El dieciséis de julio/July 16th
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| Photo from The Literature of Uprootedness: An Interview with Reinaldo Arenas (in 1983) from The New Yorker, Dec. 2013 (click HERE). |
A Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright whose memoir Before Night Falls was on the New York Times' "10 Best Books of the Year" list in 1993 (and made into a movie starring Javier Bardem in 2000), Arenas was an early sympathizer of Fidel Castro who later became a critic and rebel. Though he had joined Castro's rebels in the mountains in 1959, he soon became disillusioned with the regime. His writing, openly gay lifestyle, and unauthorized publishing outside the country got him in trouble, and in 1974 he was sent to prison by the Cuban government for "ideological deviation." He escaped and tried to leave Cuba, but was rearrested and imprisoned alongside hardened criminals. He survived by helping them write letters to their wives and girlfriends. He was released in 1976 after renouncing his work. In 1980 he fled Cuba as part of the Mariel Boatlift. After living in Miami for a bit ("a caricature of Cuba," he called it), he moved to New York, which he liked because it gave you "both people and solitude." Arenas was diagnosed with AIDS in 1987 and in 1990, close to death, he died of an intentional overdose. In a note left for friends and family he wrote, "I want to encourage the Cuban people abroad as well as on the island to continue fighting for freedom. Cuba will be free. I already am."
As part of a 1983 interview printed in The New Yorker in 2013 with Ann Tashi Slater, Arenas spoke about what he loved and hated:
When you think about what you love or what you hate, what would that be?
In what, literature?
No, in general, in life.
What I love most is life itself. I’m very afraid of death. Nevertheless, it seems to me that it’s a solution. It’s the only thing that gives meaning to life! (Laughter.) I really like people in general. People, the mystery of the human being, and the sea above all. The sea is a mystery.
What I don’t like is … well, just imagine. There are so many things not to like. Stupidity, which is something terrible, and the militarization of the world. Dogma. When someone talks to me about some dogma, I can no longer talk with that person. Dogma can be religious as well as political; it’s the same. You can’t engage in any dialogue because the person is already wielding an absolute truth. It’s like pounding on a rock—there’s no way in. I think that, in the end, what I hate most in the world is fanaticism.
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