Magali García Ramis, with colleagues from the School of Communications at the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras, Silvia Alvarez Curbelo and Luis Fernando Coss, criticized Puerto Rico´s Department of Education for forbidding the use of several books in the public school system for containing “coarse and unacceptable language.”

Public schools will no longer read four texts by Puerto Rican writers: José Luis González´s Antología personal [Personal Anthology], Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá´s El entierro de Cortijo [Cortijo´s Wake], Juan Antonio Ramos’ Mejor te lo cuento: antología personal [I’d Better Tell You About It: Personal Anthology], and José Luis Vega’s Reunión de espejos [Meeting of Mirrors] a collection of stories by an assortment of leading Puerto Rican writers such as L. R. Sánchez, M. Ramos Otero, R. Ferré, C. Lugo Filippi, A. L. Vega, among others.  Aura, the short novel by Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes, has also been listed in this recent “Index Librorum Prohibitorum” authorized by Secretary of Education Carlos Chardón with the support of Puerto Rico’s Secretary of State Kenneth McClintock.

Alvarez Curbelo calls this latest act of censorship a fundamentalist, simplistic, and hypocritical “wave of Puritanism” that is sweeping over the government agencies, amounting to a muzzle and an attack on culture, adding that she wonders whether looking at the Venus of Milo will be banned next “because she is naked.” The three educators are shocked and appalled that the Department of Education has embarked on a puritanical mission that they deem “worthy of the Taliban” or the Spanish Inquisition.

For full article, see http://www.elnuevodia.com/educacionusacensurasdelapeorcalana-614579.html

Image of Index Librorum Prohibitorum from http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum