Max Lesnik: Before all of Cuba for the first time

This Cuban, a politician and journalist residing in Miami and who left the island in 1961, is actually little known among the young people of today’s Cuba, especially when a few generations have passed since the revolutionary triumph of 1959.

What prompted Lesnik’s departure?

The same question was asked by his friend Fidel Castro in the orthodox and revolutionary vicissitudes during a face to face meeting back in the late 70s.

Lesnik had several reasons, and perhaps the fundamental one was his displeasure with the close ties with the USSR. And so he told Fidel, who after a pause replied that he, in his place, would have done the same to save the Revolution.

After some misadventures before its exhibition, finally this Sunday, Cuban TV will broadcast the documentary film, El hombre de las dos Habana (The Man of Two Havanas), directed by his daughter, Vivian, and made in 2007.

It matters little that Cuban authorities have given it the green light a few years late because it is a very well told story and, moreover, a necessary one, with an extraordinary topicality.

The arguments put forward by this revolutionary, born in 1930 in San Antonio de Vueltas, Camajuaní, current province of Villa Clara, are convincing because to aspire to an independent, democratic and sovereign country, you do not necessarily have to agree one hundred percent with certain political and ideological requirements. And here, in my modest judgment, is the validity, lesson and message of the feature film.

No one can doubt that as he enters his ninth decade of existence, this man’s life has been dedicated body and soul to his native land.