Cubano Arrepentido: Literally it means a regretful Cuban, in actuallity it means regretful of being Cuban or a self-loathing Cuban.

There's a lot of similarities between Jews and Cubans. I won't go into them too much, but both are extremely small minorities that manage to obtain a high profile and levels of professional success higher than the average American. Both groups are also very politically active and attacked for their political beliefs and being outspoken.

Among Jews there is an archetype of the self-loathing Jew, a person is embarrassed to be associated with other Jews.

Well it's the same thing with Cubans. We have Cubanos Arrepentidos, people who attack their own heritage, along with the prevalent ideas and traditions of that heritage.

Professor Sander L. Gilman of the University of Illinois-Chicago defines Jewish Self-Hatred as:

"...the internalization of the negative stereotypes about who you are--the identification with the reference group's image of you as "the other" in society. The person who is labeled as different wants to find out why he or she fits the stereotype, or to prove that he/she does not. But the more one attempts to identify with societal definitions in order to fit in, the more one accepts the attitudes of the determining group, the farther away from true acceptability one seems to be."

And so it is with Cubans too. The more a person (or pehaps a second rate author) tries distance himself/herself from his/her Cuban roots, the less likely he/she is to gain acceptance in either his/her group or the dominant group one is trying to gain the acceptance of.

As for me I am proud to be 100% Cuban-American.

...to start a library in castro's Cuba.

But two more groups of brave souls have done it. Very quietly, yet without secrecy, knowing full well the size and power of the state to come down upon them and break them.

Alone on an island, with their only defense the eyes of others from outside in freedom - people like you and me who now know this - these librarians have put together two more libraries, collections of words, dangerous words, for Cubans. These books must look rich and vivid and beautiful to them, given the bleakness of their surroundings and the grayness of their time horizons inside Cuba.

Nobody likes to live in slavery. Words and books and knowledge break chains and make people free. castro knows this - the librarians know castro knows this. They also know what he's done to other Cubans who have tried to build humble little home libraries - given them long prison terms in monstrous dungeons - and yet

They still do it. They build more libraries

And through bellisima Stefania, who lives on another island, the free and beautiful island of Sardinia, and who monitors all the little-known Web sites that can transfer this information, we get this news from inside Cuba. The 'Liberal' group identified in one of the photos refers to the word 'Liberal' in the international sense, which to us in the states, is Libertarian.

Stefania's short item, with photos and links to sites that have first learned of the new Cuban libraries being founded against all odds, is here and here.