|
|
Uncle Frank's
Diary
Number Five
 The
Night I Prayed
for Castro, and
What Happened Then:
A Meditation Prompted by a Current Controversy
Librarians
who pay attention to such things may recall--from the recesses of
their World Trade Center-preoccupied noggins--seeing recent coverage
of the "independent library" question in Cuba.
The story of anti-Castro libraries, or "libraries,"
cropping up in Cuba in defiance of state sanctions has appeared in
places ranging from American Libraries to the Washington
Post, as well as in some hot on-line exchanges about the matter.
According to an article by David Gonzalez in the June 6, 2001 New
York Times, there are approximately 60 such libraries in Cuba.
As most things do for the ever-solipsistic Uncle Frank, the
controversy awakens sleeping memory banks. Let us go back, back into
the dim recesses of a more innocent time…
Back when I was a kid, when everything was still in black and white,
I regularly watched the Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday evening.
This was well before the Beatles, in the days of Eisenhower and U-2
flights over Russia and anxiety about a possible nuclear
"exchange" over a couple of islands--Quemoy and Matsu--that
you've probably never heard of unless you're of a certain age. I
recall praying, as an eight-year-old, I believe, that we would not
blow up the world over those two islands. As you'll soon see, I was
just a prayin' fool in those days.
Sometimes Big Ed featured some pretty good material, not the least
of which was a pre-bloated Elvis. Sometimes he put on some
hopelessly lame acts, most notably "the Italian Mouse,"
Topo Gigio. I hated that stupid puppet--and Ed had him on all the damned
time! The circus acts were also a complete waste of my family's
17-inch Admiral TV's screen, but it was a variety show, so nothing
lasted very long. The worst swill in show biz (viz., Topo Gigio)
might give way to something wonderful.
Fidel
Meets Big Ed
From
time to time Ed went a little off the wall, by 1950s American
television standards. One night in 1959, he ran a filmed interview
with Fidel Castro and his fellow revolutionaries as they hunkered
down in the Cuban hills, before their upcoming push to kick dictator
Fulgencio Batista and his goons off the island. (Imagine the
bizarritude: It's the height of the Cold War, and here's Fidel
Castro on the Ed Sullivan Show! Holy moley, what next? Beaver
and Wally quoting Trotsky?)
At the time, my chief reading (aside from what I had to do for 7th
grade, which wasn't much, and much of that I didn't do with any
enthusiasm) consisted of Mad magazine (nearly at the apex of
its goodness--nothing like the poor thing it has declined to in the
present day), the Sporting News, and science fiction.
Somehow, though, I had come across some disturbing coverage of
Batista and his reign, possibly in the Reader's Digest.
(If it's in print, I'll read it. What the hell, eh?) When Big Ed ran
the interview with Fidel and the boys, my ears perked up and my eyes
widened.
"Wow," I thought, or something like that. Here are these
bearded guys up in the mountains, and they're out to free the Cuban
people from a rotten dictator! Cool! The Sullivan coverage was very
positive. The audience applauded when the interview was over; the
Sullivan audience always applauded the film clips.
 “Imagine
the bizarritude:
It's the height of the Cold War,
and here's Fidel Castro on the
Ed Sullivan Show!
Holy moley, what next?
Beaver and Wally quoting Trotsky?”
Oh
Dear God, Have a Cigar: My Hero Just Had a Revolution
I
was knocked out. I went to bed that night, my heart astir with
revolutionary fervor. I couldn't sleep, thinking about the brave
Fidel and his men in their struggle against the loathsome Batista.
So carried away was I that, by God, I prayed for the success of the
revolutionaries! I lay right there in my bed, a touching testament
to the efficacy of Sunday school, and sent my best wishes for their
triumph Heavenward.
God answered my prayer. I admit before you now that I, a
pre-adolescent idealist romantic acting on the life-long
exhortations of my patriotic, Christian tutors, am (as far as I
know) singularly responsible for facilitating the Cuban Revolution
through my invocation of Divine Will. Yes, you can petition
the Lord with prayer!
As we all know, the U.S. did not respond with good grace to Castro's
ascension. Something about the new Cuban government nationalizing
corporate properties didn't sit well with freedom-loving Americans.
When our hostility to this sort of thing led Cuba to lean on the
Ruskies for support, we went berserk. JFK and the best and the
brightest nearly got us all killed at the high point of our pique
over the Cuban-Soviet dealing. If you weren't there, or weren't old
enough to pay attention, in that run of dark days in October of '62,
you can't imagine. We were getting ready to kiss our buns good-bye.
General anticipation held that they would soon be toasted, fried,
poached, and barbecued.
Some clever diplomatic correspondence kept us out of the fire, but
ever since that point, U.S. policy toward Cuba has shown a complete
absence of enlightened self-interest, to say nothing of basic humane
consideration for the Cuban people. By seeking to isolate Cuba, and
indulging in a breathtakingly stupid, vindictive obsession, the U.S.
government has helped provoke the worst in the Cuban government, and
has, almost without a doubt, helped insure that the point at which
Cuba enjoys true democratic life will continually recede with the
horizon, at least until some vague day after Fidel shuffles off to
his eternal reward--which will probably have him sharing hot seats
with fellow people's giants Mao and Stalin.
The
Revolutionary Good Life
Fidel
is a tyrant, and has been most of his career. He can't stand
criticism. He's a control freak with an extensive enforcement
network to help him maintain rigid authority. Bad things happen to
those who publicly question him or his policies. The Committee to
Protect Journalists, a nonpartisan, nonprofit org founded in 1981 (http://www.cpj.org/index.html),
this May included Fidel for the seventh time as one of the ten worst
enemies of the press in the world. He joins such insults to basic
notions of journalistic freedom as Iran's Ayatolla Khamenei,
Liberia's Charles Taylor, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, and Russia's
Vladimir Putin.
Fine company, indeed. Here is some of the CPJ's take on Fidel:
"Fidel Castro's government continues its scorched-earth assault
on independent Cuban journalists by interrogating and detaining
reporters, monitoring and interrupting their telephone calls,
restricting their travel, and routinely putting them under house
arrest to prevent coverage of certain events…. Cuba is the only
country in the Western Hemisphere that currently holds a journalist
in jail for his work. Bernardo Arevalo Padron continues to serve a
six year sentence for reporting critical of Castro and the Communist
Party."
Trying to recruit followers in opposition to the Cuban government is
a sure ticket to trouble. Amnesty International's 2001 report on
Cuba notes that Fidel's functionaries keep hundreds of people
imprisoned for political reasons. Cuba conducts kangaroo-court
trials of its political enemies, employs the death penalty with
vigor (maybe the Cuban officials could contact George W. for some
pointers), and, when in the mood, subjects prisoners to cruel and
inhuman treatment.
Any
government that tries to control what its citizens read is evil.
There
is but one legal political party in Cuba, Fidel's. According to
Amnesty International, in the period covered by its report,
"Individuals and groups peacefully exercising their
rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly continued
to face repression." There was "serious escalation in
repression during the closing months of 2000." Living the good
life under Fidel, those who attempt to organize meetings, express
views or form organizations opposing government policy are subject
to short-term detention, interrogation, threats, intimidation,
eviction, loss of employment, restrictions on travel, house
searches, house arrests, phone bugging and physical and verbal acts
of aggression carried out by government supporters.
Authoritarian governments never have a problem finding sociopaths
eager to help carry out "support" for official policies.
It's nice to know that gainful employment is available to those who
would otherwise find it difficult to make ends meet.
Independent
Libraries, or
Outlets for U.S. Propaganda?
Curiously, authoritarian governments also don't have a hard time
finding sympathetic observers abroad. A good bit of the verbiage on
the "independent libraries" is sympathetic to the official
Cuban position: These libraries and the people who run them, or
attempt to run them, are enemies of revolutionary enlightenment. The
major point of concern for a number of U.S. librarians who support
official Cuban libraries seems to be whether the "independent
library" movement is truly independent, or whether it is simply
one more arm of the counter-revolutionary octopus encouraged by
U.S. policy.
The chief point of those who support the independent libraries is
that Cuba's official libraries are not free; they cannot offer the
reading public all points of view, particularly those of a political
stripe. Official Cuban libraries are, on one level, tools the
dictatorship employs to help control the reading, hence the thinking
and political behavior, of the Cuban people.
Are
They, or Aren't They?
Some
critics of the independent libraries attack them because they are
not "real" libraries run by "real" librarians;
those assembling collections of forbidden literature are not
positively sanctioned and certified by the authorities. Well,
honestly: Uncle Frank is shocked.
There is something a little disingenuous about arguing that only
"real" librarians can assemble "real" libraries
in an authoritarian state, or anywhere else, for that matter.
Countless private dwellings and other facilities on the planet
contain what over the centuries people have called
"libraries." Some have been very impressive libraries.
Some, little dinky libraries. Although the great majority of these
libraries were not, and are not, built by professional librarians,
it strains reason to suggest that they do not deserve to be called
libraries.
One fears that only a self-conscious professional snootiness (a
quality, alas, not unknown in libraryland) would permit a librarian
to sight down his or her uplifted nose and declare a collection of
literature "not a library" because it does not occupy an
officially-approved library building, or because no professional
librarian had a hand in its creation, or because it is not
impressively large.
Perfectly
Clear and Precious
The U.S. government (or at least some of its leading advocates of
retro-think) is eager to provide financial support to the
independent libraries. With U.S. money at their disposal, these
facilities would more easily spread their message.
So what? If the ideas thus advanced did not reflect the values of
the Cuban people, they would fall on dry ground and quickly wither.
Can it be that after four decades of Fidel, the virtues of the
revolutionary government are not perfectly clear and precious to
those who enjoy them daily? What, then, do Cuban officials fear from
these pitiful "independent libraries"--run by people who
are not even (gasp!) real librarians--and why do their U.S. critics
worry about the sources of their funding? Is it possible that the
Cuban government and its U.S. friends do not enjoy complete
confidence that the Cuban people share their faith in the fruits of
the revolution? That Cubans might want to try other possibilities in
the political orchard?
That is terribly hard to imagine, unless one reflects on the
observations on Cuban political and intellectual life put forward by
such groups as Amnesty International and the Committee to Protect
Journalists.
Sometimes I suspect that the romantic notions of noble rebellion
that I entertained the night I saw Fidel and the boys on the Ed
Sullivan Show are much the same as those animating today's
defenders and admirers of the Cuban regime, regardless of the
subtopic (libraries, health care, literacy, whatever). I will not
apologize for having been naïve at the age of 12, or for having
prayed for Fidel's success. Batista was a thug, and deserved to go
down. What is Fidel today?
"Don't follow leaders; watch the parking meters."
Bob Dylan said that. (He didn't say that Fidel's time has expired.)
Any government that tries to control what its citizens read is evil.
Uncle Frank said that.
###
Graphics by Karen McGinnis
|
A column from
Grant
Burns ("Uncle Frank")
Uncle Frank Archives
 |
