SANTO DOMINGO. – Sympathizers and followers of Cuba’s Government caused an incident in the Dominican Republic’s 9th International Book Fair, which prompted the intervention of security agents.

The pushing and shoving began when Fidel Castro sympathizers felt annoyed because the Fair’s organizers invited the exiled Cuban writer Zoé Valdes to dictate the conference "Cuba: fiction and reality," on Tuesday.

Supporters of Castro’s regime, who throughout the day had warned several media that they were against the writer’s presence, last night tried to prevent and spoil the activity, but the security prevented them from entering the National Theater’s Culture Salon, scene of the conference.

Several people were beaten and Clave Digital photographer Carmen Suàrez’s camera lens was flung off.

 "It is a regime of a tremendous cruelty, he is a man (Fidel Castro) who simply has used the nation of Cuba to make it his property in the dirtiest tradition of his land baron father," Valdes said.

She affirmed that in Castro’s 47 years in power very little is known on the outside on the Cuban people’s sufferings, because his government has a complete control of the information and a great manipulative capacity.

She defended the writers’ right to speak of their own countries’ political subjects, citing the cases of Chile’s Isabel Allende, during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship; Mario Benedetti, in Uruguay and Colombia’s Gabriel Garcia Márquez.

Several of the participants tried to boycott the writer from the audience, constantly interrupting or talking aloud, which forced the moderator, the writer Avelino Stanley, to speak firmly to end the disorder.

"Ah, I know this strategy: What you want do is speak and speak and not to let me speak. It is I who will speak now," the writer Valdés said in one occasion.

The room was filled, but many people, including international guests and journalists, deiced to skip the event when learning of the conflict.

In another moment a loud bang was heard from the main door and everyone looked back. The noise came when a Culture Ministry official slammed the door in Carmen Suárez’s face, which damaged her camera lens.