Polarization in Cuba is part of a general crisis, says academic Andrés Ordóñez

(EFE).- The Mexican academic Andrés Ordóñez lamented this Saturday the radicalism in the debates on the Cuban Revolution and considered that they are not something exclusive to the Island, but rather a trend in the world today.

“We are living in times of polarization. This intolerance, this propensity to disqualify the other, is not exclusive to Cubans; it is part of the crisis in the West. We are in a very difficult moment,” said Dr. Ordóñez in an interview with EFE.

The essayist, poet and diplomat will present his new book in Mexico in the coming days, The myth and the disenchantmentan essay on literature and power in revolutionary Cuba, in which he analyzes the role of writers on the island and refers to key moments in the country’s history.

“One of the purposes of my book is not to disqualify; my interest is to understand one and the other from the limitations of my foreign status, but also from my deep love for that country,” said Ordóñez, who was a diplomat in Havana in the presidency of Vicente Fox (2000-2006).

The author goes through the Cuban literary canon in his work and stops at four of the main novelists of the Island: Norberto Fuentes, Leonardo Padura, Pedro Juan Gutiérrez and Abel Prieto.

“We are living in times of polarization. This intolerance, this propensity to disqualify the other, is not exclusive to Cubans”

The myth and the disenchantmentedited by Planeta, stops at key moments in the history of Cuba and takes a tour of Cuban literature.

The work considers the case of the poet Heberto Padilla, who was forced to indict himself as a counterrevolutionary in 1971, and the execution, in 1989, of General Arnaldo Ochoa, one of the most beloved heroes in that country, as moments of rupture.

“There are two very important events in Cuban culture; the Padilla case and the trial of Ochoa and his relatives. There was a break in the argumentation of the Revolution that had been so powerful, in terms of moral authority,” he said.

When referring to the art of writing novels, Ordóñez accepts that approaching works of fiction will in the future be a way of learning about the history of a country in which journalism is controlled by the government and only some independent media can denounce it.

Ordóñez highlights in his book how the novelists, Fuentes, Padura, Gutiérrez and Prieto, among others, reflect the reality of the Island in their fictional works, but believes that there are still issues to be addressed.

“There are gaps. For example, the great novel about the war in Angola has not been written; Padura and others touch on the subject, but indirectly; the Angola phenomenon is something that the protagonists of Cuban culture, or do not yet have the critical distance to address it, or involves a painful phenomenon,” he says.

“There are two very important events in Cuban culture: the Padilla case and the trial of Ochoa and his relatives”

For the ruling party in Havana, whoever has a contrary opinion is a worm, a despicable being who is not against the government, but against the country.

Similar is the attitude of the opposition radicals, worshipers of Donald Trump, who describe anyone who proposes to talk as a communist, the greatest offense in their vocabulary.

Ordóñez regrets the polarization, but he is an optimist, he believes that there are people on both sides willing to open spaces for coincidences and seek a better future for a country in which few things work and the leaders have a critical spirit equal to zero. .

“I do not see it as impossible (the possibility of the Miami-Havana dialogue). There is, above all, among the young people of the enlightened, more cultivated sector, a different attitude, each one in their own point of view. It is possible to build bridges. That is what I am an optimist,” he insisted.

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