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This led to his arrest and multiple attempts at escape from the country and trips in and out of El Morro where ironically, he claimed a celibate lifestyle.
Arenas began his literary career by entering a storytelling contest. This led to his being given a writing job at the Biblioteca Nacional Jose Marti in 1963. He then produced a number of short novellas. In 1965 at 22 he his first novel Celestino antes del alba (Celestino Before Dawn) which won the First Mention Award at the Cirilo Villaverde National Competition. It was originally published in 1967 by the UNEAC (National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists) and had a limited run of 2000 copies. This work won the 1969 Prix Medici in the country of France. This was the only novel that Arenas published in Cuba.
He left the Biblioteca Nacional in 1968 and became an editor for the Cuban Book Institute until 1968. From 1968 to 1974 he was a journalist and editor for the literary magazine La Gaceta de Cuba. His lack of realism in writing caused him to fall out of favor with revolutionary cultural policy makers. After reading Arena's memoirs and being fascinated by the realism, one wonders what they were driving at.
By the mid-1960s Castro openly persecuted homosexuals, causing Arenas to abandon the Revolution. For this his writings were censored and declared to be anti-revolutionary. Some of his various manuscripts were confiscated. He was soon no longer legally permitted to publish and write in Cuba and this caused him to secretly send his manuscripts abroad.
Unfortunately for Arenas his homosexual lifestyle made things difficult for him. The political climate in Castro's Cuba became increasingly dangerous for dissidents and others who did not fit in as time went on. By the early...
His written works had to be smuggled out of the country. Additionally, he was openly critical of Castro's support of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. In the next decade, Arenas is in and out of prison (including Morro with murderers and rapists) and attempts and fails to leave Cuba several times. The prison descriptions of rats, rapists and disease are very descriptive and make one feel as if they were in prison with him.
Eventually, he gets his wish to leave the country when in 1980 Castro empties the prisons and mental hospitals and allowed many dissidents like Arenas (by now out of El Morro) to leave the country freely. After traveling on a leaky, overcrowded boat that was constantly in danger of sinking or capsizing, he went made his way in exile to Key West, Miami and eventually to New York City where he restarted his prolific writing career. He remained virulently opposed to dialogue with Castro and spoke and wrote prolifically against the regime. He contracted AIDS and committed suicide by taking an overdose of drugs and alcohol on December 7, 1990. The memoir Before Night Falls was posthumously published in 1993.
After reading Arenas book and reading about conditions now under Raul Castro in Cuba, it appears that little has changed. It seems to this author that the only thing that holds the country together is a common enemy in the gringos from the United States. While the attitude of America is wrong, it does not justify the oppression of people who simply have different lifestyles and opinions from the government in power in Havana.
Works…
Works Cited
Arenas, Reinaldo. Before Night Falls. New York, NY: Penguin, 1994.
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