Leonardo Padura Fuentes: Cuba's Man of Letters

Leonardo Padura Fuentes (born in Havana in 1955) is the best known and most widely read contemporary Cuban author. He has published eight novels, two volumes of short stories and seven works of non-fiction. He has also written scripts for documentaries and recently for a series of short films about Havana directed by different cinematographers. His work has been translated into at least eight languages, and he has won a number of important prizes including the Dashiell Hammett prize for the best detective novel from the international division of Writers of Crime Fiction (1996) and the Italian Premio Letterario Francesco Gelmi di Caporiacco (2010). His achievement was officially recognised in Cuba in December 2012 when the Cuban Ministry of Culture awarded him the National Prize for Literature, the country's highest literary honour.Padura always wanted to be a journalist. He studied philology and Latin American literature at the University of Havana. His voice as a writer developed as he practised 'literary journalism' in regular columns in one of the national newspapers based on interviews with intellectuals and national cultural figures. Padura is best known for a series of detective novels whose main character, Mario Conde, struggles with his job as a policeman as he yearns to realise his dream of being a writer. Each book develops 'the Count's' relationships with friends from his Havana youth as well as with his wide network of neighbours, associates and professional contacts as he investigates a crime committed in the Cuban capital during the difficult 'Special Period in the Time of Peace' of the 1990s.In each case, Conde encounters characters from various sectors of their society, and each narrative explores an aspect of Cuban social reality. Padura combines a journalist's attention to accurate documenting of the historical period with a novelist's exploration of the motivation of his characters. His vocabulary is subtle, and his dexterity with the Spanish language demonstrates that his talent has been cultivated with extensive training and years of practice. The Mario Conde novels are deftly translated into English by Peter Bush and published in the UK by Bitter Lemon Press. These are available in the US through booksellers and on the Internet.In 1998 Padura visited Coyoacan in Mexico City, including the house in which Leon Trotsky lived for several years before he was murdered in 1940. After dedicating two years to the study of that crime, he began writing. The resulting novel, El hombre que amaba a los perros was first published by Spain in 2009 by Editorial Tusquets in Barcelona, his primary publisher. In 2010 Ediciones Union, the publishing arm of UNEAC, the Union of Artists and Writers of Cuba, put out the Cuban edition. Four thousand copies were printed. About 2,000 of those were reserved for members of that prestigious organisation. The book was presented to the public at the 2011 Book Fair in Havana. In 2012 Padura was awarded the National Prize for Literature.Soon to be published in English in the US (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, a branch of Macmillan) as well as in Britain (Bitter Lemon Press), The Man who Loved Dogs has already attracted extensive international attention for Padura's ambitious undertaking. Three central characters in the novel all loved dogs: Ivan, the Cuban writer who opens the book; Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary in exile when the story begins; and Ramon Mercader, Trotsky's assassin who died in Cuba in 1978. It is Mercader who occupies most of the attention of the writer and the reader, and he is the person explicitly referred to in the title.Calling the book a novel offers the author the space to speculate and to create as well as to document. The exile of Trotsky within and then from the Soviet Union after Stalin assumed power is well documented. The life of Mercader can be studied to a certain extent and leaves room for speculation. Ivan is a fictional character. …

section_content: the UK by Bitter Lemon Press. These are available in the US through booksellers and on the Internet. 

In 1998 Padura visited Coyoacan in Mexico City, including the house in which Leon Trotsky lived for several years before he was murdered in 1940. After dedicating two years to the study of that crime, he began writing. The resulting novel, El hombre que amaba a los perros was first published by Spain in 2009 by Editorial Tusquets in Barcelona, his primary publisher. In 2010 Ediciones Union, the publishing arm of UNEAC, the Union of Artists and Writers of Cuba, put out the Cuban edition. Four thousand copies were printed. About 2,000 of those were reserved for members of that prestigious organisation. The book was presented to the public at the 2011 Book Fair in Havana. In 2012 Padura was awarded the National Prize for Literature. 

Soon to be published in English in the US (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, a branch of Macmillan) as well as in Britain (Bitter Lemon Press), The Man who Loved Dogs has already attracted extensive international attention for Padura's ambitious undertaking. Three central characters in the novel all loved dogs: Ivan, the Cuban writer who opens the book; Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary in exile when the story begins; and Ramon Mercader, Trotsky's assassin who died in Cuba in 1978. It is Mercader who occupies most of the attention of the writer and the reader, and he is the person explicitly referred to in the title. 

Calling the book a novel offers the author the space to speculate and to create as well as to document. The exile of Trotsky within and then from the Soviet Union after Stalin assumed power is well documented. The life of Mercader can be studied to a certain extent and leaves room for speculation. Ivan is a fictional character. The epidemic of fear, hate and violence that infected Europe during the middle of the twentieth century is the historical backdrop. Exploring the effects of those experiences on the possibility of realising the dream of a socialist utopia in Cuba is implied in the juxtaposition of these stories. 

Once the book is available in English during the autumn of 2013, it will be discussed by everyone interested in the Cuban experience and the history of the Left. Studying the book in Spanish has illuminated for me a wide range of issues that had been just beyond the periphery of my awareness as I grew up in the US Left during the 50s. 

My father joined the Communist Party during the early 30s after being arrested for the third time for returning the furniture of families evicted from their apartments in the Bronx. His commitment to the millennial dream of a workers' state took on the religious conviction that his parents dedicated to Orthodox Judaism. I understood prioritising solidarity, respect for work and commitment to the struggle for a better world for all people. 

At Leftie summer camp, I accepted the tutoring of my swimming teacher who was a professor of history at City College. My father suspected him of being a Trotskyist, which Dad implied was even worse than being an industrial capitalist. He knew that forbidding his only daughter contact with anyone would result in more headaches for the family. I knew that to maintain my close relationships with both of these men, I'd better stay out of that quarrel. 

When I was in public high school in NYC and then at the State University preparing to become a teacher, we were developing the New Left through the civil rights movement and organising against the war in Vietnam. Ideological struggles around the purity of the Soviet Union seemed to be a distraction. We needed to analyse the conditions in our country, develop strategies for mobilising and work in local communities for Social Justice and Peace. I shunned the conflicts within the Left that I did not understand and that undermined the united front needed to make progress towards our goals. 

I came to Cuba at the turn of the century after retiring from a 30-year teaching career to study Spanish and to study socialism. When I got to the point that I could read literature in Spanish, I came across Padura's detective story Adios Hemingway in the Plaza de Armas used book fair in Havana. For me, it was the perfect blend of a great story with vivid characters and an active political sensibility. I got the other Conde novels from England through a local bookseller. Then I heard Padura speak at a conference on Cuba at the CUNY Graduate Center in March 2011, and I bought a copy of the Spanish edition of El hombre que amaba a los perros. I began an eight-month study. Then, I was pleased to be able to meet and talk with Padura. I have had many rich and fascinating conversations with my Cuban companera/os about the book, our times and the implications of our experiences. I am looking forward to further discussions when The Man who Loved Dogs becomes available in English during the fall of 2013.

section_content: Leonardo: The translation of The Man who Loved Dogs is finished, and in the autumn of 2013 it will be published in English. 

Susan: By an American publisher? L: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It will come out in the US at the same time as in England with my usual publisher, Bitter Lemon Press. S: OK. Fall of 2013. We will wait for the book to come out this autumn. Into which other languages has it been translated? L: It is already translated into French, Italian, Danish, Greek, Portuguese and German. 

S: And the delay with the English translation? L: Because the translation took a while. The problem is that English language translators charge a great deal. They earn more than the writer! A writer must sell very well to earn what the translator earns. And my English publishers had to share the cost with the American publisher because it is such a long book. Generally, the translation into English is done with the support of the British Council, but the money given was not sufficient because of the length of the novel. We had to seek support from the US publisher. L: The book has done very well in Spain. It has had seven hardcover editions and four in paperback and has been selected by two book clubs. In Mexico there have been two editions and two editions in Buenos Aires from subsidiaries of the publisher. This means there have been 17 editions in Spanish.
section_name: Interview in Mantilla, Havana, Cuba, 27 March 2012

section_content: L: The novel won the National Prize for Literature (2012). There is supposed to be a re-edition soon, but the problem of lack of paper means that reissues are limited. S: Have many copies been brought to the island from Spain? L: Yes, a lot have arrived from Spain. A lot of people requested them through one channel or another. The problem is that in Cuba they do not import books. One reason is economic. This book sells for 22 euros. That is what a Cuban earns in a month, sometimes more than what a Cuban can earn in a month. 

S: In Mexico it costs 189 pesos which is the equivalent of about 18 US dollars. L: That is very expensive. So it is difficult to sell the book at that price in Cuba. In Cuba, all cultural works are produced nationally. Some imported books are sold at the yearly Book Fair, but what comes into the bookstores and sold to the Cuban public are produced here. S: The audience for this novel, in your mind as you were writing, was it for a Cuban or an international audience? L: This novel was written with the Cuban reader in mind. As a matter of fact, I had several discussions with my Spanish publishers regarding certain points in the novel. They would say, 'But hey, you are explaining some things that are not necessary to explain. ' I told them that the problem is that the Cuban reader has no knowledge whatsoever of this story. All that has to do with Trotsky, everything that has to do with Stalinism, everything about the murder of Trotsky in Mexico -all that has been entirely unknown to the Cuban reader. In Cuba for many years -this stance has now been relaxed but has not been changed -there was the same ideological position towards Trotsky that had been formed in the Soviet Union. There is no longer a problem criticising Stalin, but officially in Cuba there has not been a critique of Stalinism. They may have published a book like mine, distributed it, given it an award, but there has been no official position regarding what Stalinism meant in the Soviet Union and especially what it has meant as an element that perverted the communist utopia. 

Every time I read some book that contains intelligence from the archives opened in Moscow there is more information. Every time I read a book about what happened in the Soviet Union during the Stalin era, I first feel very sad because it was a really terrible process. Then I feel enormous indignation at the way the international communist movement closed its eyes to something so obviously barbaric. Stalin, through the Third Communist International, penetrated all the Communist Parties. He made them follow a policy dictated from Moscow and silenced all the atrocities that occurred in the Soviet Union. 

A few days ago I was watching a documentary about the famine in the Ukraine in which there was archival material. I don't know how they were able to film it nor how it was preserved. Scenes were similar to those of the German concentration camps. People were dying of hunger, walking and falling, starving. It's really hair raising because we are talking about the Ukraine which is the richest and most fertile land in the world, where the most wheat is produced in the world in what is called 'Little Russia', that part shared by Ukraine, Poland and Russia. There is always food, and yet people starved to death. S: I grew up in a communist family in the US, and my father remained a communist all his life, even after the revelations about Stalin. He remained blind because he could not accept the end of his dream, as you said. It was always in my mind that the difference between Stalin and Trotsky had to do with the international revolution. Cuba seems to have taken a more internationalist line than the other socialist countries and thus given recognition to Trotsky's perspective. 

L: The problem of Cuba is complicated for many historical and political reasons. Practically since 1960, even before the US blockade, Cuba began to be economically and militarily dependent on the Soviet Union, and this led to a political and ideological dependence. 

During the 60s there was still a movement of ideas in Cuba within which various possibilities were discussed, especially this type of communism with a more internationalist projection and less closed than what characterised the Soviet Union. But from the 70s, when the system was institutionalised, the country shut down. Its relationship with the USSR became absolutely dependent. That was one of the biggest mistakes made in Cuba. I don't know whether it is an error that could have been avoided. I have always thought that there might have been a chance. From that moment Cuba accepted the Soviet ideological model and began operating within that geopolitical game. Therefore, when the Soviet Union disappeared, the situation in which Cuba found itself was the most terrible that Cubans have lived through in the twentieth century. Here in Cuba during the 90s… I was writing something about this issue recently, and every time I start thinking about how we lived during the 90s I remember how we had to develop a strategy for survival. We went to bed and woke up the next day wondering whether we would have breakfast or lunch or dinner. There was no possibility of making plans. It was the era of going to work on a bicycle and just trying to get through to the next day. S: And it was at that time that you thought of the Mario Conde novels. They are of that time. 

L: I started writing the first novel in the Mario Conde series in 1990 precisely. The first of the novels, Past Perfect (Pasado perfecto), was published in Mexico in 1991. Between 1990 and 1995 I wrote three novels -that one and then Winds of Lent (Vientos de Cuaresma) and Masks (Mascaras). Then I finished my 600-page book about Alejo Carpentier. I wrote two film scripts. I finished a book of journalism. I worked so much because I felt that writing was the only thing that could save me from despair and madness, and save me from leaving Cuba, because it was a situation in which there were virtually no prospects. There was nothing to make life easier. 

I have a very strong attachment to Cuba, to this house and this neighbourhood. I have always felt strongly identified with it. Above politics, there is something human and personal about being a citizen of this neighbourhood. For me this country does not have a symbolic meaning. The flag and the national anthem do not say anything to me. My country starts here in Mantilla, with something concrete -the people with whom I grew up, where my father grew up. S: You were born in Mantilla. 

L: My great-grandfather, my grandfather, my father and I were born in this neighbourhood. We have lived here for 150 years, in an area of 300 square metres. 

I have a very strong attachment to this place, these roots. Writing saved me from despair and from leaving Cuba at a time when life was so very difficult here. S: Where did you go on your first trip abroad? L: The first journey abroad that I made was to Angola. I spent a year working there, fortunately as a civilian and not in the military. L: Right now I am writing a very complex novel. There are three stories that are almost independent although they have an important conceptual connection. One story is of a young Cuban woman who belongs to one of these urban tribes called the Emos. They comb their hair over their face and paint their nails black, nearly Gothic, the Emos. This girl disappears. The girl's father asks Mario Conde to help search for her. The police are sure that she has boarded a raft to leave Cuba and that it sank in the sea. The father thinks not, and he asks Mario Conde to look for her. That is one story. 

The second story is that of a Polish Jew who arrives in Cuba in 1938. His parents plan to come later, but they can't. He has to stay here, and he decides to become an ordinary Cuban. There comes a time when an artefact turns up that belonged to his family. He realises that someone who lives here in Cuba has betrayed his parents, and he decides to commit a drastic act. The object is a small painting by Rembrandt -'The Portrait of a Jew'. Around 1647 Rembrandt painted a number of portraits of the same model as he used for 'The Pilgrims at Emaus'. In that painting Christ is depicted breaking bread with two pilgrims. They realise that he is Jesus who has risen from the dead. Rembrandt wanted to paint a human Jesus. That's why he did so many tests of the face of Jesus using as his model a Sephardic Jew who lived in Holland. That's the third story. It's about a Sephardic Jew who wants to be a painter and comes to work in Rembrandt's studio violating Mosaic Law that Jews cannot paint, cannot represent. These three stories, as well as having a link to this picture, all have a conceptual link, and that is the individual's decision to assert his freedom -the freedom of the individual selecting among options, at different times and in different societies. 

That is what connects the three stories. S: Seems as though you like to do extensive research in order to locate a story in a specific historic epoch. Let me ask that question about The Man who Loved Dogs -the documentation of the life of Trotsky's killer, Ramon Mercader. How did you discover the details? Which parts are documented and which are your speculation? Which parts are imagined? L: I do like historical research and literary research very much. I am an essayist and have published several books of non-fiction. History is very attractive to me to the extent that I often encounter in the past the reasons for the present, for the various presents, because today is not the result of only one yesterday. I want to find in history the reasons for the present. 

I wrote The Story of My Life (La novela de mi vida), whose central character is Jose Maria Heredia, a Cuban poet of the nineteenth century. Heredia was the first Cuban who was identified as being Cuban and who had a series of perceptions about the adventures in his life that led to a way of thinking which form the permanent basis of what it means to be thoroughly Cuban. For this reason his story attracted me a great deal. In the case of the novel I'm now writing, what interests me is the world of Judaism -that ability to cling to tradition and survive as a people even without land below one's feet thanks to that tradition. Their tradition is in a book, and not just any book. Their tradition is in the Bible. Judaism is an example of how a tradition could exist without a country and that helped a people to maintain an identity. 

In the case of The Man who Loved Dogs and specifically of Ramon Mercader, when you ask me what is documented, what is speculation and what is fiction, that would take a lot of effort to discern. 

There is very little written about Ramon Mercader. He is a man in history, but a man without his story. If Ramon Mercader had not killed Trotsky, we would never have known that there was a man named Ramon Mercader. His story would have been hidden in a world of conspiracies and intrigues. His case is complex in relation to the truth because he assumed a personality that was created from lies. So much of his story was fabricated -various names and even his appearance was false. It was an image that was necessary for him to enter Trotsky's closest circle. Therefore, the real life of Ramon Mercader remains a question mark. He never talked about his life, to our knowledge, in an open way. His brother wrote a biography that was the most useful record I found. Recently, a book came out that is a long interview with a Spanish-Soviet who had been a close friend of Mercader. But this book, like the one by his brother, is very keen on being kind to Mercader's image. The narrator was a friend of his and of his wife. 

I had to deconstruct what I learned. No one knows how Mercader was trained to kill Trotsky. I worked from stories of others trained at that time. There are some elements in his letters that were preserved, but what was in his mind is impossible to know. I was lucky enough to meet two people from the Mercader family who told me things about him, and these conversations convinced me that I was not wrong about what I assumed about his personality. One of them was close to him, and that person told me that the image I presented of his uncle and his grandmother, Mercader's mother Caridad del Rio, were accurate portrayals of them both. S: Tell us about Africa, the other of the two fanatical women in his life. 

L: Mercader's lover Africa was a real person. She was a communist fighter in Spain. Afterwards she went to the Soviet Union and became a NKVD agent and after that worked with the KGB. She did not participate in the murder of Trotsky, though it was an option. She was very close to this complex and rich character, Orlov, who defected to the United States. Orlov knew Africa, and therefore they could not send her to Mexico to participate in the plot to assassinate Trotsky. Orlov could have betrayed her even though he never betrayed any of the spies he knew, including those in the Cambridge group. 

After the Second World War and the 50s Africa got close to -as Mercader did with Sylvia Aguelov -an important Uruguayan writer named Felisberto Hernandez. She married him, and they went to live in Uruguay which had very strict immigration laws at the time. It was a country with a high standard of living and an extended middle class. She married Hernandez, and they lived in Montevideo. She started the regional office of the KGB in the Southern Cone and worked there until she retired. S: And Lenina, the daughter of Mercader and Africa? L: No, the daughter is fiction. S: I am interested in the relationship between Ramon and his mother, Caridad del Rio. She taught him that fanaticism. L: That is well documented and has been confirmed by those close to him. Caridad had a very strong influence on every member of the family. S: And her addiction to drugs? L: Her son Luis tells about that. It was terrible. 

S: A central part of the book takes place during the Spanish Civil War in Barcelona when Mercader was growing up. It was like a laboratory for the struggle against fascism and the struggle among the various Republican factions. How much of that is documented? L: That part is well documented. A recent bibliography has virtually rewritten the history of the Spanish Civil War. It came out during the 90s when a group of Spanish and Russian researchers worked with documents in Moscow, especially from the Republican side. A book that I used a lot is called Spain Betrayed, about military and political intelligence coming out of Spain that was sent to Moscow. The level of Soviet manipulation of the Spanish Communist Party and their relationship with other factions in Spain was truly awesome. It reached the point that the Soviet advisors were writing speeches for the general secretary of the Spanish Communist Party. 

And the story of the 'Moscow gold' is all true. Moscow stole a part of the Spanish national treasury. That means that Stalin did not give weapons to Republican Spain. He sold them weapons that were paid with the Spanish gold that he already had in the Soviet Union. Orlov was responsible for that operation. The gold went to Moscow when the Republic needed it so as not to fall into the hands of the fascists. The gold was exchanged for weapons sold at a high price, almost double their actual value. It was a huge political and economic manipulation. 

What's more, this was happening when the Soviet Union was initiating a series of conversations between Moscow and Berlin that ended with the signing of a pact of friendship between the Soviet Union and the Third Reich. That collaboration raises extremely important questions about the intentions of Moscow, especially in light of the case against the Soviet marshals and generals charged in 1937 with being agents of the Third Reich. Of those ten or twelve senior military officers who were executed, eight were Jews. How could it be plausible that they were German agents when precisely what the Nazis were preparing for was the elimination of the Jews? S: There is very little about anti-Semitism in the novel. 

L: If I began on the topic of Trotsky's Judaism and the whole issue of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, such a complex and profound issue that needs to be handled with great care, I would have needed another novel. So I avoided it altogether and concentrated on the relations between Stalin and Trotsky. S: You pay more attention to the struggle for power than to the ideological differences. 

L: There are several political elements that differentiate Trotsky from Stalin -the issue of socialism in one country and that of the permanent revolution. But really these were as flags under which many clashes were hidden. What interests me particularly were the less visible confrontations that had to do with the individuals. Stalin was a man who was sick with hatred and the desire for power. That was something I was working with in the novel. The Cuban character carries the story up to the present because we see the consequences of what that man created in the image and the system of socialism. S: The voice of Ivan begins the novel. Still, it is his friend Daniel who ends the book when he sums up the lessons of Ivan's life. The Cuban story beginning in the 1970s includes the story about the homosexuality of Ivan's brother William and Ivan's relationships with his two wives, Raquelita and Ana. How is that story integrated into the struggle between Trotsky and Stalin? L: It is integrated to the extent that Cuba is a socialist country, and all that socialist ideology was put into practice in Cuba. Stalinism was applied in all sectors, especially in the economy. The socialist economy, the invention of Stalin as it came to us, has nothing to do with economics in the era of Lenin. This nationalised, centralised economy that comes through Stalin was applied in Cuba. Now Cuba is trying to reverse it because the country was led to virtual stagnation. However, another consequence was of a political nature. That had to do with the marginalisation of people who were different. This happened a lot in the Soviet Union. It occurred in Cuba, and this is absolutely real and proven -with religious people, homosexuals, those who thought differently. There was much intolerance and orthodoxy in Cuba, especially during the 70s. I try to relate these consequences through the story of a character. 

I have a historical character who has no story, but who enters history by way of his fanaticism. I have a great revolutionary leader separated from power who in turn becomes a critic of what was happening in the Soviet Union. What I needed in this book was a sense of humanity, and the character of Ivan carries that sense. What differentiates him from Mario Conde is that Mario is a typical Cuban though he is an atypical policeman. Here, I needed more than a typical character; I needed a symbolic character. In the life of Ivan I integrate many elements. His friend Daniel says, 'But you have experienced all the things that could possibly happen to you. ' It is more that what happens in a real life. It is a literary life. In the experiences of Ivan, I see ordinary Cuban citizens who during all those years were struggling under the weight of all those ideas. They were suffering the consequences. Fortunately in Cuba the weight of Stalinism was devoid of the cruelty. If communism in Cuba had been responsible for the death of 2,000 it would be a laughable figure. Not that any death is a laughing matter, but we have been talking about Stalin, who was responsible for the deaths of 20 million. 

All revolutions have a moment of confrontation that goes beyond all bounds. All revolutions. The French Revolution had that moment; and the English revolution when the head of a king was cut off, the Mexican and the Russian revolution. It is an inevitable part of the process of what is called revolution because things start to spin out of control and there are excesses. I think that in Cuba there were consequences in everyday life. Our good fortune is that they never arrived at the level that occurred in the Soviet Union. We complain about many things -but not about hundreds of thousands dying of hunger in Pinar del Rio nor who knows how many murdered in Santiago de Cuba. S: And no concentration camps. L: No. Not at all. The test concentration camp in Cuba was the UMAP, Military Units for Aid with Production. These charming military units created during the 60s were where young people were put if they had some 'deviation' as it was called at that time -for example homosexuals. They lasted from six to eight months before authorities realised that they were nonsense. One homosexual told me, 'That was the happiest time of my life because we Queens were all together, and we had so many delicious parties!' S: Ivan's sadness is not as acute as the suffering that occurred in the Soviet Union. 

L: It's that really. We learned very slowly about what really happened in the USSR. The information has still not been sufficiently debated in Cuba. Something is happening over the last five or six years. These frozen stories are being taken out of the refrigerator and debated. Four or five years ago there was a terrible character from the 70s who was featured on a TV programme. There was an immediate reaction from Cuban intellectuals against him. From that time, many issues have been brought out and discussed. 

A month ago I participated in a panel organised by Desiderio Navarro's magazine, Criterios, an important journal of cultural and literary theory. The work of a leading sociologist from Germany had been published. At that table in ICAIC, the Institute of Art and Industry of Cinema, very powerful and critical things were said about the workings of the Communist Party and how the Party makes policy for the economy, on the importance of allowing open dissent. Not everyone will agree, and there has to be space for those who are not thinking the same. In this case, very critical things were said, and nothing happened. S: How many copies of that magazine were printed? L: I don't know. It has a very small circulation as a theoretical journal. Still, it is an important publication. Social and cultural debate in Cuba has increased in recent years. More and more issues are discussed, including economic issues that increasingly affect us. In a socialist country within two years there will be 30 to 35 per cent of the population working in the private sector. It is called selfemployment, but that is a euphemism for private enterprise. They will have state controls and pay taxes. Economically and socially this will be a different country. It is already different. S: A mixed economy. 

L: I think it will be a mixed economy and more realistic. Over the last 50 years the Cuban state has proven that it could not guarantee that fresh tomatoes would arrive in the hands of the people. A small producer who sells to an individual with his produce mounted on a truck sells in the best possible way. When you buy a sweet on the street, it has better quality than what is made in the state bakery. The state baker is stealing flour to make a living. Anyway, I think that what is occurring as an economic and social movement will eventually have political consequences. In fact, Raúl Castro has instituted in the Party a system in which no leader can serve for more than ten years. That completely changes the structure of this country. Now, and they know it, they have nine years remaining, just nine, and time passes quickly. S: To return to another point…thanks for this, it is very interesting…to return to Trotsky for a moment. It seems to me that you have an affinity with Trotsky. L: No, not especially. What happens is that in history as in life, the loser appeals to the reader. S: Because we don't know what would have happened under Trotsky's leadership. L: Exactly. We will never know. That would be historical speculation with a capital S. But I think that Trotsky…and this is Speculation…if Trotsky had succeeded in the struggle for power, which was unlikely from the start, but if he had, I think that in the final analysis he would have done what Stalin did, but with the difference that Trotsky would have known that a million dead was enough, and that it was not necessary to kill another 19 million. The Trotskyists don't like it when I say this because they think that he was the most intelligent man, but he knew that having power in a country like the Soviet Union in the period we are discussing, after the First World War, in a completely devastated country, required a very strong exercise of power, very strong, and that exercise would inevitably lead to violence. Trotsky himself practised violence. I think he would have been like Stalin because he had that component, I say sickness. But he would also have been a tremendous man. 

S: Trotsky's image in the novel is built upon the sort of humanism that he practised with his family and his inner circle. 

L: I think that Trotsky was always and primarily a communist. He was faithful to his ideology. But it is one thing to be fighting for communism and another thing to be in power. Not just for a communist, for anyone. Conditions of power change the outlook. 

Want me to give an example? Obama was one man before he came to power and is another after he arrived there. Maybe he was the same, but at least we Cubans first were very hopeful about what could happen with Obama. Today, we are very disappointed with respect to how it affects us, for our part. We cannot speak for Americans who have other reasons. S: Also a disappointment for us. 

L: So that is why I say that when holding power things are different. S: Regarding the new novel. Does it have a title? How long before it will see the light? L: I still don't know when it will be finished because now I have a fairly complicated schedule of trips during which I will not write. That suits me to be separated a bit from the story because it has been intense work to finish even the first version. I hope to have it ready by the end of 2013 and for it to be published the following year. The title is Heresy (Herejes). I was born in 1955. My entire conscious life has been formed in and by the Cuban Revolution. I know the novel may not please some in official circles. They don't like it. But I say that if you've lived here all your life and gone through all the things that have happened in and to this country -Angola, cane cutting, harvesting tobacco, all the mobilisations and then the Special Period -that does entitle you to speak your mind, to say what is bothering you. That is my perspective. I will speak from here, from here in Cuba. 

The interviewer, Susan Metz, is an independent researcher and writer based in Brooklyn, NY.
section_name: S: Congratulations. And in Cuba?