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BEING READ TO
he pictures of medieval Europe offered a syntax without words, to which the reader silently added a
narration. In our time, deciphering the pictures of advertising, of video art, of cartoons, we too lend a
story not only a voice but a vocabulary. I must have read like that at the very beginning of my reading,
before my encounter with letters and their sounds. I must have constructed, out of the water-colour Peter
Rabbits, the brazen Struwwelpeters, the large, bright creatures in La Hormiguita Viajera, stories that
explained and justified the different scenes, linking them in a possible narrative that took every one of the
depicted details into account. I didn’t know it then, but I was exercising my freedom to read almost to the
limit of its possibilities: not only was the story mine to tell, but nothing forced me to repeat the same tale
time after time for the same illustrations. In one version the anonymous hero was a hero, in another he
was a villain, in the third he bore my name.
On other occasions I relinquished all these rights. I delegated both words and voice, gave up possession
— and sometimes even the choice — of the book and, except for the odd clarifying question, became
nothing but hearing. I would settle down (at night, but also often during the day, since frequent bouts of
asthma kept me trapped in my bed for weeks) and, propped up high against the pillows, listen to my
nurse read the Grimms’ terrifying fairy-tales. Sometimes her voice put me to sleep; sometimes, on the
contrary, it made me feverish with excitement, and I urged her on in order to find out, more quickly than
the author had intended, what happened in the story. But most of the time I simply enjoyed the luxurious
sensation of being carried away by the words, and felt, in a very physical sense, that I was actually
travelling somewhere wonderfully remote, to a place that I hardly dared glimpse on the secret last page
of the book. Later on, when I was nine or ten, I was told by my school principal that being read to was
suitable only for small children. I believed him, and gave up the practice — partly because being read to
gave me enormous pleasure, and by then I was quite ready to believe that anything that gave pleasure
was somehow unwholesome. It was not until much later, when my lover and I decided to read to each
other, over a summer, The Golden Legend, that the long-lost delight of being read to came back to me. I
didn’t know then that the art of reading out loud had a long and itinerant history, and that over a century
ago, in Spanish Cuba, it had established itself as an institution within the earthbound strictures of the
Cuban economy.
Cigar-making had been one of Cuba’s main industries since the seventeenth century, but in the 1850s the
economic climate changed. The saturation of the American market, rising unemployment and the cholera
epidemic of 1855 convinced many workers that the creation of a union was necessary to improve their
conditions. In 1857 a Mutual Aid Society of Honest Workers and Day Labourers was founded for the
benefit of white cigar-makers only; a similar Mutual Aid Society was founded for free black workers in
1858. These were the first Cuban workers’ unions, and the precursors of the Cuban labour movement of
the turn of the century.
In 1865, Saturnino Martínez, cigar-maker and poet, conceived the idea of publishing a newspaper for the
workers in the cigar industry, which would contain not only political features but also articles on science
and literature, poems and short stories. With the support of several Cuban intellectuals, Martínez brought
out the first issue of La Aurora on October 22 of that year. “Its purpose,” he announced in the first
editorial, “will be to illuminate in every possible way that class of society to which it is dedicated. We will
do everything to make ourselves generally accepted. If we are not successful, the blame will lie in our
insufficiency, not in our lack of will.” Over the years, La Aurora published work by the major Cuban
writers of the day, as well as translations of European authors such as Schiller and Chateaubriand,
reviews of books and plays, and exposés of the tyranny of factory owners and of the workers’ sufferings.
“Do you know,” it asked its readers on June 27, 1866, “that at the edge of La Zanja, according to what
people say, there is a factory owner who puts shackles on the children he uses as apprentices?”
But, as Martínez soon realized, illiteracy was the obvious stumbling-block to making La Aurora truly
popular; in the mid-nineteenth century barely 15 per cent of the working population of Cuba could read.
In order to make the paper accessible to all workers, he hit on the idea of a public reader. He approached
the director of the Guanabacoa high school and suggested that the school assist readings in the working-
place. Full of enthusiasm, the director met with the workers of the factory El Fígaro and, after obtaining
the owner’s permission, convinced them of the usefulness of the enterprise. One of the workers was
chosen as the reader, the official lector, and the others paid for his efforts out of their own pockets. On
January 7, 1866, La Aurora reported, “Reading in the shops has begun for the first time among us, and
the initiative belongs to the honoured workers of El Fígaro. This constitutes a giant step in the march of
progress and the general advance of the workers, since in this way they will gradually become familiar
with books, the source of everlasting friendship and great entertainment.” Among the books read were
the historical compendium Battles of the Century, didactic novels such as The King of the World by the
now long forgotten Fernández y González and a manual of political economy by Flórez y Estrada.
Eventually other factories followed the example of El Fígaro. So successful were these public readings
that in very little time they acquired a reputation for “being subversive”. On May 14, 1866, the Political
Governor of Cuba issued the following edict:
1. It is forbidden to distract the workers of the tobacco shops, workshops and shops of all kinds with the
reading of books and newspapers, or with discussions foreign to the work in which they were engaged. 2.
The police shall exercise constant vigilance to enforce this decree, and put at the disposal of my authority
those shop owners, representatives or managers who disobey this mandate so that they may be judged by
the law according to the gravity of the case.
In spite of the prohibition, clandestine readings still took place for a time in some form or other; however,
by 1870 they had virtually disappeared. In October 1868, with the outbreak of the Ten Years War,
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