Reading policy in Cuba

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Category: National Reading Program
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Reading policy in Cuba:

Since 1959 in Cuba there is a policy in favor of reading that is based on conceiving this cultural practice as a social right that enriches the life of all citizens from their childhood and develops their intellectual, cognitive and ethical capacities, especially in a society that, bets for the rights to education, culture and personal improvement.

This policy has been based over 60 years on the creation of laws that favour it and on which the practice of publishing houses, libraries, bookstores and other institutions that favour reading in the country is based.

In the publishing area, the state subsidizes the annual production of some 500 new books and reprints of the 188 existing publishing houses and reading is subsidized by the application of a price policy aimed at encouraging the average book price per capita to fall from year to year.
Through this policy, although the aim is to lower publishing costs, the price at which books are sold to the public and the application of special discounts during International Book Fairs and other promotional spaces during the year, means that books are acquired at a price that is much lower than the total cost of their production.

There is also a Law on Libraries that protects the preservation of the national editorial heritage (including in digital format) and provides the main libraries in the country with funds from the editorial production of each period. This law is materialized in the delivery of three copies of each book produced to National Cuban Library José Martí, two to Provincial Library Rubén Martínez Villena in the capital and another two to the Elvira Cape Library in Santiago de Cuba, in the east of the country.

In addition, each provincial library benefits from this decree in the amount of one copy. Similarly, the annual distribution of new publications, which is organized in each province by the Provincial Directorates of Culture and Provincial Book and Literature Centres, means that everything published can reach every corner of the nation and not just be parked in the capital.

Main actions and results:

Definition of concepts for the national program for reading.

The National Program for Reading is a project in constant construction, flexible and participative.
It proposes the coordination of the efforts of all the organizations, institutions, groups and persons of the country interested in promoting books and reading in Cuba.
It is defined as the set of policies, programs, campaigns and strategies that are carried out to promote the taste and pleasure of reading, through the formation and development of reading habits achieved, under the structure of diverse coordinated actions among its different actors and managers, designed to achieve medium and long term objectives and covering the entire Cuban population.

Mission: "Only by creating a country of readers are we going to found a more informed, socially inclusive, democratic, developed and identity-conscious society".

Vision: The National Program for Reading explores, imbeds and disseminates in the country the habits of reading as a way to guarantee the development of the Cuban population towards higher levels of spending their time in an instructive, recreational and spiritual way.

General objectives:

The general objectives of the National Reading Program are:

  1. To strengthen the humanistic-cultural value and the social significance that books and reading should have in Cuban society today and in the future.
  2. To promote a taste for reading from an early age among children, adolescents and young people.
  3. To help educated Cuban readers to find books and services linked to books that can increasingly satisfy their expectations.
  4. To coordinate actions to promote reading, integrating all the work areas of the BNJM, the SNBP and the CIED and other social executors in order to contribute to stimulate the habit of reading in the Cuban population.
  5. To strengthen the place and role of schools, libraries and other social institutions linked to the promotion of books and reading in the context of national life.
  6. To ensure that the introduction of new technologies in the country does not compete, but rather contributes to the promotion of a taste for reading.
  7. To achieve the active and creative incorporation of the community and the family into the actions of the Programme.
  8. To encourage the active and creative participation of the media in the development of the National Reading Programme.
  9. To train participants and promoters of the National Reading Programme with advanced techniques and approaches that will facilitate the achievement of the proposed objectives.
  10. To coordinate and develop social research from the Cuban Book and Reading Observatory and other bodies to evaluate the progress of the Program and enrich it, as well as to determine reading levels in various student populations or sectors.
  11. To identify, coordinate and manage the resources involved in the Program's actions and guarantee their rational use, in accordance with the country's budget for the development of the program.
  12. Cuban Book and Reading Observatory shall develop instruments for evaluating, monitoring and controlling the program in libraries and bookstores, as well as the work of other reading mediators.

 Regulatory conditions:

13. Culture-Tourism Program

General Objective

To promote the artistic and literary dimension of culture in the development of tourism in Cuba.
Actions in progress

I-Strengthen the Culture-Tourism commissions at all levels.

II-To extend the social object of the Paradiso Cultural Tourism Promotion Agency.

III-To insert the institutions of culture in the system of international marketing of tourism.

It should respond to the real context of the relations between both ministries and their institutions, as well as to the proposals made by the members of the Culture-Tourism Commission of UNEAC during the meetings of the Working Group created for the 9th Congress of the organisation. The updating process should be initiated after the Congress.

Other actions in progress

In figures: