Guillermo Cabrera Infante
Guillermo Cabrera Infante ( born April 22, 1929 in Gibara, Cuba, † 21 February 2005 in London ) was a major Spanish-language writer and film critic. He was regarded as a symbol of the resistance against the regime of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
Life
Cabrera Infante founded in 1951 as an avid cinephile, the Cinematheque in Cuba. After he released salacious stories in 1952, he had a long time in jail.
Cabrera Infante was first followers of the revolution thought of Fidel Castro. He was involved in the 1957 founding of the underground newspaper Revolución. His parents were politically left: they had co-founded in the 1930s in the small town of Gibara a local branch of the Communist Party of Cuba and were temporarily imprisoned as a communist activist.
After Castro's victory in 1959 Cabrera was responsible for the weekly cultural supplement Lunes de Revolución the press organ of the 26th of July Movement, the newspaper Revolución, which was headed by Carlos Franqui. Soon, however, Cabrera turned against the revolutionary government established by the growing restrictions of artistic freedom and against literature prohibitions. The official prohibition of the rotated of Cabrera's brother Sabá artistic documentary PM 1961 was cause of criticism of censorship, to which Castro with his " words of the intellectuals " reacted, in which he undertook the artists for the unconditional support of his policies. Lunes was then closed and pushed Castro Cabrera Infante in 1962 to the post of cultural attaché to Brussels from.
In 1965, the tension grew and Cabrera Infante went first briefly to Madrid, then to exile in London. In his later works, he sat down again and again deals with the alienation of the home, but also with the regime in Cuba. He described Cuba later as " giant prison ".
His first and probably most important novel Tres tristes tigres ( Three sad tigers, 1967), Spain was awarded in 1964 with the literary prize " Biblioteca Breve ". Cabrera Infante owner describes the nightlife in Havana shortly before the Revolution ( 1959), integrating a number of style parodies.
In the following years he was, in part, under his pseudonym Guillermo Cain, as a screenwriter at the American films Vanishing Point ( BRD: Vanishing Point San Francisco, DDR: limit point zero) and Wonderwall ( world full of wonders ) involved.
He eventually took in 1979 to the British nationality.
His big settlement with the regime in Cuba took place in 1992 at the factory Mea Cuba.
1993 awarded him the Florida International University in Miami honorary doctorate.
In 1997, he received the most important in the Spanish-language literature Cervantespreis ( Premio Cervantes ).
In protest against the participation of a 124- member delegation from Cuba at a helped organizing of Florida International University Scientific Conference Cabrera Infante his award to the university gave back in 2000. Previously, he had already finished his long-standing collaboration with the Miami Film Festival in protest against the performance of the documentary Buena Vista Social Club during the edition of 1999.
In August 2004, Cabrera Infante had to undergo a bypass surgery. A week before his death he was injured in a fall on the hip. He also suffered from diabetes and pneumonia. He died in 2005 of blood poisoning.
Cabrera Infante left behind two children.