On 1 January 1959 the Cuban Revolution overthrew US backed dictator Fulgencio Batista. At the time Cuba was an impoverished Third World US colony where the majority were illiterate, unemployed or underemployed and living in dire poverty, while a rich elite and their US cronies enjoyed the Mafia run brothels and casinos of Havana. In just 40 years, Cuba has been transformed into one of the most literate countries in the world, where many of the most basic rights we in Britain cannot depend on - such as free and accessible health care, care of the elderly, education for all - have been made a reality. For example :
* the infant mortality rate in Cuba is 7.1 per 1000 live births, the lowest figure in Latin America and lower than parts of the UK and US. Before 1960 the figure was 60 per 1000 live births
* Cuba has one doctor per 200 people. The figure in the UK is nearer one GP per 2000 people. In 1998 Cuba received an award for meeting all the WHO targets for all countries by 2000 - the only country to do so
* Cuba has the highest number of teachers and educators per head of population in the world. This year Cuba was recognised by UNESCO as the most literate country in the region (slide 1).
This is the context in which the development of Cuban public libraries needs to be considered. This development is inextricably connected to the history of the Cuban revolution, Cuba's relationship with the US and the Soviet Union and the total trade blockade of Cuba imposed by the US since 1962. There are also close links with the development of education, literacy, publishing, and other cultural activities (slide 2).
1959 - 1963 Idealistic spontaneity
The public library infrastructure in Cuba was underdeveloped in the years preceeding the Revolution of 1959. A series of social changes had to be made before the public library system was in a position to develop and grow. The most significant of these changes was the great literacy campaign. In 1959 a quarter of Cuban adults were illiterate. Early in 1960 the Ministry of Education began to plan a literacy campaign. But Fidel jumped the gun. Late in September he addressed the UN Assembly : "During the next year our people intend to fight the great battle of illiteracy, with the ambitious goal of teaching every single inhabitant of the country to read and write. Cuba will be the first country of America which will be able to say it does not have one person who remains illiterate."
And so it was, but how was it done ? The total teaching force in Cuba was 35,000 and there were about 1.1 million illiterates. A call for a great brigade of literacy teachers went out. Posters appeared throughout Cuba : "Young men and women. Join the crusade for literacy ! A family of peasants who cannot read or write awaits you. DO NOT LET THEM DOWN !". Brigadistas received eight days of training and two textbooks, "We teach reading" and "We shall conquer". They were sent out with basic equipment, including a lantern, because most peasants worked all day and could only study at night. Being a brigadista was dangerous work - monuments can be found in the mountains to literacy workers who were killed by CIA backed counter revolutionaries. Victims include Conrado Benitez, Manuel Ascunce, and Pedro Lantigua, two young teachers in the literacy campaign and one of their pupils respectively (slide 3). The success of the Great Literacy Campaign was celebrated at the "Rally of the pencils" in Havana on 22 December 1961 (slide 4).
1963 - 1970 Centralised pragmatism
Some 100,00 youth went out all over Cuba to teach almost a million people to read and write. The Campaign also broke down barriers between urban and rural areas and between manual and white collar workers. ,"Oh yes", wrote one brigadista, "now I know a lot about the way poor people think. They thought they were nobodies, but literacy changed all that. The new literates could now see they had power". This feeling of ordinary Cubans being empowered by literacy is reflected by the Black Cuban poet Nicolas Guillen, in his 1964 poem "I Have" in which he describes some of the changes bought about by the Revolution. "I have, lets see : that I have learned to read, to count, I have that I have learned to write, and to think and to laugh. I have that now I have a place to work and earn what I have to eat. I have, lets see : I have what was coming to me". Without the Revolution there would be no literacy campaign and no Black Cuban poets. Without the Revolution there would be no public library system.
In 1964 - the year that Guillen wrote "I have" and five years after the Revolution - Cuba had 32 public libraries (slide 5). These developed, partly in a response to the surge in literacy, and partly as a means of sustaining it. After the great literacy campaign illiteracy went down to 4% within a year, and it stayed very low, owing to the many new opportunities on offer for skills training. Public libraries played a key part in making books and information available to the people in order to help them acquire new skills. In 1964 Cuban public libraries were able to offer 675,000 books. This reflected the increase in book publishing from 507 titles in 1959 to 781 in 1967. The number of titles published per 100,000 inhabitants rose from 7.3 in 1959 to 9.5 in 1967 (slide 6).
The early years of the Cuban revolution 1959-1963 have been described as idealistic spontaneity. Massive nationalisations, increased wages and educational provision characterise these early years but the enormously enlarged public sector - including public libraries - was not managed according to a comprehensive development strategy. As a result the development of public libraries was patchy and sporadic. The lack of an investment and development strategy and the imposition of a total US trade blockade, lead to a serious economic downturn in 1962/3. Social policies, such as library development, were threatened.
However, the revolution was not conceived of simply as a problem of economic management, but as a process of fulfilling Cuban citizen's potentials. This was illustrated when , at the beginning of the Revolution, library workers made signs carrying a statement by Fidel Castro "The revolution does not tell you to believe - the revolution tells you to read". In other words, being exposed to reading and knowledge is, in itself, an act of liberation. And Fidel chose the National Library as the venue for his speech, known in Cuba as his "words to the intellectuals". Fidel's guidelines for artistic expression - "within the revolution anything, against the revolution, nothing" - serves as a summary of the revolution's cultural and library policy to this day.
Between 1963 - 1970 Cuban public libraries were developed within the new context of centralised pragmatism. This period saw the centralised control of enterprises and the means of production, and economic growth and efficiency were achieved through "socialist consciousness" based upon moral incentives (as opposed to material incentives). Political representation and participation was through the "mass organisations" - trade unions, committees for the defence of the revolution (CDRs), the Federation of Cuban Women, the Association of Small Farmers, the Federation of University students, the Communist Party and the Federation of Secondary School students. These organisation involved every member of Cuban society, including public library workers and users. They constituted, in Fidel's words, a " great school that develops the consciousness of the millions of workers, men, women, old people, young people and children". The outcome was to influence public library planning, policy and services. The CDRs, for example, functioned as a grass roots, neighbourhood based form of local government, which had a say in the way that public libraries were run, from opening hours to stock policies.
1970 - 1986 Centralised planning
The 1970's and 80s saw a great leap forward in the development of public libraries, from 108 in 1974 to 196 in 1980. Book stocks increased from 1.6m in 1974 to 2.7m in 1980. Over 1000 titles were published in Cuba by 1977 which represented 10.7 books and pamphlets per 100,000 inhabitants. This growth in libraries and publishing resulted from a shift to centralised planning in Cuba from 1970 - 1986. A more structured approach to decision making and economic management was adopted. The first Five Year Plan was introduced in 1975, which by 1980 referred to 95% of the economy. It was recognised that the definition of economic parameters by central planners - the Soviet model - was essentially authoritarian, hierarchical and anti democratic. In response to these criticisms in 1974 Poder Popular (Popular Power) was trialed in Matanzas province, and codified in the new constitution (1976) and applied to the whole of Cuba, as a political antidote to central planning. Hitherto, "direct democracy", in the periods of "idealistic spontaneity" and "centralised pragmatism", through the mass organisations, had been voluntary and largely structureless ; with Poder Popular, in the stage of "centralised planning", democracy was institutionalised.
National and regional politics, henceforth, were to be based on the municipal neighbourhood, with the management of economic institutions and the provision of services decentralised to the areas which they served. Although norms and procedures would be set nationally - by the National Library in Havana - management and policy decisions, as far as possible, were cited at the muncipal level , through the development of municipal libraries. The Cuban public library system was consolidated at this time but the greatest period of development - the 1980's - was yet to come.
1986 - 1990 Rectification
As bureaucracy grew during the 1980s it was realised by 1986 that mistakes had been made in slavishly following the Soviet model of centralised planning, tempered by municipal government. As part of the rectification process Poder Popular was extended with the creation of Provincial Assemblies and a National Assembly. Now there was a joined up and coherent local, regional and national infrastructure for developing public library strategy and policies. The development of provincial libraries was a key part of this process. The result of these improvements in the democratic process was a sustained period of economic growth which benefited all sectors, including public libraries. By 1987 there were 328 public libraries in every part of Cuba (slide 7). Book stocks had risen to 5.9 million. 2,315 titles were published in Cuba in 1987, representing 22.4 books and pamphlets per 100,000 inhabitants. This put Cuba in a strong position in terms of population and titles published in the Americas (slide 8). Cuba was publishing more titles per 100,000 inhabitants than most other countries in the region, including the US. Those countries which were doing better than Cuba - such as Argentina and Uruguay - were not having to deal with the consequences of a US blockade.
Cuba had a flourishing publishing industry, which is unusual for Third World countries even today. The Ministry of Culture, alone, had 9 publishing houses. In 1987 the Cuban publishing industry produced 41.9 million books and pamphlets. Each edition averaged 18,000 copies. These books were supplied to public libraries and sold to the population through a network of bookshops. This was to represent the high water mark in Cuban public library development and publishing. The overthrow of the Soviet Union and People's Democracies in Eastern Europe led to Cuba losing 85% of its trade with the outside world. The US took this opportunity to tighten its economic grip on Cuba via the blockade, and Cuba entered what is still called the Special Period.
1990 - onwards Special Period
Literacy, the public library service, publishing and other gains for the Cuban people have been maintained despite the crushing economic crisis caused
by the blockade, which prevents food, medicine, books and information from getting in or out of Cuba. Despite appalling shortages of fuel, spare parts, paper and most other commodities, not one hospital, school or library in Cuba has been closed down, and no doctors, teachers or library workers have lost their jobs. Library opening hours have not been reduced. However, publishing came to an almost complete standstill and the book stocks of many public libraries were frozen. This was evident to visitors to the IFLA conference which was held in Havana in 1994, one of the worst years of the Special Period. Speaking at this conference, the IFLA President Robert Wedgeworth said he had been impressed by the way literacy had been brought directly into the work place, with the introduction of libraries into factories and sugar mills. He described the "donkey librarian" working in an inaccessible mountain area who used imaginative and practical means - the humble donkey - to transport books and other materials to the remote community.
The economy has picked up in more recent years through decriminalisation of the dollar, tourism and other factors, but these have acted as a double edged sword. Symptoms of capitalism - such as protitution - have started to re-emerge, and the opening of the Cuban economy has given the US opportunities under Track 2 of the Torricelli Act. Track 1 tightened the blockade, while Track 2 provided for the undermining of the Cuban system from within. This is achieved through the activities of US government agencies funding so-called "dissidents" in Cuba. Freedom House, for example, which publishes anti Castro books and pamphlets, is supporting the self-styled "independent library movement" in Cuba. As the Cuban Library Association (ASCUBI) has pointed out, none of these "independent librarians" are, in fact, librarians or members of ASCUBI. Even the IFLA Freedom of Information committee which complained to Castro about the alleged harrassment of these "independent librarians", admitted that they were all political opponents of the Castro regime.
According to IFLA the "independent library movement" was established in Cuba because the state funded public library system censored book stocks and slavishly followed the Party line. This displays ignorance, not only of the quality of Cuban libraries, but how they are managed and the reasons why their stocks might be perceived to be inadequate. Cuba is a one Party state, but the Communist Party is only one of a range of mass organisations which influence national, regional and local policy. Institutions such as trade unions, CDRs and Poder Popular have a say in how public libraries are run and stocked. The blockade has also influenced stock selection. As Fidel Castro said at the Havana International Book Fair in 1998 : "In Cuba there are no prohibited books, only those we do not have the money to buy".
Cuban libraries today
The signs for Cuban public libraries and publishing look good. The benefits of economic growth are being fed into the public sector - teachers were recently given a 30% pay increase, for example. The jewel in Cuba's library crown remains the Jose Marti National Library which has pride of place on one side of Havana's Plaza de la Revolucion. The library has 16 floors housing lending rooms, children's and young people's sections - which are not found in many national libraries - an auditorium and gallery, general and reference rooms, rooms on Cuban ethnography and folklore, slave languages and music sections, storerooms, collection deposits and selection and acquisition departments.
The National Library stands at the centre of a network of public libraries, currently numbering 385. Each province has a Provincial Library, such as the Biblioteca Publica Provincial Ruben M Villena, in Old Havana. Originally housed on the ground floor of the Education Ministry, it recently moved to purpose built premises, partly funded by the Spanish government. The building is of a very high standard with comprehensive children's, adult lending and reference collections. There is aslo a room where children can play games and a delightful library garden. Public libraries are not confined to the major cities - they can be found in suburban and rural areas such as Regla, a suburb of Havana, and in the rural town of Vinales, in Pinar del Rio Province. Most public libraries have collections of material in braille. These
libraries are true centres of the community ; they are both based in the community and community based. They take an inclusive approach and target vulnerable groups. The "child-mothers" project, for example, in which teenage mothers and their children are actively encouraged to read, both generations being helped at the same time. Libraries take a lead role in providing health care and other information to these youngsters.
Cuban children work with computers at the Los Joven Club de Computacion, a country-wide organisation promoting computer literacy to children and young adults. Development of the Internet is patchy - mostly due to the blockade - but Cuba is more advanced than other countries in the region. More than 700 specialists from 25 countries met in Havana for the Info' 99 international convention. Cuba continues to gain awareness of the importance of electronic information, while pointing out that this technology is still out of reach for most people in Developing Countries.
The Cuban publishing industry is picking up again and another positive sign has been the launch of the Cuban National Reading Programme. Public libraries, which are central to this initiative, have helped to create a population of informed, aware people, who can read, write and think. Once a country with a million illiterates and more than a million semi-illiterates, Cuba today gives its workers a minimum ninth grade education. Ten times more books per person are available now than in 1959. Cuba is a nation of passionate readers constantly seeking more information and understanding. Nearly 6 million Cubans use the public library service and borrow over 8 million books each year (slide 9).
Most recently, the 9th Havana International Book Fair attracted over 600 publishing houses from more than 30 countries in Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Japan, China and Iran. Cuba was represented by 26 publishing houses including the Cuban Book Institute which staged a recovery last year with more than 300 titles, albeit with a still insufficient print run. From the very first days of the Revolution, the Cuban leadership has always given a great deal of importance to the fight to extend culture and raise the cultural level of all working people in Cuba. Fidel's 1961 statement that "a true social revolution produces a cultural revolution" has been proved correct in the field of public libraries which have played a key role in that revolution. As such, they provide an inclusive model for library services in other countries, including Britain.
References
Cole, K : Cuba - from revolution to development, Pinter, 1999
Guillen, N : The great zoo and other poems, Editorial Jose Marti, 1967
Harris, G (ed) : Better read than dead, Link, 1996
Hernandez, C : 100 questions and answers about Cuba, Pablo de la Torriente, 1997
Julia, M & Iglesias, T (eds) : Cuba cultural statistics, Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1988
MacDonald, T : Schooling the revolution, Praxis Press, 1996
Tovar, C : Democracy in Cuba, Editorial Jose Marti, 1997
Turfan, B & Pateman, J (eds) : From Hackney to Havana - breaking the information blockade, IGLA, 1994
For more information about the Cuban Libraries Support Group, contact John Pateman at John.Pateman@merton.gov.uk
John Pateman is a member of the Society of Chief Librarians and has visited Cuban libraries in 1993, 1995, 1999 and 2000.
HOME |
ARTICLES |
FACTS |
Last updated 6/28/2000
Copyright © 2000 Cuban Libraries Support Group
Please send comments, questions, and corrections regarding this website to the Cuban Libraries Support Group webmaster.