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FIDEL AND CHAVEZ INAUGURATE THE BOOK FAIR
ALBA Cultural Fund
created in Havana
• Cuban and
Venezuelan presidents sign the agreement at the
Cabaña Fortress • Includes a publishing house,
record label and film productions • Niños
del
infortunio first text launched
BY
MIREYA CASTAÑEDA — Granma International staff
writer—
THREE
significant events marked the beginning of Cuba’s
15th International Book Fair: the inauguration by
Cuban and Venezuelan Presidents Fidel Castro and
Hugo Chávez, the creation of the Bolivarian
Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) Cultural Fund
and the launching of Niños
del
infortunio
(Children of Misfortune), by Venezuelan Tarek
William Saab.
The
presence of the heads of state in the Cabaña
Fortress, site of the cultural festival, underlined
the importance that both give to this event
described by Chavez as an “explosion of life, above
all of ideas.”
In a
festooned tent in front of the Venezuelan Pavilion,
the presidents signed a document establishing the
ALBA Cultural Fund, designed “to strengthen the
identity of Cuba and Venezuela and of all America.”
“A
Fund,” as Cuban Culture Minister Abel Prieto
affirmed: “that offers a concrete response, not of
promises, but instead of feasible projects in a
world in which commercial and superficial art
dominates.”
The
agreement emphasized the defense of the region’s
authentic creative values, the promotion of works by
youth, and the fostering of closer ties with
critical U.S. intellectuals.
Among
the concrete instruments to achieve such high
objectives, the Ediciones ALBA publishing house has
been created specifically for the dissemination of
anti-imperialist thought, although it will publish
poetry, narrative work, essays, testimonies,
biographies, and social studies by Latin American
and Caribbean authors.
Also
established was a publishing house of the same name
for the publication of two magazines, one analytical
and one aimed at children and youth, and the ALBA
recording label for the promotion of thinking Latin
American songs and of patrimonial and contemporary
expression excluded by the rules of the commercial
market.
The
production of films, documentaries and television
series strengthening the Latin American identity and
the television and radio of both countries and the
Telesur network will benefit from the Fund.
AN
ESPECIALLY INSPIRATIONAL BOOK
In a
fair with an intense program of launches, the book
Niños
del
infortunio
(Children of Misfortune), by Venezuelan poet Tarek
William Saab (also governor of Anzoátegui state),
had extraordinary significance.
Its
launch immediately after the signing of the cultural
agreement took place in the presence of Fidel and
Chávez, and the panel was comprised of the Cuban and
Venezuelan Ministers of Culture, Abel Prieto and
Francisco Sesto, respectively, Argentine writer and
Deputy Miguel Bonasso, Havana City Historian Eusebio
Leal, and naturally the author.
 Los
niños del infortunio
(a
testimony on the Cuban medical mission in Pakistan)
came about —explained Prieto— as a result of a
conversation between President Fidel Castro and
Tarek, in which the former suggested that he go to
Pakistan to see first hand the magnitude of the
consequence of the earthquake and the Cuban
solidarity.
From
that awareness of the suffering and total
defenselessness of orphans along with his discovery
of the work that the 2,540 Cuban doctors and health
technicians are doing there, Tarek wrote this
intense and realistic book, stressed Prieto.
“Tarek
gathered numerous testimonies and brought them
together in this book that ranges from prose to
verse without any discord between the genres. In a
base world of daily genocide, where two-thirds of
humanity are condemned, it is touching to see a
spark of what solidarity can do, which is not an
abstraction, but instead a work of salvation.”
It was
Bonasso who compared the Venezuelan writer to the
Greek epic poets upon describing the book as a
“poetic testimony” of special spirit in which the
author reflects “above all an intense human
solidarity, more valuable that the instruments and
medicines.”
Leal,
who wrote the prologue, considered Los niños
del
infortunio
a
tribute to an unknown cause in the Himalayas where
Cuban doctors are engaged in a profoundly humane
task. “A beautiful collection of poetry, with
reports, testimonies, and descriptions accompanied
by photographs, in an impeccable edition.”
To
close, the author shared the origins of the book,
“It was written in nine days (between January 17 to
25) in that feverish attack experienced by poets,”
and he affirmed that for him it is “a grain of sand
in tribute to the Cuban Revolution and people, that
sings of the two Revolutions at the same time (the
other being Venezuelan).”
The
writer asked President Chávez to read one of the
poems, “El largo camino a casa” (The Long Road
Home), which describes a 20 year old who has lost
touch with reason. Chavez read this and then
concluded by reading another short poem that closes
and gives the book its title.
Tarek
William Saab dedicated Los niños del infortunio
to Fidel and Chávez, who he described as "two
giants of the emancipation and redemption of our
peoples, two forgers of the destiny of a new
civilization."
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