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Week 82 Ethics Headlines
Schools Told to Reinstate Banned Cuba
Book
By Carol J. Williams
Los
Angeles Times
July 25, 2006
MIAMI — A federal judge Monday ordered the Miami-Dade County School
District to restore a children's book about Cuba to school library
shelves, delivering a blow to fiercely anti-Communist Cuban exiles who
complained the book sugar-coats contemporary life in their homeland.
"Vamos a Cuba," or "Let's Go to Cuba," had been pulled from elementary
school libraries last month after Cuban-born parents and politicians
denounced its depiction of life in the island nation ruled by Fidel
Castro as misleading, propagandistic and a waste of taxpayers' money.
After months of heated debate and all-night meetings, the nine-member
county school board voted June 14 to ban "Vamos a Cuba" and 23 other
titles in a series on life in foreign countries, prompting the American
Civil Liberties Union and Miami-Dade's Student Government Assn. to sue
the district alleging free-speech violations.
Two review committees and the county schools superintendent had advised
the board that removing the book might be seen as political censorship.
After hearing testimony from both sides Friday, U.S. District Judge
Alan S. Gold on Monday issued a preliminary injunction requiring the
school district to keep the books available at its 30-odd elementary
school libraries until a court hears and rules on the lawsuit.
"The only books in contention in this case are library books, books
that are by their nature optional rather than required reading," Gold
wrote in his 89-page decision.
By banning the books, he added, the school board was infringing on
students' rights to consider them for leisure reading, which "goes to
the heart of the 1st Amendment issue."
The book, intended for kindergarteners through second graders, has
become a target of anti-Castro exiles for its failure to address the
rule of the Castro regime.
"This is a book of lies and of omissions about the real state of life
in Cuba," said Juan Amador, the parent whose complaint about the book
made it a cause celebre among Miami's Cuban-born public officials.
A former political prisoner who fled Cuba on a raft 11 years ago,
Amador said he didn't want his 9-year-old U.S.-born daughter exposed to
a book "that suggests life is magnificent there."
During the protracted board meetings that followed Amador's April
complaint, teachers, librarians and elementary curriculum experts
deemed the books, available in English and Spanish, a harmless
children's series that left out politics and controversy in
consideration of its intended readers.
During Friday's hearing before Gold, school board attorney Richard
Ovelman said the board's decision to ban the 24-book series was
justified on the grounds that it "homogenizes and sanitizes" life in
the countries portrayed, ignoring key differences such as the lack of
individual rights in Cuba.
In presenting the ACLU's case, attorney JoNel Newman said that the book
debate was being used as a campaign issue as south Florida candidates
vie for the important Cuban American vote.
"It was only when the politicians got involved that the books were
removed," Newman said in apparent reference to school board member
Frank J. Bolaños, who led the charge against "Vamos a Cuba"
ahead of filing last week to run for the state Senate.
The book debate also prompted State Rep. David Rivera to resign from
the school district review committee after all 16 other members urged
Supt. Rudy Crew to refrain from banning the books. Rivera is up for
reelection.
Bolaños said he took up the issue in response to "taxpayers
telling me they don't want to see tax dollars wasted on this kind of
false, misleading, Communist propaganda." Castro's regime has described
the book as an accurate portrayal of contemporary life in Cuba,
Bolaños said, which he thought proved the book lacked
credibility.
"At the end of the day, I will abide by the court ruling, as we all
should. But having said that, I have to say I'm disappointed that the
information provided in his [Gold's] injunction suggests this is being
looked at as a 1st Amendment issue," said Bolaños.
Even some exiles have been critical of the political stir created over
"Vamos a Cuba."
"We left Cuba because we didn't want to be told what to read and what
not to read," said Sylvia Wilhelm, head of the Cuban Bridges group,
which seeks to improve people-to-people ties between the U.S. and Cuba.
"If they don't like what this book says, they should write another
story and let the people decide which one they want to read."