Love in the Time of Revolutionaries—Senel Paz's Return to Literature

By Carlos Rodríguez Martorell -- Críticas, 8/15/2007

Born in 1950 in the rural town of Fomento, Cuba, Senel Paz established himself as one of the most promising screenwriters on the Caribbean island thanks to the success of his movie Fresa y chocolate ("Strawberry and Chocolate," 1993), directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea. Back then, Paz had published only one novel, Un rey en el jardín ("A King in the Garden"; Ediciones Unión, 1990), along with a short story collection, El niño aquel. In the decade that followed, he worked in a series of film projects (Cosas que dejé en La Habana, 1997; Lista de espera, 2000; Una Rosa de Francia, 2006) that kept postponing his return to writing literature.

Now, 17 years later, Paz has published his long-awaited second novel, En el cielo con diamantes, a coming-of-age story of two adolescents longing for friendship and sex in the first years of the Cuban revolution. A portrait of his generation with a soundtrack of Beatles ballads, Silvio Rodríguez anthems, and Fidel Castro speeches, it can also be read as the origins of Fresa y chocolate. In this conversation with Críticas, the Cuban author described the links between all his works (literature and film) and his critical, though faithful, analysis of the Cuban revolution.

This is only your second novel and your first since your last screenplay almost ten years ago. Why did it take you so long? Did you ever consider abandoning the genre?  

Writing novels is what I love the most in the world. Someday I will do nothing but that. [Before Fresa y chocolate] my work was being produced in a very relaxed manner, almost anonymously, and I felt at ease. Such tranquility matched my temperament. My first two books had a great reception both from the public and the critics, and my screenplays more so. I was able to stay away from the limelight because in Cuba, a book does not require publicity to sell well; there are many readers. And in film, the writer does not receive too much attention.

But in the early Nineties that peace and quiet evaporated. My story "El lobo, el bosque y el hombre nuevo" ("The Wolf, the Woods and the New Man") came out, and then the screenplay as Fresa y chocolate ("Strawberry and Chocolate"). Both had significant artistic and social repercussions in Cuba, and I felt an enormous pressure. There were great expectations about what I was going to write next, and this blocked me, because it also altered my relationship with literature itself. I was used to writing out of a necessity to express myself and to make music out of words, not to please an audience or to be famous.

I have now recovered my freedom; experience has taught me how to protect my privacy in order to fulfill my need to write. I never go on television in Cuba, for example, and I avoid photographs for the press. It is here [in Cuba] where I need to be invisible. It allows me to observe and listen without drawing attention to myself. If I could choose, as Silvio Rodríguez says in one of his songs, I would write with a hood on.

David and Arnaldo are the main characters and narrators in the novel. The inevitable thought is that you use them to tell your own story. How much of it is real and how much is fiction?

It is all real, and it is all fiction. None of it is real, historically speaking. The anecdotes and the characters are not, but the spirit of the novel is. From this point of view I reenact my biography and that of my generation. My novel has an individual and a collective point of view, just like Cuban society has had in the past decades. This is why so many people recognize themselves in it. This tribal mode in which we have lived might explain why Cuban literature moves on in large groups of writers who share characteristics and motives. In the center of the enormous mass of Cubans who have undergone so many significant, dangerous, and emotive events are the individuals who go on living our small lives, our fears, our hopes. My novel chronicles our existence, our intimacies. It is an "inward novel" about the simple things, which escape labels and measurements.

Among the various cultural references in these pages, the Beatles are very present, even in the title. What did they signify for you and for Cuba in general?  

The Beatles became our only link to the world at a moment when we were extremely isolated. … The few things we imported came from lands as far away as Russia and East Europe. You would get a packet of Russian tea, a jar of Bulgarian pickles, and you would ask yourself, "How do you eat this?"

The political circumstances created individual frustration and a saddening sense of loneliness, similar to when you are a teenager and all your friends suddenly stop talking to you. The music those four boys made went beyond ideology and expressed the mood of those times. Listening to it was like getting letters from friends far away. They integrated us to the world and gave us a sense of normality. The fact that in the beginning we had to hide to listen to them made it even more exciting.

The book shows that the sexual awakening of your generation was interrupted because the revolution closed down the brothels and because "our clean and minimally beautiful places to make love are still out of sight in our poorly planned economy." Was that a fundamental mistake of the revolution?

Well, the novel exaggerates a little. Men and women will always find a place to meet. Hyperbole is a very Cuban trait and, when applied to art, it takes us to absurd and expressive situations. I sometimes have a festive, circuslike attitude when I write. It may come from my childhood frustration of never being able to afford a ticket for the circus, which I used to love. When I bring it into play to talk about political topics, the cocktail works even better.

In its implacable critique and total rejection of the capitalist way of life, the revolution intended to eliminate any correspondence to that system, hoping to rebuild everything from scratch. It made many things disappear without replacing them with something else or doing so only in theory. It has sometimes taken us into the abyss or given us a medicine worse than the illness. All this can be pathetic and dramatic, but it can also be poetic and comical.

Among the many stories in En el cielo con diamantes, some deal with loyal supporters of the revolution who become victims of its excesses, including one who fell out of favor and later had to leave the country. Why does this type of character appear so frequently in your work? Would you ever write about people who oppose the current regime?

I had never thought about that, but now that you mention it, I see that it is true. These are characters in conflict with their environment, and that is always an attractive and revealing idea for a writer. The revolution has not only had clashes with its enemies but also with its own followers. This is not as monolithic a process as it looks or as the regime claims. It is made of several currents and groups in conflict that take turns in popularity and create tension. Because our lives have gone by under a constant, defensive struggle for reaffirmation, all dissent or critique has been looked upon as a threat. This has given way to an abnormal situation where debate and diversity of opinion are avoided. I believe that people who have had an honest attitude—who may have been paid with censorship and punishment—have brought more benefits to Cuban life than the most submissive followers of the revolutionary doctrine.  

I don't know if I will write about people who are categorically opposed to the regime. That is not my choice to make. In reality, I don't write about anybody: my characters come to me and I let them in without questioning them. I welcome them artistically, and then I take charge. I never consciously chose to write about homosexuality, for example, but the character of Diego came to me, and we talked about it for a long time. In fact, homosexuality does not strike me as interesting; I see it as a minor topic. But I do find homosexual language fascinating.  

The end of the novel reads as the beginning of Fresa y chocolate. Is this a tribute, or do you feel that it completes a cycle?

It isn't a tribute. It means that the next episodes in David's life are in the movie and in the short story where it came from. I am setting down one more piece of the puzzle I intend to make. All of my books and films (the ones I have written for Cuban cinema and that come from my literary works) are related because they belong to a fictional world I have been creating as it has revealed itself to me. This is why the characters reappear in many [of my works]. What begins on the page may be resolved on screen. This is something I realized at some point and I went with it.

For instance, the grandmother, the mother, and the sisters from my first two books reappear now in En el cielo con diamantes. They showed up very briefly in the movie Una novia para David. But that was David's responsibility, not mine. He has guided me until now, and as other characters appear in his life they also enter mine. Still, this does not necessarily bind my point of view to his. I develop an independent relationship with each character. Furthermore, I feel that David's leading role is coming to an end, which does not mean that he will disappear. I am not sure where all this will take me, aside from writing more novels.

What kind of reception do you expect from readers in the United Status?

I believe that U.S. reader can find in my book, first and foremost, a novel about love, friendship, and sex among young, lively people, happy and anxious at once, in a narrative sprinkled with humor. The fact that they are Cuban is the least important thing, although it might add some sort of appeal. People in the United States and Cubans live nearby but do not know each other; we are separated by a political wall. Politics are also present though not in the form of doctrine. They work as a sort of testimony because our lives have been conditioned by it down to the most intimate aspects. Lastly, I can say that it is almost a novel with a soundtrack: not only the sound of the Beatles bustles out of its pages, but also much of the Cuban music of different eras. While it is all fiction, it is based on truth and it contains my utter honesty.