Author Leonardo Padura Paints the Cuba of Today
Padura: in Cuba, the only option left is to leave, and 10 percent of the population has already done so in the last three years.
HAVANA TIMES – Cuban writer Leonardo Padura, winner of the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, believes that Cuba is currently experiencing the worst crisis in its history, to the point that one million people, 10% of the population, have left the country in the last three years.
“The option remaining to people is to leave. And it is not those who want to leave, but those who can, because an exit via Nicaragua and the coyotes costs around 10,000 dollars. And more than a million people have left, so you can imagine the levels of hopelessness and desperation that many people feel,” said Padura in an interview with EFE.
The author said that, like detective Mario Conde, his alter ego and the protagonist of several of his novels, he has become more pessimistic about Cuban reality in the nearly 35 years since he wrote his first detective novel.
“We have both grown older, Conde and I. And we have seen a process of deterioration of Cuban reality, which is now more serious than ever, even more serious than in that Special Period when everything was lacking (with the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the aid it had sent to the Island),” he said.
Padura, who visited Rio de Janeiro this week at the invitation of the Banco do Brasil Cultural Center to participate in one of the Reading Club sessions, said that the deterioration of the situation in Cuba in recent years has extended to issues that seemed to have been resolved many years ago.
“I think people see things very pessimistically. They are very tired, very exhausted. Right now, in recent days in Havana, there are serious problems with garbage collection, which causes infections and epidemics,” he warned.
He added that Cuba is also currently facing problems with water distribution, electricity supply, food supply and “brutal” inflation.
“Just to give you an idea, imagine that my mother receives my father’s retirement pension, which is 1,800 pesos (about 75 dollars), and a carton of 30 eggs costs 3,000 pesos, if you can get one. For two months now, the ration card has not included the little packet of coffee they used to give you. How can a 96-year-old person live on 1,800 pesos?” he asked.
In his opinion, while five years ago people had a visa to go to the United States, traveled, spent a few days and returned, in the last three years, and “with no other option but to leave,” more than 10% of the population left.
According to the author of The Man Who Loved Dogs, among other works, although there are still Cubans who raise the flag and recite slogans, the vast majority, “or at least” the people around him, see reality from the perspective that Conde sees it now, who is more pessimistic than ever.
“And that speaks of a deterioration, of a loss of confidence, of a lack of hope. And I believe that a society without hope has a hard time offering you what you need as an individual. And that is what is happening in Cuba and I have learned it, as has Conde,” he said.
According to Padura, his generation, which was 35 years old in 1989 and went to university in large numbers, had many real benefits, including access to all the writers who were in fashion.
He affirmed that, personally, many things have changed in his life since he published his first novels, when he was still working as a journalist and before becoming, in 1996, the first Cuban recognized by the regime as an independent writer.
“I was lucky that my third novel won the Café Gijón prize in Spain and that the publishing house Tusquest decided to publish it. I am published in 31 languages, which shows the magnificent effort of promoting my work,” he said.
With respect to his work, on October 2 Padura will launch in Spain a new book of essays about his relations with Havana and an “improved” edition of The Man Who Liked Dogs.
Regarding the book of essays, he explained that it is “a historical and physical, but also sentimental journey through the city, from the outskirts, where I was born and from where I approached it, I got to know it and then I wrote it.”
He said the book also includes a series of fragments from his novels in which the events that occurred in Havana were brought to literature, as well as a series of articles and reports that he has published over many years about the city.
Translated by Translating Cuba.
Adding to Michael’s response that the U.S. doesn’t want to help, it’s a little more complex than that. You have a majority of bitter old generation Cuban Americans that have made sure that the embargo to Cuba is impenetrable. And to add more to the fire… most of the Cuban’s that have migrated within the last 3 years are unwanted in the U.S. by the older generation Cuban American’s.
Everything is true. The cause is the sanctions by USA. Under Obama from the USA things got better. Under Trump things went to hell. United States doesn’t want Cuba to do well.