By Laurie Goering    The Chicago Tribune
Feb 10, 2002  Tribune foreign correspondent

Havana -The faded tomes of Rogelio Traviso's independent library spill out of two small bookcases in his home's tiny back office, sharing space with an ancient Olivetti typewriter and a decrepit love seat piled with out-of-date foreign newsmagazines.

"I'd like this to be bigger but I don't have the money for more shelves," the 55-year-old political dissident said.

Since 1999, Traviso has been welcoming neighbors, fellow opposition members and anyone else who is interested into his home to borrow books--the ones that he says Cuba's public libraries do not offer.

The government, which insists that no books are banned, has not exactly welcomed the independent libraries, calling them a foreign-funded counterrevolutionary effort. In December, the Cuban founders of the independent library movement emigrated to Miami, citing state harassment.

A look at Traviso's shelves makes clear his political differences with the country's leaders. Among his 300 books is a text on the "Philosophy of Capitalism," alongside a copy of Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and reference guides to American history and German law.

Novels by Dean Koontz, Isabel Allende and William Faulkner compete for space with textbooks on democracy and the French revolution. A few texts by Fidel Castro and one by North Korea's Kim Il Sung make the cut--"I like to provide options," Traviso says--but so do "An Early American Reader" and "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl."

Political titles popular

"What most people in Cuba can read is only what's officially offered. The state libraries are all Fidel Castro and Jose Marti," Cuba's revolutionary-era poet, he said. "Here there's a lot of interest in political books because people have no way to find them elsewhere."

In 1998, Castro remarked during a speech at an international book fair in Havana that "there are no banned books in Cuba, just no money to buy them" as a result of the U.S. embargo against the island.

Cubans, particularly the small number of active dissidents, rushed to test that declaration, opening about 70 small independent libraries. Most have been built on private collections of a few hundred books supplemented with donations, largely from foreign visitors and foreign embassies.

The government, while dismissing the collections as "neither libraries nor independent," has for the most part left them alone, though some of their directors have faced persistent harassment.

The founders of the independent library movement, Berta Mexidor Vazquez and her husband, Ramon Humberto Colas, immigrated to Miami in December after losing their jobs and their home, and seeing their daughter removed from her school.

Other independent library heads say they have been jailed briefly or had security agents search their collections.

Because most library directors are also active members of Cuba's political opposition, analysts say it is difficult to determine how much of the persecution is based on the libraries and how much on the dissidents' other activities.

Disenchanted with regime

Traviso, for instance, once a stalwart of Cuba's 1959 revolution, lost his state job after publicly revealing his disenchantment with the regime in 1992. Since then he has been detained several times and in 1993 was sentenced to a year's labor picking up garbage.

Now the president of the national civic movement "Cuban Love," Traviso can't point to any specific harassment related to his library, though he says many of his visitors are anxious about leaving their names.

Because of that, the library operator says he doesn't feel the need to keep meticulous borrowing records.

"The books go out and I don't care if they come back," Traviso said. "It's better for them to be passed from hand to hand."

Eliades Acosta, the head of Cuba's Jose Marti National Library, has dismissed the independent library project as an effort "to convert a handful of rogues and salaried counterrevolutionaries into noble fighters for free access to information."

The independent librarians, he charged in Granma, Cuba's state newspaper, "live on generous remittances they receive from outside Cuba" and are "traitors to the nation."

U.S. supports efforts

The U.S. Interests Section in Havana, Washington's diplomatic representation on the island, provides monthly deliveries of books--largely textbooks, reference books and novels--to most of the fledgling independent libraries.

"Cuba in many ways remains closed to outside influences," said Vicki Huddleston, head of the office.

"The great majority of Cuban people have no access to independent sources of information. All media, newspapers, television and radio stations are state-controlled. . . .

"My government believes that distributing books, magazines and newspaper articles with all points of view will help prepare the Cuban people for a peaceful transition to democracy," Huddleston said.

The U.S. deliveries skirt obvious political topics. Ecology texts, almanacs, English dictionaries and English-as-a-second-language tapes and texts are among the most popular, U.S. officials said.

That's not to say that at least some of the same things aren't available at Cuba's expansive network of state libraries. The National Library in Havana has 4 million titles, and while most are dated--one of the "International Who's Who" copies is from 1995--the big wooden card catalog is full of authors considered controversial in Cuba, from Mario Vargas Llosa to George Orwell.

Critics point out that such books are not available to all patrons, whose type of library card depends on their jobs or other affiliations, and that most Cubans would hesitate to go on record asking for controversial titles.

Most of the library's books are in closed stacks. Patrons must ask for them by filling out a form with their own name and the title, which is then handed over to librarians.

Related Stories: •Independent libraries are gaining momentum

Related Links: Friends of Cuban Libraries

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