Introduction
Máscaras (Havana Red in English translation) belongs to
Leonardo Padura’s quadrilogy called “Havana Quartet”, which
began with Pasado Perfecto (Past Perfect) in 1991. Máscaras is the
third of Padura’s detective novels featuring Detective
Lieutenant Mario Conde, a thoroughly Cuban yet also
archetypal hard-boiled detective.
In various interviews Padura mentions his clear
aspirations for the Conde novels: they had to be very Cuban
and they should have a literary sensibility. And, although
Padura has expressed an aversion to “obvious political
intentions,” (Political Affairs 2006) which he believes are
“almost typical of social realism,” (Political Affairs
2006) the novel can be read as a summarized history of
Cuba’s worst homophobic moment during the revolution. The
story tells of a very hot summer day, August 6, 1989,
Church Transfiguration Day, when Alexis Arayán – Faustino
Arayan’s son, Cuba's latest UNICEF representative– is found
dead in Havana Park “transfigured” as Electra Garrigó, a
Cuban version of the Greek Tragedy. The murder is assigned
to Mario (El) Conde, who had been relegated to desk duty
1
after his public ‘punch-up’ with Lieutenant Fabricio three
months earlier.
Conde is no ordinary detective. In fact, he is a
frustrated writer and it is his liking for fiction that
leads him to develop certain theories based more on
intuition than on concrete evidence. At the beginning of
the novel, Conde is presented as a rather nostalgic
character, unsure of whether he's chosen the right path,
comparing his life to what became of his childhood buddies
and remembering what good times they used to have. But the
past cannot be recaptured: one of the first scenes has him
wanting to join a baseball game with some youngsters, but
he realizes quickly enough that it is not his place, mainly
because he is now a policeman, a member of a repressive
force and he is no longer comfortable among those he once
considered “his” people. As he explains later in the novel,
his own neighbourhood: “ha cambiado, transformado,
travestido” (216) (has been changed, transformed,
transvestite), indeed, masked.
The investigation leads Conde to two very different
Cuban households: the house of the privileged Arayán, and
2
that of the renowned but disgraced artist and playwright
Alberto Marqués. Marqués has been a victim of the
homophobic Cuban system promoted by the Cuban Revolution
and has suffered humiliation and repression for more than
fourteen years. Thus, he feels bitter and resentful toward
the Cuban regime. Having been a good friend of Alexis,
Marqués is one of the first people to be interrogated by
(El) Conde. During the interrogation, he clearly explains
that Alexis was not a transvestite. In fact, as Marqués
explains, Alexis was a very inhibited sort of person who
bore a great sense of guilt because of his homosexuality.
After a series of adventures, we are made aware of the fact
that, ironically, the murderer was his own father, Faustino
Arayán, who, just prior to his anticipated attendance at a
Human Rights Conference in Brussels, killed his son out of
homophobia and also to silence him after he discovered
something obscure about his past. Faustino’s secret goes
back to 1959, when he forged some documents so as to make
it appear that he had always belonged to the urban
revolution. Based on such a lie, Faustino enjoyed a
position of privilege, which resulted in him being
3
appointed as Cuban ambassador. Therefore, nothing is as
what it appears to be, and the novel is fraught with lies
and secrets, masks that Conde will try to unveil through
his investigation.
The novel clearly represents Havana society at the end
of the 80’s. Needless to say that this was a crucial moment
when the Soviet Union was at the point of dissolution, and
Cuba, then dependent on Soviet economic and military power,
entered into a period of hardship known by the euphemistic
term of Periodo Especial. But, the history told in Máscaras is
not history with a capital ‘H’, but the history of the
average resident of the city. There is a lot about the
hardships of life: the shortages (including quality cigars
and coffee), corruption, as well as some of the repression:
the atrocities committed by the Military Units during the
60`s and 70`s (UMAP), the 1971 crack-down, in which Marqués
was involved, and the Mariel exodus and its horrors.
It is known that, in Cuba, leaders have delivered
homophobic discourses as part of their nation-building
strategies. Usually, these historical and political
discourses have been influenced by war, and through its
4
practice, Cuban sexual and gender stereotypes have been
reinforced and channelled. Thus, Cuban history has been
constructed upon the principle of the exclusion of certain
social groups, mainly homosexuals and women; a patriarchal,
andocentric and homophobic history aimed to protect the
predominant ideology. Moreover, gays were regarded as
monsters, deformed and weird people, “locas” and
“pajarones” in Cuban vernacular and, therefore, subjects to
be repressed and unfit figures for the revolutionary
movement. This situation became even worse with the
communist government, as homosexuality was regarded as
subversive not only in the sense that it did not comply
with the masculine aggressiveness imposed by the system,
but also because it was thought to belong to a specific
social class, a decadent bourgeois phenomenon that had to
be eradicated.
In the novel, Alberto Marqués, the playwright, refers
to the discrimination against gays and he, himself, becomes
a symbol and symptom of the phenomenon. Alberto is a great
writer and an interesting figure whom Cuban officialdom had
censored due to his “ideological deviations”. His “sins”
5
include not only homosexuality, but also, and more
importantly, his defiant attitude toward the system and the
way in which artists and writers were treated during the
most repressive decade of the revolution. Alberto is
defined in the novel as:
Alberto Marqués: homosexual de vasta experiencia depredadora,apático politico y desviado ideológico, ser conflictive yprovocador , extranjerizante, hermético, culterano, posibleconsumidor de marihuana y otras drogas, protector de mariconesdescarriados, hombre de dudosa filiación filosófica, lleno deprejuicios pequeño burgueses y clasistas, anotados yclasificados con la indudable ayuda de un moscovita manual detécnicas y procedimientos del realismo socialista… (41)
[Highly experienced predator, politically apathetic andideologically devious, a trouble maker and provoker whosocialized with foreigners, an elitist, secretive, a possibleuser of marijuana and other drugs, a protector of stray faggots,a man of dubious philosophical affiliation, full of petitbourgeois and class prejudices, noted and classified by theundeniable assistance of the Moscow manual of techniques andprocedures of socialist realism…]
This character closely mirrors the Cuban playwright
Virgilio Piñera (1912-1979), and although Piñera died in
1979, Padura takes poetic licence to keep Piñera’s theories
alive through the character of El Marqués. Marqués bears
many similarities to Piñera, including his effeminate
behaviour and sexual habits. In addition, Marqués, like
Piñera, believes that theatre was as real as life. It is
the place where reality can be portrayed. On the other
hand, the novel’s intertextuality includes the Cuban
6
Tragedy Electra Garrigó, by Piñera, in which, the fictional
character also shares its authorship..
But, for Padura, detective fiction is the genre that
provides an ideal format in which to voice direct and
indirect political critique, as hard-boiled detectives
“frequently proceed from the interrogation of suspects to
the interrogation of society.” (Christian 2001:1) This
interrogation usually leads to a confession that is moving
away from mere problem-solving, which is arguably a central
motif in any detective fiction regardless of the cultural
context of any given novel.
In addition, according to Christian: “In its broadest
sense, the term ‘post-colonial’ encompasses the members of
any group — be it national, tribal, ethnic, or otherwise —
which has been marginalized or oppressed and is struggling
to assert itself.” (2001: 2) This could, of course, include
women or homosexuals or perhaps even teachers of that
academically marginalized sub-genre, detective fiction.
Therefore, post-colonial detective fiction is in itself not
only marginalized and “othered” in relation to “literary”
fiction, but also in relation to the perceived “centre” of
7
the genre in the English world, the “free world”. On the
other hand, the key concept argued by Christian seems to be
that post-colonial literature is written by members of
marginalized groups struggling against cultural hegemony
and neo-colonialism.” (2001: 3) In this light, we are
dealing here with triple marginalization. Padura is a post-
colonial writer, a “marginalized Habanero”, (which, to some
degree, allows for his unique position to revision the
imaginary of Havana as he lived in the suburbs all his
life) who has created a sympathetic post-colonial
detective, indigenous to Cuba, and willing to unmask
internal societal contradictions through his particular
view of society. Conde’s struggle is clearly against the
Cuban establishment and he wonders whether he belongs in such
a heavily controlled system, where everybody is screened and
identified:
lo sabían todo, absolutamente todo, incluso lo que ocurreíntimamente… (…) pero no te das cuenta de que lo saben todo? Lojodido es eso, Conde, uno siente de pronto que está viviendo enuna urna transparente o en un tubo de ensayo, no se, y que loven cagar, mear y hasta sacarse los mocos… “(127) ”… De verdadque eso si da miedo… A veces le dan ganas a uno de irse para laluna. (128)
They knew everything, absolutely everything, including intimateevents (…) but don’t you realize that they know everything?That’s how screwed up it is, Conde, one suddenly feels that oneis living in a transparent urn or in a test tube, I don’t know,
8
they see you defecating, urinating and even blowing your nose(…) This is really scary…. At times it makes you feel as if youwant to go to the moon
But, above all, Padura cubanizes the gumshoe (crime
fiction) and regards the genre as a way of being able to
give representation to the underbelly of Havana and its
repressed “dark side”. As Padura explains: “One of the
virtues of this genre is that one can utilize it in any way
one wishes,” and continues: “The ‘dark’ novel can take one
directly to the darkest corners of a reality, of a society,
while always maintaining something that is very important
to me: the possibility of communicating with readers. That
is why I like the police-type novel so much – I call my
novels ‘false crime novels’, because the crime novel
structure is only a pretext to get to other places.”
(Political Affairs: 2006)
Those other places are areas hidden from the
proscribed gaze of the Cuban state, with its mandate to
imagine and represent a socialist paradise. So one can
infer that Padura, aside from personal taste, has also
chosen to work in this seemingly formulaic genre because,
like science fiction, the formulas are masks which allow
social critique to go under the radar of state censorship,
9
the censor of the individual artist which pushes him to
work within authorized socialist realism, or even further,
to retreat into silence.
Padura’s Máscaras : A Generic Transformation
Transmutation is the basis of detective fiction as it
involves the transformation or representation of a serious
action, usually a murder, into narrative. And, if, on the
one hand, detective fiction allows for the transfiguration
of crime, a transfiguration that could very well lead to
political redemption, on the other hand, it helps to make
sense of an increasingly confusing world by uncovering
hidden causal connections through rational enquiry.
Moreover, more than any genre, detective fiction
emphasizes the related view of reading as a quest for
meaning. (Cawelti 1976) Indeed, Conde himself will be
undertaking a reading and learning process, which will
allow him to understand the world around him and, thus,
recognize the politics of exclusion rampant in his
country. As Tzvetan Todorov argues in his article “The
Typology of Detective Fiction” (1966), detective stories
10
are by definition narratives about reading. In Máscaras
this is certainly true as the reader is invited to discover
and make sense of the world depicted in the novel at the
same time as its leading character. And it is by reading
that El Conde becomes aware not only of the “obscure” world
of homosexuality but also of the reality around him. 1 In
this way, the novel allows the reader to be not only a
consumer but also a producer of the text. (Barthes 1974)
This is why the hardboiled detective novel is a powerful
ideological tool and certainly one of the reasons for its
appropriation on political grounds by Padura.2
Cuban appropriation of the “hardboiled” genre
In Mario Conde, Padura has created, in his own words,
“a man who is a bit disenchanted, sceptical, who defends
himself through irony, and who has great loyalties and
great phobias.” (Political Affairs 2006) His
1 The theories applied in the book El Rostro y la máscara, written by El Recio―borrowed by El Conde during one of his interviews with El Marqués―,are closely linked to the ones expressed by Severo Sarduy in his bookLa simulación (1982).2 Hammett’s involvement with the communist party only serves toreinforce such a reading. The political agendas, either overt orcovert, that are evident in hardboiled fiction range from the mereright wing paranoia and misogyny of Mickey Spillane to theincreasingly reformist liberal agenda of Ross Macdonald.
11
disenchantment produces an alienation that makes him a
typical hard-boiled detective, as he engages in “a version
of the quest, aimed both at searching for the truth and
attempting to eradicate evil.” (Grella 104) But the
alienation of Padura’s Conde is not really class-based,
like that of Sam Spade or Marlowe, but rather is specific
to a Cuban context. He has lived in the same Havana
neighbourhood his entire life, and is deeply rooted in many
Cuban cultural norms. Yet he is alienated, all the same,
from many aspects of contemporary Cuba, especially
political authoritarianism and the groupthink and
internalised self-censorship that it produces. Not
surprisingly, Padura notes that “for Cuban orthodoxy
[Conde] was a very politically incorrect sort of guy.”
(Political Affairs 2006) Conde’s criticism of groupthink
and censorship on the part of the Cuban state and its
adherents is undoubtedly a major reason for his perceived
“political incorrectness.” Perhaps it also has something to
do with his abiding and often-expressed love for the
popular culture of the United States.3
3 References to American music are a virtual soundtrack in Padura’s novels, celebrated frequently by Conde and his paraplegic best friend Flaco.
12
But, moreover, Padura follows Chandler’s dictum,
expressed in “The Simple Art of Murder,” that “In
everything that can be called art there is a quality of
redemption.” (Chandler 1944). The need for redemption in
Cuban society, stripped of its specifically religious
meaning, but still based on language derived from the
religious imagination, is at the center of Máscaras. There
is no redemption without “recognition” and/or an
understanding of the world behind the mask.
If great literary art could rise above genre limits,
as “the formula does not matter, what matters is what you
do with the formula; that is to say, it is a matter of
style,” (Macshare 1976: 64) one can see that, while
Chandler and Hammett employed an American street vernacular
in the service of an updated secular humanist ethic, Padura
employs a Cuban vernacular style in which celebration and
critique are intermingled. The hard-boiled genre and its
film noir counterpart developed a stylized masculine code
of conduct and employ a street-wise, witty vernacular which
is widely recognized as having been heavily influenced by
Ernest Hemingway’s hard bitten post-World War I heroes.
13
This clear “masculinization” of the language helps to
solidify a sense of a tough, shell-like exterior,4 a
masculine identity characterized by the suppression of any
affects. However, most literary detectives have a hard
appearance ― a mask or, as Christopher Brue (2005) argues,
a “cultural fantasy”, that was extended to everyday life―
but a romantic and more idealistic interior. This
disjunctive between the outer, hyper-masculine mask, and
the inner, more feminised imagination is present in
Padura`s Conde, who experiences a strong tension between
his internal and external thought. This tension mainly
arises during his encounters with El Marqués, as both
characters want to maintain extreme positions.
In addition, the clipped, first-person narratives of
Hammett and Chandler are often cynical about the sordid
social world they observe, and only rarely turn inward,
while Padura’s Conde often engages in interior monologues,
and even writes fictional stories within the novel.
Furthermore, in the hardboiled genre, the private eye is
like the scout or the cowboy, he is a loner. As Dennis
4 Greg Forter`s Murdering Masculinities: Fantasies of Gender and Violence in the AmericanCrime Novel has developed an interesting argument about the constitutionand dissolution of the hard-boiled male’s shell-like exterior.
14
Porter argues in his article “The private eye” the
investigator is: “a solitary eye, a non-organization
man's eye, like the frontier scout's or the cowboy's; an
eye that trusts no other; an eye that's licensed to
look; and even, by extrapolation, an eye for hire.”
(2003:1) In Padura’s revisioning, Conde is an organization
man to the core, if an often disaffected policeman; and he
is very much a social animal, relying on friends and the
routine of his community life, however much he may
occasionally retreat into solitude.
So, in contrast to the brittle surface of the classic
hard-boiled detective, with his cool observations of a
rather hopeless world, Padura’s style conveys the anxiety
and tension of people under pressure, and the disfigurement
that this pressure produces. It also admires to the
resourcefulness of people making do and finding happiness
while living under conditions of scarcity and indeed
oppression. Moreover, he lives in the ‘pressure cooker’ of
contemporary Havana, which seems to reinforce this sort of
personality split, the hard exterior being itself a mask
15
that reveals what the state and its vigilant observers
demand to see, but conceals a romantic-artistic soul.
In this way, the text also shares the challenges and
struggles of sexual identity mentioned by Susan Hayward in
her book Cinema Studies: Key Concepts (2000). Indeed, Máscaras is
fraught with conflicts of gender and identity, and the
boundaries of sexuality are clearly questioned by its
leading character Mario Conde. The detective’s attitude,
although consistent with the ideology of power, questions
the institutionalized gender divisions. Even Conde’s own
masculinity is threatened as, through his reading and
learning process, he realizes that sexual identity is a
construction, uncovering the crisis of a whole “Cuban
masculinity.” This is why, through the novel, Conde
expresses his progressive alienation from the culturally
permissible parameters of masculine identity, desire and
achievement created by Cuban discourse.
Yet, there are plenty of contradictions taking place
in Máscaras, as Conde appears to have ethical principles
closely linked to the ones constructed by the system, but
he also worries about the meaning of life and death from
16
an existentialist position. In this way, Conde`s
perspective on homosexuality has been based on the
stereotypes constructed by the State. Thus, he regards
transvestites as a “deviation from the norm” and a “defect
of an otherwise wise nature,” and caricature figures that
he defines in a condescending manner, mainly by negation:
“aquella mujer que no lo era” and “una mujer sin los
beneficios de la naturaleza, falsa mujer” and “a versión
limitada de la mujer con la entrada más apetitosa
clausurada por la caprichosa lotería de la naturaleza.”
(35) [That woman who was not a woman”(…) “a woman cursed by
nature, a false woman” (…)“a limited version of a woman
whose most delectable entry was sealed by the capricious
game of nature]. However, after his reading and encounters
with El Marqués, Conde`s sexuality in relation to both men
and women becomes more ambiguous and, in fact, he develops
a growing interest in the subject. This sort of attraction
toward the unknown Cuban transvestite underworld drives him
to accompany El Marqués to a gay party, despite Marques`
warnings about what he will be finding out:
Lo que usted quiere saber no es demasiado agradable, se loadvierto. Es sórdido, alarmante, descarnado y casi siempre,trágico porque es el resultado de la soledad, de la represión
17
eterna, de la burla, la agresión, el desprecio y hasta delmonocultivo y el subdesarrollo (138)
[I warn you, what you want to know is not too pleasant. It issordid, alarming, blatant and almost always, tragic because itis the result of solitude, eternal repression, ranging frommockery, aggression and disdain to monoculture andunderdevelopment]
However, the ambiguous nature of people attending the
transvestite gathering is a good example of deconstruction
of gender limits. In a way, the party implies a queer
vision that questions the very stability of any definition
of sexual, artistic or political identity. And it is
through the characters attending the event that we can
appreciate the heterogeneous Cuban nature breaking away
from the “muscovite” mentality that believed in a possible
homogeneous Cuban: “Alguien con mentalidad moscovita pensó
que la uniformidad era posible en este país tan caliente y
heterodoxo donde nunca ha habido nada puro. (214) [Anyone
with a muscovite mentality thought that uniformity was
possible in such a warm and heterodox country where nothing
had ever been pure]. That evening, El Conde is surprised
at himself when he lights up a cigarette in a very Bogart
manner in order to “aumentar su cotización en aquel mercado
rosa” (140) [to make himself more appealing in such a pink
18
market]. Conde feels wanted by the faggots and enjoys such
a fatal attraction. And, finally, he meets “nalguitas de
gorrión” [140], a very masculine woman with whom he ends up
having anal sex. Therefore, it is at the party that
Padura’s novel offers us a vantage point from which to
critically re-examine Cuban gender preconceptions and
politics and, as Conde states, Marqués’ theories allow him
to think and see subjects through a different light, making
him think: “ya sabes que no resisto a los maricones pero
este tipo es muy distinto…el muy cabrón me ha puesto a
pensar.” (59) [You already know that I cannot resist
homosexuals but this one is very different…the bastard has
given me food for thought.]
Indeed, Conde is able to reflect on and understand
reality during his conversations with Marqués, who brings
forward the repressed story of the nation. This element
shows that our memory can be liberating if it is re-
imagined, if we correct the habit of repressing the
recognition. By re-imagining the past we are taking the
necessary steps toward the transformation of the present
identity and the reconstruction of the politics of
19
inclusion in a more inclusive vision of a future society.
Yet, cultural re-imagining cannot take place without
cultural remembering and literature facilitates this re-
imagining, giving us a historically grounded vision of a
future society, a future in which we learn to avoid
repeating the exclusionary politics of the past. In this
way, fiction advocates for democracy and a new set of
possibilities.
Thus, it seems as if the conventions of detective
fiction provide the only possible means of reconciling the
opposing halves of Conde’s personality, probably indicating
that society can be reconciled as well as changed.
Moreover, the fact that the story deals with the death of a
cross-dressed homosexual allows for a reflection not only
on death itself, but also on the issues of simulation and
reality behind the masks.
Cuba’s Tragedy
No se si notó que todo esto es una Tragedia Griega,en el mejor estilo de Sófocles, llena de equívocos,historias paralelas (...) y personajes que no sonquienes dicen que son, o que ocultan lo que son, ohan cambiado tanto que nadie sabe quiénes son, y enun instante inesperado se reconocen trágicamente(220)
20
[I wonder whether you have noticed that this is a Greek Tragedy, in the best style of Sophocles full of misunderstandings, parallel stories (…) and characters who are not who they say they are, or whohide what they are, or who have changed so much thatnobody knows who they are anymore and suddenly they recognized themselves tragically]
John Cawelti, in his Adventure, Mystery, and Romance,
argues that crime stories have traditionally presented
"religious and moral" themes (54). In twentieth-century
American detective fiction, he goes on to say, “these
themes are frequently developed in stories about detectives
whose personal ethos is in conflict with an immoral and
corrupt society.” (1976: 59) So, in such scenarios, one
expects that the detective, like the Western hero, will by
story’s end, have set wrongs right. Indeed, through his
investigation, the detective needs to restore the social
fabric disrupted by the criminal. (Cawelti 1992) Another
expectation is that detective novels are in some sense
tragedies, and audiences will expect certain emotional
responses common to tragedies: a form of catharsis similar
to redemption.
This is why Padura’s Máscaras can be considered a
tragedy, approximating to the classical definition of that
21
term. Although the vast majority of hard-boiled detective
fiction cannot conform to the definition of being centred
on the downfall of a great person, which is caused by a
conscious confrontation of the character flaw, detective
fiction often does function like a tragedy, in that it
provides a sort of catharsis for the reader.5 In this
sense, the character lives a moment of anagnorisis
(recognition) of his/her fate, which if it does not
precisely purify us, does help us “to see life clearly, and
to understand it as a whole,” as Lauchlan Watt wrote in his
study of Attic and Elizabethan Tragedy (1908: 17). One
could also say that, like Greek tragedy, detective fiction
“show[s] the hidden cords which moved events,” and in some
sense serves as “a school of conduct” that helps “create a
public morality.” (Watt: 16) Both tragedy and detective
fiction are modern embodiments of archetypes found in
classical myths like those of Oedipus. And, like myths,
doubles and labyrinths, the detective story allows for
different interpretations leading to the uncovering of the
5 However, the dictum that tragedy can only depict those with power andhigh status has changed over time. Indeed, there is the modern beliefthat tragedy may also depict ordinary people in domestic surroundings.
22
archetype and by extension carries a transmutation of
social meaning.
W.H. Auden's essay, "The Guilty Vicarage," establishes
a parallel between Aristotle's theory of tragedy and
accepted elements of detective fiction. The most important
common elements are: Concealment (the innocent seem guilty
and the guilty seem innocent) and Manifestation (the real
guilt is brought to consciousness). Auden's more formal
diagram for the genre follows: Peaceful state before the
murder, False clues, Solution, Arrest of Murderer and
Peaceful state after arrest.”(1980: 14) Indeed, Padura
implies that everything seemed clean and perfect in that
house (Alexis`house implying Cuba) where suddenly, a
tragedy took place. However, we are led to understand that
in Cuba this peaceful state is just an appearance (in the
same way as in Arayan`s house where things are not what
they seem) and therefore, the above theory cannot be
closely linked to the text.
Other critics have argued for a “rebirth of tragedy”
in a way that seems most applicable to detective fiction in
general and to the one practiced by Padura in particular.
23
For instance, Howard Barker argued that in contemporary
theatre, “You emerge from tragedy equipped against lies.”
(1989:13) This is certainly part of the function of
“detective tragedy,” as Padura has developed it in a Cuban
context. Furthermore, we can note that Ross Macdonald, from
the 1960s on, consciously strove to adapt Aristotle's
theory of tragedy to the detective novel. Macdonald’s
detective, Lew Archer, is conceived “as peripatetic
chorus,” and “in place of fate or the will of the gods,
Macdonald substitutes family psychology as the inexorable
force of the story, impelling it toward its tragic end.”
(Sharp 2003)
Updating and translating this process of generic
transformation, Padura seems to have substituted the decree
from God in classical tragedy not only by a dysfunctional
family psychology, including Alexis’ homophobic father, but
also by the will of the system that shaped the individual’s
fate through policies and practices. There is no doubt
that, in Máscaras, Padura is disclosing the divided Cuban
family, a family whose feelings are set apart. But, above
all, he is portraying the Cuban State as the “inexorable
24
force” of the story that impels the characters towards
different variants of a tragic fate. Therefore, the text
implies that it is not until man faces the tragic that he
liberates himself from it and obtains purification and
redemption. Alexis’ “sacrifice” is at the level of his
“homosexual sins” and, having faced the tragic, he
liberates himself, obtaining purification and redemption.
But, Faustino Arayán’s son death goes beyond individual
interests and, in planning and performing his own
assassination, he attempts the transformation of society
and, thus, his transfiguration achieved real transcendence.
This is why, although the victim, Alexis is also the hero
of the novel, who, unable to have authority over his own
life, is glorified after his death. Therefore, in Máscaras
it is not the socialist masculine “new man” but the
effeminate man and transfigured transvestite, the
‘repressed other’, who brings about social change for Cuba.
As Conde explains: ‘Ese cabrón estaba loco y se
transfiguró para entrar en su propio calvario.” [This
bastard was crazy and he transformed himself in order to
endure his own suffering.]
25
Transfiguration and The return of the Repressed Other
By uncovering the dirty realities behind the beautiful
façade, Padura is also showing a different Havana, the
other, marginal city where crime, disorder and excess lurk
beneath the controlled revolutionary discipline. Conde’s
frustration is derived from the fact that he is aware that
the city is changing and, worse, deteriorating due to its
incoming signs of progress. Padura`s city is far from the
monumental Havana exposed by Carpentier, somehow engaging
in the process of the demystification of Havana and its
imaginary. Indeed, Padura confronts questions of hegemony
and fragmentation by presenting a city that is not
homogeneous, readable, with precise distribution of urban
functions and based on the transcendental discourse about
national identity that used to ignore marginality. It is,
somehow, the epitaph of the “new man” who is watching
impotent, the conversion of the city, plagued by crime and
sexual transgressions. This is why Conde needs to reconnect
himself to be able to uncover various signs of hidden
contemporary Cuba that cannot be interpreted through
26
hegemonic codes, be it the imposed norms of the Cuban
state, or of “standard” narratives. In this way, Alexis`
transformation is a version of what Lezama Lima once
referred to as the “poetic transfiguration” of elements of
Cuban society that have been “othered” by the imposed norms
of the Cuban State.6 Thus, as much as transfiguration is
achieved through the transformation of the detective
fiction genre, in Máscaras, transfiguration is the core of
the plot and it will be through this transformation that
the “repressed other” achieves redemption. In fact, the
very death of Alexis Arayán calls for the “return of the
repressed” story of the nation, as it is by his
transformation as a transvestite on the same day of
Transfiguration that the Cuban repressed reappears. In
fact, when people are forbidden to discuss their feelings
openly it does not mean that they disappear. On the
contrary, they continually press to re-enter awareness and
be placed into action. And, this forced silence is as
6 The poetics of transfiguration were for Lezama Lima the only way todefine what it meant to be Cuban and to change the reality of the maninhabiting the archipelago and who was obliged to perceive life as aparadise. In fact, Lezama awaits a transfiguration and expresses thisin his work: “We are in the darkness, from which, at any moment we canreceive the Holy Spirit and become transfigured.” (1970:105)
27
unhealthy for the individual as it is for the society as a
whole.
In this light, one can argue that many of the more
serious problems in our culture have been exacerbated by
the inability to discuss ideas that are unacceptable to the
prevailing politically correct wisdom. In this way, Alexis’
transformation implies the becoming of an individual being
and, by showing his most repressed desires he enters into
conflict with the collective: “ese travesti no se vistió
para exhibirse ni para salir a cazar, Manolo. Estaba
buscando algo más dificil de encontrar. La paz, tal vez. O
la venganza, qué se yo.” (90) [that transvestite did not
dress up looking for attention nor to chat people up,
Manolo. He was searching for something much more difficult
to find. It could be peace, revenge. I do not know] Alexis
abandons his “I”, breaking the rules and the symbolic
order, provoking and shocking. The external transfiguration
then becomes both internal and social. And, as we have
seen, his transfiguration gains transcendence, as Stephens
notes: “Transfiguration could lead to political redemption
often as a blood sacrifice which atones for the sins of
28
exclusion and sets a moral tone necessary for the enactment
of inclusive democracy.” (2002: 95) However, while this
would explain how the “othered” groups react to their
marginalization through masking, as Marqués explains, “una
máscara blanca es ahora su propio rostro” (225) [a white
mask has become my own face], the mask is also seen as the
inner self, portraying the very essence of “Cubanidad” of
which Piñera was the prophet and exponent. Therefore,
Alexis’ transfiguration shows emotional, aesthetic,
ideological and political complexities and his death
becomes a metaphor of the repressed coming back to redeem
the nation. In fact, Alexis` transfiguration is directed to
Marxist-socialist models, which repressed the genuine Cuban
baroque expression and identity, regarded as “dangerous”
due to its symbolic elements and its possible different
readings.
Conclusion
The traditional detective story depicts civil society
as a regime of doubt and confusion, corruption and crime.
This is certainly true in Máscaras, where Conde does not
understand his own world and must constantly search for a
29
reality, which, ultimately, is nowhere to be found.
However, his confusion only reveals his interrogation to
Cuban society and calls for a socio-political
transfiguration of life, to replace silence and repression
by a more free existence.
Furthermore, Máscaras can be seen as a Mea Culpa,
denouncing the homophobic abuses perpetrated by the Cuban
revolution. However, some critics have argued that the
novel does not uproot the essential and natural character
of the genders and, therefore, it becomes very difficult to
arrive at emancipator political positions, insofar as the
socially constructed differences in human sexuality are
concerned. Indeed, As Bejel would argue: “if there is still
vacillation between whether the genders are stable
categories endowed by “wise nature” or whether they are
social constructs produced by repressive discourse, it is
difficult to deconstruct homophobic prejudices and their
sustaining structures.”(2001: 177)
Yet, in Máscaras, Padura is attempting to create a
dialogue with the official homophobic discourse and to open
up a different line of thought. It is only by unmasking
30
repression and recognizing the dark corners of reality that
one can make a certain form of life coherent and possible. In
this way, Padura is forcing a necessary way for change; a
change performed by the repressed other.
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