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Now, listen: if you want to call the people in Cuba librarians, you may. It doesn't make it true.

Notice that most of the articles you quote from refer not to librarians, but to journalists.

Also, friendsofcubanlibraries.org is not exactly a neutral organization, affiliated as it is with Radio Marti. Excuse me if I have a problem believing they haven't got an agenda that has nothing to do with libraries.

What they are doing is making it more difficult for the American librarians to develop a dialog with the Cuban librarians in preparation for the time when there will be a change in leadership. Castro is old, and like Franco, he will eventually still be dead. Politicizing libraries by establishing institutions and calling them libraries (without the professional or organizational underpinnings required to run them as such), the "independent librarians" make the development of support for the people trying to provide literacy services to Cubans more restricted than it already is. If Cubans can't read, the "independent librarians" can distribute anti-Castro pamphlets until the cows come home and it won't matter.

Castro is not a prince. This doesn't mean that Friends of Cuban Libraries is composed of apolitical altruists. And it doesn't make Cuban librarians into worthless tools of Marxism.

Regards--
Mary Anne