Havana/The Cuban novelist Julio Travieso Serrano died in Havana this Saturday, November 1, at the age of 85. The news was confirmed by the Cuban Book Institute (ICL) and disseminated by official media, although the cause of death has not been reported.
Travieso – born in Havana, on April 11, 1940 – leaves a brief and consistent catalogue: to kill the wolf (1987), When the night dies (1998), dust and gold (1993) and It rains on Havana (2004), among other titles. His work won the Mazatlán Prize for Literature in Mexico, he was a finalist for the Rómulo Gallegos and, in adulthood, he won the 2021 National Literature Prize.
Trained in Law at the University of Havana, with a postgraduate degree at the Lomonósov University (Moscow) and a doctorate in Economics at the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, the writer also worked in journalism and university teaching inside and outside Cuba. That foot in several disciplines explains the architecture of his novels, with solid plots, precise chronologies, a trained ear for the social record and meticulous attention to the country’s economy as a backdrop.
Travieso was a writer recognized by the cultural institutions of the ruling party
dust and gold –his most widely distributed book outside the Island– immersed himself in the memory of the country and the sugar industry, slavery and popular faith. Republished in Spain, the novel enters into dialogue with the tradition of magical realism without abdicating a historical truthfulness that runs through its entire narrative. It rains on Havanafor its part, condenses the disillusionment of a capital in permanent waiting, where the characters seem suspended between survival and the minimum possible ethics. In When the night dies and to kill the wolf Obsessions about power, chance, pacts and their costs return.
Travieso was a writer recognized by the cultural institutions of the ruling party. He was a member of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (Uneac), decorated with the Distinction for National Culture, the Medal of Combatant of the Clandestine Struggle and the Aleksandr Pushkin Order of the Russian Government. This constellation of medals, added to the National Prize for Literature, outlines a fluid relationship with the cultural apparatus of the regime.
However, when in an interview He was asked about his debts as a writer, and he responded: “I should have written more and not have wasted my time on silly and absurd tasks, without genuine values, that society imposed on me and that I had to accept if I did not want to be expelled from its midst.”
His dissent – when it appears – is played out in the literary field, in the drawing of characters who negotiate with scarcity, fear and resignation. It is a hidden criticism.
“I should have written more and not have wasted my time on silly and absurd tasks, without genuine values, that society imposed on me and that I had to accept if I did not want to be expelled from its midst”
Going against the current of editorial exhibitionism, Travieso wrote little, corrected a lot and left novels with slow plots and long breaths. That rigor opened doors for him outside of Cuba. dust and gold It was circulated in Spanish and Latin American publishing houses; It rains on Havana It had editions in Brazil and Russia. Readers and critics agree on his mastery of the historical novel and his ability to turn the domestic anecdote into a metaphor for the country.
After the ICL announcement, Uneac and the Ministry of Culture published official condolences and a summary of his career. The institutional obituary highlights his role as a professor and journalist, in addition to the award-winning novelist.
Travieso’s footprint is measured less by volume and more by density. In its pages there is no heroic rhetoric or speeches from the official pantheon; There are, however, common lives. History, economics, templeless gods and bureaucracy fill the atmospheres of his novels. When I looked up at the great stories, I did so to record them in their materiality. And that perspective – which looks at the nation from its kitchen – allowed him to portray the Cuba of late socialism without slogans and without stridency.
