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• Arts and Culture
• International
• Literature
• North America
• 12 / 13 / 2006

I came to Cuba with my new knee to help breaking 40 years of embargo, said the North American writer Gore Vidal, who is visiting Havana until December 14th, after mentioning the distortion of information about the Island in his countrys media.

During a dialogue with Cuban journalists, on his arrival to the international airport José Martí, he affirmed that he had been invited to come several times, but the trip was interrupted for different causes.

The last time I lost a knee and I practically send you my knee that would be far more interesting than myself -he said ironically -, but now I have an artificial knee and I could come here to see in the western hemisphere, the beginning of the end of colonialism.

Born in 1925, Gore Vidal (81 years) is used to specify that he has lived three quarters of the XX century and a third of the North American history, whose events he has depicted in researching essays, novels and interviews characterized by his critical lucidity.

Answering a question of Prensa Latina about which, in his opinion, were the most disturbing symptoms in the political panorama of the United States, regarding the future, he replied without hesitating:

-The collapse of the Republic. We have lost the Habeas Corpus and the Magna Carta which we have inherited from England 700 years ago. It has been snatched from our hands all of the sudden.

This has been done by the present government and the legal bases of our Republic have been lost. Hence as I am one of the historians of that Republic, I am not happy.

Going back to the misleading image of Cubas image, he pointed out that they never discovered us why we should hate Cubans and, in his opinion, vanity worked as mediator on behalf of his fellow mates.

In that time -he remembered - my friend John F. Kennedy was running up for the presidency and about that country, Cuba, he was not sane and he turned it into something driven by vanity.

In year 1898 "when we invade free Cuba -he remembered -, it was only a pretext to begin the war against Spain and end up owning the Philippines, as we finally did."

I hate to say it - he added -, but you were only a step so that the United States got into Asia, although we always had our eyes set in the Caribbean.

He remembered how hardly after the end of World War II, in 1945, the North American president Harry Truman began to say: the Russians come, the Russians are coming.

With 20 million of dead Russians - he said ironically -, there was hardly anybody to come. Nevertheless the decision was taken that the only way to govern the country was terrifying everybody.

An ample delegation accompanies Vidal, integrated by his nephew Burr Steers, cinema director in Hollywood; Professor Saúl Landau, of the American University; Dennis Herrera, prosecutor elected of San Francisco; and Matt Tyrnauer, editor of the magazine Vanity Fair.

Also one of his close friends, the former senator James Abourezk, and Kimiko Burton, lawyer for the district attorney office in San Francisco, among others.

The author of Homeland and Empire will complete in Cuba a program that includes meetings with Chancellor Felipe Pérez Roque, the Minister of Culture, Abel Prieto, and the President of the National Assembly of Peoples Power, Ricardo Alarcón.

Running parallel, he will meet students and university professors and will travel to the University of Computer Sciences, the Latin American School of Medicine and the National Museum of Fine Arts.

He was welcomed at the airport by the Vice-minister of culture Ismael González and the President of the Institute of Book, Iroel Sánchez.

Source: CubaSi