Betania: An Island and a Poet
Miami Beach , November 2007 - If it would be possible to turn the clock back and face once again the crucial moment when I left my homeland and I could only take a few things, limited and chosen, what would I take? How, where, and in what manner would I wrap up the landscape? What container would hold the smells of the countryside and the grass, the fresh air, the cool winds just before a rain shower, and the sea breeze? And the fragrant scents of the Cuban cornucopia of fruits and flowers? Ah! The aroma of freshly brewed Cuban coffee, my grandmothers sitting in the backyard; and I sitting quietly absorbing every word and every gesture with a glance. What vessel would I use to carry a fistful of soil, several seeds, a piece of sugar cane and another of piña de ratón (pinguin)? Where a bunch of coralillo (coral vine), lluvia de oro (honey mesquite), galán de noche (night blooming jessamine), one orchid and two mariposas (white gingers) could be preserved? Where would I store all those treasures to better protect them? The most valuable things are precisely very difficult to grab, almost impossible to conserve; over time, they would lose their freshness and many of them, even though they could be carried away, would evaporate. How would I safely keep these few, although precious samples of my identity?
It is because of efforts each of us in exile have made to preserve our collective memory, our essential traits, that we like to listen to the songs of Chirino, Benny Moré and Albita; we also look to feed our nostalgia with the listening pleasure supplied by the music of Bebo Valdés, Arturo Sandoval and Cachao.
Mentioning only a few, a part of long and invaluable lists, the exhaustive but always unfinished task of integrating memories continues. It is for the same reason that we take pleasure in the stained glass windows of Amelia Peláez and in the flooded solitudes of Humberto Calzada, in the blue women-dolls of Mijares, in the colorful urban landscapes of Gaínza, in the poetry of light of Rafael Soriano, in the roosters of Mariano, in the mulatto women and horses of Carlos Enríquez, in the aquatic transparencies and the orgiastic still lives of Eladio González and in the Africanized totem poles of the intricate jungles of Wilfredo Lam.
We keep strengthening our cultural heritage also through films and documentaries. A task that demands a serious verification of facts and parts; the distinction and correction of inaccuracies; the illumination and detailing of the right perspective when we discover historical distortions.
There are samples of Cuban made films that are considered classics such as Memorias del subdesarrollo (Memories of the Underdevelopment), La muerte de un burócrata (Death of a Bureaucrat) and Fresa y Chocolate (Strawberry and Chocolate) of Gutiérrez Alea, to name a few. An excellent sample of the AIDS situation in Cuba and its apartheid system is Azúcar amarga (Bitter Sugar) of León Ichaso. Recent proof of attempts and achievements of film testimonies has been the extraordinary effort of Andy García in La ciudad perdida / The Lost City where a city and en epoch are resurrected; as well as one of the last documentaries about Havana, El arte nuevo de hacer ruinas (The New Art of Making Ruins), of Florián Borchmayer.
The past fades more and more, and as time goes by, our memories grow smaller, are lost or diluted little by little. Also the essence of our traits is diminished and lost. Art in all of its manifestations represents our nation. And it is through those representations, that the flow of our history and our culture is constantly being fed, summarized and continues to be created and recreated in growing waves and ceaseless transforming movements. That is why the written word, of any kind, is the richest source of wealth where our identity can be found and strengthened: to know who we are, where we came from and where we can or should go. This is the reason why those who believe in the power of the word, the promoters, the editors and other persons involved in the conservation of the word in a written text and in its dissemination, are worth of praise.
How to link this melancholic Cuban diatribe with a poet?
I knew a boy in Cuba, exactly in Güines, like many of you knew him. He seemed to be like others. Back then I thought so. The youngest and only boy of Felipe Álvarez, owner of the grocery market and bakery La Reina (The Queen). He was my neighbor and he was named after his father. I did not see Felipe Álvarez Alfonso, Felipín, for several years, until the summer of 1980 when I found him again, while I was directing a foreign student program at the Complutense University in Madrid. It was easy for me to locate him, precisely due to his letter published in La Villa where he asked for Ernesto Méndez and for me, because our names appeared together with his in a Cuban literature dictionary published in London by Marnesba Hill. Felipe emphasized the point in his letter that three persons from Güines were named in such a dictionary and he wanted to know the whereabouts of the other two. When I saw him on that occasion, being a Licentiate in Political Sciences and Sociology, a graduate from the Spanish School of Diplomats and with a Master in Business Administration, I couldn't imagine that in time, among the roles he had to play in life, he would be one of the vessels conducting and propelling our culture, sponsoring writers. I learned he was a poet and that among his accomplishments, he was a partner in an editorial house. He gave me some books and since then he has been providing me with the latest and best publications, especially by Cuban authors. He always had hawk eyes for literature, for the worthy, the new, and the original. A sharp eye for literary creations of substance .
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| Felipe Álvarez Alfonso, Director, Betania Editorial, Madrid, Spain |
Felipe Lázaro, as he is known in the literary world, resides in Madrid. Over the years he has tirelessly been involved and has participated in Cuban projects that have been successful due to his contributions. Just to mention a few, he is a founding member of the Spanish section of the Cuban Human Rights Committee, a frequent consultant of the International Encounters about Creation and Exile in Cádiz and is a founding member and contributor of the Cuban Hispanic Review and of Encounter of Cuban Culture.
Felipe the Poet, has to his credit numerous poems scattered throughout different sources, separata issues and anthologies, plus his personal collections Los muertos están cada día más indóciles (The Dead Are More Unruly Every Day) (1987) and Fecha de caducidad (Expiration Date) (2004).
Several years ago, the poet from Güines founded his own editorial house in Madrid. Lázaro selected the logical name of Betania for his enterprise, which has been since then, one of the influential bases and the starting point of a substantial part of our literature. And even though he publishes books with Spanish and Spanish-America subject matters and authorships, his specialty is Cuba, because since its foundation he has kept it his goal to serve Cuban culture.
At the present time, Betania is celebrating its twentieth anniversary. During these twenty years (1987-2007) this prolific editorial house has published more than 400 books of Spanish and Spanish American writers, out of which 120 are of Cuban authors. It has ten collections: Betania Collection of Poetry, Narrative, Essays, Theater, Anthologies, Children Literature, Arts, Social Sciences, Documents and Live Word; besides two new separata issues: Collection of Separata Issues (Poems and Stories) and Notebook on Debate (Essays). In its catalogs there are publications from prominent Cuban authors such as José Martí, Dulce María Loynaz, Gastón Baquero, Reinaldo Arenas, José Ángel Buesa, Raúl Rivero and others. It also includes most of the new generation of Cuban writers (poets, story tellers, play writers and essayists): Gustavo Pérez Firmat, Matías Montes Huidobro, Elías Miguel Muñoz, Daína Chaviano, Iraida Iturralde, José Kozer, Magali Alabau, Juana Rosa Pita and many more. The Betania label has outstanding anthologies such as Poesía cubana (Cuban Poetry): La isla entera (The Whole Island) (1995) where valuable poets from inside and outside Cuba are gathered; showing in this book as in many other of its publications, the worthy task of offering a free platform, giving the opportunity to those muzzled poets on the Island to be heard abroad.
Among other treasures, Betania's catalog is enriched with key anthologies for those experts of our poetry, such as the collections Poetas cubanos en Nueva York (Cuban Poets in New York) (1988), Poetas cubanos en España (Cuban Poets in Spain) (1988), the bilingual text A Brief Anthology: Cuban Women Poets in New York (1991), and the beautiful book Al pie de la memoria (At the Foot of Memory) (2003), a compilation of Cuban poets who died in exile from 1959 to 2002.
To conclude, I quote a commentary made by Pío Serrano, a highly regarded poet and editor, also from our hometown, in his article "Twenty Years of Betania", published in Madrid's Cuban Hispanic Review: "And it is precisely that determination to keep creating and to give voice to those being denied their testimony, the reason that bestows a special relevance to the first twenty years of Betania and its Director Felipe Lázaro for his vocation in publishing and promoting the Cuban book in freedom" (No. 24, 2006, 111). Without any doubt, our Felipe of Betania and of Güines—taking into consideration his facets as a poet, compiler, agglutinant agent of the Diaspora and publisher of poetry from the "two shores", on top of his other merits—is providing one of the more intense and valuable contributions to Cuban culture within the literary history of the last years.
Congratulations Betania! We predict many more years of success.
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