Editing Reinaldo Arenas (section)

== Life ==
Arenas was born in the countryside of Newport Beach, [[Aguas Claras]], [[Holguín Province]], [[Cuba]], and later moved to the city of [[Holguín]] as a teenager. He was six years old when he started school, attending Rural School 91 in Perronales County. There, his interest in boys flourished. He later wrote about his [[masturbation|sexual exploration with himself]]. He talked openly of how the first times he had [[straight sex]], while incomplete, was with his cousin, Dulce Maria. He also shared that his first act of [[gay sex]] was at 8 with his cousin Orlando, who was 12. Arenas stated, "In the country, sexual energy generally overcomes all prejudice, repression, and punishment.... Physical desire overpowers whatever feelings of machismo our fathers take upon themselves to instill in us."<ref>{{cite thesis |title=The Politics of Sensations: Body and Texture in Contemporary Cinema and Literature (Argentina - Cuba - Ireland) |publisher=Louisiana State University |url=https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2549&context=gradschool_dissertations |date=2016 |author=Guillermo Abel Severiche |access-date=December 11, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211212022232/https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2549&context=gradschool_dissertations |archive-date=December 12, 2021}}</ref>

After moving to Holguín when he was a teen, Arenas got a job at a guava paste factory. When conditions in the city started to get worse, around 1958, he decided that he wanted to join the guerillas (Castro and his movement). When he was 14, he walked to Velasco, where he met Cuco Sánchez, who took him to the pro-Soviet [[26th of July Movement|Cuban guerrilla]] headquarters in the [[Sierra Gibara]]. A guerilla commander, Eddy Suñol, interviewed Arenas and said, "We have plenty of guerrillas; what we need is weapons."<ref name="night">{{cite web |url=https://mg.co.za/friday/2020-10-22-before-night-falls-rearenas-breaks-down-in-fidel-castros-cuba/ |title='Before Night Falls': Reinaldo Arenas breaks down (in) Fidel Castro's Cuba |last=Zvomuya |first=Percy |date=October 22, 2020 |website=Mail & Guardian |access-date=December 11, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201024075725/https://mg.co.za/friday/2020-10-22-before-night-falls-rearenas-breaks-down-in-fidel-castros-cuba/ |archive-date=October 24, 2020}}</ref>

After ten days with the guerilla, Arenas went back to Holguín with the intention of killing a guard and taking his weapon. When he made it back to the city, he went home to see his grandparents who were not so happy to see him. Because he made the mistake of leaving a note saying that he was going to join the guerillas, the women who lived with his grandparents spread the news like wildfire. [[Fulgencio Batista]]'s [[secret police]], the [[Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities]], were on the lookout for him. His brief trip home made him realize that he could not stay and so he trekked back to Velasco to the rebel encampment. It now had to accept him.<ref name="night" />

When he was 16, he was awarded a scholarship at La Pantoja, the Batista military camp that had been converted into a [[polytechnic institute]]. There, one of the most important courses was on [[Marxist–Leninism]]. Students had to master ''Manual of the [[Soviet Academy of Sciences]]'', ''Manual of Political Economy'' by Pyotr Ivanovich Nikitin, and ''Foundations of Socialism in Cuba'' by [[Blas Roca Calderio]]. Arenas graduated as an agricultural accountant but later described his schooling as "communist [[indoctrination]]."{{citation needed|date=July 2021}}

The first time that Arenas was in [[Havana]] was in 1960. He returned later when he enrolled in a planning course at the [[University of Havana]] and reported to the ''[[Hotel Nacional de Cuba]]''. While in the program, he worked for the [[Instituto Nacional de Reforma Agraria|National Institute for Agrarian Reform]]. It was not until around 1963 that Arenas started to live his life as a gay man, but even then, it was still a life in extreme secrecy. He feared ending up in one of the [[Military Units to Aid Production]], which were [[concentration camps]] for [[LGBT]] people, [[Christians]], and suspected members of the [[Cuban dissident movement]]. A relationship with a man named Miguel, who was later arrested and taken to a UMAP camp, was the beginning of Arenas's life of being known as a gay man by the Cuban [[Committees for the Defense of the Revolution]].

Throughout his life, Arenas became friends with and had relationships with many gay men. He went so far as to say that at one point, he had had sex with at least 5,000 men.<ref name="night" /> He watched as various friends and acquaintances pledged their allegiance to the regime in exchange for safety. They became informers for the government and reported other men, often former friends or relations. The intention was to find gay and bisexual men and either prosecute and jail them or turn them into other informers. The reward for co-operating with the regime was having life being spared. Those who became informers, however, often had to participate in public and very humiliating [[acts of repudiation]] that publicly denounced their anti-regime beliefs or their homosexuality.

Arenas watched that happen with Herberto Padilla, who had written a book that was critical of the [[Cuban Revolution]] to an official competition. Padilla was arrested in 1971, and after 30 days in a cell, he decided to speak. Various Cuban intellectuals were invited by the [[Dirección de Inteligencia|state security]] to hear what he had to say. Padilla stood in front of everyone and apologized for everything that he had done. He painted himself as a coward and a traitor, apologized for his previous work, and threw blame on himself. He publicly denounced his friends and his wife and said that they had [[counterrevolutionary]] attitudes. Those whom he named were forced to go to the microphone, accept blame for their actions, and say that they were traitors as well. {{citation needed|date=July 2021}}

In 1963, he moved to [[Havana]] to enroll in the School of Planification and later in the Faculty of Letters at the [[Universidad de La Habana]], where he studied philosophy and literature without completing a degree. The following year, he began working at the [[National Library José Martí]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.cubacenter.org/media/arenas.html |title=Reinaldo Arenas |website=Cuba Center |access-date=December 11, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060215050518/http://www.cubacenter.org/media/arenas.html |archive-date=February 15, 2006}}</ref><ref name="dies" /> During his time working for the National Institute for Agrarian Reform, he spent much time at the National Library. After writing a short story and presenting it to a committee, he received a telegram that it was interested in talking to him. When he went, he met María Teresa Freye de Andrade, the director of the National Library. She orchestrated Arenas's move from the institute to the library. He then became employed there. After María Teresa lost her job and was replaced by Castro's police, Captain Sidroc Ramos, Arenas decided the library was not where he wanted to be. {{citation needed|date=July 2021}} It was around then that his talent was noticed, and he received a literary award for his novel, ''Singing from the Well'', at the Cirilo Villaverde National Competition, which was held by the [[National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists]].

His ''El mundo alucinante'' (''This Hallucinatory World'', published in the US as ''The Ill-Fated Peregrinations of Fray Servando'') was awarded "first Honorable Mention" in 1966. However, as the judges could find no better entry and they refused to award it to Arenas, no First Prize was awarded that year. His writings and openly gay life were by 1967 bringing him into conflict with the [[communist]] government. He left the library and became an editor for the Cuban Book Institute until 1968. From 1968 to 1974, he was a journalist and editor for the literary magazine ''La Gaceta de Cuba''.

In 1974, he was sent to prison after being charged and convicted of "ideological deviation" and for publishing abroad without official consent.<ref name="dies" /><ref name="matters">{{cite web |url=https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/why-reinaldo-arenas-still-matters-for-cubas-lgbt-community/ |title=Why Reinaldo Arenas Still Matters for Cuba's LGBT Community |last=O'Boyle |first=Brendan |date=December 7, 2016 |website=America's Quarterly |access-date=December 11, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200728164933/https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/why-reinaldo-arenas-still-matters-for-cubas-lgbt-community/ |archive-date=July 28, 2020}}</ref> He escaped the prison and tried to leave Cuba by launching himself from the shore on a tire inner tube, but he was rearrested near [[Parque Lenin|Lenin Park]] and imprisoned at the notorious [[Castillo de los Tres Reyes Del Morro)|El Morro Castle]] alongside murderers and rapists.<ref name="night" /> He survived by helping the inmates to write letters to wives and lovers. He collected enough paper that way to continue his writing. However, his attempts to smuggle his work out of prison were discovered, and he was severely punished. Threatened with death, he was forced to renounce his work and was released in 1976.<ref name="matters" /><ref>{{cite web |url=http://myweb.lsbu.ac.uk/stafflag/reinaldoarenas.html |title=Reinaldo Arenas |website=The Knitting Circle: Literature |access-date=August 11, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040627090109/http://myweb.lsbu.ac.uk/stafflag/reinaldoarenas.html |archive-date=June 27, 2004}}</ref>

In 1980, as part of the [[Mariel Boatlift]], he fled to the [[United States]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://libweb.princeton.edu/libraries/firestone/rbsc/aids/arenas.html |title=Reinaldo Arenas Papers |publisher=Princeton Libraries |access-date=August 11, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080512073242/http://libweb.princeton.edu/libraries/firestone/rbsc/aids/arenas.html |archive-date=May 12, 2008}}</ref> He came on the ''San Lázaro'', a boat captained by the Cuban émigré Roberto Agüero.