Raúl Roa’s Orbit

By Salvador Bueno, Cuban professor, philologist, writer and journalist.
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A CubaNews translation of the introduction to a 2004 anthology of writings by the late Raul Roa Garcia, Cuba's "Chancellor of Dignity". "Chancellor" is the Spanish term for Foreign Minister. The volume was published to mark the 45th anniversary of the formation of Cuba's Foreign Relations Ministry, or MINREX. Roa's son, Raul Roa Khouri, is Cuba's ambassador to the Vatican as of 2005.
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A review of the Cuban nation’s evolution brings about a reflection on the role played by our great personalities in our history. Our historical process offers the active presence of outstanding figures who, in their own times, stood for their people’s deepest yearnings. Affirming the masses’ decisive position in historical processes is by no means a denial of the role of outstanding individuals who guide and lead people’s movements. As Plekhanov said:
 

Cuban history reveals effective actions by exceptional individuals who succeeded in establishing a favorable position for themselves in order to satisfy a collective longing, their people’s greatest ambitions. Heroes sprouted during the war against Spanish domination who spearheaded the struggle to attain national independence. Ranking among the first were José Martí’s life, work and ideas. To face up to the pseudo republic which U.S. imperialism manipulated at whim for its own sake, exceptional men stepped forward to oppose the corrupt governments imposed by their overbearing neighbor.

In these pages I am introducing an historical personality who was part of that constellation of war-hardened and abnegated fighters who revolted at both the empire’s rule and its local nincompoops. In the prime of his life, he also had the extraordinary opportunity to represent the victorious Revolution at the international level, stretching as far as to deserve the honorable designation of Chancellor of Dignity given to him by his own people. Raúl Roa (1907-1982)’s revolutionary praxis is an instructive signal. Through his performance and speech, his persona is indicative of stellar moments in Cuban history. For over 50 years he had a unique niche in the revolutionary process that took place in his homeland and culminated in the construction of a new society.

Ever since he appeared, making an acute profile in Cuban public life, Roa made himself known and became pre-eminent by means of both his actions and his words, not to mention his audacious and unflagging revolutionary thoughts, in keeping with the efforts and self-sacrifice of young students and workers who, starting in 1925, embarked on the pressing mission of transforming their nation’s neocolonial status. He was part of the youngest batch of the so-called "1930 generation", whose members fought tenaciously and till the end, against Gerardo Machado’s puppet tyranny. Although their brave campaign endured terrible repression, frustration and deviations, and many succumbed to comfort, disappointment or sorrow, his voice, letters and revolutionary activity remained above weariness and weakness. Accordingly, he wrote: “I am a survivor of a generation who fought for a future that was dramatically defeated by the past. That future we dreamed about and longed for is now history’s living flesh”.

When the crucial time arrived and the momentous quest for national liberation and social justice, moral cleanliness and radical change was again in unrelenting motion, he took position in the vanguard and could raise his voice to speak on the Republic’s behalf and its then completely free people, before the diplomatic representatives of the world, at a time when his fully recovered homeland was in danger. And his words, filled with clamors and outcries, echoed his country’s best and truest voices, as if the verb of the founders who foresaw the future had once more found the living expression it needed to stir up a secular enthusiasm so often repressed and falsified.

Intermingled in Raúl Roa as a man in a single unbreakable, indivisible entity, we find the man, the revolutionary, the professor and the author. Always a militant writer, from the very outset he was a fighter who wrote, and a protagonist, witness and guide both to his own and subsequent generations. About poet Emilio Ballaga’s death, he stated: “He felt absolutely destined to straight letters. I in turn was entranced, as if by sorcery, with the hubbub of palenques[1]. Militant letters were my letters”. As a revolutionary, he juxtaposed his activity with journalism, teaching, essay-writing and oratory. In his capacity of a withstanding militant, forever loyal to the pugnacity which defined his public conduct from his youth. He filled his pages with fresh strokes, youthful energy, carefree wording, frenzied replies, and a categorical defense of his convictions. Armed with Marxist-Leninist thoughts and with Martí’s doctrine, he stood up to prudish and submissive intellectuals, moderates, and revisionists, as he later did, from socialist Cuba’s unswerving stance, in front of the rapacious empire, its unconditional allies and its low-quality puppets.

Never in so many years of hard and difficult work, first as a student and then as a university professor, did Roa lay aside his concern about culture, literature and art, because he always discerned that great artistic and literary works are not only inexhaustible reserve of spiritual pleasure but also combat weapons, instruments for ideological struggle and ramparts of man’s dignity. Small wonder that he never cared for ivory towers, cultural neutrality or any other tittle-tattles devised by capitalism and its direct and indirect lackeys as diversionary maneuvers. By then his first articles, published in newspapers and magazines, show him as the fighting writer he would always be, his target being either Cuban poet José Manuel Poveda’s verses or those by Russian Alexander Blok[2]. Style flows with passion from his prose, built essentially on a vindicating impetuosity which is vehicle to his concerns about problems facing Cuba, his people, and the world as a whole. “I have never written anything just for the sake of it,” he admits. “I have always been induced by something that needed to be written for some reason”.

Raúl Roa began his patriotic and literary education in his childhood and teenage years in the bosom of his own family. Straight from his mambí[3] grandfather, Lieutenant Colonel of the Liberation Army Ramón Roa, himself a combatant, poet and prose writer, he heard about memories of the Ten Years War (1868-1878). Later on his emotion was shaken by an old copy of Episodios de la revolución cubana (1890) by Manuel de la Cruz[4] that he inherited from his grandfather, who had jotted down in it the sources and protagonists of those deeds. Since then he read as well Ramón Roa’s testimony: A pie y descalzo (On foot and barefoot) (1890) and Los poetas de la Guerra (Wartime poets) (1893), a selection for which José Martí wrote a foreword that included some poems by his grandfather. In those years he avidly devoured adventure novels by Emil Salgari, Alexander Dumas, Jules Verne and many others, as he told Ambrosio Fornet[5] in a 1968 interview for ‘Cuba’ magazine. As a young man he read Martí, who would be perennial mentor for the writer and revolutionary.

Roa was born in ill-fated years, when his homeland was enduring the second U.S. military occupation (1906-1909), and grew up in times of venal governments, lifted to power by the Empire and the trickery of political maneuverers in pseudo-democratic elections. The U.S. government’s political and predominance were hand in glove with cultural penetration to deform our national roots. The echoes of a campaign boosted in favor of university reform which awakened rebellion in Julio Antonio Mella[6] drive reached the sunlit halls of Marist-ruled Champagnat college in Víbora district, where the restless adolescent deducted time from his frequent readings to play games and sports with local rowdies. Roa was yet to finish high-school studies in this religious institution when he climbed up the University front steps  to hear the touching speeches delivered in the legendary Court of Laurels by the student leader who was already gaining nationwide prestige, a momentous event for the young man who would begin in that same 1925-1926 school year his Civil and Public Law studies. Julio Antonio Mella, Rubén Martínez Villena[7] and Pablo de la Torriente Brau[8] would be of paramount significance to Raúl Roa’s political and literary timetable.

Enrolling in Havana University, the only one then open in Cuba, was a springboard for a course that only death would stop. He complemented his studies of university texts with attentive readings of works by Marx, Lenin, and other watchful thinkers of his era. Public activity was soon to be in line with his mind-set revolutionary thinking. He would undergo his first incarceration after signing a declaration in support of Augusto César Sandino’s anti-imperialist exploit and then had contacts with students protesting against the 1901 constitutional reform to extend president Machado’s mandate. He met Rubén Martínez Villena, who invited him to join the Anti-imperialist League of the Americas and teach in ‘José Martí’ People’s University, where he strengthened ties with workers and addressed Havana’s proletariat in guilds and labor unions. As a writer he started by releasing political and literary articles in Rubén-led ‘América Libre’ (Free America) as well as in ‘Revista de Avance’ (Advance Journal), the Diario de la Marina’s Literary Supplement, Manzanillo-based ‘Orto’ magazine, etc. He outstands as a literary critic in works dedicated to Block, Poveda, Martí, Rubén, and José Zacarías Tallet[9]. Worthy of attention are his dynamic prose, sharp criteria, and far-sighted assessments, conformant to modern times.

Raúl Roa’s role in the struggle against Machado’s tyranny placed him in the frontline of popular movements, in which activity he took part to become their most faithful chronicler. He struck up a friendship with Pablo de la Torriente Brau, who worked in Fernando Ortiz’s lawyers office and drafted him into the fight against dictatorship. In March 1927, at a students rally to object Machado’s intention to extend his powers, he gives old thinker Enrique José Varona[10] a manifest denouncing the incoming ploy. Martí, Varona, and Manuel Sanguily[11] would be everlasting role models in Roa’s public conduct and intellectual work. He contributed to establish the University Student Directorate in 1930, and is found beside Martínez Villena that year on March 29 when a general strike took place organized by the first Marxist-Leninist party founded in 1925. He writes the manifest and heads the ‘September 30 revolutionary march, as he called it, during which the blood of students and workers stained the streets equally. Rafael Trejo[12]’s murder highlights the all-out confrontation against the despotic regime.

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A stage of violent clashes with henchmen and apapipios[13], clandestine meetings, imprisonment and exile begins for the combative students, including writings made in the rush demanded by that juncture of fights and efforts. Recently created, the University Students Directorate is controlled by reform advocates, and discussions over this issue where under way on January 3, 1931 in journalist Rafael Suárez Solís’s home when the police stormed the premises and took those present to jail. From cells in El Príncipe castle and Nueva Gerona, the Ala Izquierda Estudiantil (AIE) (Students Left Wing) was established, bringing together both radical and anti-imperialist students, led among others by Roa and Pablo de la Torriente Brau. Once freed, they kept reinforcing AIE and its organ Línea. When its editors where arrested, Raúl and Pablo prepared a new issue headlined with a vibrant call to arms. This article by Roa, ‘Tiene la palabra el camarada Máuser’ (Comrade Mauser has the floor, titled after one of Maiakowski’s verses) reveals his ideological maturity and proves to be his foremost great contribution to Cuban revolutionary thinking through an overview of the political situation to give warning that Cuba is on the eve of an agrarian and anti-imperialist revolution under proletarian guidance. It is not a matter of overthrowing Machado, but transforming the current socioeconomic regime, a goal to be reached only by armed struggle. Carlos Rafael Rodríguez[14] commented that “such a polemic article at that time would prove to be premonitory three decades later.”

Wider dissemination and bound to turn into an exceptional document had his letter to Jorge Mañach[15] in 1931, released first under the title ‘Reaction vs. Revolution’ by the weekly ‘Noticias’ (News) and then as a brochure by poet Manuel Navarro Luna. Besides proving Mañach’s ignorance about Marxism, it discloses the role to be played by the intelligentsia: “The revolutionary intellectual minority is, indeed, the one which, once permeated in concept and sentiment of each epoch’s vital realities, aspirations and needs, break away from their own class and take service with the exploited and oppressed masses…” Roa stresses that Marxism is no dogma, as his contender affirmed, “but an effective and unique instrument of social and human redemption in today’s historical stage”. To this he adds: “It is, for its historical content, a dialectical interpretation of social processes, a true sociology, and for its philosophical content, a singular view about life and its problems, a materialistic explanation of the world it is required to transform”.

During his lengthy stay in Isle of Pines‘s Presidio Modelo, he wrote down testimonial pages that reveal his skills at using expressive memories to present a polyhedral version of the life of political prisoners, helped by his ruminations, humor-filled anecdotes and mastery of language. Roa’s ‘Presidio Modelo’ is not a diary, but a written narration made from August 1931 to January 1933 where his observations and experiences flow freely and grasp these fighters’ individual and collective feelings. It is a denunciation –similar to Pablo de la Torriente Brau’s in his much longer homonymous book– in addition to a testimony of deep human purport.

Despite its brevity these pages belong on top of Cuba’s best documenting literature.
 

This creative capacity finds ways of expression in pages that depict his reminiscence of heroes and martyrs from the days of struggle against Machado, emotional recollections that vibrate throughout Roa’s warm and tender words when he writes about the dead who became symbols and forerunners of the homeland’s future. He drew Trejo’s portrait by saying: “He was by all odds a young man set to great destinations. His broad forehead denoted bright intelligence, his candid joviality a pure spirit, his energetic chin an upright character, his fine sensitivity a Quixote-like sense of living […] However, had I been a genuine diver of souls, I would have noticed in his eyes, just by shaking his right hand, the slight sadness of ‘beings called to die early’.“ About Barceló he remarked: “He was beyond measure, fragile in body and robust in spirit. He had a resplendent look, a wide brow, a hermit-like paleness, virile gestures and thunderous voice. His words were at once lava and honey, fiery and soothing. He loved the sea, mountains, and sunrise, and used to read poetry in star-spangled nights”.

A writer’s multiple facets appear in these works made amid the hardships of the struggle to topple tyranny. His ability as an acrimonious polemicist and acute satirist who wields a language simultaneously cult and popular –thirty years later his speeches in O.A.S.[16] and U.N. meetings would display his mature militant oratory– leaps to the eye from several articles he made in those years. Suffice it to mention the one in which he denounces Marcos García Villarreal, an individual who tried to control the AIE from with the help of a small Trotskyist group he was leading. “This child prodigy is a legitimate pride to his family and unappealable High Pontiff to his epigones who amount to less than the fingers of one hand […] Every time he draws in epic gesture the shining rhetorical scimitar of common places, a glorifying mobilization of admiring drivel is seen in the onlookers’ mouths. Big shot and leader Marquitos Villarreal, the Turquino Peak[17] of adulterated Marxism, is speaking”.

After Gerardo Machado’s demise as a result of a formidable general strike, the ensuing puppet provisional government, whose mandate fell through in less than three months, heeded the American ambassador’s ‘mediating’ mission requirements. The military coup that allowed Sergeant Batista to stick out his greedy figure found support in the University Students Directorate and other reform sectors. Dr. Grau San Martín becomes president of a contradictory government during which rule Antonio Guiteras[18] outstands as a radical anti-imperialist. Attacked by both right- and left-wingers, Grau is replaced by a government totally controlled by Batista. A terrible crackdown on the March 1935 strike and Guiteras’s murder set off anti-Machado revolution’s failure.

Since his release from prison early in 1933, Raúl Roa rejoins the struggle against Machado’s government and held on to the one that followed. ‘Línea’ would launch anti-imperialist watchwords: ‘Yankee navy keep out of Cuba’. In the recently opened University he participates in students assemblies and depuration processes, and writes articles for ‘Ahora’ (Now) and other journals n defense of university reform and in opposition to maneuvers by freeloaders and opportunists. He finishes his Civil and Public Law studies, and right before the March 1935 strike, ‘Bufa Subversiva’ (Subversive Farce) is printed in a volume gathering his major articles to date, including his evocation of heroes and martyrs who were his comrades, students’ revolutionary actions, his farewell speech at Enrique José Varona’s funeral, lectures on prominent figures such as José Ingenieros[19], and pieces on political debate and literary criticism. Years later he would comment: “It was, and still is, a book of combat. Affirmative and hopeful, always open and pugnacious, like the spirit that gave it strength and meaning. It was the book of a generation destined to be hard at work for the advent of brighter days they might not live to see. Many times along these 15 turbulent years that have fallen to our lot I have revisited its pages. In spite of everything, it’s been shelter, spur and renewal”.

Forced into exile by the climate of terror brought about by the 1935 strike, he traveled to the US to continue his activity. Together with Pablo de la Torriente Brau and other New York-based fellow exiles, he founds Organización Revolucionaria Cubana Antimperialista (ORCA) (Cuban Antiimperialist Revolutionary Organization) targeted on grouping revolutionary sectors in one single front to oppose Batista’s military dictatorship, barely camouflaged as an allegedly civilian government. Roa’s letters to Pablo de la Torriente Brau from Tampa and Miami underline the need to create such front, stating: “In grandpa Marx and uncle Lenin I have the revolutionary Tables of the Law”, and clearly points out: “There’s no other way for Cuba than the articulation of a truly revolutionary mass force with a well-defined program, a dialectical tactic, and a definitely anti-imperialist ideology”. Lisandro Otero[20] remarks: “In those five years since he issued his pamphlet urging students to take up arms until his statement to Pablo about building up a revolutionary movement, you can notice his fine political nose and how he increasingly perceived the radicalization of the masses and the ripening of objective conditions to wage a revolution”.

The exile returns to Cuba and keeps trying to hatch a single front. Nicolás Guillén[21]’s publication ‘Mediodía’ (Noon) quotes excerpts (chosen by Carlos Rafael Rodríguez) from Roa’s foreword to ‘La Pupila Insomne’ (The Sleepless Pupil). To elucidate the 1931 polemic, he replies to Jorge Mañach ‘from the shoulder’, asserting as he had then: “It’s about assuming a crystal-clear, belligerent attitude between Rubén Martínez Villena and Jorge Mañach, between revolution and reaction”, and adding, “For the time being […] his emulating, thrilling, affirmative, generous, radically clean and paradigmatic life”. Roa’s conferences and articles attest to his defense of the Spanish people’s struggle against fascism. He joins other writers to found the fortnightly ‘Baraguá’, directed by José Antonio Portuondo[22]. Its motto: ‘For Cuba’s liberation’, that said in its first issue: “Baraguá [23]comes to life as an entirely free organ, with no other limitation but that of being at the exclusive service of national majorities’ interests, at a time of utmost confusion of ideas and values that Cubans have seen before –and maybe will see again”. The journal protested –hence its name– the alignment of left-wing forces. In his article ‘Unificación revolucionaria y Constituyente soberana’ (Sovereign revolutionary and constituent unification) Roa ratified his conviction that “a single front of genuinely revolutionary organizations built upon common foundations with well-defined goals” could not be postponed. A general amnesty was decreed in December 1937 as a prerequisite to the notification of the Constituent Assembly that ended its sessions in 1940.

The Faculty of Social Sciences and Public Law called to a contest-competition for a vacancy in the department of Social Doctrines History. Roa eagerly prepared his application under a campaign of attacks against him by reactionary sectors from within and outside the University, led by the Diario de la Marina. Roa’s valuable exercises, pursuant to the principles of dialectical and historical materialism, awarded him the post. One year later, he surprisingly released all his exercises in the book ‘Mis oposiciones’ (My oppositions), a decision that Wenceslao Roces[24] commented: “This gesture has no precedent in the university annals. It’s not a spiteful appeal of a candidate rejected by an academic tribunal before the higher instance of public opinion, but the assertion of a self-assured personality seeking people’s amendment of a professional accomplishment, as befits the responsible conception of a University with a duty to the life of the country to which it must render accounts”.

Being a University professor detracted nothing from Raúl Roa’s public activity, nor did it prevent him from standing up to the serious situation facing Havana University on account of the criminal acts of pseudo-revolutionary gangs, known as ‘bonchismo’[25], that brought forth the murder of students and a professor of as spotless a record as Ramiro Valdés Daussá[26], not to mention some other reprehensible incidents. From the University Council and in articles published in El Mundo and other newspapers, he realized that such groups of hooligans had blossomed in campus and other facilities because of the country’s political and socioeconomic realities, a situation he denounced, just like he did by going so far as to resign his post as Dean of the Social Sciences and Public Law Faculty when student Gustavo Adolfo Mejía Maderne was killed. In now way could Mella’s and Trejo’s University become a lair of gangsters and criminals prevailing upon certain academic authorities.

Especially consequential is his late-1947 debate with writer and journalist Ramón Vasconcelos who, in line with his conservative political views, had picked on the 1930 revolutionary movement by flatly denying its positive side. Roa put across his usual witticism and insight to write six articles several times reprinted under the title ‘Escaramuza en las vísperas y otros engendros’ (Skirmish in the vespers and other oddities) that go over anti-Machado uprising’s features. To the third edition of ‘Retorno a la alborada’ (A return to dawn), he added this footnote:

“I must give warning. Written under the existing circumstances, these controversial pages are a far cry from a consummate historical interpretation of the complex process they set out to address. Rather than an in-depth analysis of the factors at play –either political, social, economic or cultural– it is a movie-like overview with takes, sometimes outlined and sometimes out of focus, showing images now sharp and then astigmatic. Yet, as a whole, its perspective maintains patent validity”.

No historical personality appears more in Roa’s writings than José Martí. Not only did he dedicated articles and conferences to him, but very often and for a variety of reasons made mention of one of the Master’s thoughts to define an attitude or fine-tune the core of his own fundamental reflections. Many times he emphasized that Martí’s message could only be fruitful through the realization of his central ideas. Roa contributed his politics and literature to rescue the Apostle, an endeavor started with Mella’s ‘Glosas al pensamiento de José Martí’ (Some notes about the thoughts of José Martí), released in December, 1926. Months later ‘Revista de Avance’ (Advance Journal) introduced in its August 30, 1927 issue Raúl Roa García’s ‘Martí, poeta nuevo’ (Martí, a new poet), which stressed the modern-age character of Martí’s lyrical creativeness. His conference ‘Rescate y proyección de Martí’, delivered ten years afterward and included in the 1979 collective volume ‘Siete enfoques marxistas sobre José Martí’ (Seven Marxist approaches to José Martí), seizes his popular and anti-imperialist dimension, something neither his meek biographers nor certain pliable scholars from the mediatized Republic ever accomplished. Cuba’s political situation in those years, the Spanish war, and imperialism’s schemes were interpreted with extraordinary acumen by the young orator.

A whole volume could be compiled with Roa’s various works on Martí, such as ‘Martí y el fascismo’ (Martí and fascism) and ‘Martí y el destino americano’ (Martí and America’s fate), just to mention two of them, are enlightening analyses of the Master’s doings. While in exile in Mexico he would duly remember Martí’s centennial which would forward to Cuban history’s front line a generation set out to implement his main apperceptions. When the Chancellor of Dignity battled the enemies of the victorious revolution, our National Hero’s ideas were like well-aimed catapults against the empire’s servants. Suffice it to remember in this regard his words in the OAS meeting held in Costa Rica in August 1960, where time and again he toppled the Master’s quotes by saying, “That was not said by either Karl Marx (or Lenin or Jrushov), but by José Martí”. Thus he proclaimed the Cuban character of our Revolution and its Martí-based roots which, on a par with Marxism-Leninism, shape up its ideological foundations.

Roa’s following piece ‘Quince años después’ (Fifteen years later) was printed in December 1950. In its preliminary note to the reader, he defined the nature of his previous book, ‘Bufa…’ by observing: “I did write it down, but I was only the interpreter of a collective demeanor. (This new book) “is just the voice of a survivor from that generation who keeps insisting in his own way on ideals of yore”. One notices in this lengthy work a certain yearning, even from its dedication: “To my son, on whom I pin my highest hopes. And to the memory of everything that could have been but never was”. He gives us ‘Sombras y luces en la Colina’[27] (Shadows and lights on the Hill), but also ‘Siembra en la brisa’ (Sowing in the breeze) and ‘Violines en primavera’ (Violins in springtime).

The revolted and quarrelsome present determines this work’s prime topics. The first session, ‘Letras en carne viva’ (Letters in the raw) covers domestic issues. Its first article, ‘Aspillera’ (Loophole), reaffirms his persistent and straight posture, ever independent. During Carlos Prío Socarrás[28]’s mandate, Roa is appointed Culture Director of the Ministry of Education, a job he discharges productively and flawlessly. Never before had this division been engaged in so many forms of art and literature. However, he kept fulfilling his mission as a sharpshooter, as proven by his analysis of that government’s eagerness to rectify Ramón Grau San Martín’s legacy. In this article ‘El rescate de la cueva’ (The rescue of the cave) he denounces the “hesitation, clumsiness, mistakes and transgressions piled up in times of Carlos Prío Socarrás”, and ends up stating that:

“It is not by attacking conscience’s sovereignty, fettering one’s foes, or revitalizing hateful institutions that one can gain popular support and restore the empire of democratic power, so gravely endangered by racketeering’s impunity and crises of authority. Wrong and extremely alarming is the path taken by the government with these unilateral, arbitrary measures that bear down on the very fabric of liberties established in and warranted by the constitution”.

Batista’s military coup on March 10, 1952, a few months before a scheduled general election, finds Roa in his unmovable position, so he immediately resumed the fight against the dictatorial regime. In his capacity as journalist and University professor he rejected the military tyranny imposed by imperialism on our people. His articles, published in El Mundo, accused such system based upon force and repression. Through ‘En Guáimaro un día’ [29](Once upon a time in Guáimaro), released a month after the treacherous coup to commemorate an anniversary of the Assembly that laid down Cuba’s first Constitution, he kicked against the usurping government and pointed out that a revolution was unavoidable:

“At this stage nobody can question anymore our right to have a revolution, nor the right of the revolution itself. No revolution takes place by spontaneous generation. Only when society’s evolution or an essential part thereof is seen to be coactively hindered, can it germinate and explode. All revolutions are defined and singled out as expressions of a political willingness to renovate the bases and conditions of institutional life for the benefit of the masses”.

As Batista imposed censorship on the media, Roa made use of all his stylistic resources, culture and imagination to get around the gag and leave proof of his protestation in teasing articles full of alacrity, sarcasm and Creole jeering. They are his ‘fantasy whirlpool’, and they speak of kites, a cobalt scorpion, or a prizewinning papyrus. He ‘praises the lollipop’ and, as most of his fellow citizens, broaches baseball. This compulsory ‘virus-induced aphonia’ leads the writer into ironic, mocking meditations, one of which would have taken Erasmus, he said, to write “a zigzagging essay on amphibology as a literary form of our survival instinct”. Regardless, these texts had no double-entendre then. Roa’s readers figured out his subversive paragraphs.

Halfway through 1953 his new book ‘Viento sur’ (South wind) comes out. It’s not a random title, for in his best prose the first pages remark:

“A south wind blows today around the world. It’s a sterile, bristly, caliginous, exasperating, dirty wind. It’s a sea-alienating, forest-trimming, mud-releasing, soul-staining, laughter-draining, mind-numbing, sensorium-depressing, and song-beheading wind that hits you in the face and smears your mouth with brown, thick and slimy earth…”

There is no better description of the situation facing the Cuban people. Captured in these pages are his ‘tropical venting’ side by side with the ‘fantasy whirlpools’ and other articles, essays and lectures from that withering era.

He takes part in conspiracies and tries to bring to terms the truly revolutionary elements who oppose the despot. Harassed by the repressive bodies, he is forced into exile, this time over in Mexico, where he engages in many activities, his eye permanently cast upon the unredeemed motherland. As director of the journal Humanismo, he lectures in Mexico City, San Luis Potosí and Nuevo León universities. In the latter he publishes ‘Variaciones sobre el espíritu de nuestro tiempo’ (Variations on the spirit of our time), five conference-like essays, and writes chronicles about ‘México de mi destierro’ (Mexico of my exile). Upon returning to Cuba he cooperates with the 26th. of July Movement and until they closed down the University he fights as a professor and Dean against the ongoing transgression of autonomy. Political persecution constrains him to go underground till the glorious arrival of January 1st., 1959.

The Revolutionary Government appoints Roa ambassador to the OAS and later as Minister of State, a name Roa suggested be replaced by that of Foreign Affairs. Even if he kept his University position as Principal of the Political Sciences School, his responsibilities made him request to be excused from teaching. At OAS as much as at U.N. and other international meetings his voice breaks the diplomacy world’s pretended formality, attracting attention to the prevailing frankness of his speeches and his outrage at the tricks used by his country’s enemies: “If I didn’t become angered, I certainly wouldn’t be a human being, nor a man of civil dignity. That is why I speak like this, I have to speak like this and I can’t speak in any other way”, he told OAS Council, that he baptized ‘Yankee Ministry of Colonies’. Because of such crushing workload and indefatigable activity to defend the Revolution, his people paid him homage by calling him Chancellor of Dignity.

Late in the Year of Liberation (1959), Las Villas Province Central University issues a journal, ‘En pie’ (On your feet), with articles from published between 1952 and 1958 in El Mundo, Bohemia, Humanismo and Cuadernos Americanos (American Notebooks). A work so aware of the thrilling current events, its pages resound with the professor and journalist’s stout protestation against so much violence and crime unleashed by the tyranny, including some teeming with a shaking wrath that move the reader such as those narrating Mario Fortuny[30]’s underhanded assassination. It is therefore a book by Raúl Roa or, better said, it is Raúl Roa himself, of small proportions but bursting with youthful ideas and stamina. He stresses on the authenticity of that upward turn of our history: “We are living in a revolution that has its own roots, routes and projections, one that comes neither from Rousseau, nor Washington, nor Marx, but from the very entrails of the Cuban people who light, sustain and preserve its existence”.

Thanks to Samuel Feijóo[31]’s perseverance, ‘Retorno…’ comes out in 1964 in two thick volumes, edited again later on and a third time in 1977, if not with his whole work –as Mirta Aguirre[32] would say– then with his whole life, because by reading it one may notice total, dramatic identification between the written word and his vibrating life. These pages convey but its author’s vital testimony, the same heat of his days and the same rustling, hopeful, panting, clattering presence along several decades of our public life process. No stage elapsed, no moment left behind wiped out his extravagant longing for the future, nor was he beguiled by temptation to ensconce himself, for he kept striving arduously until the end.

Roa gleaned those of his works that express “a unity of thinking, sensitivity and deportment”. Consequently, not all his writings are included. Some pages have been downgraded. Among those pages, he observes, “those conveying the confusion, misplacement or versatility of my social origin were, of course, consigned to oblivion, that in this case acts as an implacable censor”. He goes on, however: “But I forswear none, nor I elucidate them: they are already an organic component of the evolving and maturing process of my revolutionary and human conscience”.

Never did he finish his study ‘Fernando de los Ríos y su tiempo’ (Fernando de los Ríos and his epoch), prepared to be included in ‘Ciencia y…’ issued by Havana University with conferences, speeches and essays made by that Spanish professor and politician. Included in this edition is a warning saying that Roa had started his piece late in 1956 but his civic resistance against the dictatorship on one hand and his responsibilities as ambassador to OAS and minister of Foreign Affairs on the other prevented him from completing such analysis of nineteen-century Spain’s historical process. These forty-eight printed pages disclose how thoroughly examined was the pivotal trail followed by the author of ‘Reflexiones sobre el sentido de la vida en Martí’ (Reflections on Martí’s sense of living). Highly interesting as well are its passages about the first Spanish republic’s views of Cuba’s independence struggle.

For many years Roa caressed the idea of writing his mambí grandfather’s biography, a project that made him dream of figures and scenes of the war against Spanish colonialism. Most of Ramón Roa’s writings were scattered, but in 1950 his grandson succeeded in making the Cuban History Academy publish ‘Con la pluma y el machete’ (With the pen and the machete) in a three-volume collection of lieutenant colonel Ramón Roa’s works found after uninterrupted search, a selection of which was issued by the Book Institute in the early years of the revolution as ‘Pluma y machete’ (Pen and machete) (1969). By deducting hours from his spare time Raúl Roa could finish ‘Aventuras, venturas y desventuras de un mambí’ (A mambí’s adventures, ventures and misfortunes), edited twice in Cuba and once in Mexico in 1970. Much more than a biography, it is as dynamic, fiery and polemic as its author, who portrays a historical fresco that perfectly grasps the national thirty-year long liberation purpose undertaken by Cuba. He scrutinizes the current socioeconomic, political, and intellectual trends to show a complex a historical task frustrated by the 1898 Yankee intervention. Roa’s peculiar style blossoms in pages bursting with color, liveliness and literary expertise. As described by Cintio Vitier, this work “…comes in our living-room as if it owned the place, with Cuba’s inflamed, pathetic and wonderful history revivified in a real revolutionary palingenesis”.

Along those years Roa became one of Cuba’s best-read authors, by both his contemporaries and new generations. Add to the abovementioned books ‘Escaramuzas…’ (Las Villas Central University, 1966). Following Samuel Feijóo’s ‘Breve prólogo’ (Brief foreword) we find Roa’s preliminary pages, particularly written for this and later included in the third edition of ‘Retorno…’ under the title ‘Los intelectuales y la Revolución’ (Intellectuals and the Revolution). With his stinging, to-the-point concepts and customary sincerity he weighs the situation of intellectuals, often burdened with their petit-bourgeois background and harassed by imperialism’s ideological diversions. His words shed light over an era when the enemies of our Revolution stepped up their attacks.

Stronger impact had the 1969 and 1973 editions of ‘La revolución del 30 se fue a bolina’ (The ’30 revolution drifted away), prefaced by Ambrosio Fornet, which included his interview to the author, named ‘Tiene la palabra el camarada Roa’ (Comrade Roa has the floor), first appeared in the journal Cuba in 1968. Although based solely upon and centered around the anti-Machado revolution years, his material is taken from ‘Retorno…’ and ‘Escaramuza…’. As a popular phrase, ‘se fue a bolina’[33] became fashionable and meaningful among the young, who had therefrom a brand-new, accurate revolutionary vision of days that were a harbinger of the yet-to-come 1950-1960 decade.

Since its establishment in 1976, Letras Cubanas Publishing House conceived Rubén Martínez Villena’s works in two volumes, ‘Poesía’ (Poetry) and ‘Prosa’ (Prose), issued early in 1979 with a great deal of material provided by Roa, who from the very beginning offered his essential cooperation and promised to write an introductory study for this edition. His work soon surpassed the boundaries of a mere prologue to turn into a full book. In the wake of Rubén’s death in January, 1934 Roa wrote a vibrant, evoking article and, while in exile, made the first biography of the poet and communist whose name headed the first edition of ‘La pupila insomne’ (The sleepless pupil) in 1936. In the revolutionary period he read his conference ‘Las primaveras de Rubén Martínez Villena’ (Rubén Martínez Villena’s springtimes) in a rally sponsored by UNEAC (Union of Cuban Writers and Artists) in 1965. Those ardent sheets of yore flourished into an exceptional biographical study to which he devoted his last years, while incessantly working as deputy president of the National Assembly of People’s Power.

Perhaps someone abiding by traditional precepts denies the biographical category of this work, where we find a vast mural of Cuba’s history from 1920 to 1934. The most significant events of that period are analyzed from Roa’s well-adjusted perspective owing to his steadfast revolutionary conviction, strict Marxist-Leninist beliefs and literary capabilities. A zealous research endorses this political biography which ranks Rubén’s figure increasingly higher as his thinking grows more and more radical, until he attains the theories of dialectical and historical materialism that define and guide his revolutionary praxis. What makes this work a hallmark of literary creation is the use of multiple-testimony techniques, as defined by Ana Cairo[34]: “a coherent, organic integration of memories and experiences of relatives, friend and comrades-in-arms…” Roa’s own life, without much ado, is attached to Rubén’s biography as much as to those of other fighters. Even if ‘El fuego de la semilla en el surco’ (The fire of the seed in the furrow) (1982) was left unfinished when its author passed away, the missing two final chapters can be replaced by reading Roa’s prior writings about the last stages of Rubén’s life.

For all of the above, this hindermost work is not only a biography but a priceless historical study of that convulsed period, as well as a time-specific survey of Cuba’s first communist party. It could only be fulfilled after the Revolution’s irreversible triumph, the one perspective from where it is possible to penetrate our people’s prime guidelines. Thus we can comprehend the symbolic title as it has been Rubén’s example and performance –together with hundreds of thousands of our fellow men and women, the fire inside the seed that has yielded fruit in history’s furrow. Seeds of fire were also Roa’s life and work and his full-fledged allegiance to the superior duty of opening roads to the future.

As Vicentina Acuña[35] rightly stated in the ceremony to present Roa with Havana University’s Professor of Merit award: “Raúl Roa’s historical actions are closely linked with his fertile works of creative literature that cover the domains of prose in journalism and essay-writing, biography and literary criticism, political and academic oratory”. Roa rejected being seen as a writer rather than as merely a journalist. Nevertheless, how to distinguish the good journalist from the better writer? “You can’t divide me,” he told me in 1970 when I expressed to him my wish of preparing a few pages for magazine Bohemia’s Art and Literature section, to be titled ‘Raúl Roa, escritor’ (Raúl Roa, a writer). If dividing any human being is difficult, such dissection proves much riskier in Roa’s case. Whoever reads any of his works gets immediately hooked by his singular stylistic features, typical of one of the century’s most remarkable Cuban prose writers.

No other excels the Cuban nature of Roa’s literary expressionism. What’s more, from the outset he managed to ‘Cubanize’ political prose, so prudish and sullen when he was young. Metaphors, images and words enrooted in our people’s speech ooze from him with amazing nonchalance, a deeply-seated Cuban character not born from a lexis purposely embedded in his prose’s fabric but, as if it were a second nature, from his written spontaneous expressions. His quite Cuban language forged with cleverness, imagination and poetry bring to view a valuable writer who, after more than 50 years of literary work, remained unchanged: a lively, high-spirited, explosive bearer of an unquestionable personality as a first-rate polemist and satirist. About him Nicolás Guillén observed: “A writer whose place in Cuban literature is as safe as it is noble, even though he, Roa, feigns ignorance and, what’s worse, is naïve enough to believe that we, his readers, don’t know it either”.

When he turned 70, Carlos Rafael Rodríguez wanted to locate the writer chronologically, seeing him not as the youngest member of Rubén and Marinello[36]’s promotion but as the eldest in the subsequent litter, that of the ‘1930 generation’s left-wing’. Roa is certainly somewhere in between. He enjoyed both postmodernists and those who raised a belated avant-gardism among us. In celebrating his 70th. birthday, he told Feijóo that the first article he (Roa) had written “was about ‘Senderos de humildad’ (Paths of humility) a book of poems by Argentinean Manuel Gálvez. I felt attracted, no doubt, by its sentimental prosaism”. A good part of Rubén’s and José Zacarías Tallet’s poetry could be labeled a similar denomination, considering how close they were to Roa.

He undoubtedly liked avant-garde creationism, as proven by a myriad metaphors and images excerpted from his texts, very typical of that refreshing movement. There is obvious proximity between Pablo’s narrative prose (without forgetting his journalism) and Roa’s reflexive prose (similarly encased in newspaper articles). Postmodernism as much as avant-gardism are related to the colloquial accent so easily perceived in many of his pages. Carlos Rafael thinks, and rightly so, that “Roa is not a writer who moves from aesthetic fruition to political duty, like Martínez Villena and Marinello […]. Instead, since the very beginning his political literature occupation comes hand in hand with his preoccupation for an uncommitted literature that lags behind at a quick rather than a slow pace until it turns into a pleasure bound to be enjoyed in times of leisure that seem never to arrive”.

To Roa, writing was commitment and service, an inescapable norm he soon understood. “Words, when objective, turn to action and substance, therefore to responsibility”. Hence his affirmative and belligerent literature, which would be not an exquisite embryo but a weapon. No wonder his impetuous lines matched popular masses’ toil. There was no gap between the intellectual and his people, for the former’s skills and culture were at the service of the latter’s best causes to conquer a new world.

In the overwhelming concentration of people at Havana University’s central plaza in honor of Roa’s 70^th anniversary, Minister of Culture Armando Hart[37] remarked:

“What defines and typifies Roa as a figure of our culture and our politics is how he reflects, as few did in his generation, the unbreakable unity between people and culture. Few men from his generation attained Roa’s intellectual and creative talent levels as a writer and polemist. Furthermore, few intellectuals from his generation achieved Roa’s revolutionary awareness and understanding levels”.

An outstanding personality in our contemporary history and one of the strongest mainstays of the tenacious campaign to shape up Cuba’s new society, Raúl Roa handed over his whole science and conscience to the prodigious revolutionary enterprise of accomplishing his homeland’s ultimate independence. That is why he is always here with us, spearheading this process of changes. As Antonio Machado[38]’s verse he liked so much to repeat says: ‘He who leaves something takes something, and he who has lived lives’.