Word: padilla
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...Florida, Flo-rree-da," says Heberto Padilla, pronouncing the familiar word with a flourish, as if it were a lover's name. "Ponce de Leon christened it, and in Coral Gables the streets have Spanish names. So we deserve the place. Whenever we had trouble in Havana, we went to Miami, and Miami is very, very important for us. We don't feel like immigrants." Padilla certainly does not. Cuba's best and most famous poet now talks as if he could be the proud father of all his 726,000 countrymen residing in South Florida...
...Padilla, a genial, garrulous man of 53, first came to the U.S. in the '50s to escape the oppression of Fulgencio Batista, the dictator of the day. When Fidel Castro overthrew Batista in 1959, Padilla returned home and put himself at the command of the new regime, which sent him to London and Moscow as a correspondent for Prensa Latina, the government press agency. Gradually he became disenchanted; he saw the future of his country in the repressive atmosphere of the East bloc. Poems such as this reflected his unhappy feelings...
HEROES ARE GRAZING IN MY GARDEN by Heberto Padilla Translated by Andrew Hurley Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 250 pages...
...Poet Heberto Padilla, who had remained in Cuba after most of his family had fled, was suddenly imprisoned, committed to solitary confinement and forced to confess to consorting with imperialists. Condemned to virtual house arrest, Padilla continued working as a translator until, through American intercession, he was allowed to seek exile in the U.S. in 1980. He smuggled out the only unconfiscated copy of this manuscript under a pile of letters in his carry...
...only zealots in sight are willfully credulous European tourists. "You are a people truly young," burbles one foreign girl to the powerless and paralyzed Julio. "Everyone finds happiness in your country." Padilla knows better, and after a chapter or two of this biting phantasmagoria, so do all but the most naive readers...