Castro's Willing Librarians

When the American Library Association met for its annual convention in Toronto last week, the organization had no trouble issuing a denunciation of the Supreme Court's June 23 decision to uphold the Children's Internet Protection Act, which enables Web-filtering on library computers. Bully for the bookworms. But when it came time to criticize Fidel Castro for jailing 10 independent librarians as part of his brutal April crackdown on dissidents, the ALA passed. It gets worse, according to this L.A. Times op-ed by Charlotte Allen.

Adding insult to injury, the ALA held a panel discussion at the convention on libraries in Cuba. All five Cuban delegates to the panel were representatives of Cuba's state-owned public library system, including Eliades Acosta Matos, head of the Jose Marti National Library, a government-controlled enterprise. Acosta Matos is on record as calling the independents "traitors," "criminals" and "mercenaries." A pro-independents activist, Robert Kent, a librarian with the New York City Public Library, tried to persuade the ALA to add to the panel Ramon Colas, a co-founder of the Cuban independent library movement who recently fled Cuba after repeated detentions and confiscations of his books. The ALA turned down the request, contending that because Colas lacked a degree in library science, he was not a professional librarian.

One particularly adamant ALA official was Mark Rosenzweig, chief librarian of the Reference Center for Marxist Studies, which maintains the archives for the Communist Party USA. Rosenzweig's explanation is appalling:

"There was hardly even the pretense that these people were librarians," Rosenzweig said in a telephone interview last week. "I have got books in my apartment too but that doesn't make me a librarian. These are people who have been dissidents for many years. They're pro-U.S. They have connections with the Miami dissident groups."

More coverage of ALA's Cuban cowardice can be found in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

Comments

[Rick Barton]

Obviously, this outrage is a manifistation of the ALA's leftist idealogical leanings as much as it is one of the "ALA's Cuban cowardice". The dearth of libraries willing to stand up to the intrusions of the Patriot Act is better attributed to cowardice.

[Dade]

Sheesh! I can't wait for the day when this idiot Castro just shrivels up and blows away -- like the villain in Indy Jones' "Last Crusade" after he drank from the wrong cup.

Soon, I hope.

[Mitch]

I can see librarians admiring Castro... here's a guy who has more means at his disposal to make people shut up than a terse "Shhh!"

[Chuck0]

Thanks, Jesse, for pointing out this entry.

I'm an anarchist librarian who has been trying to illustrate a middle path on this issue for the librarians in ALA. I've been disappointed by my lefty comrades such as Mark Rosenzweig who are sticking to the old left practice of defending a left wing dictator against the American imperialists. I'm against American imperialism (and America) as the next person, but if one cares about human rights, self-determination, and freedom, one needs to condemn Fidel Castro at the same time as you condem US interference in Cban affairs. This is one of the problems I've had with the leftover Left, that they are hypocrites when it comes to leftist authoritarian leaders.

On the other side, Robert Kent and Co. have not been honest abou the fact that *some* of these Cuban dissidents receive funding from the US government and they have been silent on the travel ban and the long history of American imperialism against Cuba. I think these dissident librarians should be supported, even if they might have questionable ties with the US government. Running a library of any kind should simply not be a reason for government harassment or repression by any regime, Cuban, American, or other.

Lastly, the comentators who have criticized ALA don't understand how associations work or their conferences. The people who organized that panel discussion have a right to fill the panel with whatever speakers they want. They can fill them with Cuban librarians or they can fill them with all points of view. There is no law that says that a conference panel has to have certain composition. If Kent and the others didnt' like this situation, they should have organized their own panel. That's what you do at conferences. I suspect that Kent and the others were more interested in making anti-communst political hay out of being "rejected" then they were in organizing their own panel.

[Anonymous]

what sort of self-respecting anarchist is a wage-slave for a library? do you realize that you could double your income working at walmart? you are a slave to exploitation!

[Anonymous]

Something tells me Chuck O's library must consist primarily of big picture books.