“Participate in the search for solutions”

From
Havana                                                             Read Spanish Version

"Participate
in the search for solutions"

Says
the award-winning Cuban writer Leonardo Padura Fuentes

By
Manuel Alberto Ramy
maprogre@gmail.com

It might
have been a scheduled meeting, because we have been friends for a
long time, but we met by chance. Leonardo Padura, the famous and
indispensable Cuban novelist, and his wife, Lucía López
Coll, journalist and editor — a woman whose sweetness, talent and
discretion have contributed to her husband’s success — were leaving
the building where my wife works, just as I entered it. And, since we
were near a coffee shop, we decided to go for a cup of coffee and a
chat. 

The
topic was unavoidable: the meetings being held by the various
artists’ associations in the National Union of Writers and Artists of
Cuba (UNEAC) prior to its seventh Congress. 

About
that exchange of opinions we reached a common conclusion: there has
been a bit of everything, from the viewpoints of those who see the
meetings as a form of labor vindication (which is not their purpose)
and who, from the highest levels of culture, have cast a long look at
the nation’s reality.

But we
also agreed that both positions are not contradictory. Rather, they
are two flight charts: one (a short one) that goes from the specific
to the general, and another that does the opposite. No doubt, the
latter is the important one because it contributes more to the great
national debate and can provide the answers to the specific needs of
society, to whatever "affects us all, as citizens."

Padura,
52, his beard neatly trimmed, speaks precisely, using the exact words
to define what he thinks, as well as what he describes in his novels.
His eyes often have a tinge of sadness. It occurs to me that the eyes
Mario Conde, the famous investigator in Padura’s police novels, would
also reveal the same. But there are also sparks of hope and illusion,
as if Padura were saving his most popular character from an
existential crisis.

Perhaps
a Cuban writer cannot enjoy (like Padura does) so many national and
international awards, especially the devotion of his readers, without
reflecting in his eyes — and his works — both sadness and hope, an
urgency to make a collective dream come true.

A dog
races past our sidewalk table, and the image prompts me to ask about
Padura’s next novel, whose working title is "The Man who Loved
Dogs." In the novel, Padura tackles the life of Ramón
Mercader, the man accused of Trotsky’s assassination — a crime
Mercader never admitted — and who, after serving a long sentence in
Mexico, died in Cuba. Mercader used to stroll through these very
streets in the Miramar district of Havana with his dogs, two elegant
Russian wolfhounds.

"I
don’t have much to go. It should be ready by next year," he
answers, with the exhilaration of the long-distance runner when he
arrives at the finish. On the trail of Trotsky and Mercader, Padura
has toured cities and towns in Europe and Mexico and invaded the
inner world of the key characters. It may have been the most
painstaking and delicate research task of his life.

Although
Trotsky’s ideas are, to a degree, revived in the debates that
circulate through the Internet and outside, our conversation returns
to its origin, the UNEAC Congress that will be held next April. I ask
Padura: "What topics are fit for debate, and what is the role of
culture at this very exceptional period of our nation’s life?"

As
quickly as Mario Conde draws his pistol, Padura answers: "As
soon as I get home, I’ll send them to you in an e-mail." I
arrive home, open my mail, and share with you the opinions of
Leonardo Padura Fuentes, whose core novel (in my opinion) is not one
of his police stories but "The Novel of My Life."

"The
country’s reality demands from Cuban artists an absolute
responsibility not only over their present but also over the possible
future. It seems to me indispensable that the next UNEAC congress
leave out of its debates the provincial and the labor-related issues
— though they affect us, true enough — and look beyond what worries
us at present as creators, and reflect on what involves us all, as
citizens. The situations on which the current Cuban society and the
outlook for its future are developing are particularly complex, and
the vision of the Cuban intelligentsia must actively participate in a
debate as transcendental as the one that demands its present today,
here.

"The
sharp ethical, social and economic conflicts that the Cuban society
today faces, as a result of a complex evolution that has been
perniciously affected by long years of economic crisis, require an
open and essentially sincere analysis that — in a forum such as the
Congress — will identify origins and seek solutions and
alternatives.

"Problems
such as the moral erosion that is seen in broad sectors of the
population, the quality of education and public health, the real
projection that the mass media must have in a society that undergoes
objective and subjective changes, the relationship between the daily
life and the political discourse, the worrisome emigration of young
people with a high degree of cultural and professional preparation
are not only affecting the country’s present but also will decide its
future. The opinions of artists as representatives of society must be
heard today with more responsibility than ever.

"All
this, however, should not and must not alienate the problems that are
typical of creation, the commercialization of art works and the
artists’ social lives. Except that, in my opinion, we need to relate
those issues with those of the very society of which they are part.
The possibility of obtaining a home or buying a computer or access to
the Internet should not be seen as labor-related problems but as the
result of decisions that affect society as a whole and, beyond that,
its own development.

"I
therefore think that a great responsibility rests in our hands and
that the Congress can and should acknowledge those concerns and, to
the extent of its ability, participate in the search for solutions."

Note:
Leonardo Padura Fuentes received the UNEAC Prize for Best Novel of
1993; the Café Gijón Prize for Best Novel of 1995 in
Spain; the Insular America Prize for Best Novel of 2003 in France;
and has received the Cuban Critics Award on six occasions.

Manuel
Alberto Ramy is Havana bureau chief of Radio Progreso Alternativa and
editor of Progreso Semanal, the Spanish-language version of Progreso
Weekly.