This April 13 died in Havana the National Literature Award (2014) Eduardo Heras Leon (1940-2022). Moved by the news, many Cubans have reacted lamenting his death, evoking his figure, his work, recalling his experiences. Among them, several of his readers, students and fellow writers responded to the request for OnCuba to remember it or they made public on their social networks these small “goodbyes“ that we want to share now with our readers.
Edward for me
Senel Paz, writer / Special for OnCuba
Eduardo Heras, El Chino for almost everyone, Eduardo for me, leaves us his work as a legacy. This is not only made up of books, various and valuable, that earned him the National Literature Award, but that are nothing more than a fundamental part of a life overflowing with very diverse actions and projects, of permanent doing and fighting. He leaves us his goodness, his wisdom, his stubbornness, his patience, his faith, his humor. A prince of friendship and teaching, of kindness; an entrepreneur of illusions who never let himself be defeated by blows, who always had something new to do. We will keep him among us, fulfilling his main teaching: love for literature, work, family and friends, and our homeland. Thank you, Edward; your legacy is your whole life.
the only immortality
Yoss (José Miguel Sánchez), writer / Special for OnCuba
Eduardo Heras León entered Eternity. The flesh is ephemeral; memory, imperishable. He is still alive in the work of all of us, his disciples who graduated from the Onelio Jorge Cardoso Center for Literary Training. On each page that we publish, his wise smile and his enthusiastic verbiage as a narrator and teacher beat. It is the only immortality that he counts, for a character so great that he dared to be more of a teacher than a writer.
I thought of calling him, but I didn’t
Mylene Fernández Pintado, writer / Special for OnCuba
I was not a student of Eduardo Heras. I owe him opportunities, moments and people. I met him in 1994, when he presided over the jury that awarded my first story a Mention in the La Gaceta contest (later he included it in classes, essays and conferences and chose it to make a film. Then he summoned me to a meeting at his home and that afternoon, in which I was the only woman among many writers, I met people who marked my literary and personal life and whose friendship I keep as a treasure.
Eduardo invited me to publish in magazines and anthologies, to participate in events and to be a jury in contests, but I couldn’t always accept. When we met on 17th Street we almost always talked about the past, and every time I noticed it was more fragile. Jokingly, he would order me to sit down and write, and seriously he would scold me for not being consistent.
The last time we talked was on the phone, he called me to ask me for advice on Copyright. During Covid, I reread The honest and the impure and I remembered that he defended the second while I advocated the first. This time, I agreed with him and thought about calling him but I didn’t.
I have some photos with Heras and an imagined talk about Miguel de Carrión.
I say goodbye to you from afar
Eudris Planche Savón, writer / Taken from Facebook
Loaded with dreams, I left Guantanamo for Havana one day in 2008 and Eduardo Heras León opened the doors of the Onelio Center for me as if they were my home. I graduated from that center as a student and returned thirteen years later as deputy director.
“More than teaching an academic course, we aspire to change their lives”, that’s what you said… Since then my life has changed a lot and for the better. An important part of it is due to your teachings.
Today I say goodbye to you from afar, teacher, from the steps on the grass, from your love for literature and the passion for classical ballet that you knew how to infect me with.
Thank you for the opportunity to meet you, learn from you, thank you for your work, thank you Eduardo, for so much…
enjoy the book
Ernesto Lahens Soto, journalist and writer / Special for OnCuba
I was a last year student in which Professor Heras León taught at the Onelio Jorge Cardoso Center. The student-teacher relationship became a friendship. On one occasion he told me to stop by his house to pick up some books that might interest me. He told me about one of them, Gran Sertón: Sidewalk. He explained to me the narrative techniques used and the style of João Guimarães Rosa. Before finishing he told me the end of the book: “In the end Diadorín dies, and it is discovered that she was a woman.” Yvonne interrupted him and exclaimed: “Eduardo! How are you going to tell Ernestito the end? You always do it with the students.” To which the teacher replied: “The most important thing is not that I discover the end, but that I enjoy the book.”
who saw him smile
Sussette Cordero Sotero, writer / Special for OnCuba
“In vain is the net cast before the eyes of those who have wings.” So said Gabriela Mistral. I don’t want to think that Heras is dead. I need to have him in my life. How could I continue without my best teacher? Who is going to make fun of my forgetfulness and my lack of empathy with the “vulgar habanero elitism”? Only those of us who saw him smile can carry that light as a memory. The man who toured Havana and ate the most cortazarian ravioli that ever existed in a city that, like him, has also left.
Far away, I only have to sit down and read. My greatest teacher has become light. I’ll put coffee on the table and look listlessly at the Joyce book we make fun of so many times.
I am full of pain today. And also knowledge. And I owe that to Heras.
Rest my Chinese.
a game of chess
Juan I. Siam Arias, writer / Special for OnCuba
It could be said that I did not know him. We barely exchanged a few words in Bayamo at the beginning of the century: he was on the jury and I was competing. I never received classes from him in person. I read his books. I did it for various reasons: The war had six names and footsteps on the grass, because the subject interested me, to the point of becoming my research topic during my years as a university professor and almost always an obsession. And so, until Steel —which I had misread at some point— because in a panel during the XVI Book Fair in Holguín, I had to share the table with the macerated knowledge of Professor Lino Verdecia Calunga and the strange mixture of youthful intrepidity and experience of the writer and journalist Erian Peña .
There was a special incentive that afternoon: Heras would come. He was invited to the Fair and his presence was assured, which made every idea or criterion that was expressed there a challenge, since it would be said in his presence.
I reread Steel carefully. I found or thought I found formal similarities with his other books. It was comfortable debating with Lino and Erian. Having ideas different from theirs is just that. I had a letter up my sleeve to talk to the guest, but he didn’t show up. He could not come to Holguín due to health problems and I could not show him the aging chess magazine Checkmate from 1968, where a game appears in which a player named Eduardo Heras León defends the black pieces. I couldn’t confirm what seemed obvious: that it was him. I could not invite him to relive those moments through a game that he faced us.
Today, given the certainty of the news, I understand that death and life are playing chess for us.
A good man
Ahmel Echeverría, writer / Special for OnCuba
Words are not enough to summarize the work and life of Heras León. Eduardo. A good man who survived the atrocious (cultural) politics of the 70s. Along with Ivonne Galeano, he set out to create a kind of phalanstery for young Cuban writers. And he got it. They made it. I was there: at the Onelio Center.
There is a veiled homage to Heras in my novel the ferris wheel, also for other writers and artists of his generation who (did not) persist in creating, and who (did not) survive in the worst or best way possible. Steps on the grass, steps on History.
Apologies
Rafael Grillo, journalist and writer / Special for OnCuba
I read, of course, his mythical The footsteps on the grass. But what happened in connection with that book was what impressed me the most. For this reason, in 2006, in the issue of the 40th anniversary of the Bearded Caiman, Taking advantage of my role as editor of the magazine, I wanted to uncover the ugly episode of his expulsion from the Editorial Board in 1971. There were those who understood it as a claim by Heras (something that was no longer necessary at that time). For me it was an apology on behalf of the magazine. I think apologizing is uplifting.
A gigantic generosity
Carlos Alberto González, doctor and journalist / Taken from Facebook
I am surprised by the news of the death of Eduardo Heras León. I met him briefly in 2005 during the sessions of the Onelio Jorge Cardoso Narrative Techniques Workshop, which from now on should bear his name. I remember his clear intelligence, his professionalism and a criticism of a story of mine that seemed “clean” to him and then he compared it to one of a great writer to immediately, like the excellent teacher he always was, warn me that I was an apprentice. . He was absolutely right!
In 2014, when he was awarded the National Literature Prize, I was happy. Not only because he wrote important books — from time to time I visit The footsteps in the grass— but because he was a useful man, which for me is the best way to be virtuous.
His great work, the Onelio Center, although it did not teach a generation to narrate, gave us a handful of basic tools to begin learning the trade. That act of gigantic generosity has extraordinary value. To his wife Ivonne, always so kind, my deepest condolences.
Cuban literature, the culture of this country, should be in mourning today.
you stay with us
Onelio Jorge Cardoso Literary Training Center / Taken from Facebook
You are not gone, Master. You will never leave, Chino. You continue with us with your mischievous smile, your educational skills, your ability to form, as you said, “better people.” Professor Heras, there are many who say goodbye to you today, many of your children rise up all over this Island and say: THANK YOU. But you don’t really go. You stay with us in unconditional dedication, in the courage to live your way, honestly and authentically, and have the courage to say so. Thank you for giving us so much. Thank you for teaching us to share. That’s why today all our works are yours. You will not leave while one of us remains. You will not go. You are not gone, Master.
