Cuban prison system held Book Festival

As part of the celebrations organized by the Cuban Ministry of the Interior (MININT) to salute the 63rd anniversary of its educational programs, a brain child of Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, and the Cuban Culture Conference, the island’s prison system hosted its 2nd National Book Festival, enjoyed by inmates and their families, as well as by prison officers and staff members and teachers and students from schools in nearby communities.

Likewise, the Festival hailed the joint efforts undertaken by these and other entities for the benefit of the national program for reading promoted in the prison system by the Cuban Book Institute (ICL) and MININT’s Division of Penitentiary Establishments.

According to ICL vice president Nancy Hernández Contreras in a speech delivered at the Combinado del Este prison, the purpose of the talks, workshops, performances, exhibitions and book presentations and sales was to encourage reading and disseminate national and foreign literary works as an opportunity to both make books available to prison inmates and turn them into a permanent companion of the Cuban people with a view to personal improvement.

Saturday’s program was dedicated to the children of inmates and of prison staff and those from the surrounding communities, in line with the goals of the program Educate Your Child developed in the penitentiary system.