Detectives Beyond Borders: A Forum for International Crime Fiction --Peter Rozovsky's self evident musings on crime fiction has some interesting comments about the Cuban crime writer, Jose Latour. I've not read any of this Cuban exile's novels but Rozovsky digs up a quote from his latest, Comrades in Havanna that's worth a hearty scoff :
"Under capitalism, many nations had achieved what he had been led to believe only communist societies could: free education and health care."Cuban artists (and sportspeople) who high tail it outter there for big bucks elsewhere always play up to the role assigned to them by the US ideological template -- while always failing to note that their experience of recognition and encouragement of their achievements relied so much on the conditions of the very process they now professionally denigrate.
This actual situation is touched on in a comment and interview with Leonardo Padura, in the ShotsMag crime fiction zine, who is referred to as Cuba's Hammett -- and the Godfather of crime fiction on the island:
In case you are thinking that I'm too black and white, Rozovsky notes another segment of Latour's novel as a reflection on what's on offer for Cubans from the outside 'forces of democracy' if they retake the country:For those who tend to support the revolution blindly and those who tend to attack it from a position of ideological ignorance, this book should be particularly challenging. For it is clear that Padura is a critical voice from within. At times the sarcasm and behaviour of his policeman indicates an almost heretical attitude. Yet Padura remains in Cuba and is celebrated, certainly by the artistic community and the general population, as one of the nation’s greatest authors.
Padura’s presence in the island and his novels are a great achievement because they illustrate that Cuban socialism is not as repressive as its enemies claim it to be, while at the same time showing that Cuba is perhaps not as perfect as some of its friends might want us to believe.
Padura’s Havana is a heterogeneous place, where the macro politics of the Cold War, the blockade and the confrontation with the United States is not mentioned but broods ominously behind the text where the characteristic scarcities and contradictions of the 1990s are ever present. Padura’s reality is thus carefully nuanced and not easily bracketed into any ideological point of view.
In a sense therefore, Padura exemplifies the maturity of Cuban socialism in that it has been able to produce an author of such ability and education (his influences are wide-ranging - from Shakespeare to Salinger, Cervantes to Montalban, Mozart to Lennon) who is able to create a credible fictional Cuban world that is recognisable to visitors and Cubans alike and which is relevant to the times we are living through.
Some Cuban politicians might feel uncomfortable reading these stories, but then that is precisely the kind of popular literature that Gramsci called for. True art, said Gramsci, is about depicting life as it is now - whereas politics is always about some great future that is going to be. For that reason, he explained, the politician would always be at loggerheads with the artist.
Padura is such an artist. He makes the reader sit up and think, using the medium of the detective story not to propagandise but to philosophise. His novels might be described as morality tales for the post-Soviet era.
One of the defectors, a central figure in the novel:"`But we've reflected on the excesses of democracy and the shortcomings of communism a hundred times. Are we going to do something about it? No, right? So leave it to the naive dissidents who risk their freedom, maybe even their lives. They haven't figured out that when communism falls, Cuban-Americans will give them a medal and a pension before rigging the elections and taking charge. Politics sucks, Victoria."
