The First Encounter of Caribbean Magazines (Part III)

Bim and Kyk-Over-Al

THE FIRST Encounter of Caribbean Magazines ran for five solid days. It was five solid days of deliberation.

The ‘Encounter’ was hosted by Casa de Las Americas in Habana, Cuba, from November 16 to 20, 2009, to coincide with the organisation’s 50th anniversary.

There were two sessions each day: Sesión de la mañana, y sesión de la tarde. In the end, there were some 150 presentations exploring every aspect of the magazine via expositions on some sixty Caribbean magazines (not a comprehensive list — off the cuff, it did not include the in-flight magazines of the carriers I used to fly to and from Cuba, ‘Caribbean Beat’ of Caribbean Airlines, and ‘Panorama’ of Copa Airlines).

Each presentation was edifying and stimulating, opening new areas for research and collaboration.

New World and Kaie

Here is something I’d like to share, something that surfaced during my preparation for the conference, and which is in keeping with the tone of my recent articles on books and the gift of reading.

In Cuba, there is a remarkable movement concerning books and reading called the cigar reader (el lector de cigar), where, during the workday, a person would read to the workers who were hand-rolling cigars. So significant is this practice, that Cuba has requested it to be designated by UNESCO as an ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage’.

Producing the famous Cuban hand-rolled cigar, one by one, hour after hour, day by day, is a highly skilled job demanding concentration in transforming delicate tobacco leaves into the world famous Cuban cigars. But the job is monotonous, and this monotony could turn to tedium, thereby affecting the final product.

The Guyana Annual

In this type of work, there is no place for complacency. So, in order to prevent boredom and to prevent sloppiness, a cigar reader is employed to read to the workers. That reader would sit on a raised platform, sometimes in front of a microphone, and read aloud, going through firstly the official State newspaper, ‘Granma’, from cover to cover. Later in the day, the reader would read aloud from a book, a how-to-do book, or a novel — the title is more often than not suggested by the workers.

Some of the books read include Alexandre Dumas’ ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’, Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ — old favourites and modern novels like Dan Brown’s ‘Da Vinci Code’.

There is an interesting nexus here, in that many famous brands of cigars were named after books that were read, as in the case of ‘Montecristos’, named after Dumas’ book, and ‘Romeo y Julieta’ after Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’. Other books include works by Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac, Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle), Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Gabriel García Marquez, and many other important Cuban, Spanish and Latin American writers.

Miguel Barnet, a Cuban novelist, poet and ethnographer, writing in the ‘Cigar Aficionado’, states: “The readings were so important to the rhythm and flow of the work in transforming what would otherwise be an extremely monotonous activity into a delight. Cigar-makers used the chaveta to tap on the wooden table as a sign of thanks to the reader, or lector, who had given them many hours of great pleasure and ventures, and they threw the blade on the floor as a sign of disapproval if the reader was not convincing, or the story was boring or uninteresting.

“Many of these workers, influenced by readings, decided to learn how to read and write at a time when working was more important than going to school, because they had to support their families.”

This practice is said to have started way back in the 19th Century, giving birth in the process to the weekly literary magazine, ‘La Aurora (The Dawn)’.
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