By Nat Hentoff
February 26, 2007
Among Fidel Castro's brutal legacies are the imprisoned independent
librarians among the authors, labor organizers, journalists and other
"prisoners of conscience" (designated as such by Amnesty International)
who will remain in cages as long as the dictatorship continues, even
without Castro. The librarians are being punished for making available
to Cubans books not permitted in the heavily censored state-run library
system.
From kangaroo-court records I have seen, when independent
librarians are sent to the gulags, certain confiscated books and
sometimes all books in their libraries are ordered incinerated by the
presiding judge. A biography of Martin Luther King was sent to the
flames because, said the judge, it "is based on ideas that could be used
to promote social disorder and civil disobedience." And the nonviolent
King's own books have been burned.
Even works by Jose Marti, the 19th-century organizer of Cuban
independence, have been incinerated. Maybe because of the pamphlet he
wrote during his exile in Spain, planning the liberation of his
homeland. Marti's pamphlet was about the horrors of political
imprisonment in Cuba under a pre-Castro dictator.
Among thousands of other incinerated "subversive" books and
pamphlets are those books by George Orwell, Pope John Paul II, the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (particularly dangerous) and
reports by Human Rights Watch.
When I found these court records by Castro's judges, I called Ray
Bradbury, whose classic novel "Fahrenheit 451" still reverberating among
readers around the world tells of a tyrannical government destroying
"disloyal" books by fire and the resistance by courageous citizens
memorizing those forbidden books to preserve them for future
generations. Ray Bradbury authorized me to circulate his response to
these real-life bonfires of free thought in Castro's Cuba: "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." The dictator
was not persuaded. Many of these librarians are still in cages, some in
dangerously failing health, and other independent Cuban librarians have
joined them.
Now, like the resisters in Mr. Bradbury's novel, who were
determined to preserve the freedom to read, a group of American and
international librarians, authors and human-rights activists have
started a liberating Read A Burned Book campaign including a curriculum
aimed at high school and college students. The campaign is also
encouraging people in the United States and around the world to read the
books that dictators, not only Castro, burned.
The independent American librarian members of FREADOM -- the
generators of this project -- have created, among other classroom and
research activities, a discussion inquiry on the history of book burning
in ancient and modern times. There will also be a classroom inquiry on
what made the books burned by Castro so "dangerous" to the dictator and
officials who will remain in power after Castro dies. He has famously
said that "history will absolve me!" But as long as these condemned
books keep rising from the ashes, they will bear witness to his reign of
fear and destruction, not only of books but of so many Cubans who
believe in their right to be free.
The growing number of the Read a Burned Book campaign's endorsers
includes a former prisoner of conscience in Cuba, Armando Valladares,
author of the classic "Against All Hope," about the Castro dungeons.
Also: Yale professor Carlos Eire ("Waiting for Snow in Havana"),
winner of the National Book Award; Gisela Delgado Sablon, executive
director of the Independent Library Project of Cuba; poet, novelist and
National Public Radio columnist Andrei Codrescu; and Anna Maulina,
president of the Library Association of Latvia. (In the interest of full
disclosure, I have also signed on.) The main contact for this campaign
is www.4freadom.org/RBBStatement.html. There are links to sign on as a
supporter, and links for students and teachers on the activities pages.
When Mr. Valladares was in a Castro gulag, locked in a so-called
tiger cage, guards would puncture the steel-mesh ceiling with clubs to
prevent him from sleeping and pour in buckets of urine and excrement
collected from other prisoners. (See Arnold Beichman's "Viva
Valladares," The Washington Times, July 9, 2006.) Mr. Valladares
survived, as has his book "Against All Hope." This "Read a Burned Book"
campaign is a message to all those prisoners of conscience of the rising
support they have from all over the world. My congratulations to
America's independent librarians at FREADOM for shaming the leadership
of the American Library Association, which persistently refuses to
demand the immediate release of the caged Cuban librarians.
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