Heberto Juan Padilla (20 January 1932 – 25 September 2000) was a Cuban poet put to the center of the so-called Padilla affair when he was imprisoned for criticizing the Cuban government. He was born in Puerta de Golpe, Pinar del Río, Cuba. His first book of poetry, Las rosas audaces (The Audacious Roses), was published in 1949. After his first marriage to Bertha Hernandez with whom he had three children, Giselle Padilla, Maria Padilla and Carlos Padilla, he married poet Belkis Cuza Malé with whom he had his younger son Ernesto Padilla. Although Padilla initially supported the revolution led by Fidel Castro, by the late 1960s he began to criticize it openly and in 1971, he was imprisoned by the Castro regime. Background Padilla's criticism of the Castro Regime was prompted by the changing role of the writer in the new revolutionary society of Cuba, and the brewing hostilities between Cuban cultural bureaucrats and the Cuban writers. During the 1950s, writers in Cuba had shown strength and vigor in the production of cultural institutions and creative material, including the Casa de las Américas and the publication of Lunes de Revolución. However, cultural bureaucrats had begun to be more critical towards art produced, and banned the movie P.M., a film about night life in Cuba. This perpetuated already existing distrust between the Popular Socialist Party, and Lunes de Revolución, who had sponsored the television platform that P.M. was shown on. Following this crisis, the writers of Lunes de Revolución, among other Cuban writers, were invited to a series of discussions at the National Library, where leaders of the PSP accused them of being divisive and not truly socialist. The heated nature of these debates demanded the intervention of Fidel Castro, himself, who then, in this speech, outlined the government's cultural policy: there will be tolerance towards all forms of artistic expression, as long as there was a basic support for the Revolution. Padilla began to get frustrated with the growing government interference in cultural affairs. In 1968, this underlying tension manifested in a debate published in the cultural magazine, El Caimán Barbudo, where Padilla wrote a scathing critique of Lisandro Otero's Pasión de Urbino, a novel that was considered for the Spanish Biblioteca Breve award, but was beat out by Tres Tristes Tigres by Guillermo Cabrera Infante. In Padilla's article, he denounces Pasión de Urbino, as well as its bureaucratic