Guillermo Cabrera Infante (Miami Herald)
Hyfler/Rosner
Guillermo Cabrera Infante, a Cuban writer who earned praise
for his books and won the most prestigious prize in Spanish
literature, died at age 75.;
BYLINE: BY FABIOLA SANTIAGO AND NANCY SAN MARTIN;
fsan...@herald.com
Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante, heralded as one of
the most original voices of contemporary Spanish letters,
died Monday night in a London hospital. He was 75.
His effervescent novel Tres Tristes Tigres, published in
English as Three Trapped Tigers, captured the rum-soaked,
salacious Havana of the late 1950s and became a classic of
Cuban literature. As most of his writings, the novel bubbled
with the witty Cuban speak of the streets and a cast of
eccentric characters.
Although he wrote ''in Cuban'' instead of the high-brow
Spanish of many of his contemporaries, he earned high-brow
praise, winning in 1997 Spain's Cervantes prize, the most
prestigious in Spanish literature.
Cabrera Infante died from septicemia resulting from a
variety of health problems he had developed in recent
months, relatives told the Spanish news service EFE. He had
been admitted to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital last week
after falling in his London apartment and breaking his hip.
The writer's wife, Miriam Gomez, had said that her husband
was being treated for pneumonia, in addition to the broken
hip. She also said he suffered from diabetes. He underwent a
heart bypass operation last August.
Cabrera Infante also was known as an outspoken critic of
Fidel Castro's regime. He had actively opposed dictator
Fulgencio Batista in the 1950s, and after Castro took power
in 1959, Cabrera Infante became a cultural representative
for the new government in Brussels from 1962 to 1965. By
1965, his discontent with the totalitarian direction of the
Castro government led to a break over a highly critical
interview.
Cabrera Infante then sought refuge in London, where he has
lived the last four decades, authoring La Habana para un
infante difunto(published in English as Infante's Inferno)
and Mea Cuba, among other works.
Born on April 22, 1929, in Gibara, a small town in
eastern-most Oriente province, Cabrera Infante moved with
his family to Havana at the age of 12.
In 1950, he began to study journalism, one of his grand
passions along with film.
He went on to write film criticism under the pen name of G.
Cain for the magazine Carteles and served as editor of a
cultural magazine Lunes de Revolucion.
He was considered one of the best film critics of Latin
America and his collection of criticism, Un oficio del Siglo
XX(A 20th Century Job), reads like a novel.
For a generation of Cuban-American writers, born on the
island but exiled as children and adolescents, his books
were a window into the Cuba they never knew. And for the
same generation in Cuba, reading them was an act of
defiance.
''He was probably one of the three most important Cuban
writers of the 20th century, known for his sarcastic
criticism of the Castro regime,'' said Jaime Suchlicki,
director of the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban
and Cuban-American Studies.
''He represented so many things. He was one of the first
exile writers who really had international recognition with
a work that was not only very Cuban, but very Havana
centered,'' said Uva de Aragon, assistant director at the
Cuban Research Institute at Florida International
University.
''He had a very personal style,'' she said. ''He has
influenced many writers, not only in exile but in Cuba.
That's a lot to say for a writer whose books were not
allowed to circulate in the country.''
''He immortalized an era [with Tres Tristes Tigres] and a
nightlife in Havana that is now gone and will remain in his
books. He was not a congenial man; he was a man who suffered
a lot, who had a lot of difficulties in coming to terms with
the reality of exile.
''But more than that he was un habanero. Cuba was present in
his work all the time. He represented a voice of dissent
that was respected worldwide. He took the essence of the
country, its language, its humor and made it into a
monumental artistic work.''
In Cuba, news of his death began to spread late Monday and
was met with deep sorrow. ''It's an enormous loss for the
Cuban culture and our identity as a nation,'' dissident
journalist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, 64, said in a telephone
interview from Havana. ''His cubaniawas always present.''
Espinosa, who was among 75 government opponents jailed
during an island-wide crackdown in 2003 and was released
from prison in November for health reasons, said Cabrera
Infante's literature ''was well-followed'' there and his
books circulate clandestinely even though they are banned.
''His grandeur as a writer broke all barriers, even those
placed by the government,'' he said.
Poet Raul Rivero, also one of the recently released
intellectuals, said: ''It's a great loss, he leaves a great
void.''
This report was supplemented with Herald wire services.