Posted February 23, 2007.

Miami-Cuban Parent Won’t Wait for Vamos Court Decision

The mother of an elementary school student has checked out two controversial books from a Miami–Dade County public school, saying she wants to prevent children from getting the wrong impression about life in Cuba. Dalila Rodriguez, a member of the Concerned Cuban Parents Committee, said in the February 21 Miami Herald that she did not plan to return them and would “lock them in a box.” Records show the books were due back February 21 at the Norma Butler Bossard Elementary School library, according to the newspaper.

One of the books is Vamos a Cuba (A Visit to Cuba), the children’s travel book banned by the Miami-Dade school board in June 2006 but reinstated by a federal court after the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida filed a lawsuit. The other was Cuba by Sharon Gordon, a title in the Discovering Cultures series published by Benchmark Books.

“If you take it out and don’t return it, no kid can read it. It’s not censoring; it’s protecting our children from lies,” Rodriguez said, adding that it romanticized life on the Communist island.

School district spokesman Felipe Noguera said the idea “didn’t seem to correspond with respect for democracy and due process.” Of the 48 copies of Vamos a Cuba in the county’s school libraries, 17 are reportedly overdue or lost.

The Vamos case is scheduled for a hearing in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta later this year.

Posted February 23, 2007.