Carlos Alberto Montaner

By: Mario Vargas Llosa - 16/09/2023

Guest columnist.
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Carlos Alberto Montaner, still a child, accused by the Castro Government of being a “terrorist”, had the most extraordinary awakening: a conviction, unjust and unfounded, of course, as usually happens in dictatorships. He told me that, one night, due to some oversight, the prison was empty of barracks and the cells were open. He was able to leave without anyone bothering him and immediately stayed at the Embassy of a friendly country, Honduras. A year later, he was in Miami as an exile. Since then he has been the most fruitful “activist” that Cuba's freedom has had. He created a publishing house for textbooks in which he also disseminated a lot of Cuban literature, and, at the beginning of the nineties, when it seemed that the collapse of communism and the transition that was taking place in Russia could be reproduced on the island, a party political. Tireless, He demanded democracy for his country with a conviction that knew no discouragement and always with an optimistic spirit. He lived in Miami, in Puerto Rico, in Spain and at the age of 80, suffering from an illness that was depriving him of his voice and words, he decided to come to Spain to die, assisted. He wrote an article, to be published posthumously on CNN, where he collaborated, which is titled When you read this article I will be dead. He had written it with the consent of his wife and children, and in it he explained the reasons for his death.

I met him in the eighties and we were always friends and collaborators. His house was everyone's house, and he and his wife, Linda, always had a kind word to greet us. He gathered friends who were in an armed position and, thanks to his manners and his charisma, they were also able to make new friends. Nobody fought for the freedom of Cuba like Carlos Alberto Montaner. In books, in articles, in forums, in public and private institutions, founding parties and alliances with other groups, he always maintained the hope that his country, freeing itself from the Castros, would be an example for Latin America and the world. As vice president of the Liberal International, he had paved the way so that, when the island became democratized, it could reintegrate into the international community as quickly and successfully as possible. But the Cuban Government recognized “its enemy” and deprived him of Carlos Alberto's last and first wish: to return to Cuba. Will there be someone to succeed him in that conviction that he maintained against all odds? It's possible. I have met many Cubans, they are spread all over the world, and I also love Cuba like Carlos Alberto did. But I believe that not even a single minute of his life did he stop thinking about his homeland, that island for which he sighed and became enraged. I had never seen him so energetic, and I met him almost 50 years ago, like when some saddened voices told him: there is no hope for Cuba. Nothing could outrage him more, and in his articles, he always defended a liberal Cuba, because he had converted to that doctrine that seemed more judicious than the others, and more just, because it was based on that freedom that he loved so much. .

He died in Madrid, a city he loved because it felt intimately part of Spain. He had to go to Miami, where he worked for the radio and the written press, for a few years. However, when he learned that his illness was irreversible, he decided to return to Madrid because assisted death is not allowed in Florida. I saw him the last time at the Atlantic Forum, organized every year at the end of June by the International Foundation for Freedom (FIL), which he chairs, in the Spanish capital. We awarded him a medal celebrating his brilliant career. He was already sick and he read, with great difficulty and with the help of his daughter Gina, some words of gratitude, and tears came to my eyes as I hugged him. He had also cried, hugging Linda, that girl he knew as a child, whom he married shortly before leaving the island, and had two children. They were always, for everyone, a model of a couple.

The work of Carlos Alberto Montaner, which encompassed fiction and essays, will become more and more known. The texts he wrote in defense of Cuba, his thorough analyzes of the reality of our time, his passion for Latin America that did not prevent him from telling the truths about those countries in decline, always leaving a small note of hope, represent an important legacy for Latin Americans who want to better understand why certain countries fail and what are the reasons for the success of the most advanced ones.

Although Carlos Alberto Montaner disappears, his books remain. He was a clear essayist and quick to capture the news, unraveling it, getting to the essentials. His essays, in which he mixed humor with didactic analysis, are part of the history of Latin America and many of them have to do with freedom, that word so misused, which in his lines he resurrected, explaining to us how extraordinary it meant, and what it guaranteed to the countries that made it their own. I have never met someone who had such conviction and who loved life more than Carlos Alberto Montaner. He did not always bring up the topic of Cuba, but we all knew that he thought about his small country, that he never forgot it in the most superficial conversations he had and that he dreamed of seeing it free again, without censorship and without prisons. He asked several times to enter the island and was prevented from doing so. He was also a novelist and there are up to five stories from his pen, as an observer of the customs and dreams of his characters. But I think he wrote to gain supporters, and he always succeeded. His passion for his country had no limits and sometimes he surprised us with his capacity for work that seemed like that of ten men together. I saw him many times, in Europe and America, and I think I always found him well, enthusiastic, with a sweet and kind smile that characterized him, and transmitting, in his lectures, which were enjoyable and enriching, a conviction in the future that It left us stunned. The world will be sadder now that it is left without Carlos Alberto. No one had as much faith as he did in liberalism and in his articles he said and reaffirmed it. Now,

He was a deep and friendly man who knew how to win friends. And those who knew him know that he was not exaggerating when I said that he was one of the most affectionate and cordial men, and one of the liberals, without a hint of arrogance and pedantry. In the published posthumous letter he explains that all doors have been closed to him and that Spain's decision to accept assisted death gives a person the possibility of making the decision to put an end to an irreversible condition like his. What infinite misfortune that Carlos Alberto Montaner faced, which he explained in detail in that article.

We are going to miss him, because of how much we loved him and because of the enthusiasm he transmitted to us, which will be irreplaceable.

© Mario Vargas Llosa, 2023. Press rights in Spanish language in Spain and Latin America reserved to Ediciones EL PAÍS, SL, 2023. Press rights in Spanish language for other territories and for other languages, reserved for Mario Vargas Llosa c/ o Carmen Balcells Literary Agency, SA.

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