Una geopoética del neopolicial cubano: el caso de Leonardo Padura

Abstract

This paper analyzes some of the “Mario Conde” series of novels by Leonardo Padura Fuentes (Havana, 1955), placing them into the Cuban detective- story tradition and setting a geopoetical mapping which accounts for several features in the series and relates them to the geopolitical particularities of Cuba, as well as to the specificity of the detective story and hard-boiled genres. The paper is composed of three sections. The first one builds a theoretical frame upon Fernando Aínsa’s speculations on the concept of “limit”, points out the importance of the violence of the separation of the world executed by capitalism and pays special attention to the role played by these concepts in the Cuban context. The second one studies Padura’s place in Cuban “neopolicial” tradition. The third one analyzes the importance of the horizon as a labile limit in the Mario Conde series of novels and its relation to the “isolated island” tautology proposed both by Castro’s regime and by its opponents.