Reinaldo Arenas manifested himself at all times; He revealed himself from his writing and in each of his actions.
HAVANA, Cuba. – Reinaldo Arenas believed, and very firmly, in his right to live by expressing himself, and he made it very clear so as not to give any space to misunderstandings. Arenas left it written, undoubtedly because he assumed that his writing would have a much longer existence than his own life could achieve. And maybe that was the reason that made him sit down to write Will to live manifesting.
Reinaldo Arenas was, without a doubt, a very willful man, even in that hour in which the greatest unhappiness came to him, in that precise moment in which he decided to resolve his life with his own death.
Reinaldo ended his existence, and that was, without a doubt, his last act, perhaps the most willful, the bravest? Arenas expressed the enormous discontent that his own life, his uprooting, caused him, and also the life that his countrymen lived on the Island.
Arenas manifested himself at all times; He revealed himself in his writing and in each of his actions, and also with that decision to die to live and be freer than he already was. And Reinaldo, the one from the large demonstrations, would have also been in each of those places where Cubans have been demonstrating in recent times. Reinaldo was on the street on June 11, and perhaps he is still in prison, without hearing from his mother. Reinaldo was, is still, with José Gabriel Barrenechea. He existed in the Ministry of Culture, letting “Minister” Alpidio know that if he smacked him he would pay him with an even stronger blow.
Reinaldo was on the street during that July 11, and also on the long night of November 27. Reinaldo was in each of the protests against all the blackness that the many blackouts leave us, those blackouts that also accompany the deaths that the epidemics bring us, those that turn so many Cubans into victims.
Reinaldo Arenas was also, a few days ago, in Marianao who took to the streets to demand light, but before that he had traveled through the devastated east of the Island. Reinaldo also walked through that, so much his own, devastated east that Melissa left us. Reinaldo warns us every day of the importance of living manifesting, of not giving up, because only with that will can we confront communism. And there are many Reinaldos lying in a hospital room, lying on the cold floor, dead who never found a grave.
And there are not a few of those who are awakening the will to manifest themselves, to demand the light that was taken from us, the light, the light that is will and also spirit, that light that is a privileged freedom, that which is an incorporeal medium that turns us into more corporeal beings. The one that will make us manifest ourselves, and above all be more free, without the cruel weight of communism that kills us.
