HAVANA, Cuba.- One year ago, on June 30, 2023, in Madrid, where he had lived since 1970, the writer and journalist Carlos Alberto Montaner left this world at the age of 80, lucid and with dignity, as he always lived.
Considered by the magazine Foreign Policy Among the 50 most influential intellectuals in Latin America, he was one of the most widely read columnists in the Spanish-speaking world. It is estimated that around six million people read his articles, which appeared for decades in various media outlets.
He was the author of 27 books, among which stand out Journey to the heart of Cuba, Why communism disappeared, Freedom: the key to prosperity, Manufacturers of misery, Manual of the perfect Latin American idiot (co-authored with Plinio Apuleyo and Álvaro Vargas Llosa), the novels Dog World, The Plot, The Colonel’s Wife, Time of Scoundrels y Goodbye again.
Montaner continued writing until May 2023, when he said goodbye to his readers by announcing his retirement due to a degenerative disease that plagued him (progressive supranuclear palsy).
He was the most solid and coherent intellectual that the Castro regime had to face. Hence the hatred and cruelty with which he was always attacked, branded a terrorist, a CIA agent and other absurd accusations.
In fact, as Montaner liked to recall, the closest he came to terrorism was when, in Havana in 1958, as a teenager, he helped a young girl terrified by the explosion of a bomb placed by members of the 26th of July Movement in a recreation center. That young woman would become his wife and the mother of his daughter.
Although he had been in exile for more than six decades, ever since he was just 19 years old and managed to escape from the prison to which he had been sent for opposing the regime in January 1961, he never lost contact with Cuban reality or with those within Cuba who were fighting for democracy.
His vision of Cuban problems, always accurate, objective, sensible and difficult to refute, was never clouded by rancor and passion. On the contrary, he was always open to reasoning and respectful debate with his ideological adversaries.
Let us remember that when Montaner debated, in 2010, with Silvio Rodríguez, he answered affirmatively to the singer-songwriter’s question of whether he would sign a letter from Cubans who were victims of CIA attacks, but he invited Silvio to sign, in turn, a letter in defense of political prisoners and opponents persecuted by the regime, which disconcerted the most pro-government of pro-government singer-songwriters and made them talk nonsense.
Founder of the Cuban Liberal Union and vice president of the Liberal International between 1992 and 2012, Montaner never gave up on the dream of a democratic Cuba. But his fight for freedom and democracy was not only focused on Cuba, but also included every place in the world where tyranny reigned, human rights were violated or the rule of law was threatened.
OPINION ARTICLE
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2024-07-02 01:59:06
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