NEW YORK, April 30, 2011 (Friends of Cuban Libraries) - Academic
conferences are usually sedate affairs, with minimal controversy or
verbal sparring, but this staid pattern was broken at a three-day
conference on "Cuban Futures" held from March 31 to April 2 at the City
University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center in New York City.
An April 2 conference session on the theme of Cuban culture was marked
by a spirited disagreement over Cuban libraries and the alleged
nonexistence of censorship and repression in the island nation. The
disputed event featured a presentation by Rhonda Neugebauer and Dana
Lubow on a project to send a bookmobile, stocked with reading materials,
to the official library system of Cuba's Granma Province.
Neugebauer and Lubow are members of an ALA faction which is accused of
denying and covering up Cuban censorship and the persecution of the
island's independent library movement, founded in 1998 to challenge
government control of information. [See below Nat Hentoff's Jan. 13
column: "Endless Shame of the Spineless ALA."] While defying persecution
and the court-ordered burning of entire book collections, Cuba's free
library movement has founded hundreds of uncensored libraries throughout
the island, including Granma Province where the bookmobile was dispatched.
Neugebauer and Lubow began their presentation with a review of the
bookmobile project's origins, along with a claim by Lubow that Cuba's
independent library movement was "organized by the United States." A
slide of former Cuban National Library director Eliades Acosta was shown
by Neugebauer when describing his support for the project. (She did not
mention Mr. Acosta's former role as head of the campaign to brand the
independent librarians as "informational terrorists," or his fall from
grace in 2008 when, in a quickly suppressed interview, he abruptly
reversed course by condemning Cuba's ironclad censorship and demanding
freedom of expression for the Cuban people.)
Neugebauer illustrated her talk with slides of smiling children, attired
in their obligatory "Pioneer" uniforms (schoolchildren who refuse to
wear them are expelled) reading glossy new books in the bookmobile,
along with information on library programs for adults and teenagers. In
closing, she attributed the bookmobile's success to cooperation from
Cuba's "mass organizations" which "link the Party to the masses."
The question and answer period following the presentation sparked a
lively debate. Ms. Neugebauer was asked by a member of the Friends of
Cuban Libraries why she testified during an ALA investigation that she
has been unable to find any evidence of censorship in Cuba during her
visits to the island over the past twenty years.
Visibly annoyed, Ms. Neugebauer at first tried to stonewall the issue by
declaring, "This question does not deserve an answer!" But a few moments
later, possibly after reflecting on the bad impression imparted to the
audience by her refusal to answer the question, she said: "The people
here should know that Robert Kent traveled to Cuba nine times with U.S.
government money provided by Freedom House!" [Editor's note: Robert Kent
is a co-chair of the Friends of Cuban Libraries; Freedom House is a
human rights group, co-founded by Eleanor Roosevelt in the 1940s, which
receives U.S. grants to aid civil society groups around the world.] In
her response, Ms. Neugebauer made no mention of her own receipt of
funding from the Venezuelan government, or U.S. government funding of
the ALA, or why this topic is relevant to discussions of book burning
and other forms of censorship.
She then accused the Friends of Cuban Libraries of claiming that she
censors books donated to the Granma bookmobile, and she claimed the
Granma bookmoible is stocked with numerous books by authors allegedly
banned in Cuba. During her last trip to the island she verified that
these reputedly banned books are still on the bookmobile's shelves, she
said.
Later in the session, a separate question was directed to Dana Lubow.
After stating that Cubans were becoming more outspoken about the evils
of censorship, the questioner quoted Eliades Acosta's suppressed 2008
interview in which he declared, "We aspire to a society that speaks
openly of its problems without fear, in which the news media report on
life as it really is, without triumphalism, in which errors are publicly
ventilated in order to explore problems, in which people can express
themselves honestly," and asked Dana Lubow why she continues to deny the
existence of censorship in Cuba. Before she could reply, the session's
presiding officer declared that time had run out. A last, hurried
question presented to Dana Lubow and Rhonda Neugebauer, demanding to
know "Why is Cuba the only country in the world which persecutes
librarians?," did not receive an answer.
Sources: reports from Cubadebate, Miami Herald and Cuban Colada compiled
by the Friends of Cuban Libraries
http://www.friendsofcubanlibraries.org/Recent%20News%202.htm#Library%20raid%20in%20Pinar%20del%20Rio
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