Miami parent complains about schoolbook on Cuba

By Jim Loney

MIAMI (Reuters) – Miami’s public school system is reviewing
a children’s book about travel to Cuba after a parent
complained it painted too favorable a picture of the
communist-ruled Caribbean nation.

The book, called “Vamos a Cuba” in Spanish and “A Visit to
Cuba” in English, “aims to create an illusion and distort
reality,” parent Juan Amador said in a challenge to the
Miami-Dade County Public Schools.

“As a former political prisoner from Cuba, I find the
material to be untruthful. It portrays a life in Cuba that does
not exist,” he wrote on a form requesting that officials remove
the book from his child’s school.

Miami is the center of the exiled opposition to Cuban
President Fidel Castro. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans settled
in the Florida city after Castro’s 1959 revolution and the
exiles’ hard-line leaders helped fashion the 44-year-old U.S.
economic embargo against the island.

The book has a picture of smiling schoolchildren on the
cover and contains references to life in Cuba that Amador found
inaccurate, school spokesman Joseph Garcia said.

“The book opens with a sentence that says people in Cuba
live, eat and go to school just like you do,” he said.

A local television station reported that Amador said a
picture of a full plate of food was a lie because no one eats
that well in Cuba.

Cuban-Americans argue that a life of hardship and
deprivation for Cubans on the island forces hundreds to flee
each year for better conditions in the United States.

This is not the first time Miami-Dade County public
officials have been embroiled in a controversy about free-
speech rights and Cuban-American anger toward Castro.

In 1999, Miami International Airport banned an issue of
Cigar Aficionado magazine that contained a story deemed too
flattering to Castro. The ban was lifted when civil liberties
advocates accused officials of the same kind of free-speech
violations for which Castro is routinely vilified in Miami.

“Vamos a Cuba” has been on the library shelf at Marjory
Stoneman Douglas Elementary School since 2001 and no one had
previously complained about it, Garcia said. Thirty-two other
school libraries also carry it.

Garcia said it had not been removed from shelves, contrary
to some media reports. A committee had been set up at Douglas
Elementary, according to the district’s rules, and a hearing
scheduled for April 19 to hear Amador’s complaint.

“It takes convincing the committee at the school that the
contents are objectionable and that the content doesn’t have
enough educational value to continue using it,” he said.