Heberto Padilla

Cuban poet born in Puerta del Golfe, Pinar del Río, Cuba. He is one of the most relevant figures in contemporary Cuban poetry.

He completed primary and secondary education in the province of Pinar del Río, studied journalism at the University of Havana and humanities and languages abroad. He studied Law and Philosophy at the University of Havana, shining from a very young age in the intellectual landscape of his country. He spoke French, English, German, Russian, Italian, and Greek.

He published his first book of poems in 1948 under the title "Las rasas audaces" and upon its success.

He visited the United States between 1949 and 1952 and between 1956 and 1959. In New York he worked as a Spanish professor at the Berlitz School of Languages, from 1957 to 1959.

With the triumph of the Cuban Revolution he was appointed correspondent for Prensa Latina in New York. Later, upon returning to Cuba, he directed the newspaper Revolución, founded the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, and was director of the National Council of Culture.

He obtained the Casa de las Américas prize for his book "El justo tiempo humano" in 1961 and several months later traveled to Russia as a correspondent for the Cuban press and representative of the Cultural Institute. He was managing director of CUBARTIMPEX (1964-1965) and representative in Europe of the Ministry of Foreign Trade. He worked at the Center for Literary Research of the Casa de las Américas. He also traveled through Mexico, Venezuela, Central American countries, parts of Africa and Asia.

That same year of his return he became the center of a cultural controversy in the pages of Juventud Rebelde, despite which he obtained the National Prize for Poetry for Fuera del juego, which motivated protests from the Union of Writers since the book was considered "counterrevolutionary". In 1967 he began working at the University of Havana until March 20, 1971 when he was detained following a poetry recital given at the Union of Writers, where he read Provocaciones. Padilla was arrested along with poetess Belkis Cuza Malé, his wife since 1967. Both were accused of "subversive activities" against the government.

His imprisonment provoked a reaction around the world, with protests from well-known intellectuals including Julio Cortázar, Simone de Beauvoir, Marguerite Duras, Carlos Fuentes, Juan Goytisolo, Alberto Moravia, Octavio Paz, Juan Rulfo, Jean-Paul Sartre, Susan Sontag, Mario Vargas Llosa, and many others.

After 38 days of confinement, Padilla read his famous Self-Criticism at the Union of Writers. In said self-criticism he repents of his critical attitude toward the revolutionary process, arguing that his actions were motivated by vanity and desires for international recognition. Padilla himself qualifies his attitude as counterrevolutionary, expressing that he had allowed himself to be poisoned by his innate pessimism, magnifying the flaws of the Revolution. In his statement he also points to other writers of his generation as victims of their own egos, placing themselves above the Revolution.

His wife managed to leave with their young son for the United States in 1979, and the following year, thanks to international pressure, Padilla also traveled to that country. He arrived in New York, via Montreal, on March 16, 1980.

As testified by his wife and writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante, this experience and exile changed Padilla, who became spiritually ill and never fully recovered. He died of a heart attack at age 68, reclining on a sofa in Alabama.

Nevertheless, in 1966, he had been unanimously awarded the National Prize for Poetry, and in 1968 the "Julián del Casal Poetry Prize".

The rest of his work is contained in the volumes "El hombre junto al mar" 1981 and "Un puente, una casa de piedra" in 1998.