Carlos Alberto Montaner Suris

Born in La Habana in 1943, Carlos Alberto Montaner has been a university professor and lecturer at various institutions in Europe, Latin America, and the United States. He is a writer and journalist. For more than thirty years, dozens of newspapers in Latin America, Spain, and the United States have carried his weekly column.

The magazine Poder has described him as one of the most influential columnists in the Spanish language. It is estimated that six million weekly readers have access to his articles in Spanish, English, and Portuguese. Montaner has published about twenty books. Several have been translated into English, Portuguese, Russian, and Italian. Among the best known and re-edited are Viaje al corazón de Cuba, Cómo y por qué desapareció el comunismo, Libertad: la clave de la prosperidad, and the novels Perromundo and 1898: La Trama.

He has been a university professor at various institutions in Latin America and the United States. In 1990 he founded the Unión Liberal Cubana with the aim of promoting the transition to freedom and democracy in Cuba. In 1992 he was elected vice president of the Internacional Liberal.

In collaboration with Álvaro Vargas Llosa and Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, he is the author of Manual del perfecto idiota latinoamericano and Fabricantes de miseria.

He writes a weekly column that is carried by dozens of newspapers in Spain, Latin America, and the United States. He has resided in Spain since 1970.

In 1978, Editorial Planeta and the University of Arkansas published a book of criticism on his work (La narrativa de Carlos Alberto Montaner). Two of his most controversial and widely disseminated essays are the best-sellers Manual del perfecto idiota latinoamericano and Fabricantes de miseria, both written in collaboration with Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza and Álvaro Vargas Llosa. In 2001 he published Las raíces torcidas de América Latina. In this book, Montaner addresses from a historical perspective one of the most pressing issues of our culture: why is the America that emerged from Iberian colonization the poorest and most unstable segment of the West? Before this work, the author, from other angles, had reflected on the subject in two books also published by Plaza & Janés: La agonía de América and No perdamos también el siglo XXI. In 2002, during the first centennial of the republic, Cuba: un siglo de doloroso aprendizaje appeared, which was the result of a series of lectures given at the University of Miami.

In 2003 he published Los latinoamericanos y la cultura occidental.

Novels

* Perromundo
* 1898: La Trama

Essays

* Las Raíces Torcidas de América Latina
* Viaje Al Corazón De Cuba
* Los Cubanos: Historia de Cuba en una lección
* Manual Del Perfecto Idiota Latinoamericano
* Fabricantes de Miseria
* Las raíces torcidas de América Latina
* Los Latinoamericanos y la Cultura Occidental
* Cómo y Por Qué Terminó el Comunismo
* Doscientos Años de Gringos
* La Agonía de América
* Libertad, La Clave de La Prosperidad
* No Perdamos También El Siglo XXI
* Víspera del Final: Fidel Castro y la Revolución Cubana
* Venezuela: del Tercermundismo a la Modernidad
* La Libertad y sus Enemigos
* Las columnas de la libertad
* Cuba: Año 2020.
* El Regreso del Idiota (2007)

In June 2022, in a public letter, Montaner said goodbye to radio broadcasts and reported that he was doing so due to health problems as he suffers from Parkinson's Disease, which causes him difficulties with speech.