14ymedio, Julio César Contreras, Cienfuegos, 13 October 2024 – Every day, numerous people come into the Dionisio San Román bookshop in Calle 54, Ciénfuegos, just at the top of the main avenue. Anyone witnessing this flow of people would think that in the city there was not only a thirst for reading material but also a lot of interesting books to acquire. In reality, these people are only going there in search of a snack in the shop’s cafeteria. If the cultural health of a city and its citizens is measured by its bookshops, then Ciénfuegos has much to be worried about.
The floor above the shop, initially planned as a conference/meeting room, has ended up sharing rented space with the independent cafeteria. Depending on the style of coffee you purchase there they can cost between 70 and 200 pesos. They’re nothing special but they still attract more attention from passers by than the “sparse and limited variety of books on offer” at the Dionisio San Román bookshop – says Jesús, to 14ymedio.
The man from Ciénfuegos has “a literary curiosity” that can very seldom be satisfied in the local state run bookshop. “Most of their books are about politics, Marxism, economics or similar themes. They also have locally written poetry, but anyone looking for quality fiction or texts which explore areas beyond the provincial will have to look elsewhere”, he explains. Even so, Jesús visits Dionisio San Román at least once a month on the off chance that some “little gem” might somehow appear.
“When there is no paper you can’t publish, so logically there are no books to sell. The result: employees on minimum wage sitting around waiting the whole day for home time to arrive”, he says. According to Jesús the state bookshop never had a “golden age”, but at least, a few years ago, there were still some quality books around, and authors who were interested in publishing with Ciénfuegos publishers Mecenas and Reina del Mar.
The shop itself can’t escape the general crisis either. Inside the building the workers have to live with power cuts and suffocating heat, not being being able to switch on the air conditioning because of “company policy”. What often happens, explains Jesús, is that they have to go outside into the doorway with a table and a few sample books, to escape from the high temperatures.
Any attempts at promotion don’t guarantee sales either. With the poor level of enthusiasm shown by the sales staff, “you don’t feel the desire to buy anything”, Jesús adds. The Cienfuegero has a theory about the workers’ weariness: “because it’s an entity subsidised by the Cuban state, everyone earns the same, even when they don’t sell so much as a postcard”.
“I remember when they used to have clubs and literary get-togethers, or they put on conferences. Now the only thing left in the bookshop is metal shelving with the same repeated book copies to fill up the empty space. I don’t think they have even fifty titles on display and the majority haven’t changed since the last Book Fair. And as for the prices, they’re too high, given the low quality of the books and the low buying power of customers. In the Calle San Carlos bookshop any old book can cost up to a thousand pesos”, he says.
In that shop, administrated also by the Provincial Centre for Books and Literature in Ciénfuegos, they sell used books. However, here there is a repeat, on a smaller scale, of the same problems of the other shop. “A few days ago I was surprised to see a long queue in front of that bookshop, but then I realised they were actually queuing for the nearby Cadeca (currency exchange)”. Although some university students and local writers go into the shop, it’s usually the case that whoever goes in there comes out empty-handed.
Translated by Ricardo Recluso
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