Allen Ginsberg in the Havana
Published in “Mundo Nuevo”, Paris, April of 1969, page 48-54
José Mario Rodríguez
I met Allen Ginsberg in 1965: we making arrangements to publish a magazine that was to be called Resumen Literario El Puente I, in which one of the numbers would include Howl. The translator, David Bigelman, was trying to make contact with Ginsberg through one of the American students that was in Cuba and who was said to have known him, after we learned through the press that Casa de la Americas was going to invite Ginsberg to be part of the poetry jury of that year. The evening that his arrival was announced; he was with some friends at the Unión de escritores. At ten o’clock the same night after the Unión closed, we left in a group and sent two people for one bottle of alcohol while the rest were waiting. Shortly after, the people who went for the bottle showed up accompanied by a bearded man wearing glasses who was going bald and wearing a Mexican serape: the man was Allen Ginsberg. We saw him walking in front of the Havana Libre with his prophet aura and had the intuition that he was the poet with whom we were talking when we invited him to drink something with us. He immediately showed himself cheerful. He asked us with how he could take out some leeches that he got in Mexico. Among jokes and laughs we took him to a pharmacy where he could buy a pot of soldier unguent. From there, we went to the Atelier Club. A young married couple from the group started asking him questions about the beatniks and the attitude that they currently hold. Ginsberg became interested when we told him that we run editorials and that we were going to start the publication of a magazine with one of his own poems. The Cuban Revolution, the young people and the culture immediately were brought out. The questions were about sexual freedom. During this time in Havana the expulsions from the School of Arts and persecutions against homosexuals were getting an inquisitor and sinister character as Ginsberg insisted. While the young married couple explained to him the details, the bottle of alcohol fell down during the stimulated conversation. We then left to the street. Manolo and I went ahead with Ginsberg trough the Vedado. He told us that he was staying at the Rivera Hotel. Manolo was translating poems from Kaddish and others poems. Ginsberg talked about his poetry and the differences that existed between her, Ferlingetti, and others beatnik poets. According to him, his poetry was like the verse of Odes of Lorca to Whitman “tu barba llena de mariposas.” He insisted that he saw the butterflies in the Lorca’s beard and in others he saw only the beard. We left him at the corner of the hotel and we agreed to see him the next day in the afternoon and to talk about the translations.
It was around seven when we arrived at the hotel. The elevator operator denied us entry and he sent us to the hall. We explained to the hall employee that we were going to see the American poet in order to discuss translations. He told us that it was prohibited to go up to his room. We asked him to call Ginsberg and he then came down and took us up to his room, showing he was bothered by the attitude that they had with us. Shortly after that we talked and explained to him about the “Ediciones El Puente” and the young poets and writers that we publish, I showed him the books. Ginsberg referred to a young student of the Art School who visited him in the morning, reading poems and explaining the persecutions and expulsions that were happening in that school (later on, we knew that the young student was detained by police out side the hotel that day). We read some poems. Ginsberg wanted those poems that Manolo was translating be adapted to the Cuban reality, translating to the language of that moment. He explained to me how some words only use by the beatniks had a popular character. I told him about the reading that we gave in a club (The Crooked Cat) with composers and popular singers and the impact that caused, and how we thought to do another one. He told me that if he still stayed in the Havana he could participate. If persecutions in Cuba still existed for the way of dress, etc., how was he invited? What were the feelings and the sickly people? In a couple of hours Ginsberg could get information about many things and he didn’t stop to confront it. At that moment people from the newspaper “Today” showed up. They came to interview him. Manuel Díaz Martínez took a seat. We were without shoes and lying down pretty comfortable in both beds. Sir Ginsberg, he asked seriously after an astonishing moment. What would you say if you meet with Fidel Castro? Ginsberg responded to him that there is nothing else to see in Havana but Castro, if he could see him; he would ask him to stop the shooting. Instead of shooting people he could punish them by being the elevator operator at Hotel Riviera. That he could put an end to persecution of sickly people, because they represented the sensitive flow of the Cuban people, and also to allow the free trade of marijuana, because doctors already proved that marijuana was less harmful than alcohol, and stopping persecution of homosexuals because as his friend, poet Voznisenski told him, communism was a thing from heart and he believed that homosexuality was also; because when two homosexual men were sleeping together they contribute to the pace and solidarity, so it wasn’t incompatible with communism. Martínez continued: What would you do if you win the Nobel Prize? I would buy a bundle of marijuana, Allen answered, “and the left over I would donate to the independent film of New York.” The reporter resisted from asking more questions and continued taking notes in his notebook as long as we were talking. A moment before he left, Ginsberg asked him: “Will you promise that your newspaper will publish everything I have told you?” “Of course, in Cuba there is total freedom!” he answered. “What is the name of the newspaper’s editor?” Allen continued. “Blas Roca” answered Martínez. “Well, if the article is not published, I am going to go to talk with Blas Roca and convince him that has to publish it,” Ginsberg continued. The reporter left and we were laughing. Allen went down with us outside the hotel.
In the morning, I read in the newspaper “The World” an article by Angel Augier celebrating the arrival of the beatnik rebel to the Havana. Ginsberg became the event. We spent the evening among jokes and bottles of beer. Ginsberg took several pictures of the posters recitals and of us at the coffee shop UNEAC. I brought him Santeria necklaces and delighted he put it around his neck a Changó, Ochún, Yemayá, and Elegguá. He asked me for the meaning of the colors. He showed us the “Corno” where there was a poem written by him and he copied it and dedicated it to a young boy at the table. He asked me if only women used those necklaces. I explained to him that each one symbolized an African god, and were used by either men or women. I promised him a book that we published: “Poesía Yoruba.” Manolo and I asked for some kind of document at the Union that proved that Manolo was working on some translations of Ginsberg’s poems, in order for the hotel to let him to go there without problems. We said goodbye to each other. Ginsberg and Manolo left to the Riviera.
The next day, in the evening, I knew that Manolo had been detained outside of the hotel: the police brought him to the police station and they took his fingerprints as a juvenile delinquent (because he was under age, he was realized under the custody of his mother with a paper that said: “To walk with foreigners”). As soon as Ginsberg knew about it, he went to talk with the poet Nicolás Guillén. I saw Guillén. I saw Ginsberg later on and he was confused. Guillén had told him that there was a mistake even when Manolo showed to the police the authorization paper for the translations. We decided to take precautions. We would see each other in places as UNEAC or in my house. We always took one or more taxis. Ginsberg wished to continue meeting and talking with us. Sartre had him to write article about his stay in Cuba, and he could have complete freedom to say the truth about what was happening or what could happen. Also, he was afraid to write something that would compromise us. He wants to know more. According to him, a document about Cuba that wasn’t specifically humanitarian would be politically distorted. He told us to make an anthology about after the revolution to take it to Ferlingetti, to his publisher company. He wanted for us to start working on this as seriously and soon as possible and, because after the “Casa de las Américas” jury was already established, he could have enough work reading the manuscripts. That night it was giving a concert of the feeling singers at the “Amadeo Roldán” in honor of Casa de las America’s jury. Ginsberg was reading time and time again the accusations “to walk with foreigners,” as he could not believe it. He took many pictures of the document.
Manolo and I went to the “Amadeo Roldán.” We got our tickets. Ginsberg was talking with some intellectual from the “Casa de las Américas” jury. He approached us and invited us to sit with them. After the concert was over, we took leave. Allen took an ICAP car. Manolo and I we went by Carmelo to Línea. From a car appeared a guy wearing black clothes: “you are detained,” he told us. He had his hands inside of his pocket as if he was hiding a gun. They put to us in a car with four more policemen and they lead us to a police station. The man took us inside the police station, gave us his name and led us to the left to another cell; he presented us before another man who was also dressed as a civilian. “Here they are,” he told him. “This is them, eh?” he responded, and he did a gesture like saying: “That they wait outside” and he resumed reading papers. Near us there was a scandal and a discussion. We knew three of the boys that were sent to sit near us: they told us that they were giving a poetry recital at the Havana Libre, and because was a fight between two boys that were there, they had to come to declare, but they were going to leave the police station soon. I explained to them our case in a fraction of seconds, I gave them the hotel’s phone number where Ginsberg was staying, also the UNEAC, and the several friends in order they know immediately we were detained without any reason. The boys were released. After half hour, the UNEAC administrator showed up. Ginsberg already knew and was trying to get in touch with Hayde Santamaría or his secretary, and at the same time he was talking with several intellectuals at the hotel. The UNEAC administrator came to us after he identified himself. I told him how we were detained. He disputed with the police. He came back and told us that we were going to be released immediately. He left. “It was a mistake,” they told us. Nevertheless, they wrote a note about our detentions. “For the sake of routine,” they said. Allen was still talking at the hotel with other intellectuals, in order to write a document protesting if we were not going to be released.
We meet the next morning, trying to explain to ourselves if there was going to be a beginning. There was distrust that everything that happened was something premeditated and not a mistake. The gossip around the stay of Ginsberg with us started getting stronger. Then he asked me to stop seeing him. I thought that Ginsberg’s personality was beyond any hypocrisy. In the evening we were listening to music of Bob Dylan and others that nobody knew about in Cuba. Allen was explaining to me his poetic system based in the notes that he gathered in a notebook: everything was there; he took notes about everything that impressed him, and his own impressions, facts and feelings: after that he transferred everything to a poem as poetic material which he transformed through the technique that such material needed. From notes like these were born long poems as Kaddish and Howl. In such a way, he took notes of everything that was happening to him since his arrival to Cuba. He read some poems of Carlos William Carlos (who had been his mentor), explaining it to me in details as some poems of Ezra Pound, and when I tried to mention The Love Song of Alfred Prufrock, he said that Elliot’s poetry had been aged. “The poets, supposedly revolutionaries, make the mistake to talk about reality as they see it, rejecting any other possibility: the reason is because it is they who deny that very same reality.” He talked about the books shown at “Casa de las Américas,” and he mentioned the original of my book, and according him a made a contrary mistake. “Pretty subjective,” he told me. “The question is to mix both things.” Nevertheless, he insisted that he considered his poetry as a naturalistic poetry. He had a new concept of naturalism. By night, we meet with Lisandro Otero, Marcia Leiseca, Edmundo Desnoes, and María Rosa, by express wishes of them, because they wanted to know what was happening with us.
I met by chance the boy from the Art School who visited Ginsberg. He told me in details how the detention was conducted and the interrogations under which they were subject. They were secret police from the ICAP (The Cuban Institute of Friendship Nations). They threatened him in order to avoid another meeting with Ginsberg. They let him leave because he still had the membership credential from “The Youth Communist.” (What really happened however is he had been expelled from that organization because he didn’t agree with the expulsions from the Art School). He went to see Ginsberg for curiosity and admiration. The secret police were trying to keep the Casa de las America’s jury away from the young people who weren’t reliable; in order to avoid any knowledge about was what happening at that moment: persecutions, expulsions, absurd detentions, and insults. With the old intellectuals whom were part of the system there weren’t problems, and there were fewer problems with the young intellectuals. They can say whatever they want to say. They can even give parties at their houses to show the rest of the intellectuals the existence of freedom in Cuba. There was a case of a well-known army General, who gave marijuana to Ginsberg.
Also, other young people could talk with Ginsberg. One day when we were at the coffee shop, they were waiting outside of the Unión, and they went with him to another place. Apparently for Ginsberg, that kind of confrontation disappointed him more and more about was happening in Cuba. At one evening we took him for a walk around the Havana. He took us to the Fraternity Park. He took a seat at the Sear corner and he asked to us to leaves him alone. “It was ten years ago when I sat in the same place and I wrote a poem; today I couldn’t write anything,” he told us. Later on we went to the Cañas Bar, showing him where Fidel was used get into the bar.
Ginsberg went to the bookstore and asked for our books. He was very sad for the anti-American propaganda: “It is even in the children’s books.” He repeated. He was wearing two small cymbals that he brought from a trip to India (along with Salvador Dalí), he was singing in any place, playing his cymbals, a Hindu song that he wrote in his small block (the same song that I heard from him in the Song and Daughter documentary). “It is an exercise for my stomach.” And he was singing on the buses, on the street and at the receptions. There was a welcome reception to the Casa de las Americas‘s jury at the “Unión de escritores” and we were invited. The Hayde Santamaría’s secretary took us to talk with her, Allen, Manolo, and me. Mrs. Santamaría told us that after she had talked with Abrantes general, he told her that our detention possibly had been a mistake. There were many pictures being taking and the next day one of the pictures appeared in the newspaper “The World.” I started to notice that the police were watching my apartment. Ginsberg had been told us what he was thinking: after he finished the poetry recital, he would stay in Cuba, and try to rent a car to travel around the island in order to write a book. He visited my apartment many times. The “Casa de las Américas” took him with the rest of the jury to Santiago de Cuba. We started preparing a meal at the house of one of our friends when he came back. We set a day for our meal. In the morning, I walked by the “Unión de escritores” and I knew that he had been expelled from the club. The police took Ginsberg out from the hotel and sent him on an airplane to Prague. The scandal of the day consisted in many comments about the Ginsberg’s attitude in Santiago de Cuba, and some declarations regarding “Che” Guevara and Raúl Castro.
Days later we got a letter from a Prague hotel. The letter was from Allen Ginsberg, where he attested that we never molested him and he quoted as witnesses of his statement the intellectuals that were at the “Casa de las Américas” event and Hayde Santamaría; he also clarified that he invited us to the event at the “Amadeo Roldán” as many other times before. The letter gave every detail possible; Ginsberg was trying to anticipate with that letter to any event could turn against us. Ginsberg’s precautions were justified: days later we got a citation trough which one of us were going to be submitted to a trial.
My apartment was under surveillance day and night. I expected the worst. It was beginning to feel like the book Con temor (With Fear) by Manuel Ballegas, a contra revolutionary book. I went to the printing house and I found out that the book was no longer there. A person from UNEAC called to tell me that Onelio Jorge Cardoso and Fayad Jamis were trying to stop the editions. One of them took Manolo’s book and gave it to a general who then gave to Fidel Castro as to prove that the Ediciones “El Puente” was corrupting young people. I thought that there wasn’t any reason for concern about that situation and that it wasn’t going any further. I took it as a gossip or intrigue.
I called the Santamaría‘s secretary and I told her about the trial. She answered that it was just a routine process and not to fear that everything was fine. We have a poetry recital (the second one). They began to put obstacles. I got phones calls and threats to keep silent to scare people into not attending the poetry recital. There was an atmosphere of tension and uncertainty; meanwhile other books were taken from the printing house. The days went by and the titles announced didn’t appear.
I took every kind of precaution, in case something would happen during the trial. I met a lawyer and he told me that there wasn’t any offense. (They accused us of “looking like homosexuals” and of “being in the company of foreigners”). The police were trying to get some proof in my apartment: “Proof of what?” Ginsberg’s letter was translated. Personally, I talked with several people that could help. The only solution was to wait.
I went to see Fernández Retamar, whom I met at UNEAC after he came back from Prague. He told me (with ambiguity and the usual fear) that he had seen Ginsberg and his success at the University of San Carlos, where he was carried on piggyback. Retamar told me that when he returned to Cuba, he coincidentally was in the same airplane with the “Che” who came back from Africa and when Che learned about how Ginsberg was expelled from Cuba, he showed discontent. Retamar was comprehensive about Ginsberg’s attitude, his personality, and the impression the situation could have on us. I had the sensation that maybe I had exaggerated my fears. The day of the trial the accusers didn’t show up. The judge, with a smile, declared us absolved.
One night I was talking with friends on 23 and O. A guy from the university approached me. “Did you know?” He asked me. “Do I know what?” I asked him. “Fidel Castro just talked about you at the university.” “Just talked about me?” I asked him. It seems to be that Fidel was at the future School of Philosophy, and a group of students under the supervision of Jesús Díaz began to talk about culture. Fidel mentioned Carpentier, the Casa de la Americas and the ICAIC, after the Union de escritores, talking badly about Guillén. Someone in the audience screamed: “Fidel, and the Puente?” “The Puente is under my control.” He said shaking a manuscript that he held in his hand, and continued talking. (The manuscript of the book belonged to Manolo, according to Rodríguez Rivera, who said that he have been present at that moment.) After this, Nicolás Guillén arranged to meet with me, telling me that because of what happened at UNEAC he didn’t want to be responsible for the editions. Because of that, we didn’t have the right to print and distribute our books. When I went in the evening to get the Segunda Novísima de Poesía Cubana, it was already finished; they refused to give me a copy.
In those days because of the accusations of being homosexuals, we were denied the right to run theater groups for the most important directors of Cuba. Even Vicente Revueltas (director of Studio Theater, who always praised social theater). The persecutions of writers and artists together with moral problems, was getting so bad that they seemed to be a hallucination, and actors, young poets, and songwriters were detained continuously. The meeting place, Carmelo de Calzada, became in a dangerous place for social gatherings.
Because the police were following me and surveying my apartment I left and went to live at my parents’ house. I made the decision to make only the necessary contacts to borrow money for my ticket and leave the country.
In “La Gaceta” Jesús Díaz took advantage of the circumstances surrounding us, he attacked the editions telling that even the first generation born from inside the revolution was getting more “dissolute and negative” (these expressions are very dangerous in Cuba). The next night, I had an appointment with a young friend to review some of his stories. When I got to the corner of O and 19th street, two gunmen detained me. They took me with three more men to a police station.
I was interrogated three times that night. The first one consisted of questions about several intellectuals and their positions. I was also asked about the kind of friendship that I had with some of them, and which of them I was willing to accuse. The second interrogation (seeing that they couldn’t get anything from me the first time) was full of insults against me, the intellectuals, and the “Union de Escritores.” They called all the artists as rotten. The third interrogation was held in a small room in front an official who was behind of a small desk. Apparently the official just arrived. He talked about Ginsberg (he turned on a light bulb; I guess that the interrogation was being recorded). He wanted me to tell him that I was a homosexual. Everything was asked with good manners. Meanwhile, he asked indirect questions about well-known people. He told me that he was going to help me and nothing was going to happen. He told me to tell him everything I knew; even if I don’t sleep with men, it doesn’t matter, because I could be a homosexual without knowing it. If I confessed it to them, they were going to do everything that they could. They told me that I was a very smart guy and that I published books and they didn’t want me to be a bad example for the young people. They simply wanted yes for answers. The interrogation continued in a very friendly manner, but because I denied everything he let me go. They called the parents of the young boy who was detained along with me. The mother arrived. His father who was a doctor was carrying out a surgery. The authorities tried to convince the parents to accuse me of the corruption of children. When the mother took a seat along with me waiting to be called, she told me about it; also that I don’t have to worry because they were a family incapable of accusations of that kind. Around midday when the father arrived, an official sent me free.
After less than a week they called me to do military service: later on I received four consecutive citations. For the last one, six men interrogated me. They made me walk from one side of the room to the other, and then insulted me. They told me that they didn’t care that I was a writer and I went to the university; that they can clean up their b… with that; that all the writers were faggots and they were going to put an end to the UNEAC and every place like that; that I let myself to be corrupted and they were going to make me a man, without poems and anything like that crap; that poetry was something for lazy and effeminate people and that the Revolution could not permit it. The only question that I asked them was what kind of education level they had. They became incredibly angry and sent me to the police station in my neighborhood. I was tired and depressed. They were waiting for me. They gave me a formulary to sign. The formulary, besides the usual information, had something else: that I had a passport. The policeman gave it to me to sign; meanwhile he held it to avoid that I could turn the page. I signed it. When he took it out I realized that something was written in other side by hand and with really bad handwriting: “You belong to the army.” It was the words of the policeman.
On June 16th, and without any proof against me that could send me to a trial, I was called under the excuse of the military service and sent to a Hard Labor Camp in Camagüey. Thousand of people found the same fate during that time, which is the reason I am not considering myself as the only one who was victim of physical and moral torture and many other kind of vexations. Nor am I the only witness.
At the Camp I met different people: from university students, unhappiness and delinquents, to priests. Without communication for three months, they tried to accuse me of being a CIA agent. They made copies of my letters for the Department of Internal Affair; meanwhile I was accused of plans to assassinate my nephews of one, three and five years old. In fact I didn’t have anything to confess or regret. There were so many complaints and comments in the Camp about what happened that Fidel Castro talked about it in one of his speeches. The wire netting was taken down, the machine guns and number of soldiers was decreased, and it was prohibited to beat and punish us. Days later when everything had changed, we could see our families as nothing would happen.
A month later we could go to the Havana with a pass. On October 3rd, they let me go. On the fourth night, officials came to my house with the pretext to talk to me. Because I wasn’t at home that day they came back the next day in the morning. That morning three men came into my house dressed as civilian and entered my room armed. They put me in car of the Department of Internal Affairs. I had flu with a fever of 39 degrees Celsius. Nevertheless, I went to the cell without any explanation. When my mother went crying to the police station in order to know what happened with me, she was menaced by police at the door and they obligated her to keep away 50 metros. In the night I went to the military prison of the Cabaña, where according the police I would be military judged. The third day and under really bad conditions and almost thinking that was going to be blind because of the darkness of the place, I got a piece of paper that someone else had used to clean up, and with an insignificant pen I wrote a letter to the general of the Cabaña. A compassionate guard delivered the letter. A half hour later, I went to the director’s office. The young director had the letter in his hand when I was brought in. When he saw me head shaved, poorly dressed and with fever he turned his back and then took a seat. After listening to me carefully he sent me to the biggest and cleanest cell where I could sleep, to go out to the patio everyday so to clean it up, and also to take the trash out (it gave me the opportunity to see the sun, something that I asked of him). During those days my job was to take the trash out. They never talked to me. I couldn’t ask anything or to talk with the militaries if they didn’t speak in the first place. One morning, suddenly they took me out. They permitted me to stay in the Havana for 10 days, after those days I should come back to another Camp. The plotting was beyond the limit. When I turned 27 I would leave the country. Some friends outside the country could get me money through family. With the transfer of money through a bank they granted my freedom. In February of 1968, I was able to leave Cuba.
© Translation into English by Bernardo Rocco
