convictions and doubts, contradictions and frustrations, and even— why not—, the food he likes. However, Nicolás is one of the lesserknown figures in the Cuban literature. He is best known for his painting, which features the same peculiarities of his poetry and prose. Why is he hardly known as a poet, if his painting is a particular form of his poetry? My answer: the appreciation of the artistic work is always accompanied by backgrounds and suggestions about the creator. And Nicolás, the poet, with harsh words and his enigmatic linguistic mode, is a voice stoned by that famous magic phrase that the representatives of the Cuban cultural institutions use to make disappear uncomfortable writers: " What a pity, comrade, but... there is no paper available." No paper, no paper, they parroted, whenever a literary project outside the praises of the revolution comes to their offices, so that they can dispatch the disturbing visitor with a triumphant smile. As an independent thinker identified with the less fortunate, the life story of Nicolás began to be woven when he was just a nine-years-old boy. A neighbor managed to save him from being crushed with a steely toggle by a pimp of the Colón neighborhood. The child was haranguing the whores to get rid of their parasites. As a teenager he joined the clandestine struggle against the Batista dictatorship. He is still breathing because the revolutionary triumph of January 1959 prevented that he would have been two found dead in a ditch the day after. In fact, Nicolás has always been an annoying factor, someone with sharp tongue and mind who easily put the high or petit bureaucrats out of control. His genuine erudition always comes to the rescue. The first revolutionary notification was being fired from work because he lent a Jean Paul Sartre’ s book. Thus, he so came up against the datum that the literature by friends of the Cuban revolution was banned for Cubans. He was put into the big sack of“ ideological deviation” and he is still there today, because he has never put his head down and asked for mercy either. From that episode on, a rumor began to circulate and some experts on this revolutionary art got the ball rolling with all kinds of intrigues. Even his closest friends came to believe them sometimes: " A quarrelsome Negro, fagot and ungrateful," id est: the worst kind of behaviors that black persons may have from the point of view of their liberators. To the first layer of the headstone was added:
• Version for the ordinary people: Nicolás is a Colonel at the Counterintelligence Section or another G-2 branch. He still in active service, even working outside Cuba. Many people believe that and what’ s worst: the version is incessantly repeated.
• Version for the government officials. Nicolás is a CIA or FBI agent with the covert of being friend— or even the ringleader— of militants from the American Black Power hidden Cuba.
His innate curiosity and desire for knowledge has always come in handy for the creators of effective little formulas, but his artistic work, unintentionally black, is a hymn to the dispossessed and misfits, the irreverent citizens and the free thinkers. Nicolás sings to all who, in one way or another, are not well seen from the politically correct side. Only that this song is a mixture of poetry and painting, and his language is so full of intricate images that some of us barely manage to clarify them in part. Anyone else, except Nicolás himself, has the keys to full understanding.
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