Cuban Book Day is celebrated every 31 March to honour all efforts to promote the right to read.

Some were surprised by the decision to maintain, despite the many obstacles, the 33rd Havana International Book Fair and its tour throughout the island, as well as the initiative to resume the People’s Library, with 70 classic titles and editions of between 3,000 and 5,000 copies on average.

In an environment of reinforced siege and many shortages, it is not possible to disregard the criteria of those who argue that there are more urgent matters for the nation; however, can a social project such as ours renounce culture and, in particular, books?

Onelio Jorge Cardoso’s masterly tale comes to mind, in which a man lay on his stomach to search the bottom of the sea for a horse as red as coral, made for the imagination and to run wherever his thoughts pleased him; and in the midst of his good «madness» he infected another, who could no longer turn his ideas around without thinking that the human being always has two hungers:

-We all have need of a horse.

-But more men need bread.

-And we all need the horse.

It is not, either in the case of the story or in the Cuban publishing world, a mere duel between pragmatism and utopia, but an understanding that there will be no better destiny for each and every one of us if we renounce cultivating the spirit and its dreams. There are conquests that must be fervently preserved.

As Martí said, all fruit does not end in the peel, and it is ignorant to believe that poetry is not indispensable to the people. Fidel told us: «The socialist state must publish books not to make money, it must publish books for the benefit of the people; and the people benefit not only with a certain type of literature, but with a great variety of books and with a publishing policy that allows the population to have access to the best works created by the intelligence…».

When the Imprenta Nacional de Cuba came into being on 31 March 1959, there were more wishes than real conditions: it was almost a year later that it had its first workshop. The printing of 100,000 copies of El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes inaugurated the People’s Library and a path of faith in the people: the people were not told to believe, but rather: Read!

The date, on which Cuban Book Day has been instituted, deserves all the celebrations. Although it is not an everyday occurrence, there is tremendous value – and rare in the world – in the wide network of modest bookshops, with copies at subsidised prices; in the printed word that reaches schools, hospitals, prisons and the mountains; in the successive generations of active readers and, consequently, of very good writers.

«That is what the Revolution does: it puts books in the hands of the people, it does not foster ignorance, because ignorance has always been fostered by the big interests. Why? Because ignorant peoples are peoples who can be easily deceived, easily exploited,» Fidel assured.

Not renouncing the book as an everyday thing is a profoundly revolutionary act. Author: Yeilén Delgado Calvo)