author, Otero, who was the Vice President of the Cultural Council. Padilla proceeded to praise Tres Tristes Tigres, calling it one of the most brilliant, ingenious and profoundly Cuban novels ever written. Therefore, Padilla not only attacked Otero, a high-ranking cultural official but praised Cabrera Infante, who had publicly condemned the Revolution and the conditions of writers within Cuba, dangerously branding Padilla as an ally to traitor to the Revolution. Following this scandal, the editorial board of El Caimán Barbudo that published this debate was fired and Padilla had also lost his job working at the Granma, or one of the government sanctioned news outlets in Cuba. Padilla's frustration was only exacerbated when the Cuban Union of Writers and Artists, or the UNEAC, awarded the "Julián de Casal" to Heberto Padilla's collection of critical poems, Fuera del juego in 1968, which would allow it to be published and distributed to the public. Before Fuera del juego was published, the UNEAC had heavily criticized the decision, and underwent a series of discussions about the counterrevolutionary nature of the book. The series of poems contained blatant revolutionary skepticism, especially in the poem titled Fuera del juego, where he outlines the difference between a good revolutionary and a bad revolutionary. Although the poem, as well as the book, presents a critical stance on the Revolution, it does so to prevent the Revolution from "supra-bureaucracy or militarization". The decision, however, was upheld, and Fuera del juego was published with a political disclaimer, but the criticisms of Padilla's work did not halt here. A series of articles were posted in Verde Olivo, the magazine of the armed forces, under the name Leopaldo Avila, prompting a stricter outline of the government's cultural policy. The conditional tolerance of Cuban literature required more than just a basic support for the Revolution. Thus a declaration of principles was created and approved at the Congress of Writers and Artists in 1968 that further defined the role of the writer in Cuba, stating that the writer has to not only support the Revolution, but contribute to it through utilizing literature as a "weapon against weakness and problems which, directly or indirectly, could hinder this advance." Affair Imprisonment With the strengthening of the overall cultural policy of the Cuban government in an attempt to avoid the weakening of the Revolutionary ideology, vigilance towards Cuban writers had increased, punishing them for even slightly