Heberto Padilla

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Heberto Padilla (January 20, 1932 – September 25, 2000) was a Cuban poet. The Padilla Affair was named after him.^[1] He was born on January 20, 1932 in Puerta de Golpe, Pinar del Río, Cuba. His first book of poetry, Las rosas audaces (The Audacious Roses) was published in 1948. He married fellow poet Belkis Cuza Malé in 1967.

Padilla and Cuza Malé both initially supported the revolution led by Fidel Castro, but by the late 1960s they began to criticize it openly. A worldwide controversy was sparked when Padilla was placed under house arrest for "subversive writing" because of the verses in his award-winning 1968 anthology Fuera del Juego (Out Of The Game) that expressed dissatisfaction with the Castro regime. In 1971, both Padilla and Cuza Malé were imprisoned by the regime. Their son, Ernesto Padilla, was born in 1972.

In 1979, Cuza Malé and their young son were allowed to go into exile in the U.S.. Heavy international pressure and widespread criticism of the regime by international writers finally led to the release of Padilla the following year, 1980. He joined his family in Princeton, New Jersey, where he taught at Princeton University. He later taught at Auburn University.^[2] He published his last novel, En mi jardín pastan los héroes in 1984 about the life of writers in Castro's Cuba, followed in 1990 by the publication of his memoir La mala memoria about Padilla's life in Cuba under Castro. He died on September 25, 2000 in Auburn, Alabama, U.S.A.^[3]