The writer Edmundo Desnoes, the Cuban who didn’t fit on any shore, has died | Culture

Edmundo Desnoes spent his final years “looking and walking,” as they say in Cuba: lying in bed, cross-legged, using his long forearms as pillows, humbly awaiting death. He ate just enough and barely spoke to his partner Felicia. His body seemed healthy, but his soul was tired. At the age of 93, he had decided to retire from life. A resignation that took effect in the early hours of last Tuesday.

He was born on October 2, 1930 to a Cuban father of Spanish origin and a Jamaican mother who spoke English to him. Perfectly bilingual, he spent his childhood between his native Havana and New York, but he never perceived his mestizo identity as a wealth, but rather as a tear that prevented him from fitting into the world. His first mentors were the two most important Cuban intellectuals of his time: the writer José Lezama Lima, who introduced him to the magazine Originsand the painter Wifredo Lam.

After the debut with the book Everything is burning (1952) he met María Rosa Almendros, the daughter of the exiled Spanish educator Herminio Almendros, whom he married in 1956. After a short time in Caracas, they had the experience of living on a deserted island in the Bahamas, from where she left. expelled due to difficult coexistence with mosquitoes. They settled in New York and there he worked as a journalist for the magazine vision to the triumph of Fidel and his bearded men in the Sierra Maestra.

“He was one of the authors of the controversial letter accusing Pablo Neruda of accepting an invitation from the Pen Club of New York.”

After returning to Cuba, Desnoes and María Rosa passionately joined the revolutionary movement. It was integrated into the supplement Monday of the Revolution, From Cabrera Infante she was involved in the founding of Casa de las Américas. After the closure of MondayDesnoes subordinated himself to Alejo Carpentier in the national editorial office of Cuba, where, together with his friend Ambrosio Fornet, he undertook the project of publishing masterpieces of universal literature with spectacular editions for a country in the process of literacy.

After cutting his teeth as a novelist No problem (1961) vol The catastrophe (1965) he was consecrated Memories of underdevelopment (1965), the apocryphal diary of a Cuban citizen full of doubts in a time of great certainty – the missile crisis of the Cold War – which director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea brought to the cinema three years later with an undeniable masterpiece.

It was the greatest success of a career that also experienced noise. Desnoes, who had served as Pablo Neruda’s driver in Havana, was one of the authors of the controversial letter accusing the Chilean of accepting an invitation from the New York Pen Club. He was also among the names mentioned by Heberto Padilla in the infamous confession he made at the headquarters of the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (Uneac), which Desnoes refused to attend. Behind Padilla case, which represented an irreparable split between intellectuals around the world associated with the revolution, the so-called Gray Quinquennium was opened in Cuba, creating a harsh climate of censorship and repression. Desnoes, divorced from María Rosa and remarried to Virgen Tabares, was sent first as a teacher to the School of Industrial Design and later to the Department of Educational Cinematography of the Ministry of Education.

By this time he had also distinguished himself as an art critic and essayist on photography, with groundbreaking texts such as: The photographic image of underdevelopment O To see you better, Latin America, together with the Venezuelan Paolo Gasparini. It was he who invited him to the Venice Biennale in 1979, after which he decided to go into exile. He immediately moved to the United States, where, with the support of a new partner, the American professor Carollee Bengelsdorf, he obtained a teaching position at the Five Colleges.

There he published his most controversial project, the anthology The devices in bloom, where he brought together texts by famous Cuban writers as well as texts by outstanding figures of the regime such as Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. And although Cabrera Infante – who wrote an angry letter to EL PAÍS entitled “Against Edmundo Desnoes” – and Reinaldo Arenas regard him as little less than their nemesis, the book will remain a precocious attempt to reconcile two antagonistic sides under the idea ​the homeland and the shared tradition that anticipates the current prevailing trend. In such a polarized context, his unforgivable sin was not embracing anti-Castroism even though he had left the island.

In New York, Desnoes will see his first young love again, the journalist and writer Felicia Rosshandler, with whom he will spend his last decades. After years of staying away from the world of literature, he surprised everyone by publishing it in 2007 Developmental memories from a small Spanish publisher, Mono Azul: a kind of sequel to his greatest success and an implicit homage to his brother-in-law, the Oscar-winning cinematographer Néstor Almendros. The work was also made into a film by a young Cuban director, Miguel Coyula, and gained some respect in the independent scene.

In any case, Desnoes’ laurels did not grow again as before. He actually managed to return to Cuba in 2003 as a jury member of the Casa de las Américas Prize, where he was applauded and received as a prodigal son. He could check it there Memories of underdevelopment It continues to appeal to readers today, more than half a century after its publication. That was his consolation, even though he felt, as perhaps he had all his life, that his divided heart did not fit on either shore of the Florida Strait. The revolution that once gave him the illusion of belonging to a place and a people was something different.

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