By Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, Mar 15 2005 (IPS)

The death of Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante brought back memories of controversies over the cultural policy of the socialist government of Fidel Castro, censorship, and intolerance.

The news of the Feb. 21 death in London of the author of the 1979 novel "La Habana para un infante difunto" (published in English as Infante’s Inferno) at the age of 75 triggered a rain of praise and criticism for the radical anti-Castro stance he took during his 40 years in exile.

"Cabrera Infante gave artistic life to a ‘language’ of his own, the ‘Havana literary style’, a valuable legacy to later generations," Cuban writer Leonardo Padura told IPS.

But the relationship between the 1997 winner of Spain’s prestigious Cervantes Award and Cuban culture was a traumatic one, added Padura, the author of "M scaras" (Masks), published in 1997, and "La Novela de mi vida" (The Novel of My Life), published in 2001.

"The writers of my generation, many of whom are devoted to the works of Cabrera Infante, were scorned by him, or at least that’s the impression he gave in public, simply because we live on the island…regardless of what we write and how we write it," said the 49-year-old writer.

Reporters and academics in various countries have said the works of Cabrera Infante are banned in Cuba, that copies of his books circulate underground, and that just reading them can get Cubans thrown into prison. The writer himself said this was true.

But Daniel Garc¡a, director of the state-run publishing house Letras Cubanas, said "Guillermo Cabrera Infante actually banned his own works from Cuban readers" by refusing to have his books published in Cuba.

Cabrera Infante said in 2003 that a homemaker had been arrested and fined for "possession of subversive propaganda": a copy of "La Habana para un infante difunto".

"That is what is happening now to my ‘natural readers’, people who have to read my books hidden deep inside their homes and cover them with newspaper or the covers of Cuban magazines," said the writer, whose works also include the 1963 classic "Tres tristes tigres", published in English as Three Trapped Tigers, and "Mea Cuba" (1992).

"My books have been banned in Castro’s Cuba since 1965, which is when I left Cuba. The price they have fetched on the black market has varied in the most diverse manner – 10 cans of condensed milk or a few dollars – and they circulate in a kind of Cuban ‘samizdat’," he said.

Samizdat is a Russian word for a system of clandestine printing and distribution of dissident or banned literature.

Cuban officials and intellectuals living on the island recognise the value of Cabrera Infante’s works although they lament the effects of what he himself termed his "acute Castro-enteritis".

The writer refused to allow his work to appear in an anthology of Cuban short stories from the 20th century published by Letras Cubanas in 1999, which is explicitly explained in the introduction to the book edited by writer Alberto Agrandes.

Because the author did not allow "Tres tristes tigres" and "La Habana para un infante difunto" to be printed in Cuba, copies for the public libraries had to be purchased abroad, according to Culture Minister Abel Prieto.

The intolerance both within and outside Cuba went far beyond the case of Cabrera Infante, however.

The changes that began to be seen in the Cuban government’s cultural policy in the late 1980s and early 1990s moved towards recognising "Cuban culture as a whole", although the changes were unable to wipe away the past.

Up to that time, innumerable personalities, like singer Celia Cruz, anthropologist Lydia Cabrera or writer Severo Sarduy, had become "unnameable" after they distanced themselves from Cuba’s socialist revolution, or simply because they emigrated.

According to Padura, since the 19th century, Cuban culture had suffered the "drama" of the "dispersion of its creative figures", like poets José Mar¡a Heredia and José Mart¡, or artist Wifredo Lam, all around the world.

But it was not until shortly after the 1959 triumph of the revolution led by Castro that political polarisation, marked by the conflict between Cuba and the United States, cast as enemies expressions of Cuban culture within and outside of Cuba.

An unwritten ban on "Cuban exile culture" in Cuba led to the lack of any reference to that culture in the government-controlled media. Authors like Cabrera Infante who were outspoken critics of Castro were even left out of specialised reference books and encyclopedias.

Even today, more than a decade after the start of the so-called "cultural opening", the media avoid mentioning certain names.

That includes leading exponents of Cuban plastic arts of the generation of the 1980s, who live abroad. The paintings of Tom s S nchez, for example, are still exhibited, but his name is not mentioned on TV or in the press.

But a number of Cuban cultural figures who left the country out of opposition to the socialist system assumed attitudes in exile that were as – or more – intolerant than those they had been the victims of in Cuba.

While any dissident stance is seen as "counterrevolutionary" by the official Cuban media, sectors of the Cuban exile community believe that merely living on the island is synonymous with being an "agent of Castro", or at the very least just "one more sheep in the flock".

This argument holds that in Cuba there is no literature, music, plastic arts or any other creative productions with true artistic or independent value, and value magically accrues to the work of Cubans only after they go into exile.

In more than a few cases, extremism and opportunism go hand in hand. Some intellectuals and artists who were initially close to the circles of power in Cuba and even acted as censors here converted to the most radical anti-Castro positions after emigrating.

After the 1959 triumph of the revolution, Cabrera Infante served as a cultural representative of the new government in Brussels. But he became more and more critical of the Castro government until he broke off relations with it in 1965.

In the case of Cabrera Infante, "the rancour and politics on both sides clouded the reality and almost concealed it, deforming the relationship until it became caricaturesque," said Padura.

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