Ediciones El Puente
Encyclopedia
Ediciones El Puente was a literary project for young writers in Cuba
just after the 1959 revolution
. Between 1961–1965 they published each other's work, introduced dozens of new voices, and held readings and performances.
Some of the writers that got their start there include poet and translator Nancy Morejón
, playwright Gerardo Fulleda León, now director of the Rita Montaner theater company in Havana, playwright-activist Ana Maria Simo
, and folklorist Miguel Barnet
.
Nevertheless, El Puente is remembered primarily as one of the casualties of the wave of social repression
in Cuba
in the 60s and 70s. Accused, among other things, of fostering homosexuality
, Black Power
, publishing exiles, and consorting with foreigners, some members were detained, and/or sent to the UMAP concentration camps
. A few left the country.
Cuban literary critics are beginning to address the group, and in 2005, the Gaceta de Cuba published a series of pieces on El Puente.
literary world in Havana
as closed to new writers. "[Lunes de Revolución] only covered people connected to the director Guillermo Caberera Infante, and they never reviewed books by young writers." He wanted to create a publishing project that would be open to everyone, "Especially young people, new people. We wanted to find new talents with quality works inside Cuban culture. That's the thing that interested us most."
Gerardo Fulleda León remembered meeting José Mario at a theater workshop in 1961 which was also attended by playwright Eugenio Hernández Espinosa.
The books they shared included authors like Borges, Lautreamont, Rimbaud, Cuban poet Emilio Ballagas, Nerval, Rilke, Tagore
, Mayakovsky
, Salvatore Quasimodo
, Essenin, poet Vicente Huidobro, Proust, Seferis, Dylan Thomas
, and Holderlin.
Within a short time they began publishing as a group. Ana María Simo
became co-director of the project, largely focusing on the production end and editing fiction. Other core members included Gerardo Fulleda León, Nancy Morejón
, Ana Justina, and Reinaldo García Ramos (Reinaldo Felipe), who later made up the board of directors.
, theater, fiction
, and folklore
.
Some of the writers that got their starts in El Puente include prize-winning poet and translator Nancy Morejón
, playwright Gerardo Fulleda León, now director of the Rita Montaner theater company in Havana, folklorist Miguel Barnet
, and playwright and lesbian activist Ana María Simo
.
El Puente's long-term impact as a movement is more difficult to gauge. Emerging from the euphoria of the revolution, they were seen by some, including themselves, as embodying the post-revolution generation. Cuban-Chilean poet Alberto Baeza Flores in particular hailed them as a kind of unifying movement, gathering together "a generation of young writers, which was the first surge in tandem with the Cuban revolution
, and which is a brilliant and critical generation."
They deliberately worked in opposition to the previous generations that they saw as excluding and elitist. They were especially determined to assert their intellectual freedom and claim all writing that reflected the gamut of Cuban society, even from writers that left the island. Anthologies, like La Novísima Poesía Cubana (1962) edited by Reinaldo Garcia Ramos and Ana María Simo
, in part expressed this literary ethos that had less to do with rigorous craft or a common style, than fresh points of view.
And while Simo's book of short stories, "Las fábulas," was one of the few ever reviewed, the books regularly found an audience, and some of the other arts communities were also enthusiastic about El Puente. Book covers were designed by young architecture students and visual artists like Gilberto Seguí, David Bigelman and José Lorenzo. A collaborative performance with "feeling" composers including Marta Valdés, Cesar Portillo de la Luz, José Antonio Méndez, Ela O'Farril, and others at the El Gato Tuerto had fans lined up down the block. They had exchanges of ideas with playwrights like Eugenio Hernández Espinosa, even though they weren't necessarily published by El Puente. A young philosophy
professor, Josefina Suárez, also became central to the group, introducing some of her students, like the poet Liliam Moro.
Not everyone agreed El Puente represented the post-revolution generation, or that they served any useful purpose at all. At the time, critics like Jesús Díaz, for instance, said they didn't represent anything except a very small "dissolute" fringe, and charged not only that that some of the writing was uneven, but that El Puente was "a politically and aesthetically erroneous phenomenon." A criticism easier to divorce from politics was that José Mario used the group, perhaps too frequently, to publish his own poems.
In more recent times, several contemporary researchers in Cuba seem to see its diversity as one of El Puente's greatest contributions.
. Many of the writers were black or mixed race at a time when people of color were underrepresented in the literary world.
The group published the first two books of poems by Nancy Morejón
. "El Puente was vital for us, for me, on a personal level. One fine day José Mario Rodríguez, its director, came, and asked me for some poems. It was the first disinterested publishing project that didn't have second or third motives."
José Mario downplayed his role in recruiting the participation of black writers, though he was a friend of Walterio Carbonell, an embattled proponent of a French-style "Negritude
," one of the first Cuban writers to address the role of race on the evolution of Cuban culture in his 1961 essay, "How the National Culture Developed," (Cómo surge la cultura nacional).
Many members of the group were also lesbian
or gay
.
once reportedly threw a book across the room in disgust because it was written by gay author, Virgilio Piñera
, Cuba
didn't need the Argentine revolutionary to introduce homophobia. Already a part of Hispanic and Western culture
s, it was underlying in such works as José Martí
's 1894 "Our America," in which the poet and revolutionary not only offered an early analysis of the growing U.S. role in the region, but dismissed loyalists to Spain as delicate ones "that are men and don't want to do the work of men!" and men that think they're Parisians or Madrileños, "talking walks on the Prado, leaning against lampposts, or eating sorbets at Tortonis."
After the revolution
, one of the first occasions homophobia
went from a private attitude to public policy was during the National Meeting of Poets (Encuentro Nacional de Poetas) held in Camagüey
in 1960 shortly before El Puente was begun. Colonel Alberto Bayo, a representative of the government, used the opportunity to launch an invective against homosexuals, calling them "bad seed," and warning they were going to "pervert the revolution
." That night large placards appeared that said, "Fags, dykes, out!"
In 1965, the government set up concentration camps, euphemistically called Military Units to Aid Production
(UMAP), where "social scum" (mostly gay men, but also Jehovah's Witnesses
, and those perceived as disaffected) were interned behind barbed wire and used as forced labor until the UMAPs ended in 1967. Echoing the slogan on the gates of Auschwitz (and ironically, José Martí
), the camps were emblazoned with the words, "Work will make you men."
The openly gay men in the group like José Mario started being regularly detained, targeted for their homosexuality, but also because they read the wrong books (Gide
), listened to the wrong music (The Beatles
) and sometimes had drunken scenes in the middle of the night. A couple of members were caught stealing library books.
In January 1965, Allen Ginsberg
, the openly gay poet, Buddhist, and drug-user, was invited to the island by Casa de las Américas to be part of the jury for that year's poetry prize. Besides meeting writers like Julio Cortázar
, Mario Vargas Llosa
, Camilo José Cela
and Nicanor Parra
, Ginsberg found his way to members of El Puente who had been corresponding with him, and intended to publish a translation of Howl
.
Though on that occasion charges were dropped, afterwards, publishing and distributing were impossible for El Puente, which was already falling apart from internal and external pressures. Books at the printers were confiscated. José Mario moved back into his parents' house, and rarely stepped into the street where he was vulnerable. "They detained me 17 times."
He used the La Gaceta, a magazine of the Writers Union, to publicly declare that members of El Puente were "generally bad as artists" but more dangerously, "the most dissolute and negative segment of their generation" and "a politically and aesthetically erroneous phenomenon."
Coming just a few months after the internment of gay men had officially begun, his statement was a shock to the group. "They declared a war of extermination on us." A week after Diaz' first attack appeared, José Mario was summoned to a concentration camp.
In El Puente's response, written and signed by Ana María Simo, she defended the merits of El Puente, and called Diaz's statement an "acto de delación intelectual" an "intellectualized denunciation."
Jesús Diaz published a long rebuttal, repeating his attack, and personally taking aim at Ana María Simo as well. Years later, Jesús Díaz, who himself left the island for Spain
, blamed it on the age, and literary quarrels, "Nevertheless ... I recognize what I did and I'd like to offer my regrets to Ana María Simo and other authors that could have felt attacked by me at that time."
Guillermo Rodríguez Rivera, another one of the editors, later defended El Caimán, blaming the Communist Youth for forbidding them, "to publish any young writer or artist which was homosexual. It wasn't a decision that we made at the magazine…"
was hesitant to speak out in groups. "I thought if I raised my hand to say something, somebody would be sure to say, "Shut up, those people from El Puente..." I can tell you that now, but before we didn't talk about these things..."
Scholars have begun to research the group, and in its July–August 2005 issue, the Gaceta de Cuba published a series of related pieces in a first attempt to grapple with the history of El Puente.
José Mario died in Madrid
in 2002.
* José Mario, La Conquista (poems)
* Santiago Ruiz, Hiroshima (poems)
* Mercedes Cortázar, El Largo Canto (poems)
* Silvia, 27 pulgadas de vacío (poems)
* José Mario, De la Espera y el Silencio (poems)
* Gerardo Fulleda León, Algo en la Nada (poems)
* José Mario, Clamor Agudo (poems)
* Ana Justina, Silencio (poems)
* Guillermo Cuevas Carrión, Ni un Sí ni un No (stories)
* José Mario, Obras para niños (drama, 1st and 2nd ed.)
* Ana María Simo
, Las fábulas (stories)
* Reinaldo Felipe, Acta (poem)
* Manuel Granados, El orden presentido (poems)
* José Mario, A través (poems)
* Nancy Morejón
, Mutismos (poems)
* Mariano Rodríguez Herrera, La mutación (stories)
* Novísima Poesía Cubana I (poetry anthology)
* Georgina Herrera, GH (poems)
* Joaquín G. Santana, Poemas en Santiago (poems)
* Belkis Cuza Malé, Tiempos del Sol (poems)
* Rogelio Martínez Furé, Poesía Yoruba (poetry anthology)
* Jesús Abascal, Soroche y otros cuentos (stories)
* Nicolás Dorr, (drama)
* J. R. Brene, Santa Camila de la Habana Vieja (drama)
* José Mario, La torcida raíz de tanto daño (poems)
* Miguel Barnet
, Isla de güijes (poems)
* Ada Abdo, Mateo y las sirenas (stories)
* Évora Tamayo, Cuentos para abuelas enfermas (stories)
* Nancy Morejón
, Amor, ciudad atribuida (poems)
* Ana Garbinski, Osaín de un pie (poems)
* Rodolfo Hinostroza, Consejeros del Lobo (poems)
* Segunda Novísima de Poesía Cubana (1)
* Silvia Barros, Teatro infantil (drama)
* Primera Novísima de Teatro (2)
* Angel Luis Fernández Guerra, La nueva noche (stories)
* El Puente, Resumen Literario I (literary review) (3)
* Antonio Álvarez, Noneto (stories)
* José Milián, Mani Omi Omo (drama)
* José Mario, Muerte del Amor por la Soledad (poems)
Pending publication:
El Puente, Resumen Literario II (literary review) (4)
Manuel Ballagas, Con temor (stories) (5)
(1), (2), (3), (4) (5). Books confiscated at the printers used by Ediciones el Puente in 1965, Havana, Cuba.
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
just after the 1959 revolution
Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement against the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista between 1953 and 1959. Batista was finally ousted on 1 January 1959, and was replaced by a revolutionary government led by Castro...
. Between 1961–1965 they published each other's work, introduced dozens of new voices, and held readings and performances.
Some of the writers that got their start there include poet and translator Nancy Morejón
Nancy Morejón
Nancy Morejón is one of Cuba's major authors and poets. She has gained recognition for work whose themes are centered on women and the Afro-Cuban experience.-Life history:...
, playwright Gerardo Fulleda León, now director of the Rita Montaner theater company in Havana, playwright-activist Ana Maria Simo
Ana María Simo
Ana María Simo is a New York playwright, essayist and novelist. Born in Cuba, educated in France, and writing in English, she has collaborated with such experimental artists as composer Zeena Parkins, choreographer Stephanie Skura and filmmakers Ela Troyano and Abigail Child...
, and folklorist Miguel Barnet
Miguel Barnet
Miguel Barnet is a Cuban writer, novelist and ethnographer. He studied sociology at the University of Havana, under Fernando Ortiz , the pioneer of Cuban anthropology. Fernando Ortíz's studies of Afro-Cuban cultures influenced many of the themes, both literary and scholarly, of Barnet.-Early...
.
Nevertheless, El Puente is remembered primarily as one of the casualties of the wave of social repression
Human rights in Cuba
Human Rights Watch is among international human rights organizations accusing the Cuban government of systematic human rights abuses, including torture, arbitrary imprisonment, unfair trials, and extrajudicial execution....
in Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
in the 60s and 70s. Accused, among other things, of fostering homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
, Black Power
Black Power
Black Power is a political slogan and a name for various associated ideologies. It is used in the movement among people of Black African descent throughout the world, though primarily by African Americans in the United States...
, publishing exiles, and consorting with foreigners, some members were detained, and/or sent to the UMAP concentration camps
Military Units to Aid Production
Military Units to Aid Production or UMAP’s were allegedly established by the Cuban government in 1965 as a way to eliminate "bourgeois" and "counter-revolutionary" values in the Cuban population, in particular, among those who neglected taking part in the military service or who had been rejected...
. A few left the country.
Cuban literary critics are beginning to address the group, and in 2005, the Gaceta de Cuba published a series of pieces on El Puente.
Origins
El Puente was begun by José Mario Rodríguez, a young poet who perceived the post-revolutionRevolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
literary world in Havana
Havana
Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...
as closed to new writers. "[Lunes de Revolución] only covered people connected to the director Guillermo Caberera Infante, and they never reviewed books by young writers." He wanted to create a publishing project that would be open to everyone, "Especially young people, new people. We wanted to find new talents with quality works inside Cuban culture. That's the thing that interested us most."
Gerardo Fulleda León remembered meeting José Mario at a theater workshop in 1961 which was also attended by playwright Eugenio Hernández Espinosa.
"The next day, in the José MartíJosé MartíJosé Julián Martí Pérez was a Cuban national hero and an important figure in Latin American literature. In his short life he was a poet, an essayist, a journalist, a revolutionary philosopher, a translator, a professor, a publisher, and a political theorist. He was also a part of the Cuban...
National Library, he and Eugenio introduced me to Ana Justina Cabrera and after that to Ana María Simo. We immediately began to exchange opinions, argue about certain points, and on others agree. From that day forward, we scheduled appointments or met up in the afternoons in the gardens of the Writer's Union, in the park, at the entrance to a series of Soviet films at the Cinemateca de Cuba, at a theater function in Mella, in the hallways of an exhibit of Portocarrero, at a concert of Bola or Burke; the afternoon would turn into night and we would go to listen to a concert of "feeling" at El Gato Tuerto, or jazzJazzJazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
at the Atelier. We went up and down La Rampa and ended up at dawn at the Malecón reading poems, singing boleros, and telling each other our hopes and dreams."
The books they shared included authors like Borges, Lautreamont, Rimbaud, Cuban poet Emilio Ballagas, Nerval, Rilke, Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore , sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European Nobel laureate by earning the 1913 Prize in Literature...
, Mayakovsky
Vladimir Mayakovsky
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky was a Russian and Soviet poet and playwright, among the foremost representatives of early-20th century Russian Futurism.- Early life :...
, Salvatore Quasimodo
Salvatore Quasimodo
Salvatore Quasimodo was an Italian author and poet. In 1959 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature "for his lyrical poetry, which with classical fire expresses the tragic experience of life in our own times". Along with Giuseppe Ungaretti and Eugenio Montale, he is one of the foremost Italian poets...
, Essenin, poet Vicente Huidobro, Proust, Seferis, Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...
, and Holderlin.
Within a short time they began publishing as a group. Ana María Simo
Ana María Simo
Ana María Simo is a New York playwright, essayist and novelist. Born in Cuba, educated in France, and writing in English, she has collaborated with such experimental artists as composer Zeena Parkins, choreographer Stephanie Skura and filmmakers Ela Troyano and Abigail Child...
became co-director of the project, largely focusing on the production end and editing fiction. Other core members included Gerardo Fulleda León, Nancy Morejón
Nancy Morejón
Nancy Morejón is one of Cuba's major authors and poets. She has gained recognition for work whose themes are centered on women and the Afro-Cuban experience.-Life history:...
, Ana Justina, and Reinaldo García Ramos (Reinaldo Felipe), who later made up the board of directors.
Impact
In practical terms, the impact of the group can be seen in what and who they published. Self-subsidized and publishing with editorial independence, even after they were persuaded to ally themselves with the Writers Union (Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba - UNEAC), El Puente introduced dozens of new voices to the literary scene, eventually publishing more than twenty writers and offering more than three dozen books of poetryPoetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
, theater, fiction
Fiction
Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...
, and folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
.
Some of the writers that got their starts in El Puente include prize-winning poet and translator Nancy Morejón
Nancy Morejón
Nancy Morejón is one of Cuba's major authors and poets. She has gained recognition for work whose themes are centered on women and the Afro-Cuban experience.-Life history:...
, playwright Gerardo Fulleda León, now director of the Rita Montaner theater company in Havana, folklorist Miguel Barnet
Miguel Barnet
Miguel Barnet is a Cuban writer, novelist and ethnographer. He studied sociology at the University of Havana, under Fernando Ortiz , the pioneer of Cuban anthropology. Fernando Ortíz's studies of Afro-Cuban cultures influenced many of the themes, both literary and scholarly, of Barnet.-Early...
, and playwright and lesbian activist Ana María Simo
Ana María Simo
Ana María Simo is a New York playwright, essayist and novelist. Born in Cuba, educated in France, and writing in English, she has collaborated with such experimental artists as composer Zeena Parkins, choreographer Stephanie Skura and filmmakers Ela Troyano and Abigail Child...
.
El Puente's long-term impact as a movement is more difficult to gauge. Emerging from the euphoria of the revolution, they were seen by some, including themselves, as embodying the post-revolution generation. Cuban-Chilean poet Alberto Baeza Flores in particular hailed them as a kind of unifying movement, gathering together "a generation of young writers, which was the first surge in tandem with the Cuban revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
, and which is a brilliant and critical generation."
They deliberately worked in opposition to the previous generations that they saw as excluding and elitist. They were especially determined to assert their intellectual freedom and claim all writing that reflected the gamut of Cuban society, even from writers that left the island. Anthologies, like La Novísima Poesía Cubana (1962) edited by Reinaldo Garcia Ramos and Ana María Simo
Ana María Simo
Ana María Simo is a New York playwright, essayist and novelist. Born in Cuba, educated in France, and writing in English, she has collaborated with such experimental artists as composer Zeena Parkins, choreographer Stephanie Skura and filmmakers Ela Troyano and Abigail Child...
, in part expressed this literary ethos that had less to do with rigorous craft or a common style, than fresh points of view.
And while Simo's book of short stories, "Las fábulas," was one of the few ever reviewed, the books regularly found an audience, and some of the other arts communities were also enthusiastic about El Puente. Book covers were designed by young architecture students and visual artists like Gilberto Seguí, David Bigelman and José Lorenzo. A collaborative performance with "feeling" composers including Marta Valdés, Cesar Portillo de la Luz, José Antonio Méndez, Ela O'Farril, and others at the El Gato Tuerto had fans lined up down the block. They had exchanges of ideas with playwrights like Eugenio Hernández Espinosa, even though they weren't necessarily published by El Puente. A young philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
professor, Josefina Suárez, also became central to the group, introducing some of her students, like the poet Liliam Moro.
Not everyone agreed El Puente represented the post-revolution generation, or that they served any useful purpose at all. At the time, critics like Jesús Díaz, for instance, said they didn't represent anything except a very small "dissolute" fringe, and charged not only that that some of the writing was uneven, but that El Puente was "a politically and aesthetically erroneous phenomenon." A criticism easier to divorce from politics was that José Mario used the group, perhaps too frequently, to publish his own poems.
In more recent times, several contemporary researchers in Cuba seem to see its diversity as one of El Puente's greatest contributions.
Diversity
The core group had as many women as men, and women are central in the list of published works (see Publications). Most of the writers were poor or working classWorking class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
. Many of the writers were black or mixed race at a time when people of color were underrepresented in the literary world.
The group published the first two books of poems by Nancy Morejón
Nancy Morejón
Nancy Morejón is one of Cuba's major authors and poets. She has gained recognition for work whose themes are centered on women and the Afro-Cuban experience.-Life history:...
. "El Puente was vital for us, for me, on a personal level. One fine day José Mario Rodríguez, its director, came, and asked me for some poems. It was the first disinterested publishing project that didn't have second or third motives."
José Mario downplayed his role in recruiting the participation of black writers, though he was a friend of Walterio Carbonell, an embattled proponent of a French-style "Negritude
Négritude
Négritude is a literary and ideological movement, developed by francophone black intellectuals, writers, and politiciansin France in the 1930s by a group that included the future Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor, Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, and the Guianan Léon Damas.The Négritude...
," one of the first Cuban writers to address the role of race on the evolution of Cuban culture in his 1961 essay, "How the National Culture Developed," (Cómo surge la cultura nacional).
"It's true that El Puente had a lot of black writers, like Nancy MorejónNancy MorejónNancy Morejón is one of Cuba's major authors and poets. She has gained recognition for work whose themes are centered on women and the Afro-Cuban experience.-Life history:...
, Ana Justina Cabrera, Gerardo Fulleda León, Eugenio Hernández, Georgina Herrera, Rogelio Martínez Furé, Pedro Pérez Sarduy and others. I think this happened a little by chance. We met in the National Library and outside of this building if you remember, there were some of [Havana's] poorest neighborhoods; a lot of people that went to these meetings came from these "mansions." They had few economic resources. They were neighborhoods that were largely black. Ana Justina and Eugenio lived nearby, just behind the Library."
Many members of the group were also lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
or gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
.
Climate of Homophobia
While Che GuevaraChe Guevara
Ernesto "Che" Guevara , commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat and military theorist...
once reportedly threw a book across the room in disgust because it was written by gay author, Virgilio Piñera
Virgilio Piñera
Virgilio Piñera Llera was a Cuban author, playwright, poet, short-story writer, and essayist.Among his most famous poems are "La isla en peso" , and "La gran puta" . He was a member of the "Origenes" literary group, although he often differed with the conservative views of the group...
, Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
didn't need the Argentine revolutionary to introduce homophobia. Already a part of Hispanic and Western culture
Western culture
Western culture, sometimes equated with Western civilization or European civilization, refers to cultures of European origin and is used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and...
s, it was underlying in such works as José Martí
José Martí
José Julián Martí Pérez was a Cuban national hero and an important figure in Latin American literature. In his short life he was a poet, an essayist, a journalist, a revolutionary philosopher, a translator, a professor, a publisher, and a political theorist. He was also a part of the Cuban...
's 1894 "Our America," in which the poet and revolutionary not only offered an early analysis of the growing U.S. role in the region, but dismissed loyalists to Spain as delicate ones "that are men and don't want to do the work of men!" and men that think they're Parisians or Madrileños, "talking walks on the Prado, leaning against lampposts, or eating sorbets at Tortonis."
After the revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
, one of the first occasions homophobia
Homophobia
Homophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian, gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behavior, although these are usually covered under other terms such as biphobia and transphobia. Definitions refer to irrational fear, with the...
went from a private attitude to public policy was during the National Meeting of Poets (Encuentro Nacional de Poetas) held in Camagüey
Camagüey
Camagüey is a city and municipality in central Cuba and is the nation's third largest city. It is the capital of the Camagüey Province.After almost continuous attacks from pirates the original city was moved inland in 1528.The new city was built with a confusing lay-out of winding alleys that made...
in 1960 shortly before El Puente was begun. Colonel Alberto Bayo, a representative of the government, used the opportunity to launch an invective against homosexuals, calling them "bad seed," and warning they were going to "pervert the revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
." That night large placards appeared that said, "Fags, dykes, out!"
In 1965, the government set up concentration camps, euphemistically called Military Units to Aid Production
Military Units to Aid Production
Military Units to Aid Production or UMAP’s were allegedly established by the Cuban government in 1965 as a way to eliminate "bourgeois" and "counter-revolutionary" values in the Cuban population, in particular, among those who neglected taking part in the military service or who had been rejected...
(UMAP), where "social scum" (mostly gay men, but also Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. The religion reports worldwide membership of over 7 million adherents involved in evangelism, convention attendance of over 12 million, and annual...
, and those perceived as disaffected) were interned behind barbed wire and used as forced labor until the UMAPs ended in 1967. Echoing the slogan on the gates of Auschwitz (and ironically, José Martí
José Martí
José Julián Martí Pérez was a Cuban national hero and an important figure in Latin American literature. In his short life he was a poet, an essayist, a journalist, a revolutionary philosopher, a translator, a professor, a publisher, and a political theorist. He was also a part of the Cuban...
), the camps were emblazoned with the words, "Work will make you men."
Ginsberg and Gay Scapegoating
As social pressures intensified, and El Puente become increasingly well known, members of the group began to draw more and more attention from state security. In 1964, Ana María Simo was jailed for several weeks and interrogated.The openly gay men in the group like José Mario started being regularly detained, targeted for their homosexuality, but also because they read the wrong books (Gide
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
), listened to the wrong music (The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
) and sometimes had drunken scenes in the middle of the night. A couple of members were caught stealing library books.
In January 1965, Allen Ginsberg
Ginsberg
Ginsberg, Ginsburg, Ginsburgh, Ginsparg, Ginzberg, Ginzborg, and Ginzburg are variants of the same surname.-Ginsberg:* Allen Ginsberg, Beat poet* Asher Hirsch Ginsberg , Zionist writer and philosopher...
, the openly gay poet, Buddhist, and drug-user, was invited to the island by Casa de las Américas to be part of the jury for that year's poetry prize. Besides meeting writers like Julio Cortázar
Julio Cortázar
Julio Cortázar, born Jules Florencio Cortázar, was an Argentine writer. Cortázar, known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, influenced an entire generation of Spanish speaking readers and writers in the Americas and Europe.-Early life:Cortázar's parents, Julio José Cortázar and...
, Mario Vargas Llosa
Mario Vargas Llosa
Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquis of Vargas Llosa is a Peruvian-Spanish writer, politician, journalist, essayist, and Nobel Prize laureate. Vargas Llosa is one of Latin America's most significant novelists and essayists, and one of the leading authors of his generation...
, Camilo José Cela
Camilo José Cela
Camilo José Cela y Trulock, 1st Marquis of Iria Flavia was a Spanish novelist and short story writer. He was awarded the 1989 Nobel Prize in Literature "for a rich and intensive prose, which with restrained compassion forms a challenging vision of man's vulnerability".-Biography:Cela published his...
and Nicanor Parra
Nicanor Parra
Nicanor Parra Sandoval is a mathematician and poet born in San Fabián de Alico, Chile, who has been considered to be a popular poet in Chile with enormous influence and popularity in Latin America, and also considered one of the most important poets of the Spanish language literature...
, Ginsberg found his way to members of El Puente who had been corresponding with him, and intended to publish a translation of Howl
Howl
"Howl" is a poem written by Allen Ginsberg in 1955 and published as part of his 1956 collection of poetry titled Howl and Other Poems. The poem is considered to be one of the great works of the Beat Generation, along with Jack Kerouac's On the Road and William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch...
.
"His visits to my house, and that we appeared together in various public places, like the Writers Union cafeteria and at a reception at the Casa de las Américas and his explosive declarations about current politicsPoliticsPolitics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
and the persecution of homosexuals, put us, as they say, on everybody's lips. We were grist for the rumorRumorA rumor or rumour is often viewed as "an unverified account or explanation of events circulating from person to person and pertaining to an object, event, or issue in public concern" However, a review of the research on rumor conducted by Pendleton in 1998 found that research across sociology,...
mill, and you know the power of rumors in a dictatorship, the power that they can have according to the intentions of the people that spread them. One day we were leaving a play at the Auditorium theater, that GinsbergGinsbergGinsberg, Ginsburg, Ginsburgh, Ginsparg, Ginzberg, Ginzborg, and Ginzburg are variants of the same surname.-Ginsberg:* Allen Ginsberg, Beat poet* Asher Hirsch Ginsberg , Zionist writer and philosopher...
had invited us to, when Manolo (Manuel Ballagas, son of poet Emilio Ballagas), and I were brusquely detained in a street near the theater, thrown violently in a dark car, and taken to a police station. Some people that knew about the operation immediately told the administration of the Writers Union that came in person to the station. Nevertheless, the interrogations lasted all night--we were only let out in the morning. We were formally accused of the crime of 'consorting with foreigners.' In a matter of days, GinsbergGinsbergGinsberg, Ginsburg, Ginsburgh, Ginsparg, Ginzberg, Ginzborg, and Ginzburg are variants of the same surname.-Ginsberg:* Allen Ginsberg, Beat poet* Asher Hirsch Ginsberg , Zionist writer and philosopher...
was expelled from the country."
Though on that occasion charges were dropped, afterwards, publishing and distributing were impossible for El Puente, which was already falling apart from internal and external pressures. Books at the printers were confiscated. José Mario moved back into his parents' house, and rarely stepped into the street where he was vulnerable. "They detained me 17 times."
El Caimán vs. El Puente
Harassment peaked in 1966, when El Puente was publicly attacked by Jesús Díaz, an editor of El Caimán Barbudo, a literary magazine created and funded by the Communist Youth. Unlike El Puente, they were straight, mostly men, almost all white, and largely recruited from the university. Jesus Diaz was an assistant professor.He used the La Gaceta, a magazine of the Writers Union, to publicly declare that members of El Puente were "generally bad as artists" but more dangerously, "the most dissolute and negative segment of their generation" and "a politically and aesthetically erroneous phenomenon."
Coming just a few months after the internment of gay men had officially begun, his statement was a shock to the group. "They declared a war of extermination on us." A week after Diaz' first attack appeared, José Mario was summoned to a concentration camp.
In El Puente's response, written and signed by Ana María Simo, she defended the merits of El Puente, and called Diaz's statement an "acto de delación intelectual" an "intellectualized denunciation."
Jesús Diaz published a long rebuttal, repeating his attack, and personally taking aim at Ana María Simo as well. Years later, Jesús Díaz, who himself left the island for Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, blamed it on the age, and literary quarrels, "Nevertheless ... I recognize what I did and I'd like to offer my regrets to Ana María Simo and other authors that could have felt attacked by me at that time."
Guillermo Rodríguez Rivera, another one of the editors, later defended El Caimán, blaming the Communist Youth for forbidding them, "to publish any young writer or artist which was homosexual. It wasn't a decision that we made at the magazine…"
Sequel
After the exchange with El Caimán, and the internment of José Mario, El Puente disappeared and their work was largely erased. Some members immigrated, and those that remained were "endiablados," demonized. For decades, Nancy MorejónNancy Morejón
Nancy Morejón is one of Cuba's major authors and poets. She has gained recognition for work whose themes are centered on women and the Afro-Cuban experience.-Life history:...
was hesitant to speak out in groups. "I thought if I raised my hand to say something, somebody would be sure to say, "Shut up, those people from El Puente..." I can tell you that now, but before we didn't talk about these things..."
Scholars have begun to research the group, and in its July–August 2005 issue, the Gaceta de Cuba published a series of related pieces in a first attempt to grapple with the history of El Puente.
José Mario died in Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
in 2002.
Publications
Below is the list of El Puente books in order of publication between 1961 and 1965 in Havana, under the direction of José Mario and co-direction of Ana María Simo, as compiled by José Mario in "La verídica historía de Ediciones El Puente, La Habana, 1961–1965".* José Mario, La Conquista (poems)
* Santiago Ruiz, Hiroshima (poems)
* Mercedes Cortázar, El Largo Canto (poems)
* Silvia, 27 pulgadas de vacío (poems)
* José Mario, De la Espera y el Silencio (poems)
* Gerardo Fulleda León, Algo en la Nada (poems)
* José Mario, Clamor Agudo (poems)
* Ana Justina, Silencio (poems)
* Guillermo Cuevas Carrión, Ni un Sí ni un No (stories)
* José Mario, Obras para niños (drama, 1st and 2nd ed.)
* Ana María Simo
Ana María Simo
Ana María Simo is a New York playwright, essayist and novelist. Born in Cuba, educated in France, and writing in English, she has collaborated with such experimental artists as composer Zeena Parkins, choreographer Stephanie Skura and filmmakers Ela Troyano and Abigail Child...
, Las fábulas (stories)
* Reinaldo Felipe, Acta (poem)
* Manuel Granados, El orden presentido (poems)
* José Mario, A través (poems)
* Nancy Morejón
Nancy Morejón
Nancy Morejón is one of Cuba's major authors and poets. She has gained recognition for work whose themes are centered on women and the Afro-Cuban experience.-Life history:...
, Mutismos (poems)
* Mariano Rodríguez Herrera, La mutación (stories)
* Novísima Poesía Cubana I (poetry anthology)
* Georgina Herrera, GH (poems)
* Joaquín G. Santana, Poemas en Santiago (poems)
* Belkis Cuza Malé, Tiempos del Sol (poems)
* Rogelio Martínez Furé, Poesía Yoruba (poetry anthology)
* Jesús Abascal, Soroche y otros cuentos (stories)
* Nicolás Dorr, (drama)
* J. R. Brene, Santa Camila de la Habana Vieja (drama)
* José Mario, La torcida raíz de tanto daño (poems)
* Miguel Barnet
Miguel Barnet
Miguel Barnet is a Cuban writer, novelist and ethnographer. He studied sociology at the University of Havana, under Fernando Ortiz , the pioneer of Cuban anthropology. Fernando Ortíz's studies of Afro-Cuban cultures influenced many of the themes, both literary and scholarly, of Barnet.-Early...
, Isla de güijes (poems)
* Ada Abdo, Mateo y las sirenas (stories)
* Évora Tamayo, Cuentos para abuelas enfermas (stories)
* Nancy Morejón
Nancy Morejón
Nancy Morejón is one of Cuba's major authors and poets. She has gained recognition for work whose themes are centered on women and the Afro-Cuban experience.-Life history:...
, Amor, ciudad atribuida (poems)
* Ana Garbinski, Osaín de un pie (poems)
* Rodolfo Hinostroza, Consejeros del Lobo (poems)
* Segunda Novísima de Poesía Cubana (1)
* Silvia Barros, Teatro infantil (drama)
* Primera Novísima de Teatro (2)
* Angel Luis Fernández Guerra, La nueva noche (stories)
* El Puente, Resumen Literario I (literary review) (3)
* Antonio Álvarez, Noneto (stories)
* José Milián, Mani Omi Omo (drama)
* José Mario, Muerte del Amor por la Soledad (poems)
Pending publication:
El Puente, Resumen Literario II (literary review) (4)
Manuel Ballagas, Con temor (stories) (5)
(1), (2), (3), (4) (5). Books confiscated at the printers used by Ediciones el Puente in 1965, Havana, Cuba.