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Raul Rivero. Posted on Thu, Mar. 27, 2003 in
The Miami Herald.
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. | 
