雷纳多·阿里纳斯

雷纳多·阿里纳斯（西班牙语：Reinaldo Arenas，1943年7月16日—1990年12月7日），古巴诗人、作家、剧作家。对于古巴革命，他早期持同情和支持态度；但随后他对古巴政府持批评和反对态度。

相关传记

阿里纳斯在1992年写下自传《Antes que anochezca: autobiografía》；此书在2000年被拍成同名电影《黎明不会来》（Before Night Falls），由朱利安·许纳贝导演，哈维尔·巴登主演。

Reinaldo Arenas (July 16, 1943 – December 7, 1990) was a Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright who is known as a vocal critic of Fidel Castro, the Cuban Revolution, and the Cuban government. His memoir of the Cuban dissident movement and of being a political prisoner, Before Night Falls, was dictated after his escape to the United States during the 1980 Mariel boatlift and published posthumously. Arenas, who was dying of AIDS, killed himself in 1990.

Life

Arenas was born in the countryside of Newport Beach, Aguas Claras, Holguín Province, Cuba, and later moved to the city of Holguín as a teenager. He was six years old when he started school, attending Rural School 91 in Perronales County. Around this age, he discovered that he was gay. He later wrote about his sexual exploration with himself. He talked openly of having his first experience of straight sex, though incomplete, with his cousin, Dulce Maria. He also shared that his first act of gay sex was at age eight with his cousin Orlando, who was 12. Arenas stated, "In the country, sexual energy generally overcomes all prejudice, repression, and punishment.... Physical desire overpowers whatever feelings of machismo our fathers take upon themselves to instill in us."

After moving to Holguín when he was a teen, Arenas got a job at a guava paste factory. When conditions in the city started to get worse, around 1958, he decided that he wanted to join the guerillas (Castro and his movement). When he was 14, he walked to Velasco, where he met Cuco Sánchez, who took him to the pro-Soviet Cuban guerrilla headquarters in the Sierra Gibara. A guerilla commander, Eddy Suñol, interviewed Arenas and said, "We have plenty of guerrillas; what we need is weapons."

After ten days with the guerilla, Arenas went back to Holguín with the intention of killing a guard and taking his weapon. When he made it back to the city, he went home to see his grandparents who were not so happy to see him. Because he made the mistake of leaving a note saying that he was going to join the guerillas, the women who lived with his grandparents spread the news like wildfire. Fulgencio Batista's secret police, the Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities, were on the lookout for him. His brief trip home made him realize that he could not stay and so he trekked back to Velasco to the rebel encampment. It now had to accept him.

When he was 16, he was awarded a scholarship at La Pantoja, the Batista military camp that had been converted into a polytechnic institute. There, one of the most important courses was on Marxist–Leninism. Students had to master Manual of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Manual of Political Economy by Pyotr Ivanovich Nikitin, and Foundations of Socialism in Cuba by Blas Roca Calderio. Arenas graduated as an agricultural accountant but later described his schooling as "communist indoctrination."

The first time that Arenas was in Havana was in 1960. He returned later when he enrolled in a planning course at the University of Havana and reported to the Hotel Nacional de Cuba. While in the program, he worked for the National Institute for Agrarian Reform. It was not until around 1963 that Arenas started to live his life as a gay man, but even then, it was still a life in extreme secrecy. He feared ending up in one of the Military Units to Aid Production, which were concentration camps for LGBT people, Christians, and suspected members of the Cuban dissident movement. A relationship with a man named Miguel, who was later arrested and taken to a UMAP camp, was the beginning of Arenas' life of being known as a gay man by the Cuban Committees for the Defense of the Revolution.