We are the founders of the Independent Libraries of Cuba project, a cultural initiative that was born in 1998 when Cuban leader Fidel Castro affirmed that “in Cuba, no books are prohibited.” These words opened the door for founding a widespread cultural initiative that would allow our people to have free access to information so that they could grow in terms of culture and knowledge.

We already knew that the Cuban regime “reserved the right to inform the public what it deemed appropriate to do so.” However, since the creation of the Library Project, we have had a unique opportunity to erode the myths of this system. With this cultural, civic initiative, we seek to promote open reading, reading without ideology – reading not affected by political affiliations.

In the 1970s, when we began school, we weren’t allowed to listen to the music we enjoyed. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and other English-speaking groups were considered to be ideologically damaging. We grew up among censorship and we were made to get used to it. The same thing happened with lies. It never mattered if we didn’t know who George Orwell, Octavio Paz, or Albert Camus were. Our cultural formation only reflected the Marxist principle that learning must respond to ideological aims. Today the government confiscates texts based on Cuban Customs Resolution 5/96.

Reading is a pleasure and a human need, but in Cuba, reading has depended on the political and ideological positions of the government. There are many Cuban and foreign authors that are censored in Cuba. The reason that these authors are prohibited and unknown is that their ideological positions do not coincide with official beliefs, those of Castro and his supporters. Carlos Alberto Montaner, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Zoé Valdés, and Reinaldo Arenas are just a few of the Cuban authors that remained unknown: but now, their books are available on the island thanks to the Independent Libraries. The greatest proof of this persecution is that besides jailing, exiling, and even executing a great part of its population, the Cuban regime burns books and jails writers and poets.

The merit of the Independent Libraries is that they have broken with the total control over information on the island and that they censor no one. “Reading without censorship” has become the way to promote a free culture among the community, and it has had a successful impact on Cuban society. Today, the libraries function as community and civic centers.

This cultural initiative constitutes a real space that is growing stronger and becoming more professional as international support for the movement arrives. It is essential that books arrive to the island so that Cubans can read. In this sense, we are committed to creating support groups in different countries across the world to coordinate shipments of bibliographic and informational materials.

Unfortunately, the Cuban government has negative reactions to any kind of independent initiative. There are currently 16 librarians in jail: all are facing long sentences. Their only crime, that is, if it can be considered a crime, is having distributed books. Prison conditions are abhorrent. The diet of prisoners is poor, as are the hygienic and health conditions within the jails.

After a year of unjust arrests of librarians and other actors working towards democracy in Cuba, our project has remained alive because the space won by civil programs is never lost, even when repression is acute and cruel.