A story about deleting history

 

Carlos Franqui, who has died aged 88, was a Cuban writer, journalist and poet who played an influential role in the early years of the Cuban revolution. 

A close friend of Fidel Castro, he ran the revolution’s radio station, Radio Rebelde, during the guerrilla war in the 1950s, and was the editor of Revolución, the iconoclastic, free-ranging paper that charted events and arguments in the early years of Castro’s Cuba. 

Unhappy about the close relationship that Castro formed with the local Communist party and then with the Soviet Union, Franqui left for a diplomatic post in Italy in 1963 and broke definitively with the revolution in 1968, when Castro supported the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. 

In permanent exile, he wrote several vivid accounts of his revolutionary experiences.

Castro was soon obliged to read the riot act, uttering his famous statement in June 1961 about the rights of artists and writers: “Inside the revolution everything; outside the revolution nothing.” 

Cultural producers were free to express themselves, but only under the conditions laid down.