Writers who stand against tyranny--and suffer for it

Raúl Rivero - March 27, 2003

HAVANA -- There are some writers and artists who manage to be very happy in a totalitarian state: Foreigners in transit. Particularly those who take long and hurried strides because they no longer feel -- as poet Rubén Darío might have said tartly.

I don't mean that here, within the trade, no one enjoys some form of happiness. However, what I'm talking about is what the word means to a born creator, to wit: total freedom of thought, respect for his individuality and the ability to choose his way to look at the world and live in it.

I'm certain that some characters in the cast -- who in their writings advocate austerity and rigor, closeness to the poor and to their fate -- feel that they are in a special paradise when someone from above gives them material goods that are not available for people to whom those characters direct their messages of resistance and agony.

True, too, is that those same characters have been seen to roll their eyes upward when they receive, in solemn ceremonies, some of the medals used to reward old age or obedience. One might say that there is a mania involving the awarding of decorations that could be called the curse of the two Leos: Leonid Brezhnev and Leónidas Trujillo.

Very well, this is a more-elevated and more-effective way to conjugate the verb ''to struggle'' in its homespun meaning, but this kind of happiness -- the one hailed by the gentlemen in transit -- sits on a framework of angst.

Do the high-minded travelers remember, amid their temporary jollity, a man named Heberto Padilla, from Pinar del Río province, Republic of Cuba? Or have we all left him, battered everywhere, like a young elf, in the same place where he watched time put an end to Dylan Thomas? [Padilla was arrested by Cuban authorities in 1971 for writing counter-revolutionary poetry and brought before an audience to criticize himself and fellow intellectuals].

No, they don't remember him. He is a fellow who left and died far away, whose death prompted some people to acknowledge condescendingly that at least he knew how to write.

Such is life, the pilgrims might say. And maybe they'll turn to their silent hosts and ask them why Padilla left, and -- their question unanswered -- will ask for another round of mojitos, courtesy of the reader.

It must be more comfortable to keep him silent, so that they can plunder his verses, his Cuban music. Don't let the man shine, the man who suffered, who had to leave his streets, the endless groves. Hide the man who thought he should submit evidence of the sacrifices.

Most likely, neither the happy folks in the courtyard nor the others will want to quote these words over an after-dinner coffee. The artist who, hoping for a better world, defends totalitarianism -- either through clumsiness, congenital maliciousness or monetary stimuli -- only manages to dig his own grave and to betray the human race.

No. They won't place that quote on their linen tablecloth, because they might summon the ghost of Reinaldo Arenas to irk them with his irreverence and his warnings, with his stories of escapes and prisons. And he would die again, far from Holguín and the jungle, which was the sea, as he used to say. [Author of the celebrated book Before Night Falls, Arenas left Cuba in the 1980 Mariel boatlift.]

That man is not mentioned either, because he dampens the victories and dulls the medals. Anyway, peace be unto those who celebrate and sing and embrace one another. Let us show respect and understanding for their merrymaking, although I believe that right now it's important to remember Padilla and Arenas.

I write their names not out of passion or nostalgia, because I wasn't a close friend to them and was almost always among their adversaries. I name them to revive them slightly, the way I name Virgilio and Lezama and the others who truly had to go into exile because totalitarianism demands docility.

Totalitarianism saw someone stand up -- at least one person will always stand up -- and is adjusting its telescopic sight.

Raul Rivero, a Cuban poet and independent journalist, was arrested March 20 during a crackdown on dissidents. Charges are pending. The men he mentions at the end of this column are acclaimed writer José Lezama Lima and playwright Virgilio Piñera. This is the last column he wrote for El Nuevo Herald before his arrest.