Stories written by Leonardo Padura
Leonardo Padura Fuentes is a Cuban journalist and writer whose novels have been translated into a dozen languages. His most recent work, La neblina del ayer, won the Hammett Prize for the best crime novel written in Spanish in 2005.

DECENCY, TRUTH, AND THE ATTACK ON MILAN KUNDERA

The lamentable scandal that broke a few weeks ago about the alleged denunciation by the young Milan Kundera of a seemingly possible \"western\" spy in then Czechoslovakia, can be examined from every angle, but there has been little comment about the ethical component of this probable act of denunciation, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. In this article, Padura writes that opportunists abroad and inside the country are waiting for just a glimpse of weakness to release the avalanche of hatred fermented in cowardice, frustration, envy, and mediocrity. Such figures are always lying in wait. But how many of them have asked themselves whether Kundera lived ethically, whether he was a decent man in his thinking and character? This world in crisis -and not only financial- is in desperate need of more decency. To fell great trees for presumed sins and so fan doubt and cause pain involves more mean-spiritedness than political uprightness. There are enough rotten trees that deserve to be chopped down to stoke their fury. Certainly the truth deserves its place. But the truth is that many of those casting the first - and second and third - stones should consider how they would have behaved in similar or even less dire circumstances than 1950s Czechoslovakia. Stones thrown often turn into boomerangs. But unfortunately, this type of zealot usually has no familiarity with the notion of decency. And too often they have little concern with another concept: truth.

OBAMA BRINGS HOPE TO CUBA TOO

While the Cuban government was more cautious that usual in their remarks about the US presidential election and even the overwhelming victory of Democrat Barack Obama, the people in the street, whose daily living conditions are dire, greeted the news of the election of the first black president of the United States with relief and raised hopes, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into ten languages. His most recent work La neblina del ayer, won the Hammett Prize for the best detective novel in Spanish for 2005. In this article for IPS, the author writes that after more than a century-and-a-half of traumatic relations, almost fifty years of a trade and financial embargo, and two terms of President George W. Bush, whose hostility to Cuba reached an almost paranoid intensity, Cuban-American relations should undergo at least a slight shift with Obama as president. The old subject of the embargo and its failure to destabilise the regime in Cuba will reach his desk at any moment. And if it is evaluated in an intelligent manner, he will respond in the only intelligent way possible: with a radical change in Washington\'s approach to the island. Were this historic shift to occur, the next question would be how the Cuban government would react, after having long used the blockade to its own benefit, for audiences both on and off the island, presenting itself as a David battling Goliath. At least President Raul Castro has indicated his openness to a dialogue, in the only possible, dignified form - between equals. Though the fate of many pre-election promises is all too well known, the new US president, despite the fact that he has said he supports the embargo against Cuba -no US presidential candidate can say otherwise- did dare rouse Florida\'s Cuban-American community with the suggestion that he might initiate a dialogue with Havana, and in any case, ease restrictions on Cubans living in the US regarding visits to the island and remittances to family there.

CUBA AND THE WINDS OF CHANGE

The staggering tally of losses caused in Cuba by hurricanes Gustav and Ike do cannot convey the awful desolation of those who saw their homes blasted into a heap of boards, bricks, and tiles, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist. In this article, the author writes that 444,000 homes were said to have been seriously damaged and more than 63,000 completely destroyed. After passing through the profound economic hardships of the 1990s, Cuba today seems to be entering a new dark era of indescribable shortages in which it is impossible to find food, clothes, matches, shoes, and in which exhaustion and desperation reign. At the moment, the big unknown is whether the Cuban government, in addition to distributing idle land, will finally enact its promised social and economic \"structural and conceptual changes\", which might help shorten the amount of time the people must wait, and despair. Before this hurricane season, the expectations of change that could energise the economy and mobilise society were a matter of hope. Two hurricanes later and with half the country devastated, they are an absolute necessity.

WAITING IN CUBA

Since the formation of the country in the 19th century, Cubans have always had to wait for the arrival of something that would complete them or improve their lot (political independence, better government, economic development, etc), writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban author and journalist whose novels have been translated into a dozen languages. The growing desire to emigrate is one of the most tangible reflections of the exhaustion of the process of waiting. What is painful about the case of Cuba is that the process is also directly compromising the essence of today\'s society and above all the future society, because a considerable number of the emigrants of the last two decades were young professionals who found themselves unmotivated, disinterested, and distrustful and decided to shift their hopes to areas where their chances seemed better. This exodus of the young, the intelligent, and the educated is without a doubt bleeding Cuba\'s present and future. It is also a cause, among others, of the aging and the shrinking of the population of the island. The art of waiting that their ancestors practised does not seem to be an option that the youngest Cubans wish to pursue any longer. What remains to be known is whether Cuban society can infinitely prolong its wait as it sees so many of its sons and daughters carried away.

US ELECTIONS AND CUBA

A year ago, when then provisional president Raul Castro made an overture to the US, the response was fundamentalist and hostile, and Havana\'s counter response was the usual: that after fifty years, Washington\'s hostility (the major effect of which has been the suffering of individual Cubans) has not budged the Cuban government, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. In this article, the author writes that today, with the US presidential elections fast approaching, Cubans are asking themselves what might change in these stagnated relations that effect them so powerfully. McCain promises more of the same, and we know that Havana will respond in kind, with unity, intransigence, and the rejection of change, whatever the cost. Obama promises certain shifts -in travel policy and remittances to family in Cuba from the US - that would not address the central problem. And even though more and more people, politicians included, recognise that the tactic employed by Washington has not and will not induce Havana to make changes - the contrary is true - the Cuban question, always prominent in electoral season, does not seem likely to produce the fundamental changes that might have a domino effect. Or is it a deadlock that politicians need, and want? Cubans are asking.

CUBA: SOCIALIST REALISM

Forty-six years after it was proclaimed, Cuban socialism seems to have finally revived the idea of the value of money as an economic regulator and social catalyst, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. In this article, the author writes that real life and political rhetoric are beginning to draw closer to one another. Realism has dawned on the upper echelons of Cuban decision-making, now led by Raul Castro, and was reflected in the President\'s July 11 speech, which focused on the quality and productivity of manual and intellectual labour. Even the government has recognised periodically over the last two years that the wages the state paid were too low. This is realism, and its manifestation can be reduced to this: the people can\'t live only on what the state pays them. The new Cuban government has issued three basic appeals to the country regarding work, saving, and discipline. This is the holy trinity that could provide the system with stability and durability.

CUBA: HEAT AND SCEPTICISM

Whether they hope for the materialisation of certain wishes or are convinced of certain disappointment, a day looms in the near future for Cuban: July 26, anniversary of the beginning of the armed struggle of Fidel Castro and his followers in 1953, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. In this article, Padura writes that it was a year ago that Raul Castro, then interim president, raised hopes for change in a short speech he gave during celebrations of this anniversary. The Cuban economy and society are clearly waiting for -and need- new and deeper changes. Months have passed without the oft- mentioned economic liberalisation that would allow for the creation of small private businesses, the longed-for sale of cars and furniture, the elimination of the burdensome exit visas to leave the country, among other changes that have been spoken of - but which the upper ranks of Cuban decision-making have less and less desire for. What is most worrisome is that this Cuban society that lives on hope continues to show signs (recognised by its leaders) of deterioration and a scepticism that in the opinion of many could block or derail the implementation of changes that could lead it into new directions.

DIVERSITY IN CUBA

Just thirty years ago, being homosexual, in Cuba, could be enough to incur the punishment of interruption of university study or expulsion from a job that involved contact with \'\'the public\'\', writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. In this article, Padura writes that today, in sharp contrast, various cities on the island held celebrations in observance of the International Day against Homophobia, a sort of gay pride event that included conferences, transvestite shows, book presentations, films, theatre pieces, as well as the growing commentary on upcoming legal and constitutional changes that will open the still restricted path to sex-change operations and civil union for gay couples and even the possibility of adoption, which is very rare in Cuba even for straight couples. Cuba is undergoing a profound change in its collective thinking that is of transcendent importance to the present and future of the island. Now that diversity has been accepted as the norm, it may be that Cuba\'s social system is moving towards greater social complexity and a more open economic model, towards a range of options for individuals that are freer and more satisfying.

CUBA SAYS GOODBYE TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Recent confirmation that Cuban citizens living in Cuba can finally have their own cell phones and buy computers, microwave ovens, and DVD players with the local currency in local stores has provoked amazement among the less informed and an ironic chuckle among those familiar with the complex multiple realities of this Caribbean island, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. In this article, Padura writes that the possibility that the inhabitants of this magical, mythic, and always surprising island will now be allowed access to these goods leads automatically, however, to a formidable obstacle : all of these devices must be paid for in \'\'hard currency\'\'. A one or two-minute cell phone call would cost an entire day\'s wages for a person who works for the all-controlling state, which pays an average daily salary of 400 pesos, or 16 convertible pesos, equivalent to 16 dollars. But the people say that doesn\'t matter: in the end they will have cell phones. The fact that for the first time inhabitants of the island can legally have a telephone that was not \'\'assigned\'\' them by the state, watch on their DVD player something not broadcast by the government, or use a computer to produce or gather information beyond the reach of the state, is far more than a jump forward in time. It is a enormous and important increase in scope of free will in a country suffocated by systems of prohibitions and control.

WINDS OF CHANGE BLOW IN CUBA

Two significant events have occurred since the formation of Cuba\'s new government on February 24 and suggest a shift in the country\'s politics, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. His most recent work, La nieblina de ayer, won the Hammett Prize for the best crime novel written in Spanish for 2005. In this article, Padura writes that the first high-level representative of a foreign state received by the new Cuban president was the secretary of state of the Vatican. After this, for the first time since the visit of Pope John Paul II to Cuba in 1998, state television broadcast a mass in Havana\'s Cathedral Square which was attended by thousands who applauded the demands made in public by a Catholic church that is exerting pressure patiently but insistently on the all-controlling Cuban state. Almost immediately afterwards, at the UN headquarters the Cuban foreign minister fulfilled the promise of the government to sign two extremely important treaties: the International Covenant on Economic, Social,and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. What is most important in Cuba today is that there is movement, and what moves changes, and what changes generates hope.

CUBA: TO CHANGE OR NOT TO CHANGE

The mystery novel into which Cuban life has been transformed has entered a climactic phase of its development. In the upcoming chapters we may find evidence regarding the question we are asking: Will Cuba change or not? writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. In this article, Padura asks, What will change on the island when the top ranks of decision-makers have a clear understanding of the frustrations and complaints expressed by the Cuban people in massive volume in a July public forum? How will Cuban domestic policy change in response to the government\'s recent commitment to respect two UN pacts safeguarding rights whose limitation on the island for a wide range of reasons, circumstances, and historical factors has been outstripped by reality (the right to travel freely is one of the most frequently mentioned). People\'s expectations are now focused on the decision that must be taken in a few weeks by the Cuban parliament regarding the confirmation of Fidel Castro as the head of the Cuban state and government. Would he be in condition to carry out his previous responsibilities? What would or wouldn\'t change with Fidel Castro in charge again, or definitively removed from power (at least officially)?

CUBAN FUTUROLOGY

The recent hardening of Bush\'s policy towards Cuba comes at a time when there are discussions underway on the island of what might accurately be called a possible transition: the search for structural and conceptual changes that Raul Castro himself demanded in an exhortation that spurred a population reticent about expressing its opinions to reject obsolete policies and propose possible changes, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. In this article, the author asks whether the government of Cuba, in an atmosphere of belligerence from the US and serious economic problems at home, has the possibility (and the will) to make these changes and how far it will go with them if the conservative forces opt for immobility. In a country where for decades no solution has been found to shortages and the lack of housing, where the leaders have recognised that interest in work has fallen in direct proportion to the impossibility of meeting daily needs with one\'s salary, and where there has been for years ethical deterioration, corruption, prostitution, etc, the introduction of \'\'structural and conceptual\'\' changes is clearly advisable if not already indispensable.

VAN GOGH, STALIN AND THE TRAPS OF THE FUTURE

The macabre contrast between the multi-million-dollar transcendence of Van Gogh\'s paintings and the life the painter led, of privation and uncertainty, reveal in an exemplary fashion that the present is not always able to render individuals even a small measure of justice, not to mention a glimpse of what the future would hold for his work and memory, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. In this article, the author writes that although the events of the past cannot be changed in the present, when we see that a few of Van Gogh\'s irises and a self-portrait have become symbols of the beauty of human creation across the world, we understand that the memory of the future is adjusted with a perspective and equity that the present lacks. How many of the owners of the truth or the adored of the moment will be denied \'\'not three but many more times\'\'? However much they try to reinforce their pedestals, many of their statues will be gone tomorrow. Will those who live only for posterity ever learn this lesson? I doubt it, but the lesson will have an effect, in general sooner than later.

WHEN THE STATUE OF LIBERTY BARS THE WAY

It was in 1883 that Jewish American poet Emma Lazarus wrote the famous lines below the Statue of Liberty in New York: \'\'Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free\'\', writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. In this article, the author asks, What would this Mother of Exiles say today? The human flux, stronger than ever, is greeted with intolerance, selectivity, and, worst of all, xenophobia. As nationalism grows increasingly hard-core and furious, hypocritical governments are trying to regulate or even block outright a solution that would be so essentially human that no law or wall could ever completely stop. Today no one is speaking the words of Emma Lazarus, or engraving them on plaques. To the contrary, some even think that this much lauded Jew shouldn\'t have stooped so low. Who today cares for the tired and poor and huddles masses from other shores? What rich and powerful country is asking for the tempest-tossed to be delivered to its shores? The golden doors stand in darkness and no one will light them, and yet, even so, the poor and downtrodden still find a crack to squeeze through towards a better life.

NOSTALGIA FOR THE OLD PLEASURES

With all the warnings about everything from sunlight to smoking to meat, it seems more and more astonishing that our species has made it to the present day, after millions of years of exposure to the sun and unrestrained eating and drinking, smoking, and indulging in sex (and not only for reproduction) and travelling, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. In this article, the author writes that there was even a time not so long ago that we even considered these suicidal indeed genocidal acts to be pleasures, like smoking a cigarette in a bar with a glass of wine or a coffee. The oblivion that shrouded life back then (of course AIDS, global warming, and the hole in the ozone layer didn\'t yet exist) made life more pleasing, if sometimes shorter. Today, however, when the entire human race risks vanishing from the earth because of its own stupidity and mistreatment of our planet, many people are worried about living to one hundred in perfect health, limiting if not eliminating pleasures while they burn rivers of fuel and raze forests and, most important, forget that for millions of other people in this world, a piece of bread, a glass of clean water, or even an avocado are not enemies but luxuries that it becomes harder and harder to come by each day.

THE LAST HOUR OF CARIDAD MERCADER

I recently visited the little-known Pantin cemetery in Paris where in a remote corner lies the grave of one of the most peculiar, mysterious, and dark figures of the 20th century, Caridad del Rio Hernandez, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. Caridad experienced her apotheosis on August 20, 1940 in the remote neighborhood of Coyoacan in Mexico City, when one of her sons Ramon Mercader del Rio, assassinated communist leader Leon Trotsky on the orders of the communist leader Joseph Stalin. The 30-year contract for the burial plot expired in 2005 and unless it is renewed soon her and her son-in-law\'s remains will be removed and placed in an urn. The author said \"he could not tell me who paid for the initial contract, but I saw in his eyes he knew the answer, which I already did: the embassy of a country that no longer exists. Like that country, which Caridad del Rio worked for and killed her son for, her tomb is destined to disappear, as there are histories and cadavers that no one wants to be around.\"

COLUMN RELATED TO THE INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENT DAY, JUNE 5: WHAT IS ART FOR?

Art has the great and very useful ability to synthesise reality and fix it within permanent codes which have the ability to make us see human behaviour and society, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes is a Cuban writer and journalist whose most recent work won the Hammett Prize for the best detective novel in Spanish for 2005. In this analysis, the author writes that today when there is so much talk of climate change and its catastrophic effects on the planet, it is fair to say that never before have so many people beheld the same vision -- one which, not by chance, happened to be generated from a work of art. The futuristic vision of Ridley Scott in his classic film Blade Runner has become, thanks to human indolence and the lure of money, a sort of nightmare that we see coming increasingly true around us. That which was conceived of 25 years ago as a metaphor has come true in the form of disasters already suffered through, hair-raising omens, and above all, a shared awareness awakened by the clearest image of what the world could be in a few decades if today, right now, (and we are already behind) if we don\'t do everything possible to slow the economic and even quotidian activities that are stoking climate change.

THE DAILY DRAMA OF HAVANA

Havana today, humanly and physically, is a city trapped between its past and an uncertain future, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. In this article, the author writes that for Cuban urbanists and architects, unless drastic action is taken immediately Havana\'s future will be mined with an array of devastating threats. The city increasingly shows the effects of the lack of attention and repair. The lamentable state of the buildings and roads requires major investments that the country does not seem capable of making. Meanwhile thousands of families suffer a promiscuous co-existence while the specialists feel a justified fear that desperate solutions to the city\'s problems could destroy its physiognomy.

AND THE WORST PICTURE WINS

Compared with Scorsese\'s other films, The Departed was artistically tepid and lacking in the revelation of human motivations that he has such a great gift for, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. In this article, Padura writes that the image of the great director, smiling, with the golden figurine in his hand aroused in me one of the most disquieting emotions that exists: embarrassment for someone else. I cannot believe that Scorsese considers this latest movie to be a memorable work. To do so would be an insult to his intelligence. For this reason, his smiling and his wielding of the little statue struck me with a sense of corrosive embarrassment for a man required by circumstances to put on a big smile when he should know (or does know) that his prize is an offense to the intelligence of the others, to art, and to justice. It is no more than a commercial venture and a poor exercise in film making.

THE WARNED

Human beings have never been as thoroughly warned about the gravity of their actions against nature as today. Hair-raising data, apocalyptic predictions, frightening evidence follow us each day to announce that disaster is drawing closer and close, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. In this article, the author writes that never before has the thinking species had the responsibility to fight for its own survival on the planet where the miracle of life was made real. Humanity has come to a crossroads with its awareness that it is even possible to calculate how much time is left for action in this third act. Intelligence has been the hallmark of this species capable of lifting itself above the others. Today only its extraordinary capacity of thought and reason can save it, although at the rate things are going, with so few world leaders and individuals willing not only to think but to take drastic action, everything seems to indicate that the bells will ring and we will not be able to ask for whom: they ring for all of us, for our children and theirs.

THE REFUGE OF REREADING

If reading a recently published book gives the taste of an encounter with the unknown, returning those one has read many times provides the slightly cowardly certainty of arriving at a safe harbour, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. In this article, the author writes that returning to these old acquaintances also cures us of the deceptions that, echoing through the market, catapult us occasionally into the embrace of books that make us lament the nights invested in their pages, when we know perfectly well the years of our lives are far too few to read everything good and essential written by our fellow humans. Perhaps the most disagreeable of these sensations occurred while I was reading the Da Vinci Code, convinced that to be able to at least criticise it I had to plough through all 600 or so pages: for years and years I have not read anything so miserably written, ill-conceived, and artistically false. The dumb provocation of the establishment devised by Brown was so innocuous and bogus that the publishing industry could swallow it happily and turn it into a sales behemoth sweeping many areas of the market while pushing to the margin, if not beyond it, that which should always be at the front: literature.

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