Hearing the voice of Reinaldo Arenas, seeing his happy face in photos with friends, reading his words in his own handwriting in the dedications of his books. Spectators of the talk ‘ Pen and Duster: Words and Papers by Reinaldo Arenas’, dictated by René Cifuentes, they were able to discover a more joyful, less sad facet than that offered in Before Night Falls, one of the most famous books by the Cuban writer who died in New York in December 1990.
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“The joy of the first years in New York was perhaps not sufficiently reflected in his memoirs, given the circumstances in which they were dictated. The image of the exiled writer, alone, poor and abandoned; dying of AIDS in a cold Manhattan apartment is very convenient for the Cuban dictatorship, but it was not like that, ”says Cifuentes, a close friend of Arenas during the 1980s.
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Cifuentes studied at the National School of Arts Instructors of Cuba, his native country. Before arriving in New York in 1980, he spent three years in Cuban jails for wanting to leave the island. He worked for 18 years at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).
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The talk given by Cifuentes, which was broadcast on the Zoom and Facebook platforms simultaneously on November 12, was part of the cycle ‘The Mariel Effect: Before, During, and After’ organized by the Cuban Heritage Collection of the University of Miami.
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Arenas was one of the emblematic writers of Cuba during the 70s and 80s. He was in prison accused of homosexuality (a crime for the Castro regime) and for having sent a novel abroad to be published without permission from the authorities. He was one of the refugees who participated in the Mariel exodus. He lived the last 10 years of his life in New York.
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Among his works stand out the works: Celestino before dawn, The amazing world, Old rose, Y The palace of the very white skunks, among other books that were translated into English, French and German.
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His memoir titled Before Night Falls gained international fame due to a film with the same name directed by Julian Schnabel. In that 2000 film, the Spanish actor Javier Bardem plays Reinaldo Arenas, a work that was well valued by specialized critics.
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Cifuentes was one of Arenas’ great friends, very close to him during the creation and life of the magazine Mariel, which gave voice between 1983 and 1985 to the culture of Cubans in exile. “The best thing that happened to Cuban literature is that the magazine Mariel It closed because it gave Reinaldo Arenas time to finish his work, ”he says.
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Arenas published between 1986 and 1990 the books: Persecution, Need for freedom, The Loma del Ángel, Will to live manifesting, and wrote his memoirs that were published posthumously in 1992.
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“He was a man of an overflowing imagination. Reinaldo turned everything into a joke, ”says Cifuentes. “On the postcards he used to say ‘adored girl’ or ‘woman’, but when he dedicates his books he does so to René Cifuentes, with extraordinary seriousness,” he adds.
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“My love for Reinaldo is the love of freedom and the sexual identity that he represents. For me the freedom of Cuba may be important, but the freedom of a human being may be more important ”, asserts Cifuentes.
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“We are a group that leaves Cuba without nostalgia. The Mariel group is a group that leaves an island after being locked up. We left while they threw eggs at us and yelled at us in acts of repudiation. There is a joy to have been able to escape ”, he clarifies.
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“If the Mariel emigrants had one thing, it was that we were a large group,” says Cifuentes. “The last of our happy reunions was on Thanksgiving in 1988 at the home of the painter Gustavo Ojeda. At that time we were still laughing at AIDS. “
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Cifuentes vividly remembers the last time he saw Arenas. “I went to look for Reinaldo at his apartment, we went to see an exhibition by Gustavo Ojeda, who had recently died. He had been our first friend in America. “
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Cifuentes relates that that day, Arenas gave him a book that he kept at his home, without opening it, because he was leaving immediately for Los Angeles. In that city, he learned of the death of his friend. “To René, before the trip, with all the love of a brother, and all the sorrows of a friend of the soul,” reads a dedication dated December 3, 1990, four days before tragically dying.
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Photos of a trip to Niagara Falls, photos on the beach, photos of Arenas’ 40th birthday, photos on the streets of New York, photos of a trip to Miami. Dozens of photographs that are part of the personal archive of Cifuentes; in which there are also 64 recordings of messages on the answering machine with Arenas’s voice, dedicated books, copies of Mariel magazine, postcards, and other objects that are under the protection of the Cuban Heritage Collection of the University of Miami.
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“It is an honor and privilege to be the custodians of this archive, whose historical importance and wealth of material will undoubtedly have an important impact on future research on Arenas and the Mariel generation,” explains the director of the Cuban Heritage Collection, Elizabeth Cerejido.
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“Life gave Reinaldo some bad moments, but it gave him the richness of words, the richness of an extraordinary body and the richness of having felt affection”, sums up Cifuentes, witness to Reinaldo Arenas’ years of joy in New York .
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