U.S. rulers know Cuba's example still a threat

Supreme Court upholds ban on book about Cuba
by Nancy Cole

MIAMI—In a November 16 decision supporting censorship, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the banning of a children’s book on Cuba.

The court let stand a 2-1 federal appeals court ruling sanctioning the removal of Vamos a Cuba (titled A Visit to Cuba in the English edition) from Miami-Dade public school libraries.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) brought the appeal before the Supreme Court. “These books were removed under the guise of ‘inaccuracies,’” said Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, “but the real reason they were removed was because the books ran afoul of the political orthodoxy of a majority of the school board members.”

The primary objection to the book is that it portrays happy Cuban children and explains in simple text aimed at children five to eight years old that “the people of Cuba eat, work and study like you.”

Juan Amador Rodriguez objected to the book after his daughter brought it home in 2006. Rodriguez claimed at the time that in Cuba “you can read, but you can only read what they tell you to.” He urged the Miami-Dade school board to ensure that no students here be allowed to read Vamos a Cuba.

Although the administration of the school district and two academic advisory committees disagreed, the school board voted that year to pull the books off library shelves, along with the rest of the series of books from publisher Heinemann Library. The company publishes books aimed at introducing young readers to the geography, customs, and daily life of various countries.

The ACLU sued, arguing that banning the books violated the First Amendment. The federal district court agreed and ordered the book put back on the shelves. But the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta reversed the federal district court in February 2009 and upheld the school board’s action in banning the book. The court ruled that the board’s action was simply a matter of setting educational standards in Miami-Dade.

“This is a great victory for the School Board and for Cuban Americans,” board member Perla Tabares Hantman told the Miami Herald after the Supreme Court decision. The Associated Press reported that former school board chair Frank Bolaños, who championed efforts to ban the book from school libraries, “said the case sets precedent for districts to back parents’ rights in future cases.”

The ACLU’s Howard Simon said if this case “is to become the new standard for censoring books from public library shelves, the ACLU may be immersed in censorship battles for years to come.”