Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas

¶ … Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas and will address the following questions, including, where Arenas was born, what his childhood was like, how he described the gay culture in 1960's Cuba, why he was arrested, what his life like in Morro prison, what happened in the Mariel boat lift in 1980, how Arenas get out of the country, what his life was like when he left Cuba and when, where and how he died and how Cuba has changed.

Reinaldo Arenas was born in Oriente province, Cuba in 1943. Arenas never knew precisely where. He was abandoned by his father and raised as an only child by his mother and grandparents. Arenas only saw his father once and remembers his mother throwing rocks at him in rage. He lamented the fact that his mother was such a beautiful woman and could not attract a man since she had become pregnant out of wedlock. As he said "marriage was only for virgins and she had been seduced (Arenas 2) ." She was very mistrustful and found it impossible to find a dependable man. Inexperienced with children, she did not really know how to properly love and take care of him.

When a young child, the entire family moved to Holguin, Cuba. One wonders about Arena's self-esteem. He opens the book with memories where he and his sister are eating dirt and worms in the yard near the animal pen. His descriptions of himself are hardly any more gratifying since he describes himself as an ugly child with a large head and a pot belly.

Arenas found his marginal existence in the poverty-stricken countryside to be liberating. Nobody cared about him, but they also did not care what his did. He therefore had complete carte blanche to explore the forests. In his wanderings, he found himself in freedom away from the noise of the extended family of his grandmother's house and the cackling of chickens in the barnyard.

Arenas claims that he discovered he was gay at the age of six when swimming in the Rio Lario with a number of other young men who were swimming in the nude. The experience was so arousing for him that the next day he masturbated so hard that he almost fainted (ibid 8). He claims to have had sexual encounters with animals his cousin Dulce Maria and his cousin Orlando (ibid 10-11). He had many other sexual encounters with animals and his uncle (ibid 18-20). In other explorations of rural Cuba, he describes the Santeria "temple of the spirits" and the possession of his Aunt Mercedita by a spirit (ibid 12). Even in matters of religion, the young Arenas was a non-conformist.

Luckily enough, he was able to hide hi homosexuality and hatred for communism when he attended a communist boy's school in Holguin, Cuba. As in the countryside, there was an underground homosexual culture. Frequently, the instructors had sexual encounters with their students and the students with each other, all under the radar of a macho communism that applauded Russian culture and theater. During a trip to Havana organized by the school to attend a rally called by Fidel Castro, he came to Havana and discovered the gay and bisexual subculture there (50-53).

Arenas, was openly gay and moved to Havana in the 1960s to continue his studies. Here, he begins to explore his ambitions and his homosexuality. Arenas was offered the opportunity to publish his first work after receiving an honorary mention in a creative writing contest. Through his writing work and friendships with other openly homosexual men (like as Pepe Malas and Tomas Diego), Arenas manages to find his true self, just as he had earlier in the jungles of Oriente. 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 1970s, Arenas was arrested for allegedly committing sexual assault against minors on a beach and for publishing his works abroad without official government consent. 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.