Four Writers
By Ezequiel Minaya

I missed him again, this time by only ten minutes. For about four days now, I’ve been combing Havana for Pedro Juan Gutierrez; a poet, novelist and journalist. I want to talk to him about his writing, Cuban writers after the revolution and censorship. But, above all else, I want to hear his thoughts on exiled poet, Herberto Padilla.

Do you think Gutierrez will want to talk about Herberto Padilla? I ask as I prepare to leave. I donÕt know, Palacio Ruiz responds. WhatÕs left to say?

I’ve stopped by underground libraries, the apartments of independent journalists, and even the crowded night-time hang outs lining El Malecon that Gutierrez wrote about in his latest novel, Dirty Havana Trilogy. All I’ve got to show for it is a messenger’s bag full of illegal, dissident writing, a dozen new titles from the many Havana bookstores and more offers of sex than I can afford.

Depending on whom you ask, Trilogy — an international hit — may or may not be banned in Cuba. Government officials have told me that it’s not widely read in Cuba because it’s not a good book. It’s typical of the Cuban writing so popular overseas, one writer’s union official told me.

It has a dash of anti-Castro — though Gutierrez never directly names him — and a lot of sex, the official complained. But not just sex, he continued. Hot CUBAN sex, he said in a mocking tone.

photo by Mimi Chakarova

People on the fringes of the state — reporters transmitting pieces critical of the government to the United States via the internet, librarians operating out of their apartments without state sanction, writers estranged from government-run art institutions — have told me that some works are just not read in Cuba. Censorship, that’s your word, one nervous writer said to me; all I’m saying, he continued, is that somethings are just not read in Cuba. Stop asking these questions, another writer advised, you are going to get yourself or me in trouble.

Yes, Pedro Juan is in town, I had been told several times over the last days. Yes he was here but a day ago, a renegade librarian said. At an independent library in Miramar: oh you missed him by a couple of hours. And now, at the independent library Dulce Maria, just blocks from the official writer’s and artist’s union, UNEAC, the caretakers — the married couple Hector Palacio Ruiz and Gisela Delgado Sablon — say I was off the trail by just ten minutes.

If you see Pedro Juan again, tell him I just want a little of his time I plead. The three of us are sitting in a small back room in the couple’s shabby apartment. The room is the extent of Dulce Maria, and they say, a peaceful place to live when books aren’t being tossed in the streets by soldiers.

Palacio Ruiz, in his loud, booming voice says that Pedro Juan knows I am looking for him. He was considering it says Palacio Ruiz, who has been in and out of jail because of his own writing and Dulce Maria. He promises to put in a good word. And as long as we are talking about favors, he says, could I do him one? Could I, he asks, carry his latest collection of essays — which included a letter he had written his wife during his latest stint in jail — to the United States. I say yes, but please make sure that Gutierrez gets my message. Sure, he says, but you make sure you don’t get caught with these — he waves the thick sheaf of papers.

Do you think Gutierrez will want to talk about Herberto Padilla? I ask as I prepare to leave. I don’t know Palacio Ruiz responds. What’s left to say?

Plenty. For starters, how is the once international symbol of Cuban censorship remembered by notable Cuban writers living on the island today. What does Padilla’s fall from grace and subsequent exile mean to Cuban writers? Could it happen again? How has Cuba changed?

On September 25, 2000, Herberto Padilla, a visiting writer and professor at Auburn University in Alabama, failed to show up for his literature class. His students went in search of their professor and discovered him in his apartment—dead of natural causes

Rivero had not forgotten Padilla. No Cuban writer could. But Padilla is remembered less for his contributions to poetry than for the chapter in the Cuban Revolution when the honeymoon between Castro and his writers ended:El Caso Padilla.

Padilla, 68, had suffered from heart problems. He had recently split from his wife, the writer Belkis Cuza Male, who was living in New Jersey at the time, and had just begun teaching at Auburn. Students barely knew the Cuban writer, who immigrated to the United States in 1980.
But, at the time of his death, Padilla was considered by many to be Cuba’s greatest living poet.

His passing caused fewer ripples in Cuba. Back in Havana, Raul Rivero -- a poet, journalist and friend of Padilla -- remembered the news zipping by on television so quickly that it took him a few minutes to fully understand.

Rivero tried to imagine what the last years of Padilla’s life had been like in the United States. Did Padilla — whose vocation as a poet immersed him in Spanish — ever grow accustomed to hearing so much English? How had Padilla handled the winters? Did he ever miss Cuba?

Rivero had not forgotten Padilla. No Cuban writer could. But Padilla is remembered less for his contributions to poetry than for the chapter in the Cuban Revolution when the honeymoon between Castro and his writers ended: El Caso Padilla.

In 1968, Padilla -- already a respected poet and journalist — entered the annual literary contest of the National Union of Writers and Artists (UNEAC). His entry, a collection entitled Fuera del Juego, Out of the Game, was a scathing critique of the government’s iron grip on intellectual life. It had only been seven years since Castro’s remarks at a conference of intellectuals. Having declared the Cuban revolution a socialist one earlier in the year, Castro then wanted intellectuals to do their part for the cause. He instructed : "What are the rights of writers and artists, be they revolutionaries or not? Within the revolution all; against the revolution nothing." That same year UNEAC was formed in imitation of the Union of Soviet Writers.

Padilla chaffed under the restrictions. In Out of the Game he wrote:
The poet! Kick him out!
He has no business here.
He doesn’t play the game.
He never gets excited
Or speaks out clearly.
He never even sees the miracles.

An international and independent panel of judges awarded Padilla the nation’s highest poetry prize, the Julian del Casal award, for the collection. The writer’s union, however, declared Padilla’s poetry "ideologically outside the principles of the Cuban revolution."

Cuza Male now living in Texas told me that Castro came to their house personally and said to Herberto, "You can go. Come back when you are ready." Padilla, then 48-years-old, never saw Cuba again.

No action was taken against Padilla until three years later, in 1971. Padilla was reading from his work at the writer’s union, when authorities arrested the poet. Among the tight-knit community of writers, the subsequent weeks of his absence produced the inescapable question of the season in Havana — "Where is Padilla?"

He reappeared a month later and addressed many of the same people he stood before when he was detained. This time, however, he read a scathing indictment of himself and many other literary notables and friends. He condemned, among others, his wife, the Cuza Male.

His public confession complete, he disappeared again. But this time, in full view. Though released from custody, Padilla would not be published for nearly a decade. He was also forbidden to leave Cuba. Friends and family avoided the 39-year-old writer and Cuza Male lived an internal exile.

Word of El Caso Padilla spread around the world. And soon notable leftist intellectuals began to retract their support for the revolution. A petition requesting the release of Padilla was circulated and signed by, among many, Jean Paul Sartre and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The diminished prestige of one man was becoming a costly loss of face for a country that — surrounded by real and imagined enemies — could not afford to lose friends. Finally, Castro decided that it was time to let Padilla go. Cuza Male now living in Texas told me that Castro came to their house personally and said to Herberto, "You can go. Come back when you are ready."

Padilla, then 48-years-old, never saw Cuba again.

photo by Mimi Chakarova

I Anton Arrufat
El Rehabilatado
Centro Havana is far-removed from the tranquility of El Vedado, home of several state ministries, and the grandeur of Havana Viejo. This section of Havana feels like a tough New York City neighborhood, with a similar insularity, a sense that residents are caught, like satellites, by the pull of the place. This is where Anton Arrufat, a national award winning writer, has lived for much of his life, on the top floor of a two story house that, like many other buildings in this part of town, is a crumbling beauty.

Four men – ranging in age from mid- 20’s to late 30’s – are hanging out on the stoop of Arrufat’s house. Walking near them, I can smell booze though it’s 10 a.m. They are arguing over the compensation for a favor.

One of the younger guys — a squat, barrel-chested man — insists, in slow drawn out words, that the agreed price was a half bottle of rum.

One of the older men, skinny and jumpy, his voice rising, disagrees. He distinctly remembers hearing a full bottle and mira no venga con mierda, cono.

I ask them if this is the home of Anton Arrufat. For a moment, they eye me, as if they don’t understand the question.

I’m surprised by the lavishness of Arrufat’s apartment. The big rooms and high ceilings seem like they belong in New York’s Dakota, renting out for thousands a month, as opposed to one of Havana’s poorest neighborhoods.

One of them responds, yeah, of course he lives here, everybody knows that. They look me over and can tell I’m not Cuban. One of them decides to help the foreigner out. You know -- what are you, Dominican? -- you know Dominicano that Arrufat won a national award, don’t you?

Yeah, yeah, another one chimes in, he also has a new book out, a book of essays. Cono, I’ve got to get it, he adds.

At the appointed time, Arrufat walks out onto his wrought-iron balcony and casually waves me upstairs.

I’m surprised by the lavishness of Arrufat’s apartment. The big rooms and high ceilings seem like they belong in New York’s Dakota, renting out for thousands a month, as opposed to one of Havana’s poorest neighborhoods.

"This neighborhood is very promiscuous, very crowded, very crime-ridden," he says, adding that fame protects him. No one messes with ‘the writer.’

And, he’s clearly one. The walls are lined with books shelves filled with every imaginable title. Throughout the tidy, quiet apartment are several paintings and sculptures. A small dog scampers between rooms, apparently pleased to be hosting company.

Arrufat, a tall, solidly built man with broad shoulders and soft middle, is quieter. His hair, caught up in a short ponytail, is gray and he is wearing a plain white T-shirt and shorts. At 66, he wears thick eyeglasses that barely soften an intense gaze.

Besides the national literature prize he also won the 2000 Alejo Carpentier prize for best novel, for La Noche de Aguafiestas, Night of the Spoilsports. I was introduced to him a day earlier at the writer’s union. "Here is a true genius," the man said.

At the moment, Arrufat is Cuba’s most celebrated writer. But it wasn’t always so.

In 1968, the same year Padilla won the poetry award, Arrufat took top honors in the drama category for his play Siete Contra Thebes, Seven Against Thebes. The play, critical of the Marxist-Leninist regime, tripped censor alarms. The writer’s union condemned Arrufat’s work as containing "conflictive points in a political context that were not taken into account when the winners were selected." To this day, the play has never been staged in Cuba.

At the moment, Arrufat is Cuba’s most celebrated writer. But it wasn’t always so.

And so, as with Padilla, Arrufat was imprisoned in silence. But he stayed, refusing to budge from the section of Havana he has called home since 1959 when he returned to Cuba at the age of 24.

"When the revolution triumphed I was living in the United States. I was living in New York," he says. But once Fidel rode into Havana, Arrufat, returned home to a Cuba brimming with possibility.

"It was a moment of great energy, of great happiness, of great vitality. It was like breaking everything that had existed before; just destroying it. We didn’t know if with good intentions or bad, if what should have been done had actually been done or not, but that didn’t matter then, what mattered was the enthusiasm of the moment, the magnitude of the time."

He became part of a group of writers known as the Generation of ’50, that included: Pablo Armando Fernandez, Cesar Lopez, Manual Diaz Martinez, Fayad Jamis, Herberto Padilla, and on and on and on. "It had the feel of a family," he says.

The group established its own identity by sweeping away the old literary regime. "We belonged to a generation less transcendental," he says. "We used colloquial language, conversational language. We used the language that was around us. Metaphor was eliminated."

In illustrating the difference between the writers of ’50 and the older writers, Arrufat quotes – nearly sings really—a poem about fireflies by Lezama Lima. He takes a poet’s pleasure in every word but "he never says the word fire fly," Arrufat says. " I would have just said fire fly."
TS Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Denise Levertov and the Beat poets all influenced Arrufat’s generation. "We tried to write a poetry whose musicality was destroyed by the poet. When a real musical verse came to mind we busted it up, fragmented it, we made it rougher, more arid, less musical, less melodic."

One writer, Ambrosio Fornet, called the late ’60’s, early 70’s the gray period, but Arrufat says now, "it was absolutely black."

The writers soon, however, turned their critical eye to what was happening to the miracle that had brought them home. The revolution began to change, repressing homosexuals – many of whom were writers and artists like Arrufat – excluding the religious and demanding complete adherence to the party line. Within the revolution all; against the revolution nothing.

One writer, Ambrosio Fornet, called the late ’60’s, early 70’s the gray period, but Arrufat says now, "it was absolutely black."

It lasted about six or seven years, Arrufat says, and during the time the government wanted writers to copy rigid Soviet realism and produce proletariat morality tales. They were also pushed to write children’s literature, to impart to the youth the virtues of the revolution. But it was also an attempt, in part, Arrufat tells me, to steer writers away from controversial topics.

But it failed, Arrufat says, with him, with Padilla and a few others. They challenged the miracle and paid the price. "I was largely excluded for 14 years," Arrufat says. Forbidden to publish, Arrufat shelved books in a library. But, Arrufat says, he was going to stay in Cuba.

But, Padilla, he remembers, was struggling with the idea of leaving.

"He chose to leave," Arrufat says, without rancor of Padilla’s departure, "I don’t criticize him for it. I think it’s fine. I chose to stay."

"His life was made a little impossible, all those things that are done so a person will go overseas, things that would give the reason to people who were accusing him. So it was ‘look, he was an enemy, look how he ends up leaving.’"

Arrufat stayed and over time, became "rehabilitated." Arrufat attributes the recovery to the natural development of the nascent revolution. "Things just went about changing."

In part, he says, the government reconsidered its campaign against writers because it looked bad. "It became a serious problem for the revolution." Many of Cuba’s friends, Arrufat says, "were displeased."

With his reputation salvaged, Arrufat, and others, including Armando, Lopez, Lezama, and Pinera, were published again, but rarely overseas. Writers who wanted to do so had to submit their manuscripts for review, and the government further discouraged it by restricting writers’ abilities to accept dollars.

But publishing in Cuba changed dramatically with the fall of the Soviet Bloc. Cuba’s GNP shrank 35 percent and the state slashed – along with everything else -- publishing budgets. The number of titles dropped by two-thirds over a five-year period. Only 2,500 to 3,000 copies of any new edition were printed. Many writers wanted out.

But, in a move as dramatic as the legalization of the dollar in the 1990’s, writers were permitted direct publishing contracts overseas. It is a move that many credit with staving off a mass exodus. Arrufat is at the forefront of a wave of Cuban writers who now publish internationally – once a crime. Grijalbo-Maodadori, a Spanish publisher, released Arrufat’s Antologa Personal, Personal Anthology, and also plans to offer La Noche del Aguafiestas. Even Abel Prieto, Cuba’s current minister of culture, publishes outside Cuba.

Though Arrufat makes it clear that he has not lived outside Cuba since ‘59, he travels often. He has spent up to three months visiting Spain and Mexico in 1993 he spent about five months visiting family in St. Paul, Minnesota.

I ask him if his life is what Padilla could have had, had he stayed. "I think so," Arrufat says. "I think so."

But freedom has its limits. I ask Arrufat about President Castro’s comments during the annual Cuban book fair. Castro told visitors that there were no prohibited books in Cuba.

Arrufat gives me a long, steely gaze. "Well, here, I don’t think there are prohibited books." He stops for a moment. "There are books that don’t enter. There are books that don’t enter. That don’t enter." He repeats the phrase softly, letting it trail off.

"Well, that’s enough," he says suddenly. The interview is over.

photo by Mimi Chakarova

My search for Pedro Juan has hit rock bottom. I’ve just paid over $20 to two jinteros who say they can find anybody in Havana. Yeah sure, we know the writer Pedro Juan.

I met them at a jazz club. We can show you the real Havana, they say with inviting smiles.

Pedro is the good-looking one of the two. He is tall and an unbroken shade of dark brown. He has a shaved head and big, sparking eyes. Manny is the brooder. He is heavy set and wears a baseball cap low.

As we walk toward El Malecon, Manny asks, Do you like girls? How about some real Cuban rum? How about some coke?

A block away from the sea, two police officers stop us. The muscular men wear neat brown uniforms, shirts tucked in, tight over their broad shoulders and big arms. They address Pedro and Manny with disdainful formality; come here comrades, IDs comrades, stand still, comrades.

They ignore me and pull Pedro and Manny several feet away. I’m told to wait. I can’t hear what he is saying, but Manny is explaining the hell out of himself. He is waving his hands with an urgent look on his face. Every once in a while, after one of the officers asks a question, Manny just vigorously shakes his head; no, no, no.

The officers approach me. One of them, with a neatly trimmed mustache, addresses me. Sir, do you know who you are hanging out with. My friends, I say and smile. That man, he points to Manny, has been in jail for robbing tourists like you.

No me diga, I say.

Now sir, he continues, have these men sold you any tobacco or rum? Though he is out to stop a black market transaction, he has stumbled across something better, I think to myself; an American with a satchel full of dissident ramblings. Don’t get caught with these, I can hear Palacio Ruiz say. At worst, I would be arrested, questioned and deported but Palacio Ruiz said he would catch hell again if anyone found his writing in the hands of an American journalist.

Though he is out to stop a black market transaction, he has stumbled across something better, I think to myself; an American with a satchel full of dissident ramblings. Don’t get caught with these, I can hear Palacio Ruiz say

No sir, no rum, no cigars, I say. Can we check your bag, sir?

Of course, I say.

I do my best imitation of a bumbling Yuma. Oh, I dropped my notebook, it’s a little dark on this side of the sidewalk, oh, there goes all my change, well, I guess you can’t really see inside the bag, let’s… what do you say we cross the street to get under those streetlamps.

No, no sir, it’s fine, the officer says. Have a good night.

Thank God Havana police don’t carry flashlights, I think to myself. My heart is racing. How does Hector live with this fear?

II
Raul Rivero:
Inxile
Neatly arranged on a small glass coffee table in the Central Havana home of Raul Rivero -- an award winning poet and internationally acclaimed journalist -- are small, framed photographs of various sizes. They form a triangle, the tip of which is a picture of a young girl. The second tier is two photos of teenagers. In all, there are about ten frames. Mrs. Rivero, Raul’s second marriage, points to each picture and says a name and then whether the person lives in Cuba or Miami.

"The same thing that is happening with the Cuban family," he says pointing toward the photos around him, "is happening with the literary Cuban family- there is division."

He’s gone, she says about her son. She’s gone, she says of Raul’s daughter from an earlier marriage. There is no emotion in her voice; it’s as if Miami is around the corner.

She agrees to wait with me; Raul is running late. He’s, no doubt, working on a story, she says. I sit in one of three rocking chairs in the small living room. There are a few photographs on the walls – portraits of young people bearing a resemblance to either Raul or his wife. There is a small television, the small coffee table, a larger, round wooden table against the wall and the rocking chairs. The floor is tiled in dingy linoleum.

We are joined by the silent, and slightly hunched mother, of Raul. She slowly shuffles to a rocking chair and sits down. Mrs. Rivero takes from me a small duffel bag filled with medicine, vitamins, video cassettes of children’s television programming and a digital video camera. Their friends in Miami sent the care package.

We strike up a conversation.
We talk about the movie ‘Before Night Falls,’ the biography of exiled Cuban writer Renaldo Arenas. Mrs. Rivero, who knew the writer, remembers Arenas as a rude, blunt, moody character, who said whatever was on his mind, no matter the consequences.

She says the actor who played the lead caused a buzz in Central Havana when he moved into Arenas’ former home. She hears the actor is up for an Oscar. She recalls an editorial in the few, slim pages of the official newspaper, Granma saying that it would be a victory of politics and not art if he won the award. Later that month, he loses.

photo by Mimi Chakarova

The light from the open balcony begins to dim. Over the next round of strong, syrupy coffee, the talk shifts to politics. Mr. Rivero’s mother gets up, slowly shakes her head and shuffles out of the room. Mrs. Rivero can’t contain a small chuckle, nodding her head in the direction of her mother-in-law.

Raul finally comes home. He is average height and stocky. He enters the living room, sees me, smiles and walks forward, hand extended. The three flights up have left the heavy-set smoker out of breath and speaking in short, clipped bursts.

He has one more thing to do before his day is done, he says. It has something to do with his journalist network. I’m sorry, he says, it can’t be helped. In moments, I’m standing in the hallway, the door closed behind me. The meeting is rescheduled.

A couple of days later Raul, keeps the appointment. He’s relaxed but his face is still a light shade of red. He sweeps his thinning blond hair with his hand often. He is causally dressed, with the top buttons on his striped shirt open. He is wearing shorts and slippers. Raul chain-smokes throughout the conversation, whittling to the butt one Marlboro red after another.

We sit in rocking chairs, facing the balcony and its view of Central Havana’s rooftops.

"The same thing that is happening with the Cuban family," he says pointing toward the photos around him, "is happening with the literary Cuban family- there is division."

On one side of the divide are writers that work with the government and collect all the perks: travel, book signing parties, conferences, he says. Many of them were once sanctioned, he says, during the gray period but have returned to good graces with a vengeance.

"Pablo Armando Fernandez, was sanctioned for about ten years because of the Padilla case, Anton Arrufat, Cesar Lopez, all those people had problems. But they have returned and are now in absolute harmony with the government."

"We spent many years in a very bad situation. I’m telling you, we sold everything we had, everything, clothing, everything, because we had nothing. I couldn’t publish."

It was once that way for Raul. "I, once upon at time, also made that pact. I moved in that world, when I supported the government."

That was before he crossed over to the other side of the divide.

Raul was one of the first generation to get a degree in journalism from the University of Havana after the triumph of the revolution. He eventually became a senior correspondent for the state news agency.

He was also successful with his art. In 1969, the writer’s union awarded him the David award for his poem Papel De Hombre and in 1972 the Julian Del Casal award for the book Poesia sobre la Tierra. He also served as the right hand man of the first president of the writer’s union, Nicholas Guillen.

But in 1989, Rivero, like Padilla before him, grew disenchanted. He quit his position at the writer’s union. And, in 1991, he completely broke with the government when he joined nine other writers in composing an open letter to Castro, asking for greater freedom of expression and the release of prisoners of conscience.

"When we signed the letter there were ten of us. [Members of the group] began to leave immediately. People were attacked. Maria [one of the signers] went to jail for two years, reasons were found to arrest them.

"I wasn’t a member of any political party so I was left here. But we got harassing phone calls. People saying they were going to kill us in our sleep." Raul says that, like Padilla, friends and family stopped visiting.

"We spent many years in a very bad situation. I’m telling you, we sold everything we had, everything, clothing, everything, because we had nothing. I couldn’t publish."

Of the ten signers of the open letter, Rivero is the only one still left in Cuba. "Why should I leave," he says, raising his voice, indignant, when I ask why he decided to stay. "This is my country."

Rivero says that crowds of his neighbors would gather beneath his balcony yelling threats at "the family of traitors." He says the yelling has stopped, but his home still gets searched by police from time to time and his phone is tapped.

"On television they have a program called ‘round table." They have said on that show that ‘Raul Rivero is a reactionary, counter-revolutionary who receives money from the US interests section."

Last year, in a speech, President Castro referred to Rivero as a drunk. Rivero, who had a drinking problem, he admits, has been sober for years.

Of the ten signers of the open letter, Rivero is the only one still left in Cuba. "Why should I leave," he says, raising his voice, indignant, when I ask why he decided to stay. "This is my country."

Raul is now an independent journalist, and professional Inxile, a name he coined last year in a Miami Herald article. Inxiles are, according to Rivero, writers who still live in Cuba but openly oppose or at least are critical of the government and as a result are kept from publishing and are often harassed.

Arrufat was an Inxile, he says, as was Lezama Lima and Pablo Armando. But the first Inxile was Padilla, Rivero says. "Herberto was left completely alone, all of us younger writers completely distanced ourselves from him. After having much of the same things happen to me, I understand more than ever [Padilla’s suffering]."

"You can’t call people because you don’t know if they are scared to meet with you." He gives the example of a friend - who Rivero asks not be named - who still moves in official circles. If anyone was to find out that they still spoke, he says, his friend would be at risk of losing his job and status in the community. So, if they were ever to run into each other in public, his friend would probably ignore Raul. Rivero wouldn’t blame him.

"He’s not a bad person. He just lives in Cuba," he says with a smile.

Rivero is openly harassed, but other writers, he says, are kept in line by more subtle means -- a change from the open repression of the gray years. "Don’t forget that here the state is the only employer, the one owner of everything.

"[The government] used to insist that [writers] show publicly their loyalty to the country. Now, if not that, at least try not to write in opposition, keep quiet, in a very discrete way."

photo by Mimi Chakarova

If a writer steps out of line, Raul says, their requests to travel are suddenly denied, their invitations to conferences and events stop coming. And in the case of a writer’s continued and open defiance, Raul says, they lose their jobs and are left to the ravages of poverty.

In 1994, in the midst of his own precarious financial situation, Rivero was contacted by an exiled Cuban journalist living in Spain, who commissioned two columns. That’s when, Rauls says, the idea for an independent news service began to form. A Miami contact gathered the financing for a web site and Cubapress was born.

"We try to have people from all over the country. It’s hard, because it’s hard to get people in the remote provinces and it’s hard to train others. At the moment we have 16 reporters."

Reporters dictate their work over the phone or smuggle it overseas over black market internet lines. Wages are around twenty-five dollars a month, which in Cuba, Rivero says, is enough money to survive. In 1997 the French foundation, Reporters Sans Frontières – honored Rivero and Cubapress with its annual award. He was unable to attend the award ceremony, he says, because of fears he would not be allowed back into Cuba.

He now knows how Padilla felt, Rivero says. And he’s happy he was able to tell him before Padilla’ death. One day, not long ago, Raul was on the phone with an editor in Miami. After they were done talking business, the editor said that she had somebody there who wanted to say hello. "It was Herberto," Raul says.

"And I told Herberto ‘You’ve must of suffered a lot because it’s exactly how much we are suffering now,’ but it must have been a lot worst for him, because he didn’t have some one like Herberto Padilla, in exile, to talk to him." He pauses and buries his chin in his hand.

Rivero talks a bit more. But soon the seemingly boundless energy Rivero had at the beginning of the interview wanes. Rivero lends me his only copy of his latest poetry collection, which was published in Spain.

Outside, while waiting for a taxi, I open Rivero’s book and begin to read at random. I stop at the poem:
NATIONAL PRIDE
None of our officials are rich
None have estates, factories or companies
None have accounts in Swiss banks
Nor do they want them
and can’t help but be surprised.

photo by Mimi Chakarova

III
Alberto Guerra
El Muerto

Even by the lofty standards set by street after street of haunted, crumbling mansions in El Vedado, UNEAC, the Cuban arts union on the corner of 17 and H, is impressive. It is a peach-colored two-storied mansion with marble columns, ringed by the thin bars of a black iron fence. Just off to the side of the front entrance and down a small stone path, artists sit in the Huron Blue Café, enjoying the rays of the mid-afternoon sun, quietly talking at small tables. The porch is also peopled with groups talking in undulating volume about painting, film, writing, art. There are young people who could pass for New York bohos, and older conversationalists who have a more rigid informality to them, as if they were on a corporate picnic. This is the place that the World comes to when it want it’s fix of Cuban Culture. Want a trio of folk musicians plucking out revolutionary arrangements? An Afro-Cuban poet? A Cuban sculpture? This is where you go.

Alberto Guerra, one of the young stars of Cuban writing, prefers to stay away. He stays at home, in the far-flung Havana neighborhood of Playa, seated in front of his computer, chasing his dream, his foremost ambition, of being a great writer.

The revolution’s victory in ’59 led to the establishment of all of the now internationally known cultural institutions in Cuba; Casa de las Americas, the Cuban Institute of Cinematography (ICAIC), UNEAC, the National Ballet of Cuba and many others. Castro vision for these institutions was made clear; "Within the revolution all; against the revolution nothing "

In 1976, Castro went a step forward and decreed that "basic cultural centers" were to be built in each of the 200 municipalities across Cuba. These centers were: a museum, a cultural hall, a movie theater, an art gallery, a bookstore, and a library.

It was in those culture centers, especially the library, that Alberto Guerra, and many of the young writers of his generation, first discovered literature and their own talent. It was there that, during the international furor over Padilla, he says, he studied, gaining a solid intellectual foundation.

But now, all Guerra wants to do is write. He quit his job at UNEAC and has withdrawn his membership in the communist party.

"I wanted to take a look at the situation in Cuba of the presence of tourists. But I decided to look at it through the eyes of an average Cuban."

"I try to stay as distant as I can so I can write. That’s to say I don’t engage in a social life. Because the more of a social life, the less intellectual intensity. So I stay here. Here in my neighborhood, in Reparto Flores, in my house, writing," he says.

Guerra is 39, but can pass, with ease, for someone ten years younger. He lives in a modest one bedroom with his wife, who also defies her age and their teenage daughter. Guerra, has a shaved head and is black.

He is proud of his heritage. One of the few adornments on his wall is a portrait of one of his ancestors, Tiburcio Naranjo, who was one of the first Afro-Cuban officers in the Cuban military.

Guerra is very pleased that I’ve come to speak to him. I read a story by Guerra in the UNEAC literary magazine and saw in it a quality that I had not seen in any of the other pieces in the union’s literary offers.

The narrator of El Muerto ends up gorging himself on all the food and drink he can buy. Then, in a vivid scene, he throws it all up.

The story is called El Muerto, The Dead Man. It is a muscular, taut story, that only uses commas, no periods and tell the story of a young Cuban who assumes the identity of tourist.

"I wanted to take a look at the situation in Cuba of the presence of tourists. But I decided to look at it through the eyes of an average Cuban."

The story opens with the first person narrator in a hotel bathroom stall, counting Fula, street slang for money:

Seated on the can, my man, with the door nice and shut, I count the money and I can’t believe it, my lord, I say to myself, I count it again, slowly, with my pants at my ankles, as if I was wrapped up in the business of taking a dump, so the employees and the curious suspect nothing, nine hundred bucks is not a dream, I say to myself, real, constant, I count them again,

The narrator then decides to wear his new identity out on the town, carrying himself with the mixture of stupidity and arrogance, according to the story, typical of tourists. Soy una yuma, the narrator says to himself, to convince himself that he is passing in his guise. Yuma is a derogatory term for tourist.

As a tourist, Havana opens up to the unnamed narrator. Women throw themselves at him, drawn to him by his money. Bartenders, who would otherwise not look twice at him, busy themselves, almost exclusively, to his comfort. Hotels, that would do not permit Cubans to enter, open up to him and his money.

In a sense, with Guerra’s short story, contemporary Cuban literature has come full circle. In 1950, Nicholas Guillen wrote an essay entitled Josephine Baker in Cuba. The opening scene of the piece is a hand-wringing clerk of the National hotel turning the singer away because of her dark-skin.

El Nacional was off limits to black people and all other Cubans who couldn’t afford the exorbitant prices. Guillen writes that the hotel might as well have been a part of another country, dropped into the middle of Cuba. It was not for Cubans.

"I’m happy when my work connects with someone," Guerra tells me.

Today, with the legalization of the dollar and the increased dependency on tourism, the government does not allow Cubans to step into hotels and other tourists areas. Now, it’s not only black people who can’t go into hotels, it’s all Cubans, who are subject the apartheid-like laws.

This is the environment that Guerra wants to capture. The Havana overrun by young girls from the country side, who come to work the street as jinteras. It matters little that some of these women are college educated because their jobs, if they have one, will only pay a fraction of what it costs to survive. It’s an Havana where socialist ideals vanish as the need for dollars becomes the ruling principle. The narrator of El Muerto ends up gorging himself on all the food and drink he can buy. Then, in a vivid scene, he throws it all up.

"I’m happy when my work connects with someone," Guerra tells me.

His wife is giving him the cold shoulder today, Guerra says. She’s upset that he has quit his job at the writer’s union. But Guerra saw his position there as little more than a distraction. He has to write. A black man has to prove himself twice to measure up to standards in Cuba, he says. Nobody, certainly not anyone in the union, is going to give him what he wants, a place in the Cuban canon. He’s going to have to take it.

He’s made progress. In 1992 he won a major writing award. And he also accompanied Miguel Barnett on a reading tour of Germany. Barnett, head of the culture ministry’s Fundacion de Fernando Ortiz, and a major writer of an older generation, thrilled Guerra when he mentioned that many years earlier he had gone on the same tour with famed Mexican writer Juan Rulfo. "That’s the first time I ever felt like a writer," Guerra says with a smile.

Guerra’s generation is called the "the newest of the new." But even though his generation is celebrated as the next big thing, there are already, he says, a group of young twenty-somethings preparing themselves to charge up the literary hill.

"We have yet to fully arrive and already we’re being challenged," laughs Guerra.

We smoke cigarettes and talk writing for hours.

But he doesn’t seem to want to talk about Padilla.

Finally, he relents. Of course, he says, he’s heard about Herberto Padilla. Who hasn’t? Sure, it can happen again, he says. He seems reluctant to pursue the topic.

"Look," he finally says, "I just hope it doesn’t happen to me."

I’ve pretty much given up on finding Pedro Juan but I decide to stop by Dulce Maria one last time to see if my luck changes.

Hector is happy to see me. After coffee and cigarettes I ask if he’s had a chance to speak to Pedro Juan about seeing me.

Yes, he says, he was able to meet with Pedro Juan one last time before he went back home to another province. I’m sorry, Hector says, he did not want to talk to you.

He doesn’t want any trouble, Hector says.

 

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