Organizers complain that foreign writers ask for royalties in dollars
14ymedio, Havana, 9 February 2025 — Havana/ A book by Cuban ethnologist Lydia Cabrera appeared on Friday on the official Round Table TV program. The silence of the guests about the book, one of the novelties of the International Book Fair, was only broken by Randy Alonso with a comment of surprise. None of his interlocutors, however, dared to answer what the work of an author exiled in 1961 and banned by Fidel Castro’s cultural commissioners was doing there.
The title in question is Cuentos negros de Cuba, an anthology of Afro-Cuban legends first published on the island in 1940. Because it is a book halfway between fiction and anthropology – and because of its brevity – its publication is less problematic and cheaper for the Book Institute than other classics by the author, such as El Monte, published during her exile. The camera in the TV program also avoids focusing on the cover of the volume.
This was not the only surprise of a Round Table dedicated to the increasingly dull “Cuban book festival.” The president of the Institute, Juan Rodríguez, turned the program into a litany of complaints and economic details – such as payment to foreign authors or the participation of some MSMEs* – to get the event going.
“The only great novel that still has rights in Cuba” by José Saramago is ’Essay on Blindness’
The Institute must pay foreign writers what their books earn in Cuba in dollars and “at the exchange rate at that time,” Rodríguez revealed. “We talk to all the authors, we explain to them what a book is in Cuba, we try to reduce their profits to the bare minimum, but foreigners always participate in that condition.”
“They sell to Cuban citizens in national currency, but then the State has the obligation, given the current exchange rate, to facilitate the transfer in hard currency,” he added. The Institute had a small budget for the event – it did not say how much – because the decision to allocate money for the fair is made “at the same table” as other “more important” decisions, such as the “development of the country.”
“The only great novel that still has rights in Cuba” José Saramago’s ’Essay on Blindness’ — published in English as ’Blindness’. Saramago “kindly transferred” the rights years ago because it was being translated into Spanish. The Portuguese Nobel Prize winner broke with the Cuban regime in 2003 after the shooting of the three young men who took the Regla boat and denounced the imprisonment of 75 opponents and independent journalists during the so-called Black Spring.
“Every day it is more difficult,” said Rodriguez. If the fair is held it is because “the State has supported it” and it is “a gift from the State to the people.” The event, dedicated to South Africa and “to Fidel,” will have a modest offering: 2,400,000 copies and 1,200 new releases, most of them digital, he acknowledged. Alonso noted that many of these books are not even recently published, but were “in the warehouses.”
“The great novelty is the People’s Library,” said Rodríguez. It is a project conceived long ago by the critic Ambrosio Fornet and the painter Raúl Martínez, which published cheap editions of Cuban authors such as José Lezama Lima, Eliseo Diego, Nersys Felipe or Cabrera herself, and other universal classics such as Mark Twain, Walt Whitman or Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
Rodriguez said that several MSMEs “related to knowledge products” had been invited.
Rodríguez said that several MSMEs – which he did not call by that acronym – “related to knowledge products” had been invited, but that they were required to be in order “so that the fair is not distorted.” He did not give any further details. Josué Pérez, coordinator of the fair, added that the event will include a Business Forum, but he did not say anything specific about that either.
The fair will be held from February 12 to 23 in two main venues: the colonial fortresses of Morro and La Cabaña, and several venues in Havana. It will be dedicated to the historian Francisca López Civeira and the writer Virgilio López Lemus.
On the choice of South Africa as the guest country, Rodriguez said that there was “a debt” to the African country to strengthen relations with a nation that “practically produces 25% of Africa’s gross domestic product.”
“They see it as a great gift to express their culture,” he added. According to the director, there will be books by Nadine Gordimer, a South African Nobel Prize winner for Literature who is sympathetic to the Cuban regime. Rodríguez did not say whether works by the other South African Nobel Prize winner for Literature, the well-known novelist JM Coetzee, published in Spanish by Random House, will arrive in Havana.
*Translator’s note: Literally, “Micro, Small, Medium Enterprise.” The expectation is that it is also privately managed, but in Cuba this may include owners/managers who are connected to the government. [mipyme in Spanish]
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