The judicial farce against Angel Santiesteban reminds me of the celebrated narrator Reinaldo Arenas and the poets Heberto Padilla and Raul Rivero

The judicial farce against Angel Santiesteban reminds me of the
celebrated narrator Reinaldo Arenas and the poets Heberto Padilla and
Raul Rivero
Posted on June 20, 2013
Miguel Iturria Savon

On September 2, 2011, I published on Cubanet the article SOS for Angel
Santiesteban, then beset by the political police of the Cuban government
in spite of being a writer who had been awarded multiple prizes by the
regime's own institutions. At the end of 2012 Angel was sentenced to
five years in prison after a rigged trial in which they used his ex-wife
as the spear point against him. I will not refer to the details of the
case because they still circulate in various writings and on
Santiesteban's blog, but to my personal impressions about this artist of
the word.

Before personally meeting the author of Dreams on a Summer Day, The
Children That Nobody Wanted, Blessed Are Those Who Mourn and South:
Latitude 13, I read his books and heard several anectdotes that reflect
his temperament and satirize the Cuban political situation. It is hard
to forget some characters from his stories about the jail and the Cuban
intervention in the African wars. Maybe the magisterial design of those
alien beings that gallop on the pages of his works are the true cause of
the humiliating judicial proecess that is trying to override his
rebelliousness and the voice of this bold man without masks.

As my son was a lawyer for Angel Santiesteban I had the privilege of
receiving him in my Havana home and talking with him frequently over a
glass of water — Angel does not drink rum or coffee. We talked of
literature and of his family experience. Only on one occasion, on asking
him about one of his characters, did he reveal to me the traumatic trace
of his brief stay in prison before reaching age 20, after being arrested
on the north coast while saying goodbye to a relative who tried to flee
the island on a raft.

I met several times with Santiesteban in the home of blogger Yoani
Sanchez and in the cultural gatherings organized in the residence of
physician Antonio Rodiles, leader of the program Estado de Sats. I
remember that Angel hardly intervened in the debates and always sat at
the end of the room, distant from posturing and prominence but cordial
with whoever approached him. Finally he would leave in his car with four
or five people whom he dropped off at their homes.

The last time we met was opposite the Infanta and Manglar police station
next to the building "Fame and Applause," where half a hundred opponents
were demanding the liberation of Antonio Rodiles, detained after the
funeral of Oswaldo Paya Sardinas, dead in a suspicious accident. We
spoke there while Wilfredo Vallin and Reinaldo Escobar tried to
negotiate with the Chief of the Station, surrounded also by a gang of
delinquents who awaited orders from Security officials to kick and drag
the opponents.

The judicial farce against Angel Santiesteban reminds me of the
celebrated narrotor Reinaldo Arenas and the poets Heberto Padilla —
incarcerated in 1971 — and Raul Rivero — sentenced in 2003, victims of a
dictatorship that punishes liberty of expression and promotes the
quietism and complicit silence of the intellectuals.

Published in Island Anchor

Translated by mlk.

9 June 2013

Source: "The judicial farce against Angel Santiesteban reminds me of the
celebrated narrator Reinaldo Arenas and the poets Heberto Padilla and
Raul Rivero | Translating Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/the-judicial-farce-against-angel-santiesteban-reminds-me-of-the-celebrated-narrator-reinaldo-arenas-and-the-poets-heberto-padilla-and-raul-rivero/