14ymedio, Havana, 9 May 2018 — Cuban writer and journalist, Bernardo Marqués-Ravelo, died on Tuesday in Miami at 71, after a long illness, according to family sources speaking to 14ymedio.
In Cuba he published the novel Balada del barrio and the poems Donde habito, Sin margen y sin fecha and He aquí el cuerpo, while his work as a journalist appeared in the magazines Bohemia and El Caimán Barbudo, in the latter as editor-in-chief.
In the summer of 1991 he signed the Declaration of Cuban Intellectuals also called the Letter of the Ten, which automatically made him an enemy of the Fidel Castro regime. This document demanding political and economic changes from the Cuban Government was initially signed by María Elena Cruz Varela, Raúl Rivero Castañeda, Manuel Díaz Martínez, Manolo Granados, José Lorenzo Fuentes, Fernando Velázquez Medina, Roberto Luque Escalona, Víctor Manuel Serpa Riestra and Nancy Estrada Galván
As a consequence of having participated in this initiative, he was dismissed from his job and subjected to pressure by State Security. In June of 1994, he chose to go into exile in the United States, where he linked up with the Nueva Prensa Cubana project under the direction of journalist Nancy Pérez Crespo and wrote the still unpublished book of stories: Lluvias sobre el territorio nacional.
His friends remember him as an affable man of witty responses. His habitual presence in the gatherings of the House of the Press in Havana leaves an indelible memory among those who knew him. A lucid intellectual, informed and fearless.
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