Book on military scandal brought censure from government for
Communist-turned-rebel
Stephen Hunt, Calgary Herald
Published: Monday, March 12, 2007
CALGARY -- As a young man, Jose Latour had a passion for revolution. As
a novelist, Cuba broke his heart.
The 66-year-old Toronto resident is the author of Outcast (McLelland &
Stewart, 344 pages, $22.99), a stylish noir thriller set in Cuba and
Miami which was released in Canada in mid-February. Latour became a
thriller writer in a very roundabout way: He went from being a true
believer, a Communist financial analyst in the Ministry of Finance, to
persona non grata when he committed the cardinal sin of writing about
Cuba after the revolution in a less than flattering way.
"My first four books were published in Cuba," says the father of three,
a wiry, animated man with alert eyes who began writing in his spare time
in 1977.
"I started writing novels set before the revolution, and I could be as
critical as I wanted. I could give my characters whatever
characteristics I wanted to give them. So I was free in that sense to
write. I didn't experience any censure.
"But then, when I wrote my fifth novel (The Fool, 1994) set in Cuba
during the revolution, that was my end as a writer in Cuba."
Latour was branded an enemy of the state. The question is, if Latour
knew what would enrage the government well enough to write four books
that didn't, why write a book that he knew was going to tick them off?
"I was absolutely certain that communism doesn't work," Latour says.
"Yes, we had good health care. We had good education, but we were
healthy and well-educated slaves of the state.
"When East Germany collapsed ... and we added to that the things we knew
about the failures of communism in Cuba, then I said, 'Listen, I have to
start writing about this. The only contribution I can make to my country
is to start writing books about this.' "
In The Fool, Latour chronicled an incident that received wide attention
in Cuba. It concerned corrupt military officials who became involved
with the Colombian drug dealer Pablo Escobar, helping him launder money
by duping local sugar exporters and providing the use of a remote beach
on the north tip of Cuba as a transit stopover for the export of cocaine
to the U.S. The scandal resulted in executions and long prison sentences
for a number of high-ranking military officials.
"The Cuban press reported it. Cuban TV showed it," Latour says. "Well,
it was publicized without any restrictions.
"But this proved that the propaganda that ... officers in the Cuban army
and Interior were paragons of perfect virtue and revolutionary behaviour
was false.
"Because of that novel, I was told that either I wrote books according
to the ideological directives of the party or I wouldn't get published
again."
The upside was that Latour was forced to use his imagination, to dream
an outside world he hardly knew.
Mixing elements of noir and the crime thriller, he wrote Outcast -- in
English. It features Elliot Steil, a half-American, half-Cuban English
teacher who is a drunk, a womanizer and a rather unenthusiastic
Communist in his mid-40s. Steil has basically put his life on layaway
until one day, when a mysterious American wearing an expensive watch
shows up to inform him that his father, who abandoned the family when
Steil was a young boy, has died in Louisiana and that his last wish was
to help Steil emigrate to the States.
This sets in motion a series of events that are positively
Chandler-esque, starring a collection of Miami Cuban expats who are
alternately tough, violent and sweetly supportive of Steil's journey to
discover what really became of his father.
The novel starts as a tone poem to Cuba, a character study of a
disillusioned culture. But by the time it hits Miami, to keep pace with
the stark traumas that befall Steil, Outcast turns more hard-boiled.
Some critics have reacted negatively to the abrupt switch of tones and
narrative, but Latour defends it.
"He (Steil) didn't return to the society where he was perfectly attuned
to people and places," Latour says. "He moves to a totally different
society. He is penniless. He doesn't have friends." Latour pauses. "I
don't know if you've been in that sort of situation where you may lose
your life, but when you go through one of those intense episodes, it
changes you."
Latour's "situation" occurred at age 17 after he joined Castro's 26th of
July Movement. One day he nearly lost his life when he stumbled across
some Batista loyalists with a stack of revolutionary newspapers tucked
under his shirt.
"I knew that if those guys searched me, they would find the newspapers,
and they would kill me," he says. "They killed you on the spot. No
trial, no arrest -- just shot."
They didn't search him.
Latour joined the Ministry of Treasury as a junior financial analyst and
translator straight out of high school, and as the Cuban bureaucracy
grew, so, too, did his status. He worked his way up through the Cuban
Central Bank and the Ministry of Sugar until he became a financial
analyst with the State Committee of Finance.
Outcast, Latour's 10th book, has been published in Japan, the U.K., the
U.S., Holland, Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Brazil, and now finally
finds its way onto Canadian bookshelves, 10 years after it first came
into print. Latour and his family beat the book over by three years;
they emigrated to Canada from Spain in 2004 after leaving Cuba for that
country in 2002.
"Canada is my favourite country," Latour said. "I haven't travelled
much. I've been to 15, 16 countries in my life, but I think Canada's the
best. Not perfect -- there are no perfect countries, there are no
perfect worlds, there are bastards everywhere -- but for me, Canada."
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