This has been a unique period in the history of Cuban literature. It captured an era, his era. Although the attitude of the authorities today is the same rigid one that led to the Padilla affair, there is no chance of such an episode happening again, even as a trumped up. Government attitudes may not change but the world's do. There are now dozens of international organisations monitoring the situation in Cuba and in the country itself there are many human rights groups.
Independent journalists are alive and kicking.
Today nobody will be alone like Padilla, who began as a writer with another distinguished work, El Justo Tiempo Humano. His death in Alabama moved everyone in the Cuban diaspora. In Cuba, the grief is private, because even dead, he is still banned there. Padilla was very keen to visit Cuba but he never got permission to. Now the poetry has been freed from the man, it can begin its journey home.