February 12, 2001

Cuban poet Heberto Padilla, who wrote the book of poems ``Fuera del Juego'' in the late 1960s and was rewarded with imprisonment by the Cuban government, died recently in relative obscurity at the University of Alabama, where he spent his last years teaching.

Even though we met only a few times, during Cuban-exile literary conferences at Columbia and Rutgers universities, I feel a sadness that is very personal. I owe him a big one.

Padilla was a living indictment for one of the darkest sides of Fidel Castro's regime: intellectual oppression. I know. He and I share some common experiences. In fact, if it had not been for Padilla, the story of my life might have included an additional tragic chapter.

Padilla was born in 1931 in Pinar del Río, a Cuban province known as ''The Cinderella.'' He overcame the poverty and other obstacles of such a region and found his way to Havana. There, in the late 1950s, he began participating in literary circles. At the start of the 1959 Revolution, he joined the group of young artists and writers who formed the UNEAC, the official writers union, and published his first works.

In 1968, Padilla won the Julián del Casal's UNEAC literary competition with ''Fuera del Juego.'' But the award was withdrawn by government ''request.''

Padilla fell in disgrace. His work was critical of Fidel Castro's Cuba, and wasn't tolerated. Padilla and his wife, Belkis Cuza Male, also a Cuban writer, were arrested and subjected to long interrogations and imprisonment. Finally, in 1971, Padilla was forced to retract the messages of his poetry in public. He did so at a writer's meeting reminiscent of Stalin's era. After that, he accepted what work he could find as a translator until 1980, when, at the request of several international and political figures, the Cuban government allowed him to go into exile.

The year 1968 was one of great political trauma all over the world. In the United States, the nation became divided over the Vietnam War; vicious conflict between the police and protesters marred the Chicago Democratic Convention. In Mexico, student riots resulted in the Tlatelolco massacre. In France there were student revolts; in Prague, there was a drastic change in the communist government, followed by a Russian invasion.

In Cuba, we had the Ofensiva Revolucionaria, the island's version of the Maoist Cultural Revolution, where whatever had been left of small, private enterprise -- mom-and-pop stores, shoeshine stands, bars -- was taken over by the government. These were also the years of mass expulsions of college students, of massive confinements to the UMAP forced labor camps, and of the Camarioca boatlift, the forerunner of the 1980 Mariel boatlift.

In such a politically charged context, it isn't difficult to understand why Padilla's problems were so large. His forced retraction was so repugnant, even some members of the international community of leftist artists, including Sartre, Paz, Vargas Llosa and Fellini, wrote a public letter of protest to Castro.

That letter resulted in Padilla's release, but he remained ostracized until he was able to leave the country years later.

A few years later, in 1979, I was arrested for writing and publishing a book of short stories that dealt with Cuba's social problems. Like Padilla, I had to submit to interrogation. I was threatened with a 12-year prison sentence for my literary activities.

Our lives were about to share another common thread. As one of many college students expelled from the University of Havana in 1965, I had been sent to the UMAP labor camps. There, I spent two years working in the cane fields of Camagüey.

After my release, I wrote a book of short stories about UMAP, ''Los Unos, Los Otros y El Seibo.'' Published in the United States in 1971, it was praised as one of the two best short story books in Dr. Seymour Menton's study of ''Prose Fiction of the Cuban Revolution.'' Menton classified my work, published under the pen name Beltrán de Quiros, with that of the exiled writers.

The nom de plume was one my father had used for many years in Cuban newspapers and magazines. It was tracked back to me and earned me another visit by the Cuban secret police. I can still close my eyes and see my small rectangular cell, with only one small couch, no windows and a constant, searing light at secret police headquarters, Villa Marista. I was allowed only my underwear. I can remember the cold, the air conditioner humming at full blast. A guard would lead me to the interrogator's office. There, a spotlight in my eyes, I was asked again and again, for hours, how was I able to get the book out of the country? They just couldn't believe I had sent every story, one by one, in the mail.

At one of the first interrogation sessions, I made a discrete but clear reference to Padilla, and to the fact that I still had other 30 stories outside the country, awaiting publication.

In the end, because of the Padilla precedent and international clamor his long imprisonment generated, I was deemed guilty but released -- liberado culpable. Afterward, I was harassed to the point that even when I obtained a valid U.S. resident visa, my sister had to come from Florida for me in a shrimp trawler during the Mariel boatlift.

My second book, ''La Otra Cara de la Moneda,'' was published a few years later, in 1984.

In my mind, there is no question that, without the Padilla precedent, I would have rotted in the oblivion of a Cuban jail for 12 years. And I have always thought about how hard it must have been for Padilla to denounce his friends publicly and apologize for something he surely was so proud of -- writing his poetry book.

I remember Heberto Padilla as one of Cuba's first peaceful dissidents. And, of course, as a very fine poet.

Dr. Jorge Luis Romeu, a 1994 Fulbright Senior Scholar to Mexico, is an Emeritus Faculty member of the State University of New York. He directs the Juárez-Lincoln-Martí International Education Project and may be contacted by e-mail at jromeu@cat.syr.edu.