It’s over half a century since the artist Waldo Díaz-Balart left Cuba. On January 1, 1959, he was seeing the New Year in at Havana’s Tropicana nightclub with the son of President Andrés Rivero Aguero, when he heard the news that the Revolution had triumphed. The 27-year-old Díaz-Balart knew he had to leave the island. His father, Rafael, had been a minister in the Batista government and had already left for the United States. His situation was also uncomfortable for social reasons: his sister, Myrta, had been married to a young man called Fidel Castro. They divorced in 1955. “On the one hand the Balart family had been in power and on the other, my sister had been married to Fidel … [Read more...] about The man who knew Fidel Castro, Warhol and Franco’s Spain
Castro
Saramago: Iberia’s Godless conscience
“With a rapid movement, what was in sight has disappeared behind the man’s clenched fists, as if he were still trying to retain inside his mind the final image captured, a round red light at the traffic lights. I am blind, I am blind, he repeated in despair as they helped him to get out of the car, and the tears welling up made those eyes which he claimed were dead, shine even more.” (From Blindness). Given that his life was so often filled with polemic, perhaps it was fitting that José Saramago’s death should be surrounded by controversy. The late Portuguese novelist would have smiled from the afterlife –if he had believed in it– at the idea of the Vatican and his country’s president … [Read more...] about Saramago: Iberia’s Godless conscience