Toulouse (AFP)
After the revolution, the "great disenchantment". Leonardo Padura, one of the best-known Cuban writers in the world, has been chronicling for 30 years the disappearance of illusions in an island he never wanted to leave.
"My generation grew up in this Utopia and, after, suffered a great disillusionment, a great disenchantment," says the novelist to the white beard.
Born in Havana in 1955, four years before the revolution led by Fidel Castro, he created in 1990, just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the character of Mario Conde, alcoholic and melancholic inspector. The country is then hit hard by the disappearance of the USSR and its communist allies, with terrible food shortages.
"The melancholy of Mario Conde is very historically justified, he lived in a world where it was believed that utopia was possible, perhaps because we were very believing, or maybe very deceived. equality, solidarity was possible ".
- "Egalitarian society no longer exists" -
Today, "the economic system and the political form of Cuba have not changed, but the egalitarian society that existed until 1989 no longer exists".
"And now, Cuban society, socially, looks like any other society in the world, those who have money live better than those who do not, but even with money, you can not buy some goods, "says the writer, whose work is translated into 20 languages and awarded in Spain and France, including the prestigious Spanish prize" Princess of Asturias ".
"It's a very special society, but the difference between the poor and the rich is not as big as in the rest of Latin America," says the author of "The Man Who Loved Dogs" "(2009) on the end of communist utopia through the assassination of Leon Trotsky.
If Cuba gradually turns the page of Fidel Castro (and his brother Raul), without touching socialism and the single party, difficult to predict the future of the island: "no Cuban has the answer".
"The policies will give a political answer: + we will resist and we will overcome + but in reality, it is very difficult to make a forecast on what will become Cuba in 5 or 10 years".
However, society is evolving more rapidly than institutions. The arrival of mobile Internet (3G) nearly a year ago was a small revolution, pushing many Cubans to express themselves on social networks.
- "Write what I want" -
"For years, we have managed and controlled access to the internet and this digital world.Today, the youngest live in this internet world, with Facebook and Instagram.They think and behave in a different way, in Cuba and in the rest of the world ".
Despite the difficulties, no way for him to leave his neighborhood, Mantilla, his city, Havana, his country.
"I pay a price to live and write what I write about Cuba, the circulation of my works is much lower than in any part of the world.In the year, I do between 200 and 250 interviews. And no more than five in Cuba, always in the alternative media, almost never in the official media.
"I'm never on TV, never in the most broadcast newspapers, I'm somewhat invisible in Cuba, but they (the authorities) do not bother me, let me write, it's the most important for me, I can write what I want, "says the novelist who from the beginning focused on documenting" abuse of power, corruption, persecution of homosexuals. "
"It's been years since I made the conscious decision to live and work in Cuba," he says. "In another place, I could not have written the work that I wrote, I have a very strong feeling of belonging to the Cuban reality, to the city of Havana.I am a Cuban writer who wants to write about Cuba ".
© 2019 AFP