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CUBAN LIBRARIES SOLIDARITY GROUP Resources on Cuba Memory and contemporaneity in Cuban books BY OMAR PERDOMO THE echoes are still resounding from the 13th International Havana Book Fair, which in fact has become the International Fair of Cuban Books in recent years, as well as the cultural event of greatest public impact in the country. At the same time, two close linked anniversaries are coming up, one having emerged from the other and both being on March 31: the founding of the Cuban Printing Company, which is turning 45, and Cuban Book Day. Although the story has been told on numerous occasions, it seems appropriate to come back to it with new elements and for the reasons already expressed. On March 31, 1959, just three months after the victorious insurrection against the Batista tyranny, the revolutionary government founded the Cuban Printing Company through Law 187, thus laying down the bases for the mass and systematic publication of books, pamphlets and magazines in a country where, up until then, the per capita consumption of books was only 0.2. Sketched out for the first time in Cuba was a project for a publishing system in line with a national cultural vision, although it lacked qualified personnel, material resources and printing facilities necessary to achieve such an objective. In March of the following year, a labor and political conflict between the workers and owners of the newspapers Excelsior and El País (which belonged to the same company), led to their print shops later becoming the first production unit of the newly created Cuban Printing Company. In addition to guaranteeing the jobs of those technicians and workers, the company was responsible for responding to the most urgent cultural and educational needs of the Cuban people. On the basis of its cultural and revolutionary program, it was decided that the first book to be published would be El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de La Mancha, (Don Quixote), which launched the People’s Library Collection – destined for the classics of world literature – in 960. As Dr. Armando Hart Dávalos commented in 1979, the selection of that book was no coincidence, given that "the symbol of the immortal character who embodies the purest human ideals came together with the desire to recognize humanity’s cultural heritage as our own in a tribute to all of the communal, unifying treasure contained in the figure of our language’s most illustrious writer." On old printing presses that worked with two- or four-page sheets (the other pages had to be folded by hand), 100,000 four-volume copies of the famous novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra were printed on Cuban bagasse paper. The books were illustrated by Gustavo Doré and Pablo Picasso, at a price that was more symbolic than anything else – 25 centavos per copy. Those four volumes have long represented a bibliographic jewel of incalculable value, not just because of the circumstances in which they were produced (the early years of the Revolution), but also because of their cultural and historical significance. This was highlighted by a facsimile edition issued by the Cuban Book Institute in 2000 – the 40th anniversary of that first edition –circulated through all the country’s public libraries. In that way, tribute was paid to those who in one way or another contributed to the creation of the Cuban Printing Company and to all print and publishing workers in general. The publication of the novel – emblematic of both Cervantes and Spanish literature – was followed by mass editions of other important Cuban and foreign titles. To mention just a few, they included Canción de gesta ("Epic Song"), Pablo Neruda’s poetic salute to the youthful Cuban Revolution; the first post-1959 edition of Nicolás Guillén’s Elegía a Jesús Menéndez (Elegy to Jesús Menéndez), with prologue by Blas Roca and illustrations by Adigio Benítez, as well as the millions of copies of booklets and manuals for the 1961 National Literacy Campaign. A long-held aspiration of Cuban writers, editors and booksellers, the Cuban Printing Company constituted an important vehicle for cultural, educational and political dissemination, in spite of its brief existence (August 1960-April 1962). When it was dissolved in May of that year, it had 75 production units and an unforgettable catalog in the history of Cuban revolutionary publishing. The established material foundations for printing allowed for a diversification of the editorial policy for books and other related publications, and the Cuban Printing Company gave way to the National Publishing House of Cuba (1962-1966), headed by Alejo Carpentier, which took over and expanded the former company’s operations. It lasted until the founding of the Book Institute and its network of publishing houses on April 27, 1967, through Law 1203. Today, it is the Cuban Book Institute. Cuban Book Day, which originated with the foundation of the Cuban Printing Company in 1959, has precedents worth mentioning in this brief outline. Suffice it to mention the first Book Fair – organized with government support by Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring and José Luciano Franco from the Havana City Historian’s Office (it took place May 20-27 on the Malecón and Paseo de Martí, in the La Punta esplanade area). Then there were the Cuban book festivals promoted by Alejo Carpentier and other intellectuals as an extension of those held in Peru and Venezuela in 1959. Referring to the first of these festivals, Dr. Salvador Bueno commented, "The book invasion was a wonderful event. Nothing like it had happened before. There were 10 books, sold at a price of three pesos. The kiosks were on the corners of Galiano and San Rafael and Neptune and Galiano; the Tejas intersection; Cuatro Caminos; along Belascoaín; opposite Reina and Amistad; on the corner of 23 and O in Vedado and at Calzada Real (51st) and Samá in Marianao. People crowded around the kiosks, and many bought several collections." |