"Cuba must change, but not because it is being suffocated by external forces, but because Cubans, impoverished, fed up, hopeless, need it to change, in many ways."

Leonardo Padura

Martha Diaz Porto sandthethepSdtrn33c71m8ga61a68068t415g9htf0h
"Many of the Cuban peculiarities I have to grapple with as a writer still persist. That's why one of my characters declares that we're living in a dystopia, where almost everything operates according to decentralized logic. However, many other unique characteristics have been eroding. Slowly, Cuba has begun to transform into something else: social egalitarianism is dwindling, poverty is growing to levels very similar to those of other societies, people are fleeing precariousness and the lack of prospects, social media has become influential, and people live amidst an uncertainty about the future that is also global. But the country's socio-political structure remains unchanged, even amidst the external pressures that profoundly affect a nation targeted by its ambitions for the most powerful economy and military apparatus in the world."
And the million-dollar question is: what will happen in that rebellious, different, peculiar Cuba? Right now, a wide range of scenarios are on the table. As I've said before, the possibilities range from everything changing so that nothing changes (the political strategy of The Leopard ) to a devastating military action that could be modeled on what happened in Venezuela or what is happening in Iran.
Predicting that future is more of a complicated exercise—like grappling with Cuba's old and new peculiarities in literature—than a simple task. But what I am convinced of is that Cuba must change, indeed, it has to change, not because the country is under external pressure or because we are now on the verge of economic collapse. Cuba must change because Cubans need it, they deserve it, so that the country doesn't continue losing its young people who emigrate everywhere, and so that—among many other needs—its elderly don't live in the poverty of a present that, once upon a time, years ago, while they worked and sacrificed, was painted in the air as a better future. And the time will come to write about those possible Cuban realities, perhaps no longer so peculiar… or perhaps not? Tomorrow will tell.
Leonardo Padura



Martha Diaz Porto
July 25, 2026

Leonardo Padura once again made it clear that he has no intention of leaving Cuba, despite the economic and social decline plaguing the island. “I’ll stay here until they kick me out,” said the renowned Cuban writer.
 
The quote, taken from his book of essays *Ir a La Habana* (Tusquets, 2024), sums up the complex and deeply emotional relationship the author has with the country where he was born and to which he remains deeply attached amid power outages, shortages, and a growing wave of emigration.
 
Padura explained that staying in Cuba is not driven by political reasons, but rather by a vital and literary necessity. “Cuban life—the concerns, hopes, disappointments, frustrations, and joys of the people—are what nourish me as a writer,” he confessed.
 
“My characters speak Cuban Spanish. I write in the Havana dialect,” added the creator of detective Mario Conde, one of the most iconic characters in contemporary Spanish-language literature.
 
The writer acknowledged that he could work from Spain or Mexico, but insisted that living in Cuba continues to provide him with “a sense of belonging” that is indispensable to his work.
 
On an island marked by the mass exodus of recent years, Padura also drew a distinction between those who emigrate by personal choice and those who are forced to do so to survive.
 
“There are people who choose to do it, and there are people who are forced to do it—those are two different things,” he noted. For a Cuban writer, he added, forced exile feels “unnatural.”
 
The writer acknowledged that he himself had to invest about $4,000 in solar panels to cope with power outages at his home in Havana’s Mantilla neighborhood, though he admitted that most Cubans do not have access to such solutions.
 
Despite his international prestige, Padura remains virtually silenced by Cuba’s official cultural apparatus. His books are not published on the island nor are they usually mentioned in state media, although his novels circulate widely among Cuban readers in digital copies and pirated editions.
 
Published in August 2025, “Morir en la arena” is described by the author himself as his saddest novel. Inspired by a real-life case of parricide, the work spans more than three decades of Cuban history marked by the Angolan War, friendship, love, loss, and the erosion of a society mired in an ever-deepening crisis.
 
TRANSLATION Walter Lippmann