Cuban Editor To Tour United Kingdom

[Brian Hauk]

Cuban Editor To Tour United Kingdom
*********************************************************************
from the Militant, vol.61/no.35 October 13, 1997

BY JONATHAN SILBERMAN
LONDON - Norberto Codina, editor of the Cuban publication
La Gaceta de Cuba, will be speaking in the United Kingdom and
Sweden in November. La Gaceta de Cuba is the magazine of the
National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba. It is a lively
forum for discussion on culture and everyday life in Cuba.
Codina will arrive in London early November and
participate in a poetry symposium organized by the
Association of Cultural Attache's of Latin America, Spain and
Portugal. His two-week tour will then take him to Sheffield
and Manchester in the north, and Bristol in the west.
The Norberto Codina Tour Committee held its first meeting
September 13. The meeting was initiated by Pathfinder
Distribution, which distributes La Gaceta de Cuba in the UK.
Opening the meeting, Tony Hunt said that the recent bombing
of Cuban hotels gave added importance to the tour. "Getting
out the truth about Cuba - among working people and youth,
and all those interested in culture - is especially important
at this time. As Codina has himself said, the most important
cultural event in Cuba was the revolution that brought
literacy and culture to millions previously denied it," Hunt
added.
John Waller a member of the national executive of the Cuba
Solidarity Campaign (CSC), attended the meeting for his local
CSC group in Sheffield. They have decided to host a day
school November 29 at which Codina will be the featured
speaker.
Two lecturers from Hackney Community College in London,
Behige Smith and Jayne Bullock, spoke enthusiastically of the
prospect of Codina speaking at their campus. "Hackney is the
poorest area in London, one of the poorest in the country,"
Smith commented. "It will be great for the students and
teaching staff alike to have Norberto Codina visit."
Hilda Kaune, a Chilean exile and long-time Cuba solidarity
activist, presented a report to the meeting on the openings
for the tour among Latin Americans in London. She and Terry
Bennett, a student at Middlesex University and an activist in
the Friends of the MST of Brazil, formed the nucleus of a
committee that will flesh out these openings. "There are also
opportunities among Latin Americans in Bristol" said Gareth
Evans, co-editor of Entropy, an experimental arts magazine.
Jane King, dance critic of the Morning Star, the newspaper
associated with the Communist Party of Britain, and Emma
Sangster, an artist and secretary of North-East London CSC,
spoke of the opportunity to win further support for the tour.
"This tour can reach people who haven't been involved in
activity in defense of Cuba before," Sangster said. Celia
Pugh, from the Communist League and a member of the
Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union at Lucas in west
London, said that a number of fellow trade unionists at the
plant had donated material aid to Cuba and read literature
about the revolution. "From Norberto Codina they'll be able
to hear firsthand of the Cuban reality and the challenges
facing the revolution."
Further information about the tour can be obtained from
the Norberto Codina Tour Committee, BCM Box 7621, London WC1N 3 XX.

To get an introductory 12-week subscription to the Militant
in the U.S., send $10 US to: The Militant, 410 West Street,
New York, NY 10014.
For subscription rates to other countries, send e-mail to
themi...@igc.apc.org or write to the above address.