Carlos Manuel Álvarez Obtains the Don Quijote Journalism Prize 2021

April 25, 2021

In his new novel "Falsa Guerra", Carlos Manuel Álvarez, 2021 Don Quijote Journalism Prize winner, addresses the exile of Cubans over the last three decades, people like him, who "don't even bring the notion that they have been exiled", as he says in an interview with Efe.

The writer explains that it is an exile where the borders of nations become blurred and the Cuban is not treated in other countries and cities with the singularity of coming from the "last bastion of socialism" in a neoliberal world.

"They dilute their condition of being exiled", he emphasizes. He is a Cuban who is also "exiled beforehand" because he has understood through previous generations that the only option for life, for prosperity, is to leave the place he belongs to, so "there is no immediate trauma, unless consciously".

At 32 years old, this Cuban from Matanzas says that his vital experience of Cuba's culture, history and politics "articulates" itself in that notion of exile, just as his novel does, which will hit the Latin American market in a month after being released in Spain last Saturday.

Álvarez thanks the recognition for his professional life, but says that "a story is always two, it is a hidden history, that has other nuances, that is not as harmonious as it looks from the outside, and that is precisely what I want to write".

The acclaimed author says that the Cuban context "totalitarian, closed, of political oppression" intertwines all his activities as an author, journalist and activist against the Castro regime.

"Those three categories are separated nominally, but in practice one learns that they are intertwined, and that one doesn't know where one begins and the other ends", he states while noting that he considers this coexistence "healthy".

The writer, one of the founders of the Cuban literary magazine El Estornudo, explains that his activism is "quite elementary, of any civic subject", and that it is based on "trying to exercise" what he believes are his rights and those of others.

"Those experiences contribute, whether I like it or not, to my journalistic work, and to my work as a writer", he clarifies.

Like the characters in "Falsa Guerra", published by Mexican publisher Sexto Piso, Álvarez left Cuba and has lived in several countries.

The author resided in Mexico for nearly three years starting in 2015, and has split his recent years between Miami, New York and Europe.
Álvarez says he is grateful for the "polyhedral vision" that living in Cuba and now outside the island gives him, and also for "going in and out" of his country.

Álvarez was recognized in 2017 by the Hay Festival Cartagena as one of the 39 most relevant writers under 40 years old in Latin America.

The writer says he is in favor of the thaw policy with Cuba of former U.S. President Barack Obama (2009-2017), but with some adjustments, such as betting on civil society as an engine of political change, and not indirectly through private enterprise as the Democrat did.

Álvarez, who for now refuses to put down roots in any city, says that if he had to do so it would be in Mexico City, but for now he is passing through Miami (USA), the country where his father lives, and which is included in his upcoming plans.

The author of the novel "Los caídos" (2018) says that next week he will undertake one of his travels through the United States accompanying his father Manuel, who is a truck driver for cargo, for his next "non-fiction" project.

The plan is to "travel with him, tell the deep America of immigrants, of workers, of laborers" and see if it deserves a book, Álvarez recounts, who is also the author of the chronicle volume "La tribu: Retratos de Cuba" (2017).