can't read whatever you want? If you are allowed to read only what's within the confines of an ideology?
There are some in Cuba that realized this and set up independent lending libraries where anyone could borrow anything from a small selection of books deemed by the government to be subversive. These books aren't all reference books, but also fictions and novels by the masters. Imagine not being allowed to read Leaves of Grass or Tom Sawyer or the Huck Finn.
Sadly, the Cuban government is cracking down on the lending libraries, and closing them one by one. Can't afford to have a learned populace if you are Fidel.
HAVANA, September 24 (www.cubanet.org) - The Cuban political police searched the home of dissident Lorenzo García in Holguín Tuesday, confiscating more than 250 books from an independent lending library García operated there.
García pointed out the police didn't show a court order for the search.
García said Captain Enrique Fornaris and officers Julio César Borrego and Pablo Guerrero searched his home for three hours.
"They confiscated more than 250 books, as well as two typewriters," said García by telephone. "The library is no more."
García is the president of the Claridad Human Rights movement, and operated the Félix Varela library out of the home.
After finishing the search, police left a watch in front of the building where García lives. The dissident said they follow him everywhere, even to church.
Posted by Val Prieto at September 26, 2003 08:12 AM |
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