Carlos Alberto Montaner

As one of the most widely-read columnist in the Spanish language--his weekly columns are estimated by Poder magazine to be read by six million people--Carlos Alberto Montaner has made a vast contribution to international understanding in the Western Hemisphere through his vigorous, sustained, and courageous defense of democracy, human rights, and market economics.

His message challenged the conventional wisdom of the seventies and eighties, when many Latin American intellectuals and politicians were promoting socialism, even authoritarian socialism, as the best route for Latin America. Many of those intellectuals and politicians blamed the United States for Latin America's poverty and injustice, for Latin America's "dependency" on the advanced democracies, above all the United States. In his writings, Montaner has held up the mirror to Latin America. While he has criticized some of the policies and actions of the United States, he has insisted that Latin America bears the principal responsibility for its problems, and he has encouraged Latin America to adopt the values and institutions that he believes underlie the success of the advanced democracies. [" [http://www.newmedia.ufm.edu/cincopreguntasmontaner Interview with Carlos Alberto Montaner] " at Francisco Marroquin University. Guatemala, August 2007]

Montaner has thus made an enormous contribution both to Latin America's taking charge of its own destiny and to constructive, cooperative, and friendly relationships between Latin America and the United States.

Life and career

Carlos Alberto Montaner was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1943. Like so many young people of his generation, he sympathized with the 1959 Cuban Revolution. As the Revolution turned toward communism and the Soviet Bloc, he joined a student protest movement and was imprisoned. He escaped from prison and left Cuba.

After taking a master's degree at the University of Miami, Montaner taught Latin American literature at the Interamerican University (Puerto Rico) from 1966 to 1970. During those years he published four books: Los combatientes (1968), Galdós humorista (1969), Póker de brujas (1970), and Instantáneas al borde del abismo (1970). The last two were also published in English.

Montaner began his career in journalism in 1968, working with Joaquín Maurín, a Spanish exile who had founded the American Literary Agency in New York at the end of the 1940s with the objective of disseminating democratic ideas in the United States and Latin America. Maurín was a noted Marxist theorist whose thinking had evolved toward liberal democracy after the Spanish Civil War.

Montaner began writing a weekly column which was soon appearing in almost every Latin American country, often in the most widely read newspapers. He also came to be much in demand as a lecturer throughout the hemisphere, speaking about the defense of liberty, economic development, and the important role of culture in the evolution of societies.

By 1970, his success as a columnist and speaker had made it possible for him to move on from teaching to a life in Madrid dedicated to his columns and books. He established a publishing house, Editorial Playor, in 1972. His first novel, "Perromundo", was published in 1972 and subsequently was made into a movie. His "Informe secreto sobre la revolución cubana" was published in 1975, and was followed a year later by "200 años de gringos", celebrating the bicentennial of the United States and contrasting the evolution of the United States with that of Latin America. This contrast between the levels of development north and south of the Rio Grande and the reasons for it would occupy much of his attention thereafter.

As Spain moved rapidly toward democracy after the death of Franco, he joined the Liberal Club of Madrid to promote democratic values and institutions. In the 1980s, Montaner began a weekly television commentary that was aired by satellite throughout Latin America. He also produced three books: "Fidel Castro y la revolución cubana", subsequently published in English, Italian, and Russian; "La agonía de América"; and "1898: La trama".

In 1980 he received the ABC prize for journalism, awarded by the then Spanish premier Adolfo Suárez. By then, his columns were being published in a number of newspapers in the United States, and the Miami Herald invited him to join its editorial board. He also edited the opinion page of "El Nuevo Herald" between 1987 and 1989.

In 1992, the Liberal International named Montaner a vice president. These activities brought him into contact with many of the world's leaders. During the first half of the 1990s, the magazines "Ciencia Política" of Bogotá and "Perfiles Liberales" of Mexico City invited him to join their editorial boards, and Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal sporadically began to publish his columns. Montaner produced three books during this period: "Cómo y por qué cayó el comuunismo"; "Libertad, la clave de la prosperidad"; and "Cuba hoy: la lenta muerte del castrismo". He was also named a visiting professor en universities in Guatemala, Ecuador, and Perú.

The best-selling "Manual del Perfecto Idiota Latinoamericano", in which he collaborated with Álvaro Vargas Llosa and Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, was published in 1996 and in English in 2000 by Madison Books. Its highly popular sequel, "Fabricantes de miseria", was published in 1998. Montaner also authored "No perdamos también el siglo XXI" (1997) and, in 1999, "Viaje al corazón de Cuba".

In 1999, in Madrid, Montaner received the Premio de Periodismo de la Fundación Independiente and the Medalla de la Cultura de Puerto Rico. In the same year he was the recipient of a Premio América award by the de Centro Interamericano Gerencia Política with the inscription, "His writings on freedom have served as a guide to the oppressed and to the emerging democracies."

In 2004 he was invited by The Miami Herald to be part of the Editorial Board. Since then his weekly columns are published in English.

His latest books were "Las raíces torcidas de América Latina" (2002), "América Latina y la cultura occidental" (2004) and "La libertad y sus enemigos" (2005), all dealing with the roots of Latin America poverty and underdevelopment. In 2006 Brickell Communicatios Groupproduced a serie of 13 lessons on Cuban History for TV written and narrated by CAM and also published a book with the scripts (Los Cubanos: historia de Cuba en una lección).

In 2007 two more books will be published, "Las columnas de la libertad" and "El regreso del idiota".

References

External links

* [http://www.carlosalbertomontaner.com Carlos Montaner's Official Site]