Depois da fronteira: revolução, exílio e liberdade nos escritos do intelectual cubano Reinaldo Arenas (1980-1990)

Abstract

The opening of the port of Mariel, announced by the revolutionaries on April 20, 1980, meant the possibility of a new beginning for many political dissidents. As a result, between April and September, 125,000 citizens left the Caribbean Island of Cuba and headed for the port of Cayo Hueso to seek refuge in the United States of America. Living in a country whose language, economy, and culture were different from those of their homeland, they began to experience new conflicts. Through the analysis of the novel El portero (1987) and the autobiographical and epistolary testimonies of the Cuban intellectual Reinaldo Arenas, his exile experience is examined. The approach, based on the concepts of representation and testimony, explores the way the writer – using the exile process of the marielitos – constructed images of the Revolution and the political scenario in America. We investigated how the writer inserted himself in the networks of intellectual debate in Latin America in the second half of the 20th century. In addition to a constructed memory, the engagement, the aporias and the underlying signs are analyzed in their narrative and aesthetic constructions.