An otherwise innocuous bulletin posted today on the website of Cuba's
National Library
(http://www.bnjm.cu/bnjm/espanol/noticias/noticias_frame.htm ) contains a
surprising announcement. The bulletin lets slip the news that Eliades
Acosta, the National Library's director and the main spokesperson for the
Castro regime's repression of the island's independent library movement, is
leaving his position effective immediately. Most of the bulletin consists of
a humdrum description of a routine event held at the National Library, the
launching of a new book by Acosta entitled "From Valencia to Baghdad," on
the history of leftist intellectuals. But one sentence in the bulletin marks
the first public notice of a sudden change in Acosta's employment status.
The announcement, accompanied by photos taken at the event of a glum-looking
Acosta, provides no details as to why he is leaving his current job as
National Library director or where he is going.
In describing Acosta's sudden departure from the prominent post he has held
for almost a decade, the terse news bulletin uses a routine phrase, commonly
employed by Marxist regimes during personnel changes, stating that "as of
today he is assuming other tasks with which he has been entrusted by the
government." Although the bulletin lauds the content of Acosta's new book,
it omits any praise whatsoever for his past record as director of the
National Library, leaving open the possibility that he is being fired or
demoted.
But until this point is clarified, the possibility also exists that Acosta
is being promoted to a more responsible position. Since January the
government has been rattled by a rare outbreak of public dissent among Cuban
writers. This public rebellion, in the form of letters of protest e-mailed
abroad and published on foreign websites, began when three elderly
officials, the most notorious among the government censors who unleashed an
intensive purge of intellectuals in the 1970's, were brought out of
retirement and featured on Cuba's controlled television network. Some Cuban
intellectuals, longtime readers of the bureaucratic tea leaves, suspected
that the reappearance of the retired censors presaged a new purge in the
cultural field, and the writers' public protests against the censors has
been interpreted as a move to forestall any new crackdown directed against
intellectuals.
One of the rumors circulating in Havana is that Eliades Acosta is a
candidate for the leadership of UNEAC, the official writers' union. If this
rumor is accurate, meaning that his sudden departure from the National
Library marks a promotion and not a purge, then his first order of business
will be to suppress further expressions of dissent by Cuba's heretofore
submissive "official" authors.
No comments:
Post a Comment