Víctor Batista Falla

Víctor Batista was an extraordinary Cuban, and his death in Havana is incredibly symbolic. An editor and patron, uncle of the Duchess María Teresa of Luxembourg.

Son of two wealthy and powerful families in Cuba—ones that knew how to contribute generously to the country—Víctor Batista Falla was, as Martí would have wished, "a simple scholar." This master of Cubanness was an eternal student, with an inexhaustible eagerness to unravel the roots and consequences of our nation.
A generous patron of Cuban literature in exile, he did not distance himself, as others did, from the internal reality of the country. On the contrary, in recent years he fought to ensure that the books from his Colibrí Publishing House could be placed at the Havana Book Fair and be within reach of Cuban readers.

He was not one to waste away in useless nostalgia, but rather always looked toward the future. He was more concerned with each new project than with accomplishments already achieved. He mastered the now-extinct art of conversation. Chatting with him was a feast for the spirit.

Víctor knew how to listen, a rare quality among Cubans. During his years in New York he financed and directed a splendid magazine "exilio"—that was the title, in lowercase, very much in keeping with his personality, as he shunned all self-promotion—, with signatures such as those of Humberto Piñera Llera, Eugenio Florit, José Gómez Sicre, Lorenzo García Vega, Julián Orbón, Ana Rosa Núñez, Carlos M. Luis, Alberto Baeza Flores, Lourdes Casal, José Ignacio Rasco, and so many others.

Born in 1933, Víctor was, although it didn't seem so, 87 years old. Had he died in Madrid of natural causes, his loss would have caused the same sadness but perhaps not the same astonishment.

He died on Sunday, April 12 of coronavirus in Havana, where he had been since March 6. It was his first visit to his native city since he left 60 years ago. Given the situation in Madrid, he most likely was already carrying the virus with him. It seemed as though, consciously or unconsciously, he went to spend his final days in Havana, in a final gesture of poetic justice, claiming his right to die at home, returning physically to that land that he never abandoned, but rather, was always for him a persistent dream.