Jesús Díaz

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Jesús Díaz Rodríguez (born July 10, 1941 in Havana , Cuba , † May 3, 2002 in Madrid , Spain ) was a Cuban writer and director.

Youth and education

He grew up in a poor district of Havana as the son of a clerk and a textile worker. In 1956 Díaz joined the opposition to the rule of the dictator Fulgencio Batista as a student . After Fidel Castro came to power , Díaz became a spokesman among the younger generation of loyal intellectuals. He fought insurgents in the 1961 civil war in the Escambray Mountains . In 1961/62 he was a student of a course in international politics organized by the Cuban Foreign Ministry.

Working in Cuba

In 1962 he worked in the Latin America Department of the Cuban Institute for Friendship of Peoples (ICAP). From 1963 to 1971 he was a lecturer in Marxism-Leninism in the Philosophy Faculty of Havana University . From 1965 to 1966 he was responsible for the cultural page of the Juventud Rebelde newspaper , the official organ of the Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas (UJC), the youth organization of the Communist Party of Cuba . When the page was expanded into the El Caimán Barbudo supplement in 1966 , he was the founding director until 1967 when the entire editorial team was relieved of the position . In 1966 his collection of short stories Los años duros , which described military exploits of the revolution, was awarded the prestigious prize of the Casa de las Américas cultural center . From 1967 to 1971 he was co-editor and member of the editorial board of the philosophical journal Pensamiento Crítico . From 1971 to 1990 Díaz worked at the Cuban State Film Institute (ICAIC) and was successful both with his own films and as a screenwriter for other directors.

to live abroad

In 1991 he went to Berlin on a DAAD scholarship and taught at the German Film and Television Academy (dffb) there. On the grounds that he had betrayed the revolution, the Cuban government refused to allow him to return to his home country in 1992. Shortly afterwards he moved to Madrid. There he was editor of the Cuban exile culture magazine Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana .

Works (selection)

stories

  • 1966: Los años duros
  • 1979: Canto de amor y de guerra

Novels

  • 1987: The initials of the earth / Las iniciales de la tierra , German first edition: Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1990
  • 1992: The lost words / Las palabras perdidas , German first edition: Piper, Munich 1993
  • 1996: The skin and the mask / La piel y la máscara , German first edition: Piper, Munich 1997
  • 1998: Tell me about Kuba / Dime algo sobre Cuba , German first edition: Piper, Munich 2001
  • 2000: Die Dolmetscherin / Siberiana , German first edition: Piper, Munich 2003
  • 2001: Las cuatro fugas de Manuel

Movies

literature

  • David Freudenthal: Jesús Díaz. In: Critical lexicon for contemporary foreign language literature. 72nd delivery, March 2007.
  • Lilliam Oliva Collmann: Jesús Díaz: el ejercicio de los límites de la expresión revolucionaria en Cuba. Lang, New York et al. 1999 (Spanish)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Díaz, Jesus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Díaz Rodríguez, Jesús (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Cuban writer
DATE OF BIRTH July 10, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Havana
DATE OF DEATH May 3, 2002
Place of death Madrid