Apparently the American belief in the paranormal, the occult, etc. is being exported to Cuba courtesy of Jesse Helms & the like.
***** The New York Times June 6, 2001, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section A; Page 4; Column 3; Foreign Desk HEADLINE: Santiago de Cuba Journal; In Book-Starved Cuba, Little Feasts for the Hungry BYLINE: By DAVID GONZALEZ DATELINE: SANTIAGO DE CUBA
Among the books that Marcia Perez Castillo keeps in the lending library at her home is "The Challenge of Liberty." Its very location underscores the book's theme, since she has it hidden in her bedroom. She tucked away similar volumes on democracy and dictatorships in an improvised rare books section, stashed in the ceiling under a dusty plastic sheet.
Ms. Perez runs one of the more than 60 independent libraries in Cuba, relatively small collections of everything from pristine college texts and yellowed paperbacks with cracked spines to photocopied American magazines and dissident tracts. She and her fellow librarians see themselves as part of a larger movement for freedom of expression in a country where the government limits what people can read or write....
The libraries are supported by donated books from the United States and Europe, as well as diplomats who regularly deliver magazines, newspapers and political books. A member of the European Parliament recently suggested providing them with more financial assistance, as has Senator Jesse Helms, who included the libraries in legislation intended to help human rights and dissident groups.
Such aid will most likely be met with skepticism from the Cuban government, which says dissidents and human rights advocates are on the American payroll...."It is not a pure space for books," said one Cuban official. "When you have external financing with its own objectives, the term 'independent' goes to hell."...
"Newsweek is a very interesting magazine," said Madeline Hernandez, who often goes to Ms. Perez's library to read recent issues. "Here we only get the news they want us to see. But that magazine has everything."...
"In Cuba, all the schools and universities have libraries," said Ricardo Gonzalez, who runs an independent library in Havana. "The National Library of Cuba can be compared with any in the third world. So why do these humble libraries succeed? Here you can read with liberty. You can choose. There are different books from an ideological point of view."...
[O]nly a fraction of her [Ms. Perez's] library's books can be considered political. Like others, hers has the slapped-together feel of castoff collections: college texts on engineering or mathematics next to dog-eared copies of Sinclair Lewis and Mark Twain.
The most popular books, in fact, are on parapsychology, mysticism and Eastern religions.... *****
Yoshie