Fifteen years, already? Fifteen years since a more or less well-known author, known in some circles, an author who was a word-of-mouth secret, became one of the great names in Latin American literature. Fifteen years since Leonardo Padura public The man who loved dogsthat novel about the exile and death of the communist leader Leon Trotsky and about his murderer, Ramón Mercader, who had been sent by Josef Stalin and who stabbed him with an ice ax – a mountaineering pick – into his head.
The man who loved dogs
eBook
That’s what it’s about The man who loved dogs but also – like all of Padura’s books, even the police ones – it is about how Cuba is today, what is happening there, the precariousness in which people live, the imposture of power, the injustice.
It was 2009, 20 years since the Berlin Wall had fallen and a little less than since the Soviet Union had ended. What was it about Cuba then? Could we talk about León Trotskythat enemy of Stalin?
The book – full of documentation – came out and was a success. It became a reference. In 2016 Leonardo Padura -already an international author, he won the Princess of Asturias Award. He lives in his neighborhood of Havana, in Mantilla, because he has said in every way that he could not write outside of those words and those customs. But he also spends a lot of time traveling the world and in Madrid, which at this point is his other home. From there, and while a commemorative edition arrives in bookstores, we speak with Leonardo Padura. Fifteen years after all that.
-Did you have to live in a communist country to write a book like that?
–The man who loved dogs It was the result of an accumulation of life experiences and readings, learning, and knowledge through bibliography, but personal experience was very important. I always say that a biography like Trotsky’s could be written, more or less in the way I wrote it, by an Argentine writer, a Mexican, a Spaniard. They could have done it but it would hardly have been possible to give him the perspective that a writer who lived and lives in a country with a communist system gave him. There is a very deep, very peculiar, very visceral personal experience that is reflected in that novel.
-How has the world changed since it came out? The man who loved dogs?
-I think that since the moment I started writing that book, back in 2005, the world has followed a slope in which what seemed to have been established with a certain firmness, well, has been collapsing into systems populists. A rise of the right, increasingly serious problems with migrations, wars that seemed like they would no longer occur in the way they have occurred, wars of conquest like the one that is occurring in Ukraine. And, furthermore, a technological leap that has been brutal in recent years and that is changing, has changed the relationships between people with respect to information, knowledge, even commerce. Today people relate more through digital media than even through personal means, through close, more intimate means.
-Does that worry you?
-It is a world that has been shaped in a way that is not particularly pleasant to me and that causes me many fears regarding the future. But I see that artificial intelligence, for example, is an instrument that can be absolutely essential, for example, for medical treatments. And, at the same time, it can be absolutely perverse for the management of information and for the dominance and control of individuals. Those are some of the things that I think have happened in these years between the publication of the book and the present.
-How do you read that book from 15 years away? Would you write it the same today?
-I think that in essence I would write the book the same way. I see that it is still relevant, because that world that I was describing to you would require that there be some utopian project that in some way tried to find a better distribution of the things that people need from justice, from democracy. I think we are missing a project and that example that was tried to be founded with the October Revolution of 1917 has a principle with which many of us agree, because it was about creating a society of equals, a society where lived with the maximum of freedom and in the maximum of democracy.
-But it didn’t happen.
-Unfortunately, that project very soon began a process of perversion and starting in 1929 with Stalin in absolute power, well, that process was galloping and led to that point of no return that I saw in the assassination of Trotsky. There it seemed to me that it was impossible to rescue that egalitarian utopia. But we need another utopia that does not make the same mistakes that were made in the process of putting that thought into practice, that utopian project of the 20th century.
-What changed in Cuba during this time?
-Some very important things- Remember that in these years the mandate was issued for Fidel to leave the leadership of the country and for it to pass into the hands of his brother Raúl Castro. The death of Fidel, after Raúl Castro passed the government, the State and the party to the current president Miguel Díaz-Canel, that in the political structure of the leadership. However, the socio-political economic system has not changed, it remains the same. The current government is defined as a government of continuity with the previous policy.
-So?
-Many changes have occurred, such as greater access to the internet and communications with mobile data, the possibility for Cuban citizens to travel abroad without having to ask for a permit, and today with an updated passport and a visa you can travel wherever you want except for some very specific people who have limitations to do so, but the vast majority of people can. Private businesses have also been opened, small private companies, the so-called MSMEs, which are playing an important role in the Cuban microeconomy, because the macroeconomy remains in the hands of what is known as the socialist state company. What has not changed is the inefficiency of this socialist state company: it remains inefficient and that inefficiency causes the results that we have seen in the current Cuban economy.
-And with the other countries?
-The Cuban thaw happened with Obama and the retreat to very hostile positions with the government of Donald Trump. Another Donald Trump government is looming, which could bring even more limitations in relations between Cuba and the United States, more hostility, more confrontation. And reinforce the blockade of Cuba, which is a real fact that exists despite the shopping possibilities that have been opened in the United States, for food and other products. But it is still a stigma that is weighing on the Cuban economy. And the most visible result of this entire process that has occurred in these years, with an economic crisis that has been sustained and has even increased, the most visible has been the migration process, the migration crisis that is being experienced in Cuba.
-Is it something new?
-It is the strongest immigration crisis, the largest that has ever existed. In three years, one million two hundred thousand people have left Cuba, that is, 10 percent of the population. A population that had just over 11 million now has less than 10. Furthermore, to leave you need a visa or money to pay for a trip through Nicaragua and all of Central America, on the so-called “Coyote Route.” That means that those who could have left, not those who wanted to leave. If that had been the case, there would be figures that could be truly frightening. Many hopes have been lost, people trust less, people have less purchasing power, the population has been impoverished, while there are pockets of wealth that have appeared. For example, these entrepreneurs who have MSMEs, some have made some interesting capital within Cuba, we are not talking about capital from Silicon Valley or the rich Mexicans, but well, compared to the rest of the Cuban population they are notable. In the midst of poverty, because there is a lot of inflation in Cuba. And a lack of basic products ranging from food to medicines has greatly affected the Cuban population in recent years.
-How did you get to the topic at that moment? And how did you access the information?
-In Cuba, as in any country in the Soviet sphere, there was what I call a “programmed ignorance” of different processes, characters, historical moments. And Trotsky was part of that programmed ignorance. There was no bibliography to consult, something that would give you a more or less balanced image of his personality, of his work, of the events that had occurred in his life. I had to look everywhere, especially in Spain. I brought a lot of bibliography from Spain. At that time, Internet access in Cuba was very restricted and what I did was look for information and ask friends who lived outside of Cuba to download those files and send them to me by email. When I went out I looked for libraries in different places. In Mexico I had correspondents who helped me a lot by finding information and documentation. I searched everywhere to be able to construct not only Trotsky’s biography from the time he went into exile until he was assassinated in Mexico, but also the very diffuse and controversial personality of Ramon Mercadera historical character who has no history because his story is fiction.
-As?
-His story was created, remember that this man was called Ramón Mercader, his name was Frank Jackson, his name was Jacques Mornard, his name was Ramón López… at one point in the novel he is called “Soldier 13.” In short, he is a character that was very difficult to create due to the lack of reliable information that existed about him. But well, I read a lot, a lot, a lot, I looked for, for example, the information about what had happened with the famous Soviet aid to the Spanish Republic during the Civil War and I saw there the entire process of use of that Republic and that Civil War by Stalin and the almost betrayal he committed with the Spanish republicans. All of this involved deep research and I believe that everything that is said in the book is based on texts that are quite reliable.
-How have you changed in these fifteen years, starting from a novel that gave you enormous projection?
-The novel has had a very notable journey. For example, in Brazil, where my books were not particularly well-sold, it was a leap, it was a huge leap and we are already at more than 100,000 copies sold. And throughout the Ibero-American world it has been the same. It has also been published in many languages, it is now being translated into Romanian, for example. The novel meant that I received awards such as the Cuban National Literature Prize in 2012 or the Princess of Asturias Prize for Literature in 2015 and that it had an especially international projection. So I return to an earlier question: I think I wouldn’t touch it, I think the novel worked with the perspectives, the knowledge, the concerns I had at the time. And I have to respect that writer who at that time wrote that novel that has given so much satisfaction to the writer who answers these questions today, fifteen years after The Man Who Loved Dogs was published.
