http://cartasdesdecuba.com/entrevista-a-leonardo-padura-ii-revolucionar-la-revolucion/ Interview with Leonardo Padura I: Openly and Without Masks March 20, 2012 Taken from La Joven Cuba, by: Harold Cárdenas Lema A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann. "Young people like you, expressing unorthodox thinking, who do not become or are not easily turned into enemies… is a sign of how much this society has changed" PHOTO: Raquel Pérez Last February I had the pleasure of sharing more than three hours with Leonardo Padura, one of the best known writers in Cuba and a man fully committed to his country. This is an interview with citizen Padura, a writer immersed in his society and distant from elitist attitudes that those who don't know him may accuse him of. The questions that follow seek to examine our reality through the unique perspective of Leonardo. We will talk a lot about politics and a little about literature. I hope this will serve to somehow understand this present of ours. I begin asking, "Who is Leonardo Padura?" and he gives me a novel-like answer: "In my thinking and acting, I'm still the young man who was born in 1955 in this house, in a neighborhood that had a long historical link with my family on the Padura side. The Revolution triumphed when I was four years old. In the years 62 and 63 scarcities began and it was difficult to buy a baseball glove at a store." "Despite of this I had a very happy childhood because I was very free, and I believe freedom is the measure of almost all happiness. I ran around this neighborhood loose and wild, with sneakers and no socks, with pants and no shirt, playing baseball, stealing mangoes and catching lizards. School occupied a small part of my life, but it was very nice." "This made my childhood a very happy one, very gregarious, with lots of friends. Of those friends there are very few left in the neighborhood; some died, others left Cuba or left the neighborhood. This is something I resent a lot. In the hood I'm "Nardito", because my father's name is Leonardo and everybody calls him "Nardo". Essentially I try to remain being Nardito." While Padura talks, it comes to my mind that many celebrities have their children abroad. In the TV show "Con dos que se quieran" [TV interview show hosted by singer Amaury Perez] this sad fact was seen quite often. I ask my interlocutor why it is a symptom that although these celebrities are proud to live in Cuba, their children are abroad. Padura answers: "The subject of the demographic, intellectual, professional and cultural drain that has taken place in Cuba these last years is really one of the most serious problems the country has. Emigration is a phenomenon that has always existed and will always exist. When I wrote La novela de mi vida and presented Heredia's conflict as an exile, I was somehow trying to look at this trauma from a permanent perspective in Cuban society. One of the biggest problems Cuban society has to solve is avoiding the drain of young professionals. Even if its political impact and connotation are removed, it remains being a social and economic problem because Cuba is losing one of its riches. The sooner the relation between the individual and its decision to live anywhere in the world becomes normal and transparent - I mean what we would call today the reform of Cuban migratory laws- the fewer people would leave the country." "Today, the people who are leaving are those who have more possibilities to do so; this is why the persons who were chosen by Amaury for his TV interviews - somehow the Cuban cultural jet set- have more opportunities for their children to live abroad; and it is logical that they defend this as a natural thing. But this is not natural for all, and it certainly was not natural for my generation." "My generation was traumatized by the subject of emigration, of exile, because at the time the decision had a rotund, permanent and irreversible nature. I have no children and had not lived through that problem, but I have a brother in the Unites States and the issue is close to home. Besides, almost all the family on my father's side, who were so well rooted in this neighborhood, lives there now. I know of the feeling of loss. This can be much more serious when it becomes a sense of loss at a national scale." The mentioning of the generational subject prompts a question I always wanted to ask. Padura once referred to his generation as the "Mandaos" [the sent to] Why? "We were sent to do everything. Every generation in Cuba can claim the right to be the one most experimented on, but none as much as ours. My generation started the student cane cutting tours, it was the one that took part in the Ten Million Ton Sugar Harvest, the one that had the chance to avoid military service if they were studying, the one that initiated the practice of Escuelas al Campo [Schools in the Countryside] and the one that inaugurated the Contingentes Pedagógicos [Pedagogical Brigades]." "I'll never forget that in 1971 or 72, when the Destacamento Manuel Ascunce [named after a teacher murdered by counterrevolutionaries] was created, we were kept for six hours in a theatre near the Pre de La Vibora [High School] and were not allowed to leave until they had the number of students who would agree to become teachers, because that was the commitment of the municipality. This was a terrible experiment that perhaps solved the need of teachers at the time, but also interfered with the vocation of many, in times when university admission was open and massive." "Mine is the generation that went to Angola (lucky for me I went as a civilian collaborator, not military). All those things happened to us; we were sent and nobody ever asked if we wanted to go; it was a duty. In the 90's and the Special Period the country practically collapsed and my generation had to renounce eating to feed their children. We took to bicycles again and had no other choice. I think the Special Period was a blessing in the sense that it started to create a distance between the Almighty State and the individual; and this space has grown wider and increasingly filled up with freedom." "They sent us to do all kinds of things" "My generation started to see this space of greater freedom, but this was not until we were around 50, and then they told us we had to work 5 more years before retirement and pension, but that they could not fire us. It is the Generation of the Sent To, but also the Generation in Hiding, because it never had the capacity to decide and had to hide so the blows did not hit it and it could survive." "We wore masks in Cuban society. In my generation this was taken as something natural. The generation of my parents decided to wear masks; ours was totally masked. If you believed in God, in Changó or Allah, you simply hid it, without giving it a thought. When it was allowed, people started wearing crucifixes and all the things they had always believed in. Some were even in the military, or Party members, or worked for the Ministry of the Interior and hid their beliefs, their preferences and their sexual inclinations so they could survive. The young people today have the advantage that if they are religious or homosexual, they are perhaps more accepted than if you are atheist and heterosexual, because then… you may look suspicious." We are laughing about this when Lucia serves us coffee, and I tell Leonardo that his generation may have a better perspective on reality because it knew the good and bad times of the Revolution. "We were children or teenagers at the beginnings of the Revolution. We lived the process of homogenization of society and this brought some advantages for us. Except for some people who were known as "daddy's children", the 99% of us had a pair of sneakers and a pair of shoes, two pants and two shirts that were all identical; this made us really very equal." "In my nostalgia that homogenization looks positive, but it had the drawback of our masquerading, because we couldn't be different. It also had the problem of the demanded unanimity. You could think differently but could not speak differently, because then you would depart from homogeneity and become different; and in a society where we were all equal this was a very heavy burden to carry." I then remind him that my generation only knows the Special Period and despite of this we are blamed for paternalism and other things of which we young people are not guilty at all … "Sometimes the State accuses the citizens of being the result of what it promoted. Paternalism is a rather complicated State policy because it means obligations for the State and helplessness for the citizen who can only think of what the State will grant him; and this is a macabre inversion of terms. Fortunately, today this is beginning to be understood differently. This country has changed a lot; it is changing greatly and will change much more. This is one of the things they are changing: citizens are beginning to become aware of their role in society, and part of this role is to upkeep the State whose task is to administer the goods of all citizens. The State does not produce; it owns the things that belong to all of us." "We are recovering the awareness that the State can tell you: 'you have nothing to do with me, you are self employed. I guarantee what is my constitutional obligation: free public health and education for your children… but you make a living to the best of your abilities.' Then the citizen becomes aware that public health and education are not really free, because when he pays taxes the State pays the salary of the doctor and the teacher. The whole relation begins to be seen from a different perspective." "When we were accused of enjoying unduly free options, they didn't ask who promoted those free options and why…; nobody said who decided in the 60's to waive ithe entrance fee to baseball games. The entrance to movie theatres was almost waived, but luckily this didn't happen, because we could have ended up without movie theatres (we ended up almost without movie theatres anyway). Public telephones were also free, buses were almost free. These are all examples of the paternalism and unduly free options all promoted by the State." I then ask Padura his opinion about young people having greater political participation in the country, and he answers: They should have a greater participation in everything. This is a country that grows old ostensibly. There are many people who will soon be in their third age and therefore it is inevitable that younger people take the reins of the country as they are the generational relief. I sometimes think that keeping the same person in decision-making postings forever at all levels is one of the reasons why there is not a renovation of ideas and purposes or greater results. In Cuba you can find someone who runs a magazine (that is not his) for 25 years, or manages something else for 40 years or more. This means that in those 25 or 40 years a whole generation did not have the chance to run that magazine or anything else. I believe it is essential that young people have more access to decision-making levels in all areas: social, economic and political, because there is an increasing longevity in the world. My generation did not even have the possibility of running itself, and I recognize the importance of new generations as the only guarantee for the future of the Cuban nation. END OF THE FIRST PART Coming soon: To what extent are we still a Revolution? What would Cuba be like after Raul? Is there a reform or updating of the Cuban model? Information and transparency in our political project… Interview with Leonardo Padura II: Revolutionize the Revolution ADMIN / March 20, 2012 Taken from La Joven Cuba, by Harold Cárdenas Lema