STORE UNDERLINES CUBA'S HUNGER FOR BOOKS, CASH

By Laurie Goering
Chicago Tribune Foreign Correspondent
February 1, 2001

HAVANA -- The decrepit old bookstore that long graced the end of Obispo Street, a tiny place
stocked mainly with faded communist texts, has given way to something you probably wouldn't
expect in Cuba: Borders South.

Actually La Moderna Poesia, or Modern Poetry bookstore, has nothing to do with the glitzy
superstore to the north, but the resemblance is clearly intentional.

Beautifully arranged books grace the new store's huge display windows. Inside there's a coffee and
soft drink bar, a CD section, a slim shelf of videos and a display of posters--mostly Che Guevara,
Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Minh.

If you have dollars--the store doesn't accept Cuban pesos--you can choose from a "Mission:
Impossible" movie book, Charles Dickens' "Great Expectations" or any number of Spanish
bodice-rippers. There's even Amando Carranza's text on "How to Set Up a Profitable and
Sustainable Business," not something generally encouraged in Cuba's state-run economy.

Clearly, the variety of books available for sale is broader than it once was, a testament to growing
international trade, Cuba's economic recovery after the fall of the Soviet Union and the explosive
growth of tourism.

This week, the island will host its 10th international book fair, with 1,400 titles on sale from Cuba,
Mexico, France, Argentina, Spain and other nations. "In Cuba, the book is part of daily life, a
treasured, invaluable item," Granma, the Communist Party newspaper, noted.

If a complete complement of titles is lacking, the article suggests, that's largely because of the
economic downturn in the early 1990s and because of the U.S. embargo. "There are no banned
books in Cuba. There just isn't any money to buy them," Castro once said.

But controversial titles remain conspicuously absent in dollar and peso bookstores, state and school
libraries, and several dozen independent libraries. Although Cuba has no single law regulating
books, general rules restrict the possession or sale of materials perceived as counterrevolutionary.

Over the years that standard has been used to restrict or exclude international texts on human
rights, tomes by Cuban exiles, religious publications and novels with controversial political themes.

George Orwell's "1984," for instance, has not found a warm reception in Cuba. Nor has "Fidel's
Final Hour" by Andres Oppenheimer, a Miami journalist who is banned from the island.

That doesn't mean some authors don't push the line.

Cuban writer Pedro Juan Gutierrez has admitted that his novel, "Dirty Trilogy of Havana," is based
largely on his own painful experiences during Cuba's economic meltdown in the years after the fall
of the Soviet Union. But he is not in jail, and his highly critical book is not banned.

Similarly, controversial books brought into Cuba may be seized or allowed in based largely on who
is carrying them, analysts say. "It depends a lot on the context," said Max Castro, a Cuban affairs
expert at the University of Miami. "The same thing that might make it to a bookstore on its own
might be banned if it was brought by someone carrying stuff for Frank Calzon," a top Washington
critic of Cuba's regime.

At the new Modern Poetry store, shelves are filled with the classics: Homer, Virgil, Cervantes,
Dickens and Poe. William Shakespeare makes the cut, as does Khalil Gibran, Julius Caesar and
even the Marquis de Sade. Modern Cuban novels, however, are few.

Numerous titles are clearly non-political, focused on everything from kung fu to tree grafting and
raising hamsters. Despite the Cuban government's uneasiness with creeping U.S. culture, Modern
Poetry also features books on American idols from Bruce Springsteen to James Dean.

For a high-tech touch, one can buy guidebooks to Linux, or, for the slightly less progressive,
COBOL or Windows 95.

The bookstore's social and humanities section features titles right out of Cuba's most traditional
political genre: "Capitalism in Crisis," "Neoliberalism in Crisis," "CIA Targets Fidel" and "Island
Under Seige: The U.S. Blockade of Cuba."

But one can also buy some oddities, from the "Tibetan Book of the Dead" to a practical guide on
organizing the family finances, which touches on overseeing stock funds, pension plans and loans,
none of which is available in Cuba.

Private donors of books to the island have for the most part avoided stepping on political toes.
Oxfam America, a relief organization better known for its food and community projects, earlier this
month donated 3,000 mostly new volumes to the island's libraries, half of them textbooks,
dictionaries and atlases.

The other half of the shipment included children's books and novels, from "Little Women" to Mary
Shelley's "Frankenstein." "We didn't throw in any challenges," admits Adrienne Smith, a
spokeswoman.

Instead, with many textbooks on the island outdated and novels like "The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn" falling apart from age and use in the National Library, the group wanted to
simply update collections, Smith said, something cash-strapped Cuba hasn't always been able to
afford.

"We wanted to feed a different kind of hunger," she said.

Cuba, which continues to have one of the highest literacy rates in Latin America, has an odd
relationship with literature. For the most part, books are cheaper here than in much of Latin
America and thus more readily available, especially as the nation has recovered from its deep 1990s
recession.

But while most Cubans have access to public or private libraries that include at least occasional
controversial texts, actually reading them is another matter. Being seen with a copy of a
controversial book can earn a Cuban demerits for lack of revolutionary fervor. State libraries
restrict access to certain volumes on a need-to-know basis.

In Havana, the revolutionary classics are still the books in greatest public evidence.

Around Old Havana's Plaza de Armas, book vendors set up racks of faded used books each
morning and little has changed in the 40 years since the Cuban Revolution.

On nearly every rack there's a copy of Fidel Castro's "History Will Absolve Me." There is Karl
Marx's "Communist Manifesto." There are photo books of Vladimir Lenin. There is nearly every
word that ever passed from the pen of Jose Marti, Cuba's favorite 19th Century poet and nationalist
hero. There is, incongruously, a crumbling copy of Dale Carnegie's "How to Make Friends and
Influence People."

Ernest Hemingway, a popular former resident, wins space for "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" and "To
Have and Have Not." Gabriel Garcia Marquez, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1982 and a
friend of Cuba, also makes the cut, as does Graham Greene.

But the majority of books, decades after his death, still hail the island's dashing revolutionary hero:
"Che Guevara and the FBI," "Thinking of Che," "They Fought with Che," "Che--the Sportsman,"
the "Diary of Che in Bolivia," "Che: A New Battle," and, recalling his brief, mostly forgotten stint
as head of Cuba's national banking system, the "Economic Thoughts of Ernesto Che Guevara."