The Tuxpan bookstore of the Fund for Economic Culture, located on the corner of L and 27, in Havana’s El Vedado, opened the door to readers on Monday. The Cuban Minister of Culture, Alpidio Alonso, and the writer Paco Ignacio Taibo II, director of the Fund, inaugurated the project as it is: unfinished, sloppy and poorly decorated.
In April of this year, Taibo had assured the press that Tuxpan, the name with which they had renamed the old Fernando Ortiz bookstore, would open on the 30th of that month. Then, the opening was delayed until May, to make it coincide with the official visit to Cuba of the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, which did not happen either. The termites, little access to construction materials and bureaucratic obstacles made the directors of the Fund affirm that they would take the inauguration very calmly.
“If I didn’t see the books, I would think I was at the Zanja street funeral home,” commented a reader, after the opening, which was also attended by writers and officials such as Fernando Rojas, Graziella Pogolotti and Alberto Marrero.
Going through the yellow portico, during the hot blackout in which the Tuxpan was submerged after the act, the visitor finds a hall paved with gray and mortuary marble, polished in any way, splashed by lime and paint on the walls.
From the ceiling, rough due to the bad plaster, the water pipes and the electrical installation hang undisguisedly. On the left, an assembly and meeting room that looks too much like a funeral chapel.
The books, in the center of the room, are arranged on a stone staircase with no other classification than some plates to indicate the subjects. Surprising, however, the large number of employees that the bookstore seems to have hired: about twenty, uniformed with red pullovers and dark pants.
A reader listlessly browses through the titles, which offer little interest. The Allende years a graphic novel, shares a shelf with Fidel: 17 approaches , by John Saxe-Fernandez. There are novels by Martín Luis Guzmán, recreational math manuals and Christmas coloring books, the latter at 370 pesos. Other technical texts, such as Mexico’s countryside in a black hole from Amador Terán, are worth 50 pesos.
Once the book has been chosen, the customer goes to the counter. There, one of the helpful employees explains that, due to the power outage, she cannot scan the book to find out its price. “Come back at two in the afternoon,” she tells him, “and then you can take it with you.”
The Government of López Obrador has supported the skirmishes of the director of the Fund, which has repeatedly failed to comply with international distribution and copyright regulations
Almost all the copies bear the Fund’s seal, but there are also titles from other Mexican and Spanish publishers. water everywhere , the collection of chronicles by Leonardo Padura, costs 420 pesos in its Tusquets edition. The novels of Joselo Rangel, the Mexican rocker, only 100. There is even room for Andrés Manuel López Obrador to sell his own books, in Planeta editions. who wants to read Towards a moral economy You will have to pay 220 pesos.
It is unknown what legal artifice the director of the Fund is resorting to to sell these books in Havana. It is not the first time that Paco Ignacio Taibo II’s negligence and disrespect has plunged the prestigious Mexican label into a legal dispute with publishing groups such as Penguin, which has filed several lawsuits against the writer.
The López Obrador government has supported the skirmishes of the director of the Fund, which has repeatedly failed to comply with international distribution and copyright regulations. It is very likely that the sale of books printed by Tusquets, Planeta, Booket, Debolsillo and other publishers responds to this pattern of illegalities, agreed with complete impunity between Havana and Mexico.
Despite the fact that only a portion of the Fund’s titles are sold in Havana, and not the highest quality ones, the director of international affairs of that publishing house, Marco Barrera Bassols, assured the Mexican newspaper the day that “the Cuban people will be able to have permanent access to the 11,000 books that make up the catalog of this seal.”
“The Tuxpan bookstore is still under construction, not because it is not finished, but because it is in infinite change”
Barrera had no scruples in describing the place as “magnificent”, after an “arduous process of design and restoration”. “Two young Cuban architects, Anadis González and Fernando Martirena, collaborated with us at the request of Wilfredo Prieto, one of the most important artists at this time not only in Cuba, but in the world,” added the official.
Both the usual excuse of the “inhumane blockade” and “the prevailing climate and humidity in Havana further slowed down the process to design and install a permanent space for the exhibition and sale of bibliographic material,” Barrera said.
“The Tuxpan bookstore is still under construction, not because it is not finished, but because it is in infinite change.” Havana readers who attended the venue this Monday, in the midst of a blackout and under the cloud of black smoke that covers Havana, were able to verify that the official’s words about the perpetually “unfinished” bookstore of the Fund for Economic Culture are more than a metaphor.
________________________
Collaborate with our work:
The team of 14ymedio is committed to doing serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time becoming a member of our newspaper. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
