Memorias del Enemigo: Relatos Autobiográficos de Heberto Padilla, Reinaldo Arenas y Eliseo Alberto sobre el Poder en la Cuba Revolucionaria

Abstract

This dissertation examines the totalitarian drift of the Cuban Revolution through a critical reading of La mala memoria (1989) by Heberto Padilla, Antes que anochezca (1992) by Reinaldo Arenas, and Informe contra mí mismo (1997) by Eliseo Alberto. From an interdisciplinary perspective that integrates literary study with political analysis, I demonstrate how these autobiographical works reveal the mechanisms of censorship, surveillance, repression, exclusion, and control deployed on the island after 1959. This theoretical approach is fundamentally inspired by a contextualization of Carl Schmitt's political thought, particularly regarding the distinction between friends and enemies that radically shaped Cuban society.

In the chapter dedicated to La mala memoria, I explain how the confessional nature of these memoirs is permeated by the narrator's guilt complex in relation to the "Padilla affair," an episode where simulation is revealed as constitutive of totalitarianism. In addition to illustrating how Padilla outlines the sacrificial orientation of revolutionary History, I complete the section with his literary portrait of Fidel Castro, whose tyrannical representation appears in tension with the author's self-portrait. In my initial approach to the study of Antes que anochezca, I argue that Arenas's writing style can be conceived as a principle of individuation that challenges certain dismissals of his autobiography. After unveiling the castrating logic of Castroism described by Arenas, I analyze the manifestations of collective violence that gave rise to what I define as a "dejective biopolitics". In the chapter on Informe contra mí mismo, drawing on Eliseo Alberto's experience, I problematize the confession and guilt stemming from his collaboration with state surveillance apparatuses entrenched in a permanent state of exception. After integrating various critical recollections of the Revolution - presented as letters, slogans, narratives, and even the portrait depiction of Castro created by Eliseo Alberto, I elucidate the progressive erosion of the revolutionary myth following the collapse of the socialist bloc. In sum, through the autobiographical texts of these exiled writers, I demonstrate the presence of a literary corpus that challenges the hegemonic, apologetic, and totalizing narratives of the revolutionary process.