Leonardo Padura: "The Cuban reality is too unique to be explained with prejudice for or against"
By Astrid Pikielny | LA NACION
On the eve of his arrival in the country, the Cuban writer and journalist discusses his praise and criticism of his country, and affirms that the opening is changing the social life in the island
05.04.2014 | 00:00
He said that writing was his lifeline; it rescued him from madness and despair in the nineties when the crisis of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) swept away the socialist utopia's promises and dreams, and plunged Cuba -his homeland, the country where he lives, and to which he returns after his many travels abroad- into an unimaginable crisis.
Leonardo Padura, the journalist and writer who captivates thousands of readers around the world and has unleashed a true "Paduramanía"; the man who writes in Cuba about Cuba and -in his many novels and journalistic works for an international news agency- does not spare devastating criticisms of the truncated utopia, said this -slowly and warmly from the island- in a telephone conversation scheduled for the eve of his arrival in Argentina.
Next Saturday he will present at the Book Fair in Buenos Aires: The Longest Journey (Capital Intelectual- Futuro Anterior), a book which compiles newspaper articles written in the 1980s and 1990s and offers a journey along the identity of Cuba through moments, milestones and characters.
These works, written in a singular moment of Cuban journalism --which allowed for literary experimentation and creation-- surprise us today for their validity and quality of expression.
"I wrote them thinking of texts that would not die with their publication and that would have a longer existence. I really like that those works written so many years ago are now published, edited and studied in journalism schools as a way to use the narrative techniques and the language of the literary profession," he said.
Padura explained that, after that creative parenthesis, in the 80s, in the history of Cuban journalism there was a return to a "politicized and utilitarian" press which presents "a sweetened, watered-down image of the country." The author of The Man Who Loved Dogs -a novel about Trotsky and his murderer, Ramon Mercader- and a cycle of crime novels which have as protagonist the now famous detective Mario Conde, Padura acknowledges in Conde a sort of alter ego, hunted by nostalgia, disenchantment and disillusionment with the revolution that was not, and the promised future that did not arrive as expected.
-Of all the working tools you have chosen the word. Why?
-Probably because I was not able to be a good baseball player; because I would have been a disaster if I had tried to do any manual work; or because I have no talent for show business, and therefore could not have been an actor or a politician. Anyway, writing is the best thing I can do; I think it is the only thing I know how to do. The word is the queen of communication: it existed before literature and it will exist after the digital era. And the word gave me the chance to satisfy what became a need: to communicate something.
– To Communicate what?
-The most dissimilar attitudes, realities and feelings. When you write literature or journalism you need to ask what you write for. And often the answer to that question is in a small detail of everyday life or in a great event. It depends on many reasons that are not always the same. Sometimes I see a person and who prompts me to create a literary character or write a news story. I always try to give them a dimension within the society where I live, and communicate a story of that society that would allow the reader to identify it.
-Anyway, your case is atypical: you live in Cuba; you write about Cuba and your journalistic and literary texts are not published in Cuba, but in other countries.
-It's true. It's a strange situation: making journalism on a reality that has no impact on that reality, or a direct relationship with the people who make it. But there is an indirect relationship: in one way or another, many of these texts circulate and are read in Cuba. So much so that I often meet people who tell me about a text I wrote two years ago as if I had written it the previous week, because it was then that they read it. And they circulate so much within that alternative circle that recently something has happened: certain people have started circulating texts as if I had written them, but which are not mine. This is not uncommon but it is not nice.
- How do you fight your own limitations, your own barriers when it comes to writing?
-My strategy is to work hard. I write several versions of my novels. I write them; I revise them; I give them to people to read; I write them again, I revise them again; I give them to people to read again; I rewrite them again, and so on, until I’m satisfied with what I have written. The result of my work is stubbornness, a struggle to try to say what I want to say in the best possible way. And that is also my attitude towards journalism. Right now I'm writing a story that explains what life in Cuba is like. I've started four times and I'm still not happy.
But you write in Cuba about Cuba. Doesn’t that make it easier to write?
-Having the experience is not the problem. Many people have the experience but lack the ability to communicate that experience in the best possible way. That is only achieved through a lot of hard work.
- How much of the disenchantment disillusionment and skepticism of detective Mario Conde is present in Leonardo Padura?
-A lot. There is a close relationship between the character and myself. Mario Conde in my novels is my way of expressing Cuban reality. His are my eyes seeing that reality. Mario Conde is a typical man of my generation who has a burden of nostalgia, disappointment, lost hopes, and the remaining illusions of my generation. Through him I have managed to express my own relationships with the reality we have lived and are living in Cuba.
-Fifty years after the Cuban revolution, today we see the promise unfulfilled, the broken dream.
-Yes, it has to do with unfulfilled promises. I remember there was much talk about the future; about a future that would come at some point. And when that future came, it did not bring those promises we had been made. Rather the contrary. The nineties was a decade when my generation had reached its first maturity and apogee. It was then that we were surprised by a crisis that paralyzed the country and basically paralyzed the people. There were practically no opportunities for development. I was lucky that my possibilities of expression were in literature and in those years literature saved me from despair and madness. I wrote and published a lot, and that was my lifeline in a very complicated material situation for the life of the people and the country in general.
-You participated in that "spring" of journalism. Could we talk about an interregnum?
-It was a very special parenthesis in the development of Cuban journalism. There were a number of conditions --as we usually say objective and subjective-- which allowed for a different journalism. And like in most things, it is important to be in the right place at the right time. And I was in the right place at the right time and could do that kind of journalism.
-After this parenthesis there was a return to a "politicized and utilitarian" press, as you yourself described it. What is the space for that press? Is it read?
-It has a prominent place in Cuban society because it is the only press which circulates officially. The thing is that the credibility of that press is much lower than it should be. There's a joke in Cuba --a little macabre-- that goes: if you are looking for food, or milk or whatever, you will only see it in the newspaper or on television." That journalism offers a sweetened, watered-down image of the country and people take it with a grain of salt.
- Why do you think that after the 80s Cuban journalism never again experienced innovations such as those of which you were part?
-Because in the 90s, newspapers and magazines practically disappeared when the paper sent by the USSR stopped coming. Without that support, it was impossible to make journalism, and there was only room for the official propaganda; except for very few cultural publications which painstakingly survived. Then, in the late 90s, a recovery of physical spaces began, but the regression in spaces for creation, information and analysis remained. So it was impossible to even dream of that literary journalism of the 80s. The press was used as a mechanism for state propaganda and there was not much space for freedom. Today, with alternative spaces -magazines, blogs- there is a different journalism, but not really widespread, and therefore, with limited effectiveness. The best of Cuban journalism today is in the analyses and the newspaper articles outside the official press.
- Can "militant journalism" be made? To what extent does the militant swallow the journalist?
It swallows it whole. The militant obeys the Party. The Party decides and commands. The journalist then vanishes.
- What errors or distortions are made when looking at Cuba from the outside? I mean those who have an idealized view of Cuba, or those who see a fierce dictatorship there.
-Understanding a reality such as the Cuban reality is a challenge. It is too unique --too unparalleled-- to be understood by comparison or contrast; or to be explained from prejudices for or against. Cuban reality often touches the absurd; I would say it is a reality that sometimes becomes unreal. So the most important premise to attempt an interpretation of Cuban reality and Cuban life is to live it. This is the only way you can begin to understand something, but you will never understand it all. I live in Cuba and I write about what I see, about what I know, about what I experience. I never try to make assumptions; and that is why it bothers me so much when I am asked to make predictions on the future of Cuba. I speak of concrete reality as I see it, but without distorting this reality. So I think I can write about Cuba living in Cuba, and give an image that, if not reality itself, resembles it a lot.
- How would you define your situation in Cuba? A “tolerated “critic? How have you built and defended the space of autonomy and independence that you have there?
-I am an independent writer and a journalist who does not live off of journalism. I have not stopped practicing journalism, even though my work over the past 20 years has been published more outside of Cuba than in Cuba. I do not know if I am “tolerated”, or whether someone thought and gave me that category; what I do know is that I have been able to do my present work without anyone bothering me. I pay the price of my journalism not being published in Cuba, and people having to read my things at random, when someone sends by email any of my chronicles. But it's a price I pay gladly in exchange for freedom.
- How deep is the economic, political, and social Cuban "openness" about which we hear so much outside Cuba lately?
I do not know if it's deep. I don’t think it is; but it is an opening with some interesting elements that are moving aspects of the Cuban economic and social life, albeit very timidly. Today, there are more people living in the country without depending on the state; there are more who travel abroad and stay or return; and there are more who get better returns for their work. All that is important; it gives mobility to the social structure and eventually, will give mobility to the political structure. In intellectual life, for example, the relationship of independent workers with the state is now mostly about taxes. There is no need to ask permission to travel, publish, display or perform, make a personal work committed to art and not to institutions. However, there is still a long way to go, especially in the media world.
-I'd like your definition of the Cuban regime.
-In this case it is the same as when we try to explain Cuba from established (or pre-set) models which fail to express the uniqueness of the Cuban case. Cuba is a country with a trinity of power: the State-Government-Party (only one party) which exercises power through the same person and confuses its powers by mixing them together. That trinity is even identified with another binomial: the homeland-nation. The result is a quintet of real and abstract elements brought together in a single power. Cuba is truly socialist -in a 20th. Century style- and its political structure is typical of the system, with elections and legislation that match this structure. Cuba is simply a country governed by a single party with a maximum leader who is both president of the Council of State and Council of Ministers, i.e. the government.
-You spoke of a future that did not come as expected. How would you like Cuba to be in the future? What country do you long for?
That is the question I should never be asked! I do not have a crystal ball. And as for longing… I long for normalcy. A country that is normal, not exceptional.
Leonardo Padura: "La realidad cubana es demasiado peculiar para explicarla con prejuicios a favor o en contra"
Por Astrid Pikielny | LA NACION
En vísperas de su llegada al país, el escritor y periodista cubano matiza las miradas elogiosas y críticas sobre su país, y afirma que la apertura está cambiando la vida social en la isla
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