Reinaldo Arenas was born on July 16, 1943, and died on December 7, 1990. He was a Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright who strongly opposed Fidel Castro, the Cuban Revolution, and the Cuban government. His book, Before Night Falls, describes important events in the Cuban dissident movement and his time as a political prisoner. He told his story to someone else after escaping to the United States during the 1980 Mariel boatlift. The book was published after he died. Arenas was sick with AIDS and chose to end his life in 1990.

Life

Arenas was born in the countryside of Newport Beach, Aguas Claras, Holguín Province, Cuba, and later moved to the city of Holguín as a teenager. He began school at age six, attending Rural School 91 in Perronales County. Around this time, he discovered he was gay. He later wrote about his early experiences with his own sexuality. He openly shared that he had his first experience with straight sex, though it was not completed, with his cousin, Dulce Maria. He also mentioned that his first act of gay sex occurred at age eight with his cousin Orlando, who was 12. Arenas said, "In the country, sexual energy usually overcomes prejudice, repression, and punishment. Physical desire is stronger than the feelings of machismo our fathers try to teach us."

After moving to Holguín as a teen, Arenas worked at a guava paste factory. When conditions in the city worsened around 1958, he decided to join the guerillas (Castro and his movement). At age 14, he walked to Velasco, where he met Cuco Sánchez, who took him to the pro-Soviet Cuban guerilla headquarters in the Sierra Gibara. A guerilla commander, Eddy Suñol, interviewed Arenas and said, "We have many guerillas; what we need is weapons."

After spending ten days with the guerillas, Arenas returned to Holguín with the goal of killing a guard and taking his weapon. When he arrived home, his grandparents were upset to see him. Because he had left a note saying he was joining the guerillas, the women living with his grandparents spread the news quickly. Fulgencio Batista's secret police, the Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities, were looking for him. His short visit home made him realize he could not stay, so he returned to Velasco to the rebel camp. The guerillas now accepted him.

At age 16, Arenas received a scholarship to La Pantoja, the Batista military camp that had become a polytechnic institute. One important course there was on Marxist–Leninism. Students had to study books such as the Manual of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Manual of Political Economy by Pyotr Ivanovich Nikitin, and Foundations of Socialism in Cuba by Blas Roca Calderio. Arenas graduated as an agricultural accountant but later described his schooling as "communist indoctrination."

Arenas first visited Havana in 1960. He returned later to enroll in a planning course at the University of Havana and stayed at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba. While in the program, he worked for the National Institute for Agrarian Reform. Around 1963, Arenas began living openly as a gay man, though he kept his identity secret. He feared being sent to one of the Military Units to Aid Production, which were camps for LGBT people, Christians, and suspected Cuban dissidents. A relationship with a man named Miguel, who was later arrested and sent to a UMAP camp, marked the start of Arenas being known as a gay man by the Cuban Committees for the Defense of the Revolution.

Throughout his life, Arenas had friendships and relationships with many gay men. He once said he had sex with at least 5,000 men. He saw friends and acquaintances pledge loyalty to the regime for safety. These people became informers for the government, reporting other men, often former friends or family members. The goal was to find gay and bisexual men and either jail them or turn them into informers. Those who cooperated with the regime were spared, but they often had to perform public acts of humiliation, denouncing their anti-regime beliefs or their homosexuality.

Arenas witnessed this happen with Herberto Padilla, who wrote a book critical of the Cuban Revolution for an official competition. Padilla was arrested in 1971 and, after 30 days in jail, decided to speak. Cuban intellectuals were invited to hear his confession. Padilla apologized for his actions, called himself a coward and traitor, blamed himself, and publicly denounced his friends and wife, saying they had anti-revolutionary attitudes. Those he named were forced to accept blame and say they were traitors as well.

In 1963, Arenas moved to Havana to enroll in the School of Planification and later studied philosophy and literature at the Universidad de La Habana without completing a degree. The next year, he began working at the National Library José Martí. During his time at the National Institute for Agrarian Reform, he spent much time at the library. After writing a short story and submitting it to a committee, he received a telegram asking to meet with María Teresa Freye de Andrade, the director of the National Library. She arranged Arenas' move from the institute to the library. He was then hired there. Around this time, his talent was recognized, and he received a literary award for his novel Singing from the Well at the Cirilo Villaverde National Competition, organized by the National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists.

His book El mundo alucinante (This Hallucinatory World, published in the U.S. as The Ill-Fated Peregrinations of Fray Servando) received "first Honorable Mention" in 1966. However, because the judges could not find a better entry, no First Prize was awarded that year. By 1967, his writing and openly gay life brought him into conflict with the communist government. He left the library and became an editor for the Cuban Book Institute until 1968. From 1968 to 1974, he worked as a journalist and editor for the literary magazine La Gaceta de Cuba.

In 1974, Arenas was sent to prison after being charged with "ideological deviation" and for publishing abroad without official permission. He escaped the prison and tried to leave Cuba by floating on a tire inner tube from the shore, but he was recaptured near Lenin Park and imprisoned at the notorious El Morro Castle alongside murderers and rapists. He survived by helping inmates write letters to their families. He collected enough paper this way to continue writing. However, his attempts to smuggle his work out of prison were discovered, and he was severely punished. Threatened with death, he was forced to renounce his writing and was released in 1976.

In 1980, as part of the Mariel Boatlift, he fled to the United States. He arrived on the San Lázaro, a boat captained by Cuban émigré Roberto Agüero.

Death

In 1987, Arenas was diagnosed with AIDS but kept writing and speaking against the Cuban government. He helped train many Cuban exile writers, such as John O'Donnell-Rosales. Arenas died on December 7, 1990, in New York City. The reason for his death was suicide. In 2012, Arenas was added to the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display that honors LGBT history and people.

Writings

Reinaldo Arenas created a large amount of work despite the difficulties he faced during his time in prison. He wrote many poems, including "El Central" and "Leprosorio," and a series of five novels called Pentagonia. These novels tell a hidden story about Cuba after the revolution. The books are titled Singing from the Well (also called Celestino before Dawn), Farewell to the Sea (which means The Sea Once More), Palace of the White Skunks, Color of Summer, and The Assault. In these novels, Arenas used many different writing styles, such as simple, realistic storytelling, complex modernist writing, and humorous, strange stories. His second novel, Hallucinations (El Mundo Alucinante), retells the story of a historical priest named Fray Servando Teresa de Mier.

In interviews, his autobiography, and some of his fiction, Arenas showed how his own life experiences influenced the lives and outcomes of his characters. Critics, like Francisco Soto, have noted that characters such as the child narrator in Celestino, Fortunato in Palace of the White Skunks, Hector in Farewell to the Sea, and the character named "Gabriel/Reinaldo/Gloomy Skunk" in Color of Summer seem to represent different stages of a single life story connected to Arenas’s own.

Arenas often tied his personal story to the experiences of a generation of Cubans. His writing frequently criticizes the Castro government, the Catholic Church, and American culture and politics. He also criticized several writers in Havana and around the world, including those he believed had betrayed him or stopped his work, such as Severo Sarduy and Ángel Rama. In his work Thirty Truculent Tongue-Twisters, which he said he shared in Havana and later included in Color of Summer, Arenas mocked many people, from friends he thought had spied on him to famous figures like Nicolás Guillén, Alejo Carpentier, Miguel Barnet, Sarduy, and Castro.

His autobiography, Before Night Falls, was listed as one of the ten best books of 1993 by the New York Times. In 2000, the book was made into a film directed by Julian Schnabel, with Javier Bardem playing Arenas. An opera based on the autobiography, with music and lyrics by Cuban-American composer Jorge Martín, premiered in 2010 at the Fort Worth Opera, with baritone Wes Mason performing the role of Arenas.

The Reinaldo Arenas Papers are stored at Princeton University Library. These papers include personal and professional documents, such as drafts of his writing, essays, interviews, newspaper articles, and letters.

Notable works

• El mundo alucinante (1966) ISBN 978-84-8310-775-1 , OCLC 421023 ; Scholarly edition by Enrico Mario Santí; English translation Hallucinations (2001 reissue) ISBN 978-0-14-200019-9 .
• Cantando en el pozo (1982) (originally published as Celestino antes del alba (1967)) English translation Singing from the Well (1987) ISBN 978-0-14-009444-2 .
• El palacio de las blanquisimas mofetas (1982) English translation The Palace of the White Skunks (1990) ISBN 978-0-14-009792-4 .
• Otra vez el mar (1982) English translation Farewell to the Sea (1987) ISBN 978-0-14-006636-4 .
• El color del verano (1982) English translation The Color of Summer (1990) ISBN 978-0-14-015719-2 .
• El Asalto (1990) English translation The Assault (1992) ISBN 978-0-14-015718-5 .
• El portero (1987) English translation The Doorman (1991) ISBN 978-0-8021-3405-9 .
• Antes que anochezca (1992) English translation Before Night Falls (1993) ISBN 978-0-14-015765-9 .
• Mona and Other Tales (2001) ISBN 978-0-375-72730-6 This is an English translation of a collection of short stories originally published in Spanish in Spain between 1995 and 2001
• Con los ojos cerrados (1972).
• La vieja Rosa (1980), English Translation Old Rosa (1989) ISBN 978-0-8021-3406-6 .
• El central (1981), ISBN 978-0-380-86934-3 .
• Termina el desfile (1981).
• Arturo, la estrella más brillante (1984).
• Cinco obras de teatro bajo el título Persecución (1986).
• Necesidad de libertad (1986).
• La Loma del Angel (1987), English Translation Graveyard of the Angels (1987) ISBN 978-0-380-75075-7 .
• Voluntad de vivir manifestándose (1989) ISBN 978-987-9396-55-1 .
• Viaje a La Habana (1990). ISBN 978-0-89729-544-4 .
• Final de un cuento (El Fantasma de la glorieta) (1991) ISBN 978-84-86842-38-3 .
• Adiós a mamá (1996) ISBN 978-0-89729-791-2 .