Ediciones El Puente (The Bridge Publications) was a literary project for young writers in

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...

just after the 1959 revolution. Between 1961 and 1965 they published each other's work, introduced dozens of new voices - among them poet and translator

Nancy Morejón Nancy Morejón (born 1944 in Havana) is a Cuban poet, critic, and essayist. She was a recipient of the Struga Poetry Evenings Golden Wreath Award. She is "the best known and most widely translated woman poet of post-revolutionary Cuba". Biograp ...

, playwright Gerardo Fulleda León, playwright-activist Ana Maria Simo and folklorist

Miguel Barnet --> Miguel is a given name and surname, the Portuguese and Spanish form of the Hebrew name Michael. It may refer to: Places * Pedro Miguel, a parish in the municipality of Horta and the island of Faial in the Azores Islands * São Miguel (disa ...

- and held readings and performances. Nevertheless, El Puente is remembered primarily as one of the casualties of the wave of social repression in

in the 1960s and 1970s. Accused, among other things, of fostering

homosexuality Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to peop ...

, Black Power, publishing exiles, and consorting with foreigners,Ponte, Antonio José, (2006-12-26).
Un puente de silencio"
Asociación Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana. Havana. Retrieved on 2007-12-26. some members were detained, and/or sent to the UMAP concentration camps. A few left the country. Cuban literary critics are beginning to address the group, and in 2005, the ''Gaceta de Cuba'' published a series of pieces on El Puente.''La Gaceta de Cuba''. 2005, no. 4.
UNEAC, La Habana. Much of the group's work was republished and analyzed in the 2011 book ''Ediciones El Puente en la Habana de los años 60: Lecturas críticas y libros de poesía'', edited and introduced by Jesús J. Barquet.''Ediciones El Puente en La Habana de los años 60: lecturas críticas y libros de poesía'', ed. Jesús J. Barquet, Ediciones del Azar, Mexico, 2011.

Origins

El Puente was begun by José Mario Rodríguez (b. 1940, Güira de Melena - d. 2002, Madrid), a young poet who perceived the post-

revolution In political science, a revolution (Latin: ''revolutio'', "a turn around") is a fundamental and relatively sudden change in political power and political organization which occurs when the population revolts against the government, typically due ...

literary world in

Havana Havana (; Spanish: ''La Habana'' ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of the La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.

as closed to new writers. " unes de Revoluciónonly covered people connected to the director Guillermo Cabrera Infante, and they never reviewed books by young writers." He wanted to create a publishing project that would be open to everyone, "Especially young people, new people. We wanted to find new talents with quality works inside

Cuban culture The culture of Cuba is a complex mixture of different, often contradicting, factors and influences. The Cuban people and their customs are based on European, African and Amerindian influences. Music The music of Cuba, including the instruments a ...

. That's the thing that interested us most."García Ramos, Reinaldo. (Fall-Winter 2002).
Ese deseo permanente de libertad: Conversación con José Mario e Isel Rivero en Madrid, el 4 de octubre de 2002
. ''La Habana Elegante''. Dallas. Retrieved 2007-12-16. Gerardo Fulleda León remembered meeting José Mario in 1961 at a theater workshop that was also attended by playwright Eugenio Hernández Espinosa.

"The next day, in the
José Martí José Julián Martí Pérez (; January 28, 1853 – May 19, 1895) was a Cuban nationalist, poet, philosopher, essayist, journalist, translator, professor, and publisher, who is considered a Cuban national hero because of his role in the libera ...
National Library, he and Eugenio introduced me to Ana Justina Cabrera and after that to Ana María Simo. We immediately began to exchange opinions, argue about certain points, and on others agree. From that day forward, we scheduled appointments or met up in the afternoons in the gardens of the Writer's Union, in the park, at the entrance to a series of
Soviet films The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
at the Cinemateca de Cuba, at a theater function in Mella, in the hallways of an exhibit of Portocarrero, at a concert of Bola or Burke; the afternoon would turn into night and we would go to listen to a concert of '' filin'' at El Gato Tuerto, or
jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
at the Atelier. We went up and down La Rampa and ended up at dawn at the Malecón reading
poems Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in ...
, singing
boleros Bolero is a genre of song which originated in eastern Cuba in the late 19th century as part of the trova tradition. Unrelated to the older Spanish dance of the same name, bolero is characterized by sophisticated lyrics dealing with love. It has ...
, and telling each other our hopes and dreams."Fulleda León, Gerardo. (2002).
Aquella luz de La Habana
. ''La isla en peso'' (no. 10). Retrieved 2007-12-16.

The books they shared included authors such as

Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known bo ...

, Lautréamont,

Rimbaud Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (, ; 20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891) was a French poet known for his transgressive and surreal themes and for his influence on modern literature and arts, prefiguring surrealism. Born in Charleville, he start ...

, Cuban poet Emilio Ballagas, Nerval, Rilke,

Tagore Rabindranath Tagore (; bn, রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. He resha ...

Mayakovsky Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (, ; rus, Влади́мир Влади́мирович Маяко́вский, , vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr vlɐˈdʲimʲɪrəvʲɪtɕ məjɪˈkofskʲɪj, Ru-Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky.ogg, links=y; – 14 Apr ...

Salvatore Quasimodo Salvatore Quasimodo (; August 20, 1901 – June 14, 1968) was an Italian poet and translator. In 1959, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his lyrical poetry, which with classical fire expresses the tragic experience of life in our own time ...

, Essenin, poet Vicente Huidobro,

Proust Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel '' In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous E ...

Seferis Giorgos or George Seferis (; gr, Γιώργος Σεφέρης ), the pen name of Georgios Seferiades (Γεώργιος Σεφεριάδης; March 13 – September 20, 1971), was a Greek poet and diplomat. He was one of the most important G ...

Dylan Thomas Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems "Do not go gentle into that good night" and "And death shall have no dominion", as well as the "play for voices" ''Under ...

, and Holderlin. Within a short time they began publishing as a group. Ana María Simo became co-director of the project,Rodríguez, José Mario. (2002)
La verídica historía de Ediciones El Puente, La Habana, 1961–1965
", ''Revista Hispano Cubana'', Madrid, number 6, winter 2002. largely focusing on the production end and editing fiction. Other core members included Gerardo Fulleda León,

, Ana Justina, and Reinaldo García Ramos (Reinaldo Felipe), who later made up the board of directors.

Impact

In practical terms, the impact of the group can be seen in what and who they published. Self-subsidized and publishing with editorial independence, even after they were persuaded to ally themselves with the Writers Union ( Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba - UNEAC), El Puente introduced dozens of new voices to the literary scene, eventually publishing more than twenty writers and offering more than three dozen books of

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

theater Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actor, actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The p ...

fiction Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying individuals, events, or places that are imaginary, or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent with history, fact, or plausibility. In a traditi ...

, and

folklore Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, ranging ...

. Writers who got their start with El Puente include prize-winning poet and translator

, playwright Gerardo Fulleda León, now director of the

Rita Montaner Rita Aurelia Fulcida Montaner y Facenda (20 August 1900 – 17 April 1958), known as Rita Montaner, was a Cuban singer, pianist and actress. In Cuban parlance, she was a '' vedette'' (a star), and was well known in Mexico City, Paris, Miami and ...

theater company in Havana, folklorist

, and playwright and lesbian activist Ana María Simo. El Puente's long-term impact as a movement is more difficult to gauge. Emerging from the euphoria of the revolution, they were seen by some, including themselves, as embodying the post-revolution generation. Cuban-Chilean poet Alberto Baeza Flores in particular hailed them as a kind of unifying movement, gathering together "a generation of young writers, which was the first surge in tandem with the Cuban

, and which is a brilliant and critical generation." They deliberately worked in opposition to the previous generations that they saw as excluding and elitist. They were especially determined to assert their intellectual freedom and claim all writing that reflected the gamut of Cuban society, even from writers that left the island. Anthologies, such as ''La Novísima Poesía Cubana'' (1962) edited by Reinaldo Garcia Ramos and Ana María Simo, in part expressed this literary ethos that had less to do with rigorous craft or a common style, than fresh points of view. And while Simo's book of short stories, ''Las Fábulas'', was one of the few ever reviewed, the books regularly found an audience, and some of the other arts communities were also enthusiastic about El Puente. Book covers were designed by young architecture students and visual artists, including Gilberto Seguí, David Bigelman and José Lorenzo. A collaborative performance with "feeling"

composers A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Classical music, Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. E ...

including , Cesar Portillo de la Luz, , Ela O'Farril, and others at the El Gato Tuerto had fans lined up down the block. They had exchanges of ideas with

playwrights A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays. Etymology The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word "wright" is an archaic English ...

like Eugenio Hernández Espinosa, even though they weren't necessarily published by El Puente.Grant, María (2002).
Nancy Morejón: Sobre el Puente
. La Jiribilla. Fragment of "En Los Sitios de Nancy Morejón", ''Opus Habana'', La Habana, vol. VI, no. 1, 2002, pp. 18–19. Retrieved 2006-11-25. A young

philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

professor, Josefina Suárez, also became central to the group, introducing some of her students, like the poet Liliam Moro. Not everyone agreed that El Puente represented the post-revolution generation, or that they served any useful purpose at all. At the time, critics such as Jesús Díaz, for instance, said they did not represent anything except a very small "dissolute" fringe, and charged not only that some of the writing was uneven, but that El Puente was "a politically and aesthetically erroneous phenomenon."Díaz, Jesús,
Encuesta
. ''La Gaceta de Cuba'', no. 50, April–September 1966. A criticism easier to divorce from politics was that José Mario used the group, perhaps too frequently, to publish his own poems. In more recent times, several contemporary researchers in Cuba seem to see its diversity as one of El Puente's greatest contributions.

Diversity

The core group had as many women as men, and women are central in the list of published works (see Publications). Most of the writers were poor or

working-class The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in manual-labour occupations or industrial work, who are remunerated via waged or salaried contracts. Working-class occupations (see also " Designation of workers by collar colou ...

. Many were blackGarcía Ramos, Reinaldo. (Fall-Winter 2002).
Introducción: José Mario, el entusiasmo esperanzado
. ''La Habana Elegante''. Dallas. Retrieved 2007-12-16. or mixed-race at a time when people of color were underrepresented in the literary world. The group published the first two books of poems by

. "El Puente was vital for us, for me, on a personal level. One fine day José Mario Rodríguez, its director, came, and asked me for some poems. It was the first disinterested publishing project that didn't have second or third motives." José Mario downplayed his role in recruiting the participation of black writers, though he was a friend of Walterio Carbonell, an embattled proponent of a French-style " Negritude," one of the first Cuban writers to address the role of race on the evolution of

in his 1961 essay, "How the National Culture Developed" (Cómo surge la cultura nacional).

"It's true that El Puente had a lot of black writers, like
Nancy Morejón Nancy Morejón (born 1944 in Havana) is a Cuban poet, critic, and essayist. She was a recipient of the Struga Poetry Evenings Golden Wreath Award. She is "the best known and most widely translated woman poet of post-revolutionary Cuba". Biograp ...
, Ana Justina Cabrera, Gerardo Fulleda León, Eugenio Hernández, Georgina Herrera, Rogelio Martínez Furé, Pedro Pérez Sarduy and others. I think this happened a little by chance. We met in the National Library and outside of this building if you remember, there were some of avana'spoorest neighborhoods; a lot of people that went to these meetings came from these "mansions." They had few economic resources. They were neighborhoods that were largely black. Ana Justina and Eugenio lived nearby, just behind the Library."

Many members of the group were also

lesbian A lesbian is a Homosexuality, homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate n ...

gay ''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'. While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late 1 ...

Climate of homophobia

While

Che Guevara Ernesto Che Guevara (; 14 June 1928The date of birth recorded on /upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Ernesto_Guevara_Acta_de_Nacimiento.jpg his birth certificatewas 14 June 1928, although one tertiary source, (Julia Constenla, quoted ...

once reportedly threw a book across the room in disgust because it was written by gay author

Virgilio Piñera Virgilio Piñera Llera ( Cárdenas, Cuba, August 4, 1912 – Havana, October 18, 1979) was a Cuban author, playwright, poet, short story writer, essayist and translator. His most notorious works are the poem ''La isla en peso'' (1943), the collec ...

didn't need the Argentine revolutionary to introduce homophobia. Already a part of

Hispanic The term ''Hispanic'' ( es, hispano) refers to people, Spanish culture, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or Hispanidad. The term commonly applies to countries with a cultural and historical link to Spain and to Vic ...

and

Western culture Leonardo da Vinci's ''Vitruvian Man''. Based on the correlations of ideal Body proportions">human proportions with geometry described by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius in Book III of his treatise ''De architectura''. image:Plato Pio-Cle ...

s, it was underlying in such works as

José Martí José Julián Martí Pérez (; January 28, 1853 – May 19, 1895) was a Cuban nationalist, poet, philosopher, essayist, journalist, translator, professor, and publisher, who is considered a Cuban national hero because of his role in the libera ...

's 1894 "Our America," in which the poet and revolutionary not only offered an early analysis of the growing U.S. role in the region, but dismissed loyalists to Spain as delicate ones "that are men and don't want to do the work of men!" and men that think they're Parisians or Madrileños, "talking walks on the Prado, leaning against lampposts, or eating sorbets at Tortonis." After the

, one of the first occasions

homophobia Homophobia encompasses a range of negative attitude (psychology), attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who are identified or perceived as being lesbian, gay or bisexual. It has been defined as contempt, prejudice, aversion, h ...

went from a private attitude to public policy was during the National Meeting of Poets (Encuentro Nacional de Poetas) held in

Camagüey Camagüey () is a city and municipality in central Cuba and is the nation's third-largest city with more than 321,000 inhabitants. It is the capital of the Camagüey Province. It was founded as Santa María del Puerto del Príncipe in 1514, by S ...

in 1960 shortly before El Puente was begun. Colonel Alberto Bayo, a representative of the government, used the opportunity to launch an invective against homosexuals, calling them "bad seed," and warning they were going to "pervert the

." That night large placards appeared that said, "Fags, dykes, out!" In 1965, the government set up

concentration camps Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...

, euphemistically called

Military Units to Aid Production Military Units to Aid Production or UMAPs (Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción) were agricultural forced labor camps operated by the Cuban government from November 1965 to July 1968 in the province of Camagüey.Guerra, Lillian. ""Gender ...

(UMAP), where "social scum" (mostly gay men, but also

Jehovah's Witnesses Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. The group reports a worldwide membership of approximately 8.7 million adherents involved in ...

, and those perceived as disaffected) were interned behind barbed wire and used as forced labor until the UMAPs ended in 1967. Echoing the slogan on the gates of

Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

(and ironically,

), the camps were emblazoned with the words: "Work will make you men."

Ginsberg and gay scapegoating

As social pressures intensified, and El Puente become increasingly well known, members of the group began to draw more and more attention from state security. In 1964, Ana María Simo was jailed for several weeks and interrogated. The openly gay men in the group, such as José Mario, started being regularly detained, targeted for their homosexuality, but also because they read the wrong books ( Gide), listened to the wrong music (

The Beatles The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatles, most influential band of al ...

) and once or twice had drunken scenes in the middle of the night. A couple of members were caught stealing library books. In January 1965,

Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...

, the openly gay poet,

Buddhist Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...

, and drug-user, was invited to the island by Casa de las Américas to be part of the jury for that year's poetry prize. Besides meeting writers like

Julio Cortázar Julio Florencio Cortázar (26 August 1914 – 12 February 1984; ) was an Argentine, nationalized French novelist, short story writer, essayist, and translator. Known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, Cortázar influenced an ent ...

Mario Vargas Llosa Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquess of Vargas Llosa (born 28 March 1936), more commonly known as Mario Vargas Llosa (, ), is a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist and former politician, who also holds Spanish citizenship. Vargas Ll ...

Camilo José Cela Camilo José Cela y Trulock, 1st Marquess of Iria Flavia (; 11 May 1916 – 17 January 2002) was a Spanish novelist, poet, story writer and essayist associated with the Generation of '36 movement. He was awarded the 1989 Nobel Prize in Literat ...

and

Nicanor Parra Nicanor Segundo Parra Sandoval (5 September 1914 – 23 January 2018) was a Chilean poet and physicist. He was considered one of the most influential Chilean poets of the Spanish language in the 20th century, often compared with Pablo Neruda. P ...

, Ginsberg found his way to members of El Puente who had been corresponding with him, and intended to publish a translation of ''

Howl Howl most often refers to: *Howling, an animal vocalization in many canine species *Howl (poem), a 1956 poem by Allen Ginsberg Howl may also refer to: Film * ''The Howl'', a 1970 Italian film * ''Howl'' (2010 film), a 2010 American arthouse b ...

''.

"His visits to my house, and that we appeared together in various public places, like the Writers Union cafeteria and at a reception at the Casa de las Américas and his explosive declarations about current
politics Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies ...
and the persecution of homosexuals, put us, as they say, on everybody's lips. We were grist for the
rumor A rumor (American English), or rumour (British English; see spelling differences; derived from Latin:rumorem - noise), is "a tall tale of explanations of events circulating from person to person and pertaining to an object, event, or issue in p ...
mill, and you know the power of rumors in a dictatorship, the power that they can have according to the intentions of the people that spread them. One day we were leaving a play at the Auditorium theater, that Ginsberg had invited us to, when Manolo (Manuel Ballagas, son of poet ), and I were brusquely detained in a street near the theater, thrown violently in a dark car, and taken to a police station. Some people that knew about the operation immediately told the administration of the Writers Union that came in person to the station. Nevertheless, the interrogations lasted all night--we were only let out in the morning. We were formally accused of the crime of 'consorting with foreigners.' In a matter of days, Ginsberg was expelled from the country."

Though on that occasion charges were dropped, afterwards, publishing and distributing were increasingly difficult for El Puente, which was already falling apart from internal and external pressures. José Mario moved back into his parents' house, and rarely stepped into the street where he was vulnerable: "They detained me 17 times." Books at the printers were confiscated, and finally, "the publisher was abruptly closed by governmental authorities."

''El Caimán'' vs. El Puente

Harassment peaked in 1966 after the group had already ceased publication, when El Puente was publicly attacked by Jesús Díaz, an editor of ''El Caimán Barbudo'', a literary magazine created and funded by the

Communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

Youth. Unlike El Puente, they were straight, mostly men, almost all white, and largely recruited from the university. Jesus Diaz was an assistant professor. He used the ''La Gaceta'', a magazine of the Writers Union, to publicly declare that members of El Puente were "generally bad as artists" but, more dangerously, "the most dissolute and negative segment of their generation" and "a politically and aesthetically erroneous phenomenon." Coming just a few months after the internment of gay men had officially begun, his statement was a shock to the group. "They declared a war of extermination on us." A week after Diaz' first attack appeared, José Mario was summoned to a

concentration camp Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...

. In El Puente's response, written and signed by Ana María Simo, she defended the merits of El Puente, and called Diaz's statement an "''acto de delación intelectual''" an "intellectualized denunciation". Jesús Diaz published a long rebuttal, repeating his attack, and personally taking aim at Ana María Simo as well.Díaz, Jesús,
Jesús Díaz responde a Ana María Simo: El Último Puente
. ''La Gaceta de Cuba'', no. 50, April–September 1966. Years later, Jesús Díaz, who himself left the island for

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , i ...

, blamed it on the age, and literary quarrels, "Nevertheless... I recognize what I did and I'd like to offer my regrets to Ana María Simo and other authors that could have felt attacked by me at that time."Díaz, Jesús, "El fin de otra ilusión. A propósito de la quiebra de 'El Caimán Barbudo' y la clausura de 'Pensamiento Crítico'", ''Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana'', Madrid, primavera-verano 2000, número 16-17). Guillermo Rodríguez Rivera, another one of the editors, later defended El Caimán, blaming the

Youth for forbidding them, "to publish any young writer or artist which was homosexual. It wasn't a decision that we made at the magazine…"

Sequel

After the exchange with ''El Caimán'', and the internment of José Mario, the work of El Puente was largely erased. Some members emigrated, and those who remained were "endiablados", demonized. For decades,

was hesitant to speak out in groups: "I thought if I raised my hand to say something, somebody would be sure to say, "Shut up, those people from El Puente..." I can tell you that now, but before we didn't talk about these things..." Scholars have begun to research the group, and in its July–August 2005 issue, the ''Gaceta de Cuba'' published a series of related pieces in a first attempt to grapple with the history of El Puente. Since then, other books have appeared, including the ''Dinámicas culturales de los años 60 en Cuba y otras zonas creativas de conflicto'' (Doctoral Dissertation; 2007) and ''Ediciones El Puente y los vacíos del canon literario cubano'' (2016), both by María Isabel Alfonso, and the 2011 work ''Ediciones El Puente en la Habana de los años 60: Lecturas críticas y libros de poesía'',edited and introduced by Jesús J. Barquet. José Mario died in

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

in 2002.

Publications

Below is the list of El Puente books in order of publication between 1961 and 1965 in Havana, under the direction of José Mario and co-direction of Ana María Simo, as compiled by José Mario in "La verídica historía de Ediciones El Puente, La Habana, 1961–1965". * José Mario, ''La Conquista'' (poems) * Santiago Ruiz, ''Hiroshima'' (poems) * Mercedes Cortázar, ''El Largo Canto'' (poems) * Silvia, ''27 pulgadas de vacío'' (poems) * José Mario, ''De la Espera y el Silencio'' (poems) * Gerardo Fulleda León, ''Algo en la Nada'' (poems) * José Mario, ''Clamor Agudo'' (poems) * Ana Justina, ''Silencio'' (poems) * Guillermo Cuevas Carrión, ''Ni un Sí ni un No'' (stories) * José Mario, ''Obras para niños'' (drama, 1st and 2nd ed.) * Ana María Simo, ''Las fábulas'' (stories) * Reinaldo Felipe, ''Acta'' (poem) * Manuel Granados, ''El orden presentido'' (poems) * José Mario, ''A través'' (poems) *

, ''Mutismos'' (poems) * Mariano Rodríguez Herrera, ''La mutación'' (stories) * ''Novísima Poesía Cubana I'' (poetry anthology) * Georgina Herrera, ''GH'' (poems) * Joaquín G. Santana, ''Poemas en Santiago'' (poems) * Belkis Cuza Malé, ''Tiempos del Sol'' (poems) * Rogelio Martínez Furé, ''Poesía Yoruba'' (poetry anthology) * Jesús Abascal, ''Soroche y otros cuentos'' (stories) * ''Nicolás Dorr'', (drama) * J. R. Brene, ''Santa Camila de la Habana Vieja'' (drama) * José Mario, ''La torcida raíz de tanto daño'' (poems) *

, ''Isla de güijes'' (poems) * Ada Abdo, ''Mateo y las sirenas'' (stories) * Évora Tamayo, ''Cuentos para abuelas enfermas'' (stories) *

, ''Amor, ciudad atribuida'' (poems) * Ana Garbinski, ''Osaín de un pie'' (poems) * Rodolfo Hinostroza, ''Consejeros del Lobo'' (poems) * ''Segunda Novísima de Poesía Cubana'' (1) * Silvia Barros, ''Teatro infantil'' (drama) * ''Primera Novísima de Teatro'' (2) * Angel Luis Fernández Guerra, ''La nueva noche'' (stories) * El Puente, ''Resumen Literario'' I (literary review) (3) * Antonio Álvarez, ''Noneto'' (stories) * José Milián, ''Mani Omi Omo'' (drama) * José Mario, ''Muerte del Amor por la Soledad'' (poems) Pending publication: * El Puente, ''Resumen Literario'' II (literary review) (4) * Manuel Ballagas, ''Con temor'' (stories) (5) (1), (2), (3), (4) (5). Books confiscated at the printers used by Ediciones el Puente in 1965, Havana, Cuba.