Becoming Reinaldo Arenas: Family, Sexuality, and The Cuban Revolution
256
Becoming Reinaldo Arenas: Family, Sexuality, and The Cuban Revolution
256eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Through insightful close readings of a selection of Arenas's works, including unpublished manuscripts and correspondence, Olivares examines the writer's personal, political, and artistic trajectory, focusing on his portrayals of family, sexuality, exile, and nostalgia. He documents Arenas's critical engagement with cultural and political developments in revolutionary Cuba and investigates the ways in which Arenas challenged literary and national norms. Olivares's analysis shows how Arenas drew on his life experiences to offer revealing perspectives on the Cuban Revolution, the struggles of Cuban exiles, and the politics of sexuality.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780822397588 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Duke University Press |
| Publication date: | 04/11/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 761 KB |
About the Author
Jorge Olivares is the Allen Family Professor of Latin American Literature at Colby College.
Read an Excerpt
Becoming Reinaldo Arenas
FAMILY, SEXUALITY, AND THE CUBAN REVOLUTION
By Jorge Olivares
Duke University Press
Copyright © 2013 Duke University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-5396-6
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
I Scream, Therefore I Am
* * *
I tell my truth, as does the Jew who has suffered racism or the Russian who has been in the Gulag, or any human being who has eyes to see the way things really are. I scream, therefore I am. REINALDO ARENAS, Antes que anochezca (Before Night Falls)
The brief entry on Reinaldo Arenas in the Diccionario de la literatura cubana illustrates Arenas's situation while living in Cuba. Of his literary accomplishments, the dictionary says only: "He received honorable mention in the uneac [Union Nacional de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba] literary competitions in 1965, 1966 and 1968 for his novels Celestino antes del alba [Singing from the Well] and El mundo alucinante [The Ill-Fated Peregrinations of Fray Servando] and for his collection of short stories, still unpublished, Con los ojos cerrados. He has been translated into English, French, Italian, German, Portuguese and Dutch" (1: 70). What at first seems to be a rather straightforward account of Arenas's literary achievements turns out to be an entry filled with misleading and incorrect information. While it is true that Arenas's peers lauded him for the two novels mentioned, they did not do so for the collection of short stories. And contrary to what the entry says, Con los ojos cerrados was indeed published, without the sanction of the Cuban authorities, in Uruguay in 1972. Arenas had managed to smuggle the manuscript out of Cuba, as he had done before with the manuscript of El mundo alucinante, his best-known novel, which was first published in a French translation in Paris in 1968 and in its original Spanish one year later in Mexico. The dictionary also neglects to mention that the Cuban state-run press refused to publish the award-winning El mundo alucinante and that for daring to place this novel before an international readership, which immediately hailed it as a masterpiece, and for living an openly gay life, the prize-winning and internationally acclaimed young writer not only became a persona non grata in his own country but also was incarcerated. Moreover, although the dictionary mentions the languages into which Arenas's works had been translated, it makes no reference to El palacio de las blanquísimas mofetas (The Palace of the White Skunks), the manuscript of which Arenas also had smuggled out of Cuba. Translations of this novel appeared in 1975 and 1977 in France and Germany; its original Spanish version was published in Venezuela in 1980, the year in which Arenas left Cuba and in which the Diccionario de la literatura cubana was published. Had the dictionary been prepared after Arenas's departure, it is likely that, instead of omissions and misinformation, there would have been complete silence. As was the case with other Cuban writers who had gone into exile (e.g., Guillermo Cabrera Infante and Severo Sarduy), Arenas would have been literally erased from this "official" account of Cuban literature.
Though Arenas was included in the Diccionario de la literatura cubana, he already had been banished from the literary and social landscape of Cuba during the last twelve years that he lived in his country, as much for writing works that did not celebrate the Revolution as for his homosexuality. An openly gay man like Arenas was anathema to the hombre nuevo (new man), the man's man whom the Latin American revolutionary icon Ernesto "Che" Guevara extolled and on whose virile shoulders fell the responsibility to advance the revolutionary program. In 1965, the same year that Che's influential "El socialismo y el hombre en Cuba" ("Socialism and Man in Cuba") was published, there appeared in the Cuban newspaper El mundo an article by the respected writer and folklorist Samuel Feijóo titled "Revolución y vicios." After making cursory comments about drugs, prostitution, gambling, and alcoholism, "vices inherited from capitalism," Feijóo focuses on "homosexuality," telling his Cuban readers that it is "one of the most abominable and harmful legacies of capitalism." Feijóo then goes on to relate a conversation that he had with the Chilean literary critic Ricardo Latcham, who, in the course of lamenting "the invasion of art and literature by the sodomites," asked him to comment on "the influence of homosexuality on Cuban art":
I told him the truth: that that legacy of capitalism still persists. But that we are fighting against it and will continue to fight until it is eradicated from a virile country that finds itself in a life-and-death struggle against Yankee imperialism. And that this extremely virile country, with its army of men, should not and could not be expressed by homosexual or pseudo-homosexual writers and artists. Because no homosexual represents the Revolution, which is a matter for men, a matter of fists and not of feathers, of courage and not of cowardice, of integrity and not of intrigue, of creative valor and not of spineless surprises.... True revolutionary literature is not, and will never be, written by sodomites.
There is no other recourse, in his view, but "to annihilate" homosexuals. This is what must be done by a "nation that ... confronts bloodthirsty Yankee imperialism with supreme virility." Feijóo concludes:
It is not about persecuting homosexuals, but about destroying their positions, their methods, their influence. This is called revolutionary social hygiene. We will have to eradicate them from their key positions at the forefront of revolutionary art and literature. If as a result we lose a dance troupe, we will do without the "sick" troupe. If we lose an exquisite writer, the cleaner the air will be. This way we will feel healthier as we create virile groups that emerge from a courageous nation. Let us break the vicious capitalist legacy.
If I have quoted at some length Feijóo's metaphorical "call to arms," it is because such words became deeds: grandiloquent rhetorical expression translated into degrading antigay repression. For 1965 was also the year that Fidel Castro not only publicly stated that he did not believe that "a homosexual could embody the conditions and requirements of conduct that would enable us to consider him a true Revolutionary, a true Communist militant" (Lockwood 124), but also authorized the creation of the Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción (UMAP), work camps to which "nonconformists" (Báez) were sent beginning in November of that year.
As reported in Granma, the Communist Party daily, the objective of the UMAP was not to punish the young men sent to the camps, but rather to "educate," "shape," and "save" them—to prevent them from becoming "parasites" or "counterrevolutionaries." Through "military discipline," they would overcome their "attitudes" and become "productive members of society" (Báez). In fact, those interned in the UMAP camps, a large number of whom were gay men, were sent there for "rehabilitation" through intense agricultural labor. "Work will make you men," the internees were told by signs posted in the camps (Almendros and Jiménez Leal 37). They were subjected not only to forced labor and physicial abuse but also, in some instances, to medical experimentation, as was the case in Laguna Grande, a camp reserved exclusively for gay men, where, according to one of the internees, visiting foreign psychiatrists injected "an unknown substance" into their veins (Ronet 53). There were approximately 250 UMAP camps in the province of Camagüey with a total population of about 25,000, which included such strange bedfellows as men who had sex with men, vagrants, hippies, Catholics, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, practitioners of Afro-Cuban religions, writers, and artists.
Although protests by members of the Unión Nacional de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba and by intellectuals in Europe and Latin America led to the closing of the UMAP camps in 1967, institutionalized homophobia continued. Relying on traditionally antigay metaphors of infection, disease, and contamination, Abel Prieto Morales, a prominent educator who was to become Cuba's vice minister of education, published an article in 1969 in the popular magazine Bohemia in which he discussed the "phenomenon of homosexuality" (108). With its one-word title, "Homosexualismo," printed across the page in large bold letters, the article expressed the pressing need for a program of "prophylaxis" (109), both within the family and in society at large, for the prevention of homosexuality. In Prieto Morales's view, although it would be very "simple" to execute the program in the home—"The father must behave like one and the mother must occupy within the home the place that corresponds to her"—outside the home it would entail "a major social undertaking," the primary aim of which would be to keep homosexuals, "contagious elements," away from children (109).
Prieto Morales articulates the view held most widely on the island in the 1960s on the etiology of homosexuality. In post-1959 Cuba, homosexuality was primarily explained in terms of "nurture" rather than "nature," a perspective that was compatible with an interest in and commitment to its prevention and eradication. Gaspar García Galló, the distinguished pedagogue and leading figure in the Departamento de Educación, Ciencia y Cultura of the Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba, voiced the prevailing position: "We believe that the justification that some pretend to make for the 'sick ones' [enfermos], reducing it all to a biological problem, is not valid. We believe that it is—fundamentally—a social problem: a problem of corruption" (Nuestra moral socialista 70). It is no coincidence that in 1963, in a speech to university students in which Fidel Castro denounced antisocial elements, including homosexuals (not mentioned by name but allusively present in the speech's language and turns of phrases), Cuba's leader highlighted the role that ambiente (environment) and reblandecimiento (softness) played in those who had the problema (problem) ("No cayó en el vacío el sacrificio de los mártires" 6). According to one of the available transcriptions of the speech, "Discurso pronunciado por el Comandante Fidel Castro Ruz," the audience interrupted Castro with laughter and applause, shouting that the ones with the "problem" were "those weak in the leg," "the homosexuals." The U.S. psychiatrist Irving J. Crain, having visited Cuba in 1969 and 1978, explains: "The scientific consensus in Cuba is that homosexuality is socially determined and, as society becomes more cooperative and non-exploitive, homosexuality will diminish" (16). Although the psychiatric community in Castro's Cuba later became strongly anti-Freudian, in the 1960s the notion of the Oedipus complex, a central tenet of psychoanalysis, was widely accepted. It is at the basis of Prieto Morales's program of "familial prophylaxis," which would involve altering dysfunctional home dynamics (especially the absent or passive father and the possessive or smothering mother) to prevent the development of a homosexual child.
In 1971, two years after the publication of Prieto Morales's article, a program of "social prophylaxis" was proposed by the state-sponsored Primer Congreso Nacional de Educación y Cultura, which defined homosexuality as a "social pathology" ("Declaration by the First National Congress on Education and Culture" 5) and called for the removal of homosexuals from positions associated with the education of youth and the propagation of Cuban culture. One of its resolutions stated that "cultural institutions cannot serve as a platform for false intellectuals who try to convert snobbery, extravagant conduct, homosexuality and other social aberrations into expressions of revolutionary art, isolated from the masses and the spirit of the Revolution" (5). Although the recommendations of the congress regarding homosexuality did not become "official" until 1974 (see Ley 1267), their implementation was immediate, as the event was sanctioned by the nation's communist apparatus and its supreme leader, Fidel Castro, who brought the congress to a close with a rousing speech ("Only After a Revolution").
The discussions on art and literature at the congress, which convened 23–30 April 1971, had as their catalyst the "Padilla Affair." In 1968 a jury that included Cubans and non-Cubans unanimously awarded Heberto Padilla the uneac poetry prize for Fuera del juego. Although cultural ideologues at uneac considered the book counterrevolutionary and tried, unsuccessfully, to influence the jurors' vote, they allowed the book's publication but with a condemnatory prologue that explained uneac's objections to the jurors' decision. On 20 March 1971, Padilla was arrested and charged with "having plotted against the powers of the state" (Padilla, Self-Portrait of the Other 133). Five weeks later, when the Congreso was in session, he was released from prison and was forced to deliver an autocrítica (self-criticism) in which he denounced his past "errors" and those committed by friends and colleagues, some of whom were in attendance at his public declaration. Leading intellectuals from Europe and Latin America publicly denounced the treatment of Padilla and distanced themselves from Castro's Revolution, which until then they had enthusiastically supported and embraced. As a result, what otherwise would have been a national incident became an international scandal.
Seeking to define the role that art, literature, and their producers should play in a socialist society and determined to exclude homosexuals from the project of nation building, the Primer Congreso Nacional de Educación y Cultura oicially launched a period characterized by ideological dogmatism, cultural repression, and extreme homophobia. Ambrosio Fornet named it Quinquenio Gris ("A propósito de Las iniciales de la tierra" 150, 153), a five-year period of repressive measures that, according to him, began in 1971 and ended in 1976 with the creation of the Ministerio de Cultura with Armando Hart at its helm. Although there is agreement that Hart instituted policies that began to reverse those that Luis Pavón Tamayo, as president of the Consejo Nacional de Cultura, had put in place in 1971, the consensus is that the so-called Quinquenio Gris extended to the mid-1980s, having begun as early as 1968. Lasting well beyond the five years that Fornet's denomination suggests, this period has received other names, such as Decenio Negro and Trinquenio Amargo. During this time, those considered to be outside the sexual, social, moral, and ideological "parameters" that defined a true revolutionary suffered ostracism, persecution, or incarceration. Homosexuals in particular, especially artists and educators, were dismissed from their jobs or given employment in places where their "contaminating" presence would not be a threat to society. Writers who did not embrace socialist realism, which imposed an ideological mold on cultural production, were silenced. They included established figures such as José Lezama Lima and Virgilio Piñera and younger writers such as Reinaldo Arenas. "Art is a weapon of the Revolution," the Primer Congreso Nacional de Educación y Cultura succinctly affirmed ("Declaration by the First National Congress on Education and Culture" 6).
Those who did not subscribe to the Congreso's dictum were accused of diversionismo ideológico, which in its initial application referred to the subtle penetration of capitalist ideology in socialist countries in the guise of pseudo-Marxist positions. Although in 1972 Raul Castro called for legislation that would punish those within Cuba who committed acts of ideological deviationism, a formulation that had been used for the first time in Cuba in 1971 at the Primer Congreso Nacional de Educación y Cultura, it was not until 1974 that his wish became law, with the promulgation of Ley 1262. In Cuba, as in other socialist countries, the concept of "ideological deviationism" suffered a deviation, as it were, from its original and narrow meaning—the ideological penetration by the "enemy" from the outside—and was used to characterize any act or activity committed by people within the country that "deviated" from Cuba's moral, social, literary, artistic, and political prescriptions.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Becoming Reinaldo Arenas by Jorge Olivares. Copyright © 2013 by Duke University Press. Excerpted by permission of DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ixNote on Translations xiii
Prologue. Encountering Arenas 1
1. I Scream, Therefore I Am 7
2. Climbing the Family Tree 36
3. In Search of the Father(land) 65
4. All About Mother 91
5. Facing AIDS 114
Epilogue. After Night Falls 148
Notes 173
Works Cited 203
Index 231