Broward Library Reschedules Film

South Florida’s political wars have caught up with the Broward County Library, Fort Lauderdale. After protests from right-wingers about scheduling The Motorcycle Diaries, a film about Cuban guerrilla leader Che Guevara, during Hispanic Heritage Month, the library postponed the showing at the Southwest Regional Library until November.

“In my mind, this isn’t censorship,” library director Robert Cannon told the Sun-Sentinel. “The film is readily available; we are still showing it. But this is a celebration of Hispanic culture, and some felt it was insensitive to show the film since it shows [Guevara] in a positive light.” The library’s decision in turn drew picketers and critical letters to local newspapers. Some in the library community noted that the Library of Congress itself was showing The Motorcycle Diaries as part of Hispanic Heritage Month.

After the Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library, CA, canceled the speaking engagement of a psychic author, the speaker has been invited back to the library’s Ripon Memorial branch. However, as the Record reported, Irma Slage agreed to excise the section of her program in which she was supposed to “communicate with the dead.”

Library director Natalie Rencher said that the decision to cancel Slage’s planned September 17 appearance was a mutual decision by her and Ripon mayor Chuck Winn. However, Brigitte Long, president of the Friends of the Ripon Memorial Library, said that Winn, responding to complaints from residents, had threatened to have the city council cut library funding if Slage appeared. Rencher, however, said that Winn had “never said that in those words.”