Book Fair Falls Short of Expectations

Santiago de Cuba/The 24th edition of the Santiago of Cuba Book Fair did notmeet official forecasts, nor was it up to the celebrations for the 500th anniversary of the foundation of the city. In the event, which closed its doors last Sunday after five days of activity, 85,000 books were sold. Between 250,000 and 300,000 people attended the reading fair, despite the high prices and the narrow range of titles on offer.

The authorities of the Cuban Book Institute (ICL), however, defined the fair as a success. “We are succeeding in having each event resemble the territory where it occurs, with the provinces leaving their cultural imprint on the fair and writers feeling more at ease to interact with their readers,” said Zuleica Romay, president of the organization.

Ramon Alvarez Cortés, President of the Organizing Committee of the fair, also spoke of an “excellent, successful and wonderful” event. His opinion, however, contrasts with that of readers such as Moraima Lescay, resident in the municipality of Palma Soriano, who complained of not being able to buy the textbooks she was looking for because they ran out in the first two days of the fair. To this Santiago resident, children’s texts were at “unaffordable prices” relative to wages.

Among the youngest, there were more positive reviews. Javier Méndez, a young man from the María Rafael de Mendive high school, for example, said he was “satisfied” with this event and considers it as “the best edition in the relation to the past”. According to the young man, this time “there was more variety in the books” and he could even buy at an affordable price the three volumes of “One thousand and one nights,” in an adaptation of Oriente Publishers.

Some participants regretted that children’s texts were “at unaffordable prices” relative to wages.

Ideology and politics monopolized much of the presentations. During the last days, they launched books like Palomas Blancas (White Pigeons) by Ramón Labañino and Enigmas y otras conversaciones (Enigmas and Other Conversations) by Antonio Guerrero, two of the five spies who returned to Cuba in December of last year after being imprisoned in the U.S.

Another title put forward at the fair was Estados Unidos: El precio del poder(The United States: The Price of Power), written by the son of the Cuban President, Alejandro Castro Espín. However, the public better valued the texts of the national award winners Leonardo Acosta and Dr. Olga Portuondo Zúñiga, to whom this fair was dedicated.

Portuondo Zúñiga said she was surprised by the number of people at the provincial events, from Pinar del Rio to Santiago de Cuba, and said that she will continue writing “for a growing audience.”

On Sunday, the last day of the Book Fair, there was a clear denunciation of gender violence. On the so-called Orange day, various initiatives, organized with the support of specialists from the United Nations, warned about the physical, sexual and psychological harm or physical suffering caused by acts of aggression against females.

The presence of Zuleica Romay contributed to the visualization of a problem affecting Cuban society, although there is little room for it in the media.

Ideology and politics monopolized much of the presentations

More than one hundred people wrote and signed messages rejecting violence against women. Romay, for example, explained that a victim of violence is also someone who grows up in it and then reproduces the violent behavior: “Let us give love to our children so that they can give love when they are older,” he added.

A professor of psychology at a university in the eastern part of the country, who attended the meeting, said that Santiago de Cuba is one of the provinces with the most cases of this kind of violence and that in the last two years about ten women have been killed for this reason.

The fair featured, for the first time, an exhibition area dedicated to the United Nations. From the 22nd to the 26th of April, readers had access to several publications of this organization and its regional specialists. Between the texts and multimedia which were presented, some also reflected on the situation of the city after the passage of Hurricane Sandy and the long process of recovery that they have been undergoing.