Las transgresiones de Leonardo Padura: verdad y transfiguración tras el juego de Máscaras.

In his 1997 novel Máscaras, Leonardo Padura uses the detective fiction genre to represent the repressed "other" in Cuban society, in its sexual, ideological, religious and artistic aspects. This inquiry beneath the surface and behind the masks runs counter to the structures of the Cuban State, which demands that Cubanismo be imagined / represented as a socialist paradise. This essay analyzes Padura's novel as a realization of Lezama Lima's notion that Cubanismo could only be articulated via "poetic transfiguration". But symbols are dangerous because they are poly-vocal and cannot be controlled by the authority; hence, we are confronted to the repression of the imaginary in a post-revolutionary Cuba. Through the uncovering of the masked truth about this intrafamilial murder, Padura effects a symbolic integration of Cuba's repressed otherness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]