Resumo de Before The Night Falls

Before night falls is an autobiographical and harsh testimony of author's life, who expounds without reserves his suffering and painful life experiences in and out of Cuba. It's the last work written while Reinaldo Arenas (the author) suffered the effects of AIDS; after it, he killed himself.

Julian Schnabel, american painter, sculptor and well-known director, filmed the book in the year 2000. The role of Arenas was performed by the spanish actor Javier Bardem, who was awarded as the best actor with this work in the Venice International Festival and nominated to the Oscar.

Before night falls is not only an autobiographical document in a context of a hard, male chauvinist and prejudiced reality with a process leading to extreme and (at the same time) covered totalitarian regime. It's also a new reading of Cuba's history, from a non-official vision and from the point of view of someone who, being a brilliant writer, is marginalized for his homosexuality and for his ability to express solid opinions, differents to the ones that are proclaimed by the governement.

This book is made from the author's experiences and the most important social facts after 1959, leading to the urban society's impoverishment, to the deterioration of its social, economic and spiritual reality, to the lost of values and its identity. It's quoted, for example, the ideological campaignes in radio and TV to impose the marxism and comunist ideas. We can see also the constant crisis of the cuban public services (until now), made clear in the transport, feeding, food, housing, etc. They affect basically to cuban common people, but not to the government elite, who get some advantages by its social position and servile and miserable attitudes.

The author does a good job making critics to the crazy economic plans of the country, under the whim of his main chief, Fidel Castro. It is explained very good through the "10 millions cultivation", an unprecedented economic fail in the Cuba's history, resulting in the nation's environmental, physical and spiritual damage. In despite of the opinion of many experts, warning about the impossibility to get it, Fidel insisted on it, mobilizing en masse with psychological pressure methods, to the population for the sugar harvest. A lot of adolescents, youngs, parents, convicts, intellectuals, etc., in the most inhuman and unimaginable conditions, turned in farmers and harvesters. Even the fruit fields, pastures and forests were turned into reedbeds; that made a ruined nation with a devastated look. And, as an example of how the leader use the nation, it relates clearly how Fidel minimized the economic disaster, fixing the eyes of the people in a politic fight and after that, in a popular festivity.

Another element in this work is the persecution of cuban intellectuals between the 60s and 70s (including the author), with a state proclaiming a false democracy and impeding all regime's contrary ideas. We can see the judgement of Heberto Padilla, where as the inquisition times, he's got to deny himself as a creator, to accept to work for the regime and to give away close people.

Analyzing many cuban intellectuals of that time, it's interesting to know that many of them kept faithfuls to the cuban nation; others adopted a servile position to Fidel Castro's government. In the particular case of the author, the strongest experience of that abuse is the prison, where, in despite of all, he continues writing and turns in a well-known writer in other countries.

Before... doesn't have a defined final. It's implied when we see the work of someone who is suffering the AIDS and knows the only possible final is a premature dead. Maybe this is reason why the facts are related with a great realism in the context of the cuban literature. Howeverage, as an epilogue, there is a letter from Reinaldo to his friends, where he reported on to Fidel as the responsible of his personal ruin.

If you want to know the truth about the cuban reality, and want to have more information than the officially proclaimed, we recommend you this book.

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