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Hispanic Studies: Culture and Ideas 38
Guy Baron
38
A film institute was the first cultural institution to be created by the new Cuban
revolutionary government in 1959. One of its aims was to create a new cinema
Gender in Cuban Cinema
to suit the needs of the Revolution in a climate of transformation and renewal.
During the same period, issues of gender equality and gender relations became
important as the Revolution attempted to eradicate some of the negative social

Guy Baron • Gender in Cuban Cinema

tendencies of the past. Through the prism of the gender debate, Cuban cinema
both reflected and shaped some of the central ideological concerns on the
island at this time.

This book brings together these two extremely significant aspects of the Cuban
revolutionary process by examining issues of gender and gender relations in six
Cuban films produced between 1974 and 1990. Using close textual analysis
and theoretical insights from feminism and postmodernism, the author argues
that the portrayal of aspects of gender relations in Cuban cinema developed
along a progressive path, from expressions of the modern to expressions of the
postmodern.

Guy Baron is Lecturer in Spanish and Latin American Studies at the

University of Aberystwyth, where he teaches courses in both Spanish
and Spanish American cinema and culture. He completed his PhD at the
University of Nottingham and has taught at a number of other universities in
the UK. His publications include articles in the Bulletin of Latin American From the Modern to the Postmodern
Research and Revista Cine Cubano.

ISBN 978-3-0343-0229-6

www.peterlang.com Peter Lang

Hispanic Studies: Culture and Ideas 38
Guy Baron
38
A film institute was the first cultural institution to be created by the new Cuban
revolutionary government in 1959. One of its aims was to create a new cinema
Gender in Cuban Cinema
to suit the needs of the Revolution in a climate of transformation and renewal.
During the same period, issues of gender equality and gender relations became
important as the Revolution attempted to eradicate some of the negative social

Guy Baron • Gender in Cuban Cinema

tendencies of the past. Through the prism of the gender debate, Cuban cinema
both reflected and shaped some of the central ideological concerns on the
island at this time.

This book brings together these two extremely significant aspects of the Cuban
revolutionary process by examining issues of gender and gender relations in six
Cuban films produced between 1974 and 1990. Using close textual analysis
and theoretical insights from feminism and postmodernism, the author argues
that the portrayal of aspects of gender relations in Cuban cinema developed
along a progressive path, from expressions of the modern to expressions of the
postmodern.

Guy Baron is Lecturer in Spanish and Latin American Studies at the

University of Aberystwyth, where he teaches courses in both Spanish
and Spanish American cinema and culture. He completed his PhD at the
University of Nottingham and has taught at a number of other universities in
the UK. His publications include articles in the Bulletin of Latin American From the Modern to the Postmodern
Research and Revista Cine Cubano.

www.peterlang.com Peter Lang

Gender in Cuban Cinema
Hispanic Studies: Culture and Ideas

Volume 38
Edited by
Claudio Canaparo

PETER LANG
Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Wien
 Guy Baron

Gender in Cuban Cinema

From the Modern to the Postmodern

PETER LANG
Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Wien
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche National-
bibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet
at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Baron, Guy.
Gender in Cuban cinema : from the modern to the postmodern / Guy
Baron.
p. cm. -- (Hispanic studies: culture and ideas ; v. 38)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Includes filmography.
ISBN 978-3-0343-0229-6 (alk. paper)
1. Motion pictures--Cuba--History--20th century. 2. Sex role in
motion pictures. 3. Masculinity in motion pictures. 4. Motherhood in
motion pictures. I. Title.
PN1993.5.C8B37 2011
791.43097291--dc23
2011027079

Cover illustration: ‘Yolanda’s Sun’ by Zella Clay.

ISSN 1661-4720
ISBN 978-3-0343-0229-6 E‐ISBN 978‐3‐0353‐0176‐2

© Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2011

Hochfeldstrasse 32, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland
[email protected], www.peterlang.com, www.peterlang.net

All rights reserved.

All parts of this publication are protected by copyright.
Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the
permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution.
This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming,
and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.

Printed in Germany
Contents

Acknowledgements vii

Introduction 1

Chapter 1
Machismo, Masculinity and the Modern 47

Chapter 2
Machismo on Screen 81

Chapter 3
Sexuality and Motherhood 125

Chapter 4
The Mother on Screen 157

Chapter 5
Cuba and the Postmodern 203

Chapter 6
The Postmodern on Screen 237

Conclusion 287

Bibliography 301
vi

Filmography 317

Index 321
Acknowledgements

I wish to thank, in the first instance, Dr Adam Sharman and Professor

Antoni Kapcia, who guided me through the production of this work with
unfailing commitment and intellectual rigour, at all times being available
with advice and seemingly endless knowledge. Likewise I wish to express
my thanks to the various institutions that made possible the development
of this work: the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos that
allowed me to research and watch films in their premises in Havana; the
Federación de Mujeres Cubanas that provided me with valuable information,
advice and interviews; the Department of Spanish and Latin American
Studies at the University of Nottingham, and the Cuba Research Forum
based there, that both employed me for the duration of my research, and
who provided me with funding to carry out research in Cuba and attend a
number of national and international conferences, and who also provided
a working space, stimulating for dialogue and debate, in which to work.
I also wish to thank a number of individuals in Cuba for their wisdom
and advice: Ambrosio Fornet for taking the time to be interviewed by
me on two occasions, Julio García Espinosa for spending time with me at
the Film School in San Antonio de los Baños and Reynier Abreu of the
Instituto del Libro, Havana, for his time and ef fort. I would also like to
thank the following individuals who, over the years, have contributed to
the development of this book and to my academic and intellectual pro-
gression: Professor Catherine Davies, Professor Bernard McGuirk and
Professor Mark Millington.
Finally, I am indebted to Kerri for her love, patience, understanding
and support during the last few years.
Introduction

Lucía is not a film about women; it’s a film about society. But within that society, I
chose the most vulnerable character, the one who is most transcendentally affected at
any given moment by contradictions and change […] the effects of social transforma-
tions on a woman’s life are more transparent. Because they are traditionally assigned
to a submissive role, women have suf fered more from society’s contradictions and
are thus more sensitive to them and more hungry for change. From this perspective,
I feel that the female character has a great deal of dramatic potential through which
I can express the entire social phenomenon I want to portray. This is a very personal
and a very practical position. It has nothing to do with feminism per se.1

El deber de un cineasta revolucionario es hacer la revolución en el cine.2

The Films, the Hypothesis and the Organisation of the Book

Humberto Solás’s classic film Lucía (1968) provoked the above quota-
tion from the highly acclaimed Cuban film director, who died on 17
September 2008.3 It is cited in many studies of Cuban cinema as it en-

1 Film-maker, and one of the founders of the New Latin American Cinema of the
1960s, Humberto Solás, quoted by Julianne Burton and Marta Alvear (1978: 33) in
an interview with the Cuban director.
2 ‘The duty of a revolutionary film-maker is to make a revolution in cinema’, Cuban
film-maker and theorist Julio García Espinosa (2000: 28).
3 Solás’s film Lucía is considered by world critics as one of the ten most important
films in the history of Spanish American cinema. Some of his major credits as a
director are: Manuela (1966), Cecilia (1981), Un hombre de éxito [A Successful Man]
(1986), El siglo de las luces (1991) [literally ‘The Century of Lights’ but an adaptation
of the Alejo Carpentier novel from 1962 known by the English title Explosion in a
2 Introduction

capsulates perfectly Cuban cinema’s relationship to its portrayal of female

characters.4
Marvin D’Lugo (1997: 155), for example, argues that the female figure
has long been identified with the Revolution and ‘with the emergence of
a truly national cinema in Cuba, that is, with the expression of the narra-
tives that embody and circulate the values of the revolutionary commu-
nity’, arguing that female characters in Cuban cinema of the Revolution
often retain the one ‘cardinal feature’ that Solás designated as the essential
feature of the female characters of Lucía – ‘transparency’ (i.e. that the
female protagonists are ‘seen through rather than seen’). He argues that
during the first decade of the Revolution, in productions such as Lucía, De
cierta manera [One Way or Another] (1974, Sara Gómez) and Retrato de
Teresa [Portrait of Teresa] (1979, Pastor Vega), ‘the ethos associated with
a revolutionary national identity was elaborated in fictional films through
an insistent focus on the narrative destiny of female characters’ (ibid.). He
puts the ‘revolutionary mythology’ within the figure of the female arguing
that it creates identification with the audience at a new level, in order ‘to
develop a form of address to, and identification by, the Cuban audience’
(ibid.). He goes on to argue that between 1987 and 1997, a change occurred,
in that images of women in Cuban cinema were used not only to embody
the concept of nation (this has remained, he suggests) but also to express
‘critical discourses about Cuban culture in general and the Revolution in
particular …’, and that this is an evolving process responding to changes in
contemporary Cuban society (ibid. 156).
Via the examination of six films that each address, to a greater or lesser
extent, issues of gender in contemporary Cuban society between 1974 and
1990, this book argues that the portrayal of aspects of gender relations in
Cuban cinema developed along a progressive path from expressions of
the modern to expressions of the postmodern, closely following a cultural
transition in the nation as a whole. This does not mean that there occurred

Cathedral], Miel para Oshún [Honey for Oshún] (2001) and Barrio Cuba [Cuba
Neighbourhood] (2005).
4 See D’Lugo, 1997: 155; Spinella, 2004: 151; Chanan, 1985: 225–6.
Introduction 3

an absolute rejection of all the principles of what it meant to be ‘modern’,

but that, in the latter half of the 1980s, expressions of the postmodern as
described by Jameson and others can be seen through the prism of gender
relations in some of the films produced. The films to be examined are: De
cierta manera (Sara Gómez, 1974), Retrato de Teresa (Pastor Vega, 1979),
Lejanía [Far Away] ( Jesús Díaz, 1985), Hasta cierto punto [Up to a Point]
(Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1983), ¡Plaf f ! (o demasiado miedo a la vida) [Plaf f !
(or Too Afraid of Life)] ( Juan Carlos Tabío, 1988), and Mujer transparente
[Transparent Woman] (Humberto Solás, 1990).
The choice of some of these films is immediately obvious. Chapter 1
theoretically and contextually introduces the notion of machismo in Cuban
society, while Chapter 2 analyses two films that focus on this aspect of
gender relations. De cierta manera debates machismo using an experimental
cinematic approach. It is often cited as one of the films that encapsulates
the Revolution’s early, modernist approach to its treatment of gender and
gender relations. I will argue that it formulates a dialectical discussion that
powerfully challenges traditional notions of gender in Cuban society via
an aesthetic mechanism that breaks with traditional narrative in a number
of ways. Hasta cierto punto is a pessimistic account of attempts to change
basic attitudes towards male–female relations in the Cuban population. In
its portrayal of a central female character that resists the forces of machismo
it is critical of machista values that exist in both the working class and the
bourgeoisie, and in many ways pays homage to De cierta manera.
Chapter 3 discusses the figure of the mother – its representation in
film and in Cuban society – while Chapter 4 highlights two dif ferent
representations of the mother-figure. Retrato de Teresa is an examination
of domestic marital relations and was highly controversial at the time. It
poses many questions regarding relations between men and women in
Cuban society (this time on a much more personal level, on the domestic
front) and opens up many issues regarding the cultural representation of
the mother-figure, not least from the point of view of sex and sexuality.
Lejanía, however, is not such an obvious choice in a study of the
representation of gender, as it is a film about exile as much as it is about
a mother and her son. But its inclusion is justified for two reasons. First,
its representation of the character of the mother makes an interesting
4 Introduction

comparison with that of the mother in Retrato de Teresa, six years earlier,
and second, in its bold aesthetic, it illustrates the beginnings of an emerg-
ing critical and resisting postmodernism that continued into the late 1980s
and on into the early 1990s.
Whilst Chapter 5 debates the emergence of postmodern culture in
Cuba, I have discussed both ¡Plaf f! (o demasiado miedo a la vida) and Mujer
transparente in Chapter 6. In ¡Plaf f!, the tradition of allegorising the nation
through female characters is intentionally parodied in postmodern style,
and the film is a direct critique of aspects of the Revolution, including the
status of women within it, while Mujer transparente discusses women’s strug-
gle for equality at one of the most significant moments in Cuba’s history.
It also revisits and reworks, in postmodern style, Humberto Solas’s notion
of the ‘transparent woman’ in Cuban revolutionary cinematic history.
The period of study, 1974–90, is self-evident. 1974 was the year in which
De cierta manera was made, although it was not released until 1978 for rea-
sons that will be made clear in Chapter 2. It was a highly significant film in
Cuba’s history and opens up a wealth of issues concerning gender, gender
relations and machismo in Cuban society. It was made one year before the
law on male–female relations, known as the Código de la Familia [Family
Code] was promulgated (to be discussed shortly), and the time between its
production and its release – 1974–8 – straddle a hugely important period
in Cuban cultural history.
The years 1971–6 were defined by writer and cultural critic Ambrosio
Fornet as the ‘quinquenio gris’ [grey five years] of Cuban cultural produc-
tion: a period of cultural authoritarianism stemming largely from closer
political ties with the Soviet Union, when Cuba’s politics became more dog-
matic and, as Fornet (Chanan, 2004: 313) commented, ‘a vain attempt was
made to implement, along with the Soviet economic model, a sort of criollo
socialist realism’.5 These years were marked by a pathway of rigid ideological

5 Michael Chanan (1985 and 2004) discusses the politics and history of ICAIC
throughout his book on Cuban Cinema. For more on the politics of ICAIC see
Quiros (1996: 279–93). For other general histories of ICAIC see Burton (1997:
123–42); Caballero y Del Río (1995: 102–15), and the of ficial website of ICAIC:
<http://www.cinecubano.com>.
Introduction 5

and cultural thought, and the 1971 Congress of Education and Culture
proclaimed art as ‘un arma de la Revolución’ [a weapon of the Revolution],
declaring such activities as homosexuality (and any others not in accord
with the revolutionary process) as extravagant and counter-revolutionary.
However, after the Ministry of Culture was set up in 1976, there began a
process of cultural institutionalisation alongside the ‘Institutionalisation’
of the Revolution, with a huge expansion of cultural activities.6
As Michael Chanan (1985: 16) remarks, in 1977, in a country with only
10 million people, ‘there were over 46,000 professional artistic perform-
ances that recorded an attendance of almost 12 million, and nearly 270,000
aficionado performances with an attendance of almost 48 million.’
De cierta manera was made during the ‘grey five years’ but was not
released until after the process of institutionalisation had been put in place.
This, combined with the introduction of the Family Code in 1975, and
the fact that one of the central concerns of the film is the prevalence of
machismo in Cuban revolutionary society, makes it the perfect place to
start an examination of gender relations.
It is very convenient to end this study in 1990, as it was the year in
which the final film to be discussed, Mujer transparente, was released. It
is a film that pays much attention to Solás’s opening quotation and was
supervised by the great director himself. It was also released shortly after the
collapse of the Berlin Wall, a symbolic event that ushered in the collapse of
the Soviet Union, provoking enormous changes in Cuban society. What
came next (the ‘Special Period’) falls outside the remit of this book. The
last two chapters, however, deal with the emergence of postmodernism in

6 After the failure in 1970 to produce a targeted 10m tons of sugar, Cuba joined
COMECON (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance – an economic organisa-
tion of Communist states) in 1972 and moved from a so-called ‘moral economy’
based on moral imperatives to work, to a more incentivised economy. This became
formalised ‘in the various moves of 1975–6’ (Kapcia, 2000: 193) in the process of
institutionalisation of the Revolution’s practices, that included, in 1976, the forma-
tion of the Ministry of Culture, and the subsequent decentralisation of publishing
houses in the world of literature.
6 Introduction

Cuba and in Cuban cinema and, in this way, point towards the impending
changes that were to occur after 1990.
One of the goals of this study is to illustrate how, through the prism
of the gender debate presented on film, Cuban cinema both ref lected and
produced some of the central ideological concerns within the nation’s
society during this period (1974–90). It will be possible to see, through
the examination of six films of the period, how the gender debate both
helps to create and, at the same time, makes reference to, more general
cultural debates on the island. As such, the issues around gender explored
through Cuban cinema can be seen as one of the most important cultural
topics of this period.
The importance of cinema to the development of the Cuban Revolution
cannot be overstated and the significance of the debate on gender and
gender relations within it plays a crucial part in Cuba’s revolutionary cul-
tural evolution. It is necessary, therefore, to consider how Cuban cinema
developed its particular framework for expressing issues of gender on-screen,
and why such a topic became one of the most important areas of expression,
from the inception of a Cuban national film institute until at least the early
1990s. A brief outline of the growth and progression of the Institute will
serve to establish the context within which this book operates.

The Cuban Film Institute and the Gender Debate in

Cuban Cinema

Historian, film-maker and film critic Michael Chanan (2000) provides

a valuable insight into Cuban culture generally in his article, ‘Cuba and
Civil Society, or Why Cuban Intellectuals Are Talking about Gramsci’.
In an examination of Cuban ‘civil society’, Chanan argues that ‘Cuban
society has gone through four phases since the Revolution of 1959, each
corresponding to roughly a decade’ (ibid.). The 1960s, he argues, was the
Introduction 7

decade of revolutionary euphoria and ‘direct democracy’;7 the 1970s the

decade of institutionalisation and ‘Sovietisation’, when there was an evi-
dent move towards orthodox Marxism ‘and the hegemony of Moscow’
(ibid.); the 1980s, that of ‘rectification’, when such negative tendencies as
inef ficiency, absenteeism and corruption were attacked; and the 1990s, ‘fol-
lowing the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union,
and of ficially called the “Special Period” – was the decade of “desencanto
[disenchantment] or desconfianza [mistrust]”’ (ibid.). Such generalised
temporal divisions are obviously somewhat simplistic, but actually serve
an examination of Cuban cinema very well indeed.
The Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos [Cuban
Institute of Art and Cinematographic Industries] (ICAIC) was the first
cultural body to be set up by the revolutionary administration in March
1959, and was created in the whirlwind of revolutionary fervour that was
sweeping Cuba and the rest of Latin America at the time. As John King
argues, Cuba seemed like an exemplary solution that of fered artists and
intellectuals an attractive model for ‘fusing artistic and political vanguards’
at least until the ‘grim realities of the ’70s’ (1990: 67) and ICAIC, even
today, retains a tight hold on cinematic production and distribution within
the nation.8

7 Chanan takes the term ‘direct democracy’ from Jean-Paul Sartre, C. Wright Mills,
and Paul Baran, who all described the socio-political state of Cuba in this way in
the 1960s. As Chanan (2000) states this was, ‘a fair enough, though inadequate,
description of a social system in embryonic form still trying to establish itself.’
8 Cinema in Cuba is not made entirely by ICAIC. As Juan Antonio García Borrero
(2001: 11) points out, films are also produced by the Estudios Cinematográficos
de Televisión de las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias [Revolutionary Armed
Forces Television and Cinema Studios](ECTVFAR); la Escuela Internacional de
Cine y Televisión [International School of Cinema and Television] (EICTV), at
San Antonio de los Baños, outsider Havana; los Estudios Cinematográficos de la
Televisión [Television Cinema Studios] (ECTV); el Taller de cine de la Asociación
Hermanos Saíz (TCAHS) [Cinema Workshop of the Saíz Brothers Association], as
well as via co-productions with other countries, and in small ‘cine-clubs’. However,
ICAIC has been the major power in Cuban cinema since its formation, its films
having more national and international significance than any others. This work
8 Introduction

Under its first president, Alfredo Guevara, ICAIC found it easy to

become an organic and creative movement with film-makers free to be artis-
tic and experimental. It became a school where the principle was to develop
talent – ‘a revolutionary cultural project’ (García Espinosa, 2000a: 202).
As such it has had a powerful and significant role to play in the creation
and fostering of a revolutionary ideology, and became decisive in helping
to unify the country, standing, as it did, in the vanguard of culture (ibid.).9
Although it has maintained a degree of autonomy from the state, it has
always been very strongly linked to the search for and expression of a new,
revolutionary, Cuban national identity.
Since its inception, then, ICAIC has been the promoter of national
cinema and, according to Cuban critic García Borrero (2001: 11), from a
critical point of view, virtually nothing of value was made before 1959. And,
according to Álvarez (1995: 114) ‘… antes de 1959, Cuba produce un cine
plagado de maracas, rumba, casinos, nightclubs, bailarinas’ [before 1959,
Cuba produces a cinema plagued by maracas, rumba, casinos, nightclubs
and dancers]. Cuban spectators in the major cities were fed a diet largely
consisting of Hollywood films. Those in the rural areas had no access to
cinema at all.
Thus, the increasingly Marxist Revolution made possible the expres-
sion of a new cinema that would be plural, diverse and aesthetically open
to experimentation, counter to the dominant codes and structures of
Hollywood, and the literary codes of the nineteenth century that, as García
Espinosa (2000a: 205) argues, force the spectator into a passive acceptance
of the image viewed, rather than into a critical position.
In the first few months of the Revolution, the larger cinemas, most
of which were owned by large US corporations, were nationalised while

acknowledges that there is an alternative contribution to Cuba’s cinema history but

only considers and analyses films produced by ICAIC. Analysis of Cuba’s ‘alterna-
tive’ cinematic production would itself make for an interesting full-length study.
9 The law that created ICAIC declared cinema an art form and a body to serve the
creation of a collective consciousness, able to contribute to the deepening of the
revolutionary spirit. So, as Chanan argues, the creation of ICAIC was the creation
of socialist cinema (1985: 18).
Introduction 9

the smaller ones became cooperatives under the government. This was the
only way to guarantee the production and distribution of Cuban national
cinema. To enable the rural population to watch films, mobile cinemas were
taken to remote parts of the countryside where a variety of films (including
Charlie Chaplin classics) were introduced to those that had never before
seen them.10 John King (1990: 150) quotes Fidel Castro: ‘The work of the
mobile cinemas is the most interesting experience in the formulation of
a new public.’
ICAIC was set up because the Revolution’s leaders understood, as did
Lenin, the value of cinema in promoting the ideals of a new socialist move-
ment.11 In essence ICAIC wanted to create a cinema with national char-
acteristics. However, it would take nearly ten years before Cuban cinema
asserted itself with the production in 1968 of the films Memorias del sub�
desarrollo [Memories of Underdevelopment], by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
and Lucía. Cuban cinema, García Espinosa (2000a: 8) asserts, arrived at
modernity in the 1960s almost from nothing and became a very important
tool in developing a revolutionary consciousness. It helped transform a large
majority of the Cuban people from a nation of viewers, dumbfounded by
their first experience of cinematography, to that of active participants in a
revolutionary process. A part of this process, as we shall see, included the
eradication of certain negative tendencies, some of which, like machismo
for example, are displayed in relations between men and women. The pro-
duction of films, then, that presented these issues to an increasingly critical
audience, became an important part of ICAIC’s raison d’être.
In line with Chanan’s division of Cuban cultural periods into separate
decades, the early years of ICAIC represent a period of experimentation,
using various artistic styles and filmic content, in a search for an appropriate

10 Octavio Cortázar’s 1967 short film Por primera vez [For the First Time] illustrates
the use of the mobile cinemas, and ‘[…] produced for its audience a vision of its own
self-discovery as an audience’ (Chanan, 1985: 14).
11 Michael Chanan (1985: 15) comments that for Lenin it was film that helped develop
the mission of the Soviet Union as Lenin said: ‘for us, film is the most important of
all the arts.’ This is not simple propaganda, Chanan argues, but a way of mobilising
energy towards a new way of life.
10 Introduction

genre that might best serve the requirements of a national film institute
firmly attached to the revolutionary process and searching for ways to
express this new radicalisation of society. As Chanan (2000) says: ‘What
happened in the 1960s was that the triumph of the Revolution completely
recast civil society precisely because it radicalised the political domain in
a manner that redefined the political subject and the character of citizen-
ship’. The first president of ICAIC, Alfredo Guevara, was a college friend of
Fidel Castro, and the early film-makers were Julio García Espinosa, Tomás
Gutiérrez Alea, Jorge Haydu, Jorge Fraga, Néstor Almendros and Santiago
Álvarez, amongst others. Both García Espinosa and Gutiérrez Alea had
studied cinema in Rome and were inf luenced by the European avant-garde
style of film-making and Italian neo-realism in particular.12
Thus, during the 1960s, a process of social revolution was being devel-
oped that could also be seen in the so-called ‘Boom’ of Latin American
literature at the same time. But, although many aspects of Cuban cinema
throughout the 1960s were extraordinary in their revolutionary aspirations,
techniques and, indeed, results, the images of male–female relations pro-
duced in the popular films of this period often sit uncomfortably along-
side this ‘revolutionary’ practice. It is questionable whether the cultural
modernity that García Espinosa rightly posits as being combined with this
sense of social revolution (a modernity stemming from economic growth
and industrial development, derived from Marxism) stretched as far as
the development of new and radical images of male–female relations that
might have aided the drive towards egalitarian politics.

12 In 1960, ICAIC made its first feature films, of which the first to be shown (though
it was the second to be completed) was Gutiérrez Alea’s Historias de la revolución
[Stories of the Revolution], made in the Italian neo-realist style. As Jaskari (1997)
comments: ‘The inspiration of Italian neo-realism came from the desire to expose the
true face of the nation from behind the façade of development, to create the “cinema
of the humble” and discover on film the Italy of underdevelopment’. Julio García
Espinosa (2000a: 203) believes that the New Latin American Cinema movement of
the 1950s and 1960s was heavily inf luenced by Italian neo-realism. He argues that it
was a useful way of filming with few resources, no ef fects or stars. It of fered a cinema
of resistance and a spirit of change, but, ultimately, was limited in developing a new
narration specific to the Cuban problematic.
Introduction 11

Films that take as one of their central concerns issues of gender rela-
tions, have formed a significant and disproportionate part of ICAIC’s
feature-film production. Indeed, Jean Stubbs (1995: 3) believes that ‘it is
probably safe to say that hardly a single film has not addressed, in some
way or another, changing gender relations within the Revolution.’ This is a
strong claim and has a great deal of truth in it, although the presentation of
gender relations is not, of course, the main objective of many Cuban films.
However, such has been the ferocity of debate surrounding the subject
throughout the Revolution (and particularly during the mid-1970s–mid-
1980s) that any film presenting any relations at all between men and women
(and what film does not?) can be viewed with this debate in mind.
Catherine Benamou (1999: 67) also believes the issue of gender has
been fundamental to the development of a revolutionary society but ques-
tions whether issues of dif ference along lines of gender, race, or sexual
preference have been adequately explored at an institutional level in Cuba
or whether there should be more ‘autonomous spaces within which diverse
subjectivities and identities need to be represented.’ So, has Cuba been
too concerned with its search for an independent ‘cubanness’ (a singular
identity in defence of itself against cultural imperialism) that it has failed
to consider suf ficiently the various diverse spaces of dif ference that exist in
a debate as wide and complex as that of gender? This is one of the central
questions of this book.
Despite the revolutionary practices carried out at the level of form
and construction, it can be argued that most of the films of the 1960s do
not portray radical or novel images of gender relations. A brief outline of
three of the most important films of the first decade of the Revolution
will serve to present an initial idea of how gender relations were first dealt
with in the new, radicalising Cuban cinema; from here it will be possible to
establish how these representations evolved through the 1970s and 1980s.
If one considers the images of woman presented in these films, at a time
in the history of Latin America when the cultural space was being increas-
ingly shaped by new and exciting aesthetic forms and practices, perhaps
the risks taken were subsumed by a desire for wholeness, oneness, in the
creation of a Latin American sentimentality: a desire for a solution to the
continent’s problems that overlooked the concerns of ‘marginalised’ groups,
12 Introduction

such as women. For it must be argued that, in cinema at least, women were
left on the fringes, both in terms of production and, as we shall see now in
the case of three Cuban films, where the image of Woman is concerned,
in terms of reception.
A brief analysis of three of the most important films of the 1960s will
serve to locate the relationship between Cuban cinema and its representa-
tions of gender relations and will provide a backdrop for the analysis of the
films that are central to this study. If we take, for example, the film Aventuras
de Juan Quin Quin [Adventures of Juan Quin Quin] (1967) by Julio García
Espinosa, one of Cuba’s most important film-makers and film theorists –
former head of both ICAIC and of the film school, Escuela Internacional
de Cine y Televisión (EICTV) at San Antonio de Los Baños – it would
appear that its highly experimental nature often subverts any attempt to
display woman as anything other than a feminine object.
As Chanan (1985: 209) states, Aventuras… was ‘Cuban cinema’s first
fully accomplished experimental film’ and also a comedy. The film represents
García Espinosa’s attempt to unite pure entertainment with a revolution-
ary aesthetic and is a precursor to his essay on the development of a film
style pertinent to the contemporary Cuban reality (written after the film
was made), which is entitled ‘Por un cine imperfecto’ [For an Imperfect
Cinema].13 Aventuras… is a parody of Hollywood cinema genres, this parody
being designed to produce a highly artificial and comical aesthetic, with
the viewer’s attention being deliberately drawn to this artificiality and
cinematic illusion.14
But the parody is often undermined by the film’s apparent support
(without the irony that is attached to the male characters) of conventional
notions of female representation. As Taylor (1979) argues, there are areas of
underdevelopment that the film still evades, and a straight reproduction of
certain codes of behaviour (albeit tinged with an ironic aesthetic) is simply
not enough to break with traditional codes. Where they appear, the women
characters feature as asides, aids or confectionery for the revolutionary hero

13 This essay will be discussed at length in Chapter 1.

14 For a more detailed analysis of this film see Taylor (1979).
Introduction 13

and others. If the truth of this film lies in its brilliantly funny ironic swipe
at capitalist culture then a part of that truth is left out.
Before 1974, the most significant film to address issues of gender rela-
tions was Solas’s Lucía (1968). It is divided into three parts, each part being
set during a significant time in Cuba’s history.15 In each of the parts the
principal character is a woman whose personal life serves as a backdrop to
a narrative that opens up questions about Cuban national identity at each
significant historical moment. Like Aventuras… it is a highly experimental
film that is made using a variety of dif ferent styles and techniques and is
‘one of the films that supports and defines the ideals of promoting a radical
new vision’ (Martin and Paddington, 2001: 2).16
In Part One the character Lucía is finally driven to murder her lover,
a man who represents the Spanish colonisation of Cuba. Here, ‘Woman’
and ‘Nation’ are fused, i.e. the female figure is mobilised to function as
national allegory, and driven through circumstances to take up arms in a
collective, hysterical moment of revenge against oppression. In Part Two,
Lucía joins the fight against dictator Machado in 1933, and develops a
female solidarity with her factory colleagues, but is ultimately alienated
by her lover and remains eternally trapped in a one-sided relationship with
him, and marginalised by the processes of revolution. In Part Three, she
becomes physically trapped by her jealous husband, who refuses to let her
out of the house, only for the Revolution (in the form of her other female
work colleagues who represent its drive to get women into the workforce)
to rescue her from this traditional machista behaviour.
Although the film is replete with images of revolution and change (a
revolution conducted by men), for the women in the film the process of
liberation is more one of ‘evolution’ than ‘revolution’ as many of the old
principles appear very dif ficult to break. But Lucía, unlike Aventuras… is
trying to develop possibilities for a new definition of gender relations within

15 Part One is set in 1895 during the Wars of Independence, Part Two in 1932 during
the overthrow of dictator Gerardo Machado, and Part Three in the 1960s in the first
few years of the Revolution.
16 For more on the aesthetics of Lucía see Chanan (2004: 275–88).
14 Introduction

Cuban revolutionary society (even when it is accepted that this society

is still loaded with patriarchal prejudice). Solás’s film illustrates woman’s
position in an evolving culture, whereas García Espinosa presents ironic
critiques of another society’s filmic representations of women.
The most important Cuban film of the 1960s was Memorias del sub�
desarrollo. Although its central theme is not the debate on gender, some
critics argue that it fails to address suf ficiently the question of male–female
relations in the new, revolutionary Cuba. Benamou (1999: 68), for exam-
ple, argues that, although the treatment of women by the main character,
Sergio, is criticised as pre-revolutionary decadence, ‘the preclusion of an
oppositional reading from a feminine viewpoint is due to its detainment
in the audiovisual documentation of Sergio’s conscious and preconscious
experience’; at no time does there exist a unity of women in any com-
bined opposition to male forces. Women in Memorias… have no ‘agency’
as Benamou puts it. She believes that there is no real critique of machismo
in the film, and no real alternative to patriarchy. It is as if the criticism of
Sergio is that he is not macho enough to belong to the new revolutionary
order (ibid.).17
The problem with all three films, from the point of view of develop-
ing a radical new vision of male–female relations, is that priority is given
to ideology over subjectivity, as the female protagonists sit alongside men
in the revolutionary processes observed.18 The image of Woman is created
always as secondary to the development of a (male) revolutionary purpose.
Women then have to fit into and alongside that purpose, their definitions
only being created in relation to it.
As the quotation at the beginning of this introduction reveals, Solás
was interested in the parallel between the representation of women and the
expression of Cuban national identity. His other films include: Manuela
(1966), in which a peasant woman is transformed into a revolutionary

17 For various takes on Memorias … see: Chanan (2004: 288–302); Lesage (1979);
Sharman (2007).
18 Chapters 5 and 6 discuss the questioning of the very notion of subjectivity and the
possibilities for its representation in film.
Introduction 15

guerrilla fighter; Cecilia (1981), an adaptation of the novel Cecilia Valdés

by Cirilo Villaverde, and an attempt to reconstruct the past from a new
standpoint;19 and Amada (1983), a film about a bourgeois wife who falls in
love with her cousin, a young idealist fighting against the Cuban govern-
ment in 1914. Solás, then, developed the idea that the representation of
female protagonists served well his concern with the projection of a new
vision of Cuban society, be it an attempt to rewrite history or understand
the present.
As the debate on male–female relations intensified in Cuba from the
mid-1970s, so representations of this debate increased across the cultural
spectrum. This coincided with the ‘Institutionalisation’ of the Revolution,
discussed earlier.
The two most important films from this period for the purposes of
this study are De cierta manera (1974) and Retrato de Teresa (1979) and
both will be discussed in detail in Chapters 2 and 4 respectively. The 1970s
can be split into two parts (1971–6 and 1976–80) with the production and
release of De cierta manera, the first film to be examined in this book, creat-
ing a bridge between the two periods. With the failure of the sugar harvest
in 1970 (a misguided attempt to produce 10 million tons of sugar due to
the fact that the Soviets would buy it at pre-established, inf lated prices, by
diverting resources away from other industries and revolutionary ef forts)
and the Padilla af fair,20 there was a concerted attempt to redefine (or at least
re-appraise) all artistic production. This is when, Julianne Burton (1997:
131) argues, the process of defining and producing a national culture begins,
with a reduction in the kinds of cinematic experimentation seen through
the 1960s, in favour of moves towards more non-fiction features.
But many of the changes were brought about through economic neces-
sity rather than ideological priority. The lack of resources due to the US
embargo, and the failure of the sugar harvest of 1970 reduced the money

19 See González, R. (2000), ‘Some Historical Themes in Cuban Cinema’.

20 The poet Heberto Padilla (winner of the UNEAC Prize in 1968) was arrested and
imprisoned in 1971 for 28 days for criticising the government after he became dis-
enchanted with the deepening associations with the USSR. He also lost his job on
the newspaper, Granma (Chanan, 1983: 257).
16 Introduction

available to ICAIC and, as Chanan (1985: 256) points out, there were
twenty-four documentaries made in 1970 and only one thirty-minute
fiction film, plus one animation. In 1971, however, there were five fiction
films produced, including José Massip’s Páginas del diario de José Martí
[Pages From the Diary of José Martí], Los días del agua [The days of Water]
(Manuel Octavio Gómez), and Gutiérrez Alea’s Una pelea cubana contra los
demonios [A Cuban Fight Against the Demons]. These helped to develop
the anti-colonial, nationalistic intent of Cuban cinema at this time.21
Historical films were prominent in the 1970s. Perhaps this points to a
desire on the one hand to avoid commentary on contemporary events, or
on the other hand to redefine and relocate Cuban history in the manner
described by Chanan. El otro Francisco [The Other Francisco] (1974, Sergio
Giral) forms part of this historical reconstruction, along with Giral’s other
two features in the 1970s, Rancheador [Slave Runner] (1977) and Maluala
(1979). The battle, then, was not only fought in the mountains and at
Playa Girón, and subsequently on the international stage, but was also
being fought in the cultural arena – but nowhere more visibly than in the
cinemas. Both Burton and John Hess (Burton, 1997: 131) argue that the
1970s was marked by artistic decline in an ‘attempt to define and produce
a people’s culture’, as ICAIC lost a degree of the autonomy it had expe-
rienced during the ‘golden era’ of the 1960s. So it does appear that both
political necessity and socialist practice were evident in the film-makers’
choice of genre and topic at least in the early part of the 1970s as the film
El hombre de Maisinicú [The Man of Maisinicú] (1973) by Manuel Pérez

21 Many of the documentaries produced in the early 1970s had clear and evident over-
tones of the philosophies of José Martí, illustrating a desire to forge a new identity
for Cuba through the medium of film – an attempt to relocate the nation away from
its colonial past. In feature films too, this process is evident. Páginas del diario de José
Martí is an expressionistic homage to the Cuban hero, a ‘truly hallucinatory film’
as Chanan argues (1985: 258) while Una pelea cubana contra los demonios forms part
of what Chanan calls ‘cine rescate’ in its attempt to rescue the image of Cuba from
its colonial past (ibid.). Los días del agua by Manuel Octavio Gómez also deals with
a reformulation of Cuban identity, using a real historic event of the 1930s to point
to the ease with which ordinary people can be exploited by political and religious
opportunism.
Introduction 17

would illustrate, as it deals with a struggle against CIA-backed banditry

in the years immediately after 1959.
Timothy Barnard (1997: 149) also asserts that, after a period of experi-
mentation in the 1960s, the period of the late 1960s and the 1970s saw
an increase in historical themes being passed through ICAIC for fear of
reprisals if contemporary subjects were dealt with. He cites Ustedes tienen
la palabra [The Word is Yours] (1974), by Manuel Octavio Gómez, a story
of corruption and opportunism told in f lashback and contrasted with
present day revolutionary unity, and Una pelea cubana contra los demonios,
that recreates an account of religious fanaticism in 1672.
Both juxtapose historical and contemporary images in a re-positioning
of Cuban history that has definite political overtones. These films were
entirely necessary in establishing a new and more meaningful perception
of history for the Cuban people and, as Barnard (ibid. 153) comments,
they are formal representations of an ideology of intervening in history
in order to create a need for the present. The previous carriers of the cin-
ematic monopoly in Cuba had forged their own version both of history
and of a contemporary reality largely erroneous or irrelevant to the major-
ity of Cubans, but now a dif ferent interpretation of the past was being
created.
Michael Myerson (1973: 84) makes a good point concerning the lack
of contemporary criticism in films of the 1970s. He argues that, while
the documentaries dealt with a present day reality, Cuban feature films
attempted to rewrite Cuba’s negative and badly portrayed history, not
because the film-makers feared government reprisals but because they
themselves were revolutionaries, many committed communists, and they
did not want to weaken the position of the Revolution by making anything
overly critical, and also because they did not want to make simple propa-
ganda in favour of the Revolution as this was detrimental to the artistic
values of ICAIC. The reason that they did not deal with contemporary
subjects in feature films (such as gender relations) was largely because in
the first years it was too soon to critically observe contemporary reality
in fictional form – an analysis that is much better observed at a temporal
distance. Later, particularly in the 1990s, however, contemporary reality
was dealt with in fiction largely because the historical rewriting process
18 Introduction

had been underway for some time and the themes (and forms) had been
overused and overplayed.
One film during the 1970s that does present some criticism of a con-
temporary reality and could well have been included in this work, how-
ever, is Manuel Octavio Gómez’s, Una mujer, un hombre, una ciudad [A
Woman, a Man, a City] (1973). Complex and with a contemporary focus,
it is a film that explores the physical modernisation of Cuba via the inter-
actions between architects, male and female, who are constructing the
houses of the future and, as Chanan (2004: 275) states, ‘takes the role of
women very seriously’. However, an analysis is not included here as space
does not allow it. All six of the other films discussed pay far more atten-
tion to issues of gender per se and Una mujer, un hombre, una ciudad has a
tendency to idealise the figure of the ‘New Woman’ of the Revolution as
the ‘model imagined by men’ (ibid.).
But, out of the so-called ‘grey five years’ of the early to mid-1970s, came
De cierta manera, a film regarded by many to be one of the most important
in Cuba’s cinema history and that, as Caballero and Del Río (1995: 104) say,
started the move, in the latter part of the 1970s, towards popular cinema
and certainly started the first wave of anti-machista films that appeared in
the 1980s. This film will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 2 and is
certainly one of the most important films regarding the representation of
male–female relations to ever come out of Cuba – not least because, up
until the production of Ciudad en rojo [City in Red] by Rebeca Chávez
in 2009, it was the only full length feature film from ICAIC to have been
directed entirely by a Cuban woman.
The early part of the 1970s was a confusing and slightly troubled time
for ICAIC, finding its feet after the heady experimentalism of the 1960s
but not knowing in which particular direction to step next. Chanan delves
into this rather more deeply in the second edition of his book on Cuban
cinema, commenting that the 1970s saw the production of several dif ferent
genres of films but with a conspicuous absence of contemporary subjects.
However, this makes for an extremely interesting period in Cuba’s cinematic
history – some would say more interesting than in the more prolific days
of the 1980s, when production rose dramatically but, thematically, there
was perhaps less diversity and a move towards more popular cinema.
Introduction 19

The end of the 1970s was a significant point in the history of Cuban
cinema, with the launch of the first Festival of New Latin American Cinema
in Havana, a festival that has grown every year to become the most impor-
tant event in the calendar for Latin American and Cuban cinema. Seen
as a promotion of the concepts delineated by Latin American film theo-
rists such as Jorge Sanjinés, Julio García Espinosa, Fernando Solanas and
Octavio Getino, the festival can be described as a post-colonial of fensive
against the Hollywood/Europe monopoly that cannot deal with the type
of repression suf fered by Latin American countries.
But, if the 1980s kicked of f positively with an af firmation of all that
was good in Latin American cinema, ICAIC was soon to be grappling
with a polemic that saw the removal of Alfredo Guevara as president. It all
revolved around the attempt to make a big budget spectacular in order to
sell around the world. Guevara put a whole year’s budget into the making
of Cecilia, directed by Humberto Solás. Adapted from Cirilo Villaverde’s
well-known and loved nineteenth-century novel Cecilia Valdés, the film
failed as it drifted markedly from the original story thereby upsetting, as
Chanan (2004: 388) remarks, ‘both the traditionalist and popular audi-
ences’. Guevara was dismissed as president and replaced by García Espinosa,
although neither the Institute nor Solás himself suf fered to any degree, both
getting on with the job of making more films. Perhaps this illustrates the
extent to which ICAIC was seen at the time as an important part of Cuba’s
cultural make-up and something that needed to be reformed rather than
removed, with artistic experimentation and risk-taking still being seen as an
essential duty of the film-maker. With García Espinosa as president, ICAIC
set about mending the damage done by the after-ef fects of Cecilia.
This period of the Cuban Revolution was marked by the Mariel exodus
of 1980 when 120,000 people were allowed by the Cuban government to
leave the country in a makeshift f lotilla to Miami after a period of dis-
content with the Cuban economy. So, in a moment of political instabil-
ity, both within ICAIC and the nation as a whole, how would García
Espinosa handle the running of one of the government’s most important
and inf luential cultural bodies? He began by increasing production using
low budgets, time restraints and fresh creative blood, although one of
the first films under his jurisdiction, Amada (1983), was directed by the
20 Introduction

experienced Solás. Amada is another historical drama and love story, set
in 1928 and is interesting for its psychological study of the main protago-
nist and for its optimistic ending, with the people taking to the streets in
protest at the worsening economic situation in Cuba.
But perhaps the most inf luential film of the early 1980s is Hasta cierto
punto which, as García Osuna (2003: 105) states, ‘gives a pessimistic account
of the ef fort by the government to change basic attitudes in the population’.
A film about sexism, machismo and the dif ficulty of changing entrenched
social codes, it is partly a homage to Gómez’s De cierta manera, and employs
similar techniques in mixing documentary and fiction, but is also a critique
of ICAIC itself, as we shall see in its detailed examination in Chapter 2.
Gutiérrez Alea had recently written his own Marxist theory on cinema
called Dialéctica del espectador [The Viewer’s Dialectic], in 1982, arguing
that film should create a shift from everyday reality to fictional reality, where
one informs the other, ‘a kind of formal credo of an independent Marxist
intellectual’ (Chanan, 2004: 407). This is discussed further in Chapter 1,
but in his book Gutiérrez Alea profoundly problematises the art of the
film-maker, arguing that the old juxtaposition of form and content is far
too simplistic to be relevant to a Cuban reality.
At the beginning of the 1980s, then, it was García Espinosa’s plan
to move away from the experimentalism of the 1960s and the historical
recovery of the 1970s, to make more popular (rather than populist) films,
popular in the sense that they dealt with popular issues (such as gender
relations). In this sense the films of the 1980s were most certainly aimed
at producing a dialogue with the spectator. Se permuta [House Swap]
(1983, Juan Carlos Tabío) is a contemporary comedy about the dif ficulty
of moving house in Havana, as a single mother desires to move upmarket
to a better neighbourhood. The film was seen by more than two million
people in Cuba (with a population of 11 million) and was a commercial hit,
being both funny and critical of a contemporary reality, easily identified
by the audience (ibid. 411). The following year, Rolando Díaz released his
first feature, Los pájaros tirándole a la escopeta [Tables Turned] that drew
an audience of nearly three million and again was an acclaimed hit (ibid.).
Díaz’s film is a generational comedy and again critical of a modern-day
Introduction 21

reality, hence its popularity. Both films have simple and fairly traditional
narrative structures, using popular and contemporary themes.
García Espinosa’s policies were appearing to work and eight feature
films were released in 1984 (ibid. 413). During the 1980s, there were approxi-
mately forty features produced by ICAIC that covered a variety of film
genres, from historical drama (e.g. Cecilia) to contemporary social comedy
(e.g. Se permuta, Los pájaros tirándole a la escopeta), historical satire (e.g.
Un hombre de éxito [A Successful Man], 1986, Humberto Solás), and social
commentary (e.g. Habanera [Havana Woman], 1984, Pastor Vega, and
Lejanía. As Davies states, at this point in its history ICAIC seemed to be
‘broadening its appeal at the expense of its thematic and linguistic audac-
ity’ (1997: 346).
Thus, there was a renewal in style and content in the 1980s that pro-
duced a number of films critical of a contemporary reality. Some, like Los
pájaros tirándole a la escopeta, could have been included in this work in far
more detail but, again, space does not permit it as around the same time,
both Hasta cierto punto and Lejanía were released. Both of these last two
films are extremely important regarding gender relations and could not have
been replaced. The important thing about the films Se permuta and Los
pájaros…, though, is that they opened the way for topical Cuban comedy
because they attack bad habits under socialism, and are contemporary and
immediate (Paranagua, 1988: 91–3). They prepared the ground for the
production of the best of all the social comedies in the 1980s, ¡Plaf f ! (o
demasiado miedo a la vida), which is analysed in detail in Chapter 6.
Habanera is also a film that could figure in any discussion of gender
relations in Cuban cinema as it deals with a woman’s desire, her psycho-
logical introspection and how she can be incorporated into the revolution-
ary process (Caballero y Del Río, 1995: 104), while Otra mujer [Another
Woman] (1986, Daniel Díaz Torres) portrays a couple’s conf lict and mas-
culine infidelity (Paranagua, 1988: 91).
Lejanía, about exile and the relationship between an émigré mother
and her son, was one of the most interesting films to come out of this
period during the mid-1980s and is discussed at length in Chapter 4. Later,
in 1988, ¡Plaf f ! set out to parody the very idea of using female characters
to represent the nation.
22 Introduction

What is evident from this period are the number of films dealing with
social concerns (generational conf lict, the pain of exile, housing problems,
inter-marital relations etc.), attributed by some observers to the maturation
of new film-makers, uninhibited by the necessity of recreating a new his-
tory for Cuba, and with the desire to question and even criticise aspects of
the Revolution (Aufderheide, 1989: 498). I have chosen Hasta cierto punto,
Lejanía, ¡Plaf f ! and Mujer transparente from this period as I feel they best
give a sense of the overall changes occurring in ICAIC over this time and,
indeed, in Cuban culture as a whole. We can witness, in this maturation
of film-makers, through the prism of male–female relations, an evident
move from expressions of the modern – in support of the relatively young
revolutionary process – in films like De cierta manera, or Retrato de Teresa,
for example, to expressions of the postmodern, which cast a critical and
questioning eye over many aspects of the Marxist revolutionary project
in some of the films of the late 1980s, including ¡Plaf f ! and Mujer trans�
parente. Comedy was one of the genres used to make this type of critical
social commentary, illustrating a light-hearted way of handling societal
problems.22
In 1986, as the economy suf fered increasingly from the tightening US
blockade, and the Soviet Union entered into perestroika and glasnost, Cuba’s
period called the ‘Rectification of Past Errors and Negative Tendencies’
(Kapcia, 2008: 42) began. This was a process of ‘deep reassessment’ (ibid.)
that included an austerity programme, the reduction of permits given for
private businesses (with a corresponding increase in the enticement of
foreign investment in cooperation with the Cuban government), a denun-
ciation of the USSR’s ‘betrayal of Marxism-Leninism’, and an attempt to
reinvigorate conciencia [consciousness] via an ideological purification of
the population (Bunck, 1994: 18). As Julie Bunck points out, at the Third
Party Congress in 1986, Castro called for a rebirth of ‘consciousness, a

22 This comedy turned more satirical in the early 1990s and took one step too many as
far as the authorities were concerned with the release of A�����������������������������
licia en el pueblo de maravi�
llas [Alicia in Wondertown] by Daniel Díaz Torres, a ‘scathingly satirical’ film ‘about
the society created by Castro’s revolution’ (García Osuna, 2003: 53), that was pulled
from the cinemas after three days.
Introduction 23

communist spirit, a revolutionary will’ (ibid.). In order to make ICAIC

more economically ef ficient, García Espinosa split the institution into three
creative groups that had their own separate production processes, each
under the control of a supervisory director. With increased production,
no single person could oversee the entire schedule in one year and so this
appeared to be a sensible move, especially as each group would be headed
by an experienced film-maker who would therefore concentrate on the
artistic merits of the films he supervised, rather than on budget restrictions.
Each group would therefore have control over itself thus allowing for, as
Chanan (2004: 429–30) points out, a more f lexible process.
At the end of the 1980s came a film that, this book argues, embodies
Cuban cinema’s entry into the postmodern era through its treatment of
issues of gender and gender relations, and ushered in the transition to the
‘Special Period’ as world communism collapsed. Under the guidance of
Humberto Solás’s creative group, the film Mujer transparente, an assem-
blage of five short films each by a dif ferent director, reworks and reinvents
Cuban cinema’s approach to issues of gender. Contemporary and with a
documentary feel, the five shorts deal with various aspects of women’s
lives in 1980s Cuba (male–female relationships, self-esteem, hopes for
the future, non-conformity and relationships with friends). The film as
a whole explores themes that are extremely sensitive to a Cuban political
and human sensibility and portrays controversial episodes surrounding the
relationship between Cubans living on the island and Cubans abroad. It is
discussed at length in Chapter 6 and concludes the film analyses.

Women and Gender in Cuba

In any study of gender and male–female relations, a major focus will be on

the position and role of women in the society to which it refers. This work
provides no exception to this and asserts that it is important to explore the
position of women in Cuban society in order to provide a socio-historical
24 Introduction

backdrop to the examination of how gender issues are presented on the big
screen. If, as García Espinosa (2000a: 201) argues, the project of human
emancipation characterises modernity, then it will be interesting to analyse
whether or not Cuban cinema provides evidence of such emancipation
through a period of rapid modernisation in Cuba’s history.
Cuba has been and continues to be a type of social laboratory in the way
that it has undertaken, for a number of generations, multiple economic and
social transformations. Amongst these, the incorporation of women into all
aspects of the revolutionary process has been one of the most important.
To that end, the Cuban Women’s Federation, the Federación de Mujeres
Cubanas (FMC) was set up in 1961, led by Vilma Espín, wife of Raúl Castro,
and has always been seen as part of the revolutionary vanguard.23
Since the triumph of the 1959 Revolution, Cuban society has been
centred on the notion of solidaridad. Solidarity for Cuban society is the
basic principle of human co-existence, the opposite of individualism that is
seen as simply egotism. Cuban women have been seen as essential contribu-
tors to the demands of the Revolution. Yolanda Ferrer (1998b), Secretary
General of the FMC, comments: ‘Nuestro papel en la sociedad es contribuir
a hacer realidad en todos los ámbitos y a todos los niveles, el ejército pleno
de la igualdad de la mujer […] trabajar por el fortalecimiento de la familia
[…] y defender esta Revolución que desde su triunfo se situó como obje-
tivo de especial importancia enaltecer a la mujer y garantizar que ocupará
el lugar que le corresponde en la vida nacional’ [Our role in society is to
contribute to the realisation, in all spheres and at all levels of society, of the
complete exercise of women’s equality […] to work for the strengthening of
the family […] and to defend this Revolution that since its triumph has set
as a particular object of importance the praise of women and to guarantee
that they will occupy their rightful place in national life].
Before 1959, as Bunck (1994: 89) asserts, going back as far as the early
1930s, women in Cuba compared well in status with other Latin American
countries. They received the vote in 1934 before all but Uruguay, Brazil and

23 For a more detailed history of the FMC see Azicri (1998: 457–71); McCaughan
(1998); and the website of the FMC at: <www.mujeres.cubaweb.cu>.
Introduction 25

Ecuador. There were similar numbers of female and male students between
the ages of five and fifteen, and literacy levels for women were higher than
men at around 79 per cent (only Argentina had a higher female literacy
rate). More women worked outside the home than in most other Latin
American nations. They were elected to the House of Representatives and
the Senate, were mayors, judges, cabinet members, and local councillors. The
1940 Constitution, which prohibited discrimination and called for equal
pay, was one of the most progressive in the western hemisphere regarding
women’s rights. But, she comments, there were certain inequalities, and
women were far from equal in terms of the power wielded in the govern-
ing of the state, and they were usually relegated to subordinate roles. There
was an authoritarian and patriarchal family structure that was a product
of the Hispanic legacy and highly inf luential, especially in the rural areas
that made up more than 43 per cent of the population. Infidelity amongst
men was accepted but not tolerated amongst women. Machismo was seen
as a good quality in this society – ‘a Latin notion of male superiority and
aggressiveness demonstrated by virility, strength, confidence, courage, and
power. Young girls were expected to be gracious, attractive, retiring, virtu-
ous, and virgin’ (ibid. 91).24 Women only made up some 17 per cent of the
labour force in 1959, the majority of these working in traditionally female
occupations such as nursing, teaching and domestic service (ibid.).
After 1 January 1959 the majority of the female population of Cuba
supported the Revolution, as the promotion of women into the public
domain was an evident goal of the Castro government. As Espín (1990: 90)
commented: ‘En 1959, el primer año de la Revolución, nosotros sentimos
con mucha fuerza la presión de las mujeres que deseaban unirse, organi-
zarse para participar mejor en las tareas de la Revolución’ [In 1959, the first
year of the Revolution, we felt very strongly the pressure from women that
wished to unite and organise themselves in order to participate more fully
in the tasks of the Revolution].

24 Chapter 1 deals in depth with machismo in Cuban society to theoretically introduce

two films that approach the subject, De cierta manera and Hasta cierto punto.
26 Introduction

The formation of the FMC came about without a preconceived struc-

ture or design programme, only with the will to defend and participate
in a revolutionary process to create a better society for everyone. Thus,
the FMC does not strive only for the furthering of the female cause but
does so within the confines of the revolutionary process. As Max Azicri
(1998: 457) argues, the dominant concept of the ‘liberation’ of women
has a dif ferent meaning in Cuba from that in the US or Europe as con-
cepts such as ‘status-seeking and achievement orientation or some kind of
hard-core individualism’ are rejected. Instead this ‘liberation’ is developed
through ‘the act of being freed from bourgeois, capitalistic domination’
within the auspices of the Revolution. ‘Rather than fighting the govern-
ment for recognition of their demands, Cuban women have struggled for
their emancipation, and scored substantive gains, within the parameters
of a socialist society whose goals are actually prescribed by an almost all-
male leadership’ (ibid.).
So the government works alongside the FMC and at the same time
expects the FMC to in turn comply with certain modernising policies
decided by the government. For Vilma Espín (Ferrer, 1998b: 3), what has
been of most importance to the FMC is obtaining parity with men within
the revolutionary process.

[E]l mayor aporte de la Federación es haber contribuido decisivamente a la transfor-

mación del pensamiento y la vida de las mujeres cubanas, haber cambiado radicalmente
su situación social, haber iniciado el proceso complejo de reconceptualizar los roles
sociales y familiares y desempeñar por las mujeres en la sociedad que estamos cons-
truyendo, comenzando a crear las bases económicas, culturales, jurídicas y sociales
necesarias para asegurar la igualdad de oportunidades y posibilidades a hombres y
mujeres y así impulsar el pleno ejercicio de sus derechos a la igualdad social.

[The major contribution of the Federation is to have contributed decisively to the

transformation of the thinking and lives of Cuban women, to have radically changed
their social situation, to have started the complex process of the re-conceptualisation
of social and family roles and to work on behalf of women in the society that we are
constructing, starting to create the economic, cultural, juridical and social founda-
tions necessary to assure the equality of opportunities and possibilities for men
and women and in this way to push forward the complete exercise of their rights
to social equality.]
Introduction 27

The Federation sees itself as struggling alongside men, rather than against
them, to arrive at the transformation of both women and the world in
which they live. Theirs is a popular brand of feminism, a concentration
on the contribution of women to the process of changing their disadvan-
tageous position and removing age-old negative traits concerning gender
issues, in order to participate in and defend the Revolution and its leaders.
‘[F]idel ha estado siempre, sistemáticamente, planteando con mucha fuerza
la necesidad de que estos rasgos se borren en nuestra sociedad’ [Fidel has
systematically always insisted upon the necessity that these traits be eradi-
cated from our society] (ibid. 16).
Some of the achievements of the FMC have been impressive and it
is important to analyse the most relevant ways in which the situation of
women in Cuba has been advanced in the last four decades, at the same
time as demonstrating how a patriarchal culture has been perpetuated and
has therefore provided points of detainment to this social progress.
In the first years of the Revolution, the idea of the liberation or eman-
cipation of women was deliberately not discussed. However, since 1959: ‘[…]
se habían establecido, a nivel gubernamental, políticas generales y sectori-
ales en correspondencia con la estrategia cubana de desarrollo económico
y social que incluía como un derecho inalienable de las mujeres, participar
en la vida económica, política, cultural y social del país, en igualdad de
oportunidades y posibilidades que los hombres’25 [general and sectorial
policies had been established, at governmental level, to correspond to the
Cuban strategy of economic and social development, that included as
an inalienable right of women, the right to participate in the economic,
political, cultural and social life of the country, with equal opportunities
and possibilities to that of men].
The FMC from its beginnings assumed the role of changing the dis-
criminatory mentality against women as well as consolidating them as a
force of civil transformation. In 1961 the FMC had about 17,000 members,
a number that grew to approximately three million by the 1990s (Leiner,

25 FMC (1996), ‘Las cubanas de Beijing al 2000. Conferencia ofrecida por Vilma Espín.
III Congreso. Ciudad de La Habana’: 2 (booklet).
28 Introduction

1994: 62). It constitutes a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) that

plays a decisive role in the recuperation of female dignity, by both making
women conscious of their rights and responsibilities in the construction
of a new society and by making it possible for them to be integrated into
the economic and political structures of the nation.
Amongst its most significant actions can be found: the creation of
objective conditions for the relief of domestic duties and responsibilities;
the development of a wide educative campaign to confront social, famil-
ial and individual conf licts that prevent or halt the presence of women in
public life; the pushing forward of cultural programmes that encourage
women into more complex tasks; and the incorporation of women into
the economic life of the country, diversifying their roles outside of the
role of housewife.26
These actions allegedly allow women access to work and to decision
making, and they promote the attempt to develop a non-sexist society.
However, it is worth stating here that the Revolution was conceived in
such a way as to incorporate women into a masculine world and even the
complete validation of women into such a world remained and, as we
shall see, still remains to be realised. The FMC has always been, ultimately,
responsible to the Communist Party. It has always been state funded with
minimal membership dues. As Bunck (1994: 93) argues, there must be
serious questions asked about whether women’s voices were ever heard
properly. ‘This government support provided the FMC with a degree of
legitimacy, and authority, over women’.
This study will argue that women are seen in Cuba as a body apart,
distinct from the male population. For example the magazine produced

26 For example the ministry of work not only overcame any restrictions to access for
women to traditionally masculine jobs, but promoted regulations that actively
favoured the incorporation of women, protecting their rights and guaranteeing
equality of opportunity and remuneration. Work legislation did not accept any
discrimination whatsoever regarding salaries, promotions etc. Also, the creation
of creche’s (círculos infantiles) in 1961 and the system of semi-boarding schools are
decisive elements in the massification of the incorporation of women into the public
life of work (Abreu, 2006: 2–5).
Introduction 29

by the FMC, Mujeres (Mujeres, 1998: 24), makes a comment on the 1997
Communist Party congress: ‘Por ello concebimos este congreso como el
mayor acicate para fortalecer la participación de los obreros, cooperativis-
tas, campesinos, jubilados y particularmente de la mujer cubana, heroína
indiscutible del Período Especial, en el desarrollo de la economía, la defensa
y de nuestra democracia socialista’ [As such we conceive this congress as
the major incentive to strengthen the participation of workers, those who
work in cooperatives, peasants, the retired and particularly Cuban women,
indisputable heroines of the Special Period, in the development of the
economy, defence and of our socialist democracy].
The reference to women being classed alongside the most marginalised
groups in society can be read in dif ferent ways: as an acceptance of the low
level of regard in which women are held, along with the knowledge that
this must change rapidly, or as evidence of the nature of a paternalistic,
hierarchical order. It could also be interpreted as the belief and acceptance
within Cuban society that men and women are inherently dif ferent and
that this dif ference should be celebrated. The fact that this comment was
made in a magazine written by a body that serves to protect the rights of
women nearly forty years after the triumph of the Revolution points to
the latter. But does this acceptance of dif ference have negative overtones,
whereby the upholding of it could be used against women to further the
cause of a patriarchal order? This is one of the problems that I hope to tease
out in the analysis of some of the films in this work.
One of the problems that could arise in an acceptance of dif ference is
that the social mores of a machista tradition could continue in a society that
is continually trying to promote egalitarian principles. This possible con-
tradiction is illustrated in the following quote from the magazine Mujeres
(ibid. 30): ‘Y es que desde los días del Moncada y luego en la sierra y la
lucha clandestina, Fidel defendió el derecho de la mujer a participar como
una combatiente más, a pesar de resquemores e incluso incomprensión
de muchos guerrilleros’ [And since the days of Moncada and later in the
mountains, in the clandestine struggle, Fidel defended the right of women
to participate as simply another fighter, despite the resentment and even
incomprehension of many guerrilla fighters].
30 Introduction

Fidel Castro (Stone, 1981: 48) himself has called the struggle for female
equality the ‘revolution within the Revolution’27 and has spoken of their
‘participation’ in the great struggle against capitalism and the West. As
Castro (Mujeres, 1998: 3) said in 1962:

Las mujeres dentro de la sociedad tienen intereses que son comunes a todos los miem-
bros de la sociedad; pero tienen también intereses que son propios de las mujeres.
Sobre todo, cuando se trata de crear una sociedad distinta, de organizar un mundo
mejor para todos los seres humanos, las mujeres tienen intereses muy grandes en ese
esfuerzo, porque, entre otras cosas, la mujer constituye un sector que en el mundo
capitalista en que vivíamos estaba discriminado. En el mundo que estamos constru-
yendo, es necesario que desaparezca todo vestigio de discriminación de la mujer.

[Women within society have interests that are common to all members of society;
but they also have specifically women’s interests. Above all, when one is dealing with
the creation of a distinct society, of organising a better world for all human beings,
women have enormous interests in this ef fort, because, amongst other things, in the
capitalist world in which we live, women constitute a sector that is discriminated
against. In the world that we are constructing it is important that all vestiges of dis-
crimination against women disappear.]

But this paternalistic standpoint did not go completely unnoticed by the

FMC as the magazine Mujeres (1998: 21) points out: ‘Hoy es innegable el
protagonismo de las cubanas en las principales esferas de la vida del país,
aunque la lucha por eliminar los rezagos de la cultura patriarcal tanto en el
ámbito del público como de lo privado continúa de acuerdo con las nuevas
condiciones’ [Today it is undeniable that Cuban women are protagonists
in the important areas of the life of the country, although the struggle to
eliminate the residue of patriarchal culture, both in the public and private
spheres, continues alongside these new conditions].
The FMC is therefore aware of the necessity for change to more than
simply the role that women play in Cuban society, but also to modes of
thought and behaviour. Many of these changes occurred in the 1970s,

27 Castro made this comment at a speech at the closing of the Fifth National Plenary
of the FMC, in 1966. The whole speech is translated into English in Stone (1981:
48–54).
Introduction 31

an important decade for the FMC, as important laws were created that
transformed the juridical situation of women and eliminated injustices
exclusively derived from the condition of gender. Such reforms included
the Ley de Maternidad [Maternity Law] (1974), Family Code (1975), Ley
de Protección e higiene del trabajo [Protection and Hygiene and Work Law]
(1977), Ley de Seguridad Social y Código Penal [Law of Social Security and
the Penal Code] (1979).
Important to the general debate on gender relations in Cuba from the
mid-1970s was the Family Code that was created in order to try and legis-
late for equality of the sexes within the home, an extremely bold attempt
at taking the socialist Revolution into the private sphere. Symbolically
presented to the president of the FMC, Vilma Espín, in the International
Year of the Woman (1975) on 8 March (‘Women’s Day’), it was set up to
formally present the ‘rights and duties of husband and wife’, where marriage
must be underpinned by full equality and demands loyalty, consideration,
respect and mutual help (Azicri, 1989: 458). The care of the family and the
upbringing of the children should be shared ‘according to principles of
socialist morality’ (ibid.). According to Julianne Burton (1994: 108), the
code had three principal aims in mind: to preserve and strengthen family
ties, to transfer some of the housework duties to the father, and to increase
citizen participation in government politics. Designed, as Azicri (1989: 468)
argues, to counter traditional attitudes rooted in cultural values (attitudes
such as male chauvinism), part of the code included legislation to increase
the collectivisation of domestic duties. ‘[…] if one of them (husband or
wife) only contributes by working at home and caring for the children, the
other partner must contribute to this support alone, without prejudice to
his duty of cooperating in the above mentioned work and care’.
This came in response to the many complaints by women that the
Revolution’s desire to enable women to enter the workplace on an equal
footing with men had simply created what was known as the ‘double-shift’:
the idea that, although women were now able to go to work, they still were
largely responsible for the maintenance of the home, as men were not pre-
pared to change traditional patterns of behaviour in the private sphere.
The Cuban constitution (Constitución de la República de Cuba, 1992:
28) in Article 44 of Chapter VI on equality, states: ‘[…] el Estado garantiza
32 Introduction

que se ofrezcan a la mujer las mismas oportunidades y posibilidades que al

hombre, a fin de lograr su plena participación en el desarrollo del país […]
La mujer y el hombre gozan de iguales derechos en lo económico, político,
cultural, social y familiar […] El Estado se esfuerza por crear las condiciones
que propicien la realización del principio de igualdad’ [the State guarantees
that women will be of fered the same opportunities and responsibilities as
men, with the aim of arriving at their complete participation in the devel-
opment of the country […] Women and men will enjoy equal rights in
the economic, political, cultural, social and family spheres […] The State
will attempt to create the conditions to propitiate the realisation of the
principle of equality].
As Abreu (2006: 12) states, social policies were also put in place to
promote and push forward the strategies in favour of women’s rights,
such as the Centro Nacional de Educación Sexual [National Centre for
Sex Education] (CENESEX), and the Comisión de Empleo Femenino
[Feminine Employment Commission]. The health strategy that has been
adopted is another element that has favoured the development of equitable
gender conditions, as the majority of the population has free access to these
services. Health protection programmes have been implemented. Sexual
health and reproductive services are guaranteed and maternal mortality
is twenty-two per 100,000 births (ibid.). Women receive tests for cervi-
cal uterine cancer and there is special attention paid to child maternity
with el Programa de Maternidad y Paternidad Consciente [Maternity and
Paternity Programme], as well as programmes for the prevention of HIV
and AIDS. In addition to this, abortion is considered a fundamental right.
As Dr Carlos Dotres (Ferrer, 1998b: 11), Minister for Public Health, said:
‘Quisiera comentar que el aborto es un derecho de la mujer: es inhumano
que ella tenga que parir hijos que no desea o que, por diversas circunstan-
cias, no puede tener’ [I would like to comment that abortion is a woman’s
right: it is inhuman that women have to give birth to children that they
do not want or, for a variety of circumstances, cannot have].
Cuba has had particular successes in the incorporation of women into
socio-economic life, due to the literacy programmes and access to free educa-
tion. Women make up 49.9 per cent of the total population of 11 million with
Introduction 33

a life expectancy of 77.6 years (ibid.). In 1997 the participation of women

in the civil state sector was 42.5 per cent and in the private sector 22.9 per
cent. Women constituted 66.6 per cent of technicians and professionals and
70 per cent of education workers (Fernández, 2000: 67). They occupied 31
per cent of management posts in the state economy, 27.6 per cent of parlia-
mentary positions, 34.6 per cent of managers in the judicial system, 61 per
cent of finance workers, 49 per cent of professional judges and 47 per cent
of magistrates of the Supreme Tribunal (Alvarez, 2000: 126).
However, it cannot be said that the actions of the FMC or of the
political environment in general, with respect to women’s situation or
gender issues in Cuba, were inspired in any conscious way by a theory of
gender or feminism. It was not until the II FMC Congress of 1975 that the
terminology of equality started to be used in conjunction with debates on
notions of stereotypes and prejudices derived from the condition of gender.
Studies of gender began to develop in a rudimentary and informal fashion
in the second half of the 1980s, and more intensely from the 1990s as a
natural development of macro-social demands that see it as necessary to
change the position of women to not only transform their place in society
but to transform society itself (Núñez, 2001). The basic motivation for pro-
moting studies of gender has been the desire for social justice against the
discrimination of which women and homosexuals were the main objects,
at the same time as being a scientific imperative to understand more fully
the objects of study. As Abreu (2006) argues, there has been confusion,
prejudice, misunderstanding and resistance with respect to feminism and
feminist theory and to the perspective of gender that has emanated from
some of the most prominent of Cuban intellectuals who tackle the prob-
lem. However, various events have gradually changed this environment for
the better. According to Núñez (2001), the development and presence of
Cuban women in all aspects of society became much more evident from
around 1985–6.
It was at this time (1986), that the Third Congress of the Communist
Party put forward the need to promote management positions for women,
the black population and young people as part of the ‘Rectification
Campaign’. In this process, an economic, political and social restructuring
34 Introduction

took place within the socialist project and which, in the opinion of Jorge
Luis Acanda (1996) ‘marcaron nuevos espacios, prioridades, tácticas y
estructuras, y que recibieron una nueva dirección tras la desaparición de
la Unión Soviética’ [marked out new spaces, priorities, tactics and struc-
tures, that went in a new direction after the disappearance of the Soviet
Union]. He continues: ‘Todo ello provocó la existencia en Cuba, a partir
de estos años, de una percepción generalizada, en todos los niveles y sec-
tores sociales, sobre la necesidad de transformaciones’ [All that provoked
the existence in Cuba, from this time, of a generalised perception, at all
levels and in all social sectors, of the necessity to change].
As Catherine Davies (1999: 199) comments, during the period of recti-
fication, it was recognised that Marxism had to be refocused to encompass
feminism. Fidel Castro declared in the Third Party Congress, 1986, that
ef forts to correct ‘historical injustices’ such as racial and gender inequali-
ties had been inadequate.
During these years the participation of Cuban men and women in
international events was promoted, which allowed comparisons of the
situation of women in Cuba with that of other countries, thus allowing
for contact with other ideas on gender. Forums on gender and women’s
issues were held between universities and from 1991 the Casas de la Mujer
y de la Familia [Centre for Women and the Family] and the Centro de
Estudios sobre la Mujer [Centre for Woman’s Studies] were set up by the
FMC (Abreu, 2006).
As Carolee Bengelsdorf (1997: 122) argues, the studies on women in
Cuba in the majority of cases do not have the required level of theory. They
have also been displaced, she says, by studies on the family where the women
are shown only as part of a family situation. ‘Los debates en la literatura
sobre la mujer y el trabajo en Cuba han sido mucho menos complejos, y tal
vez por eso menos interesantes, que los relativos a la familia. Casi siempre
los investigadores emplean las mismas cifras para llegar a conclusiones dif-
erentes’ [The debates in the literature on women and work in Cuba have
been a lot less complex, and perhaps because of this less interesting than
those related to the family. The researchers nearly always employ the same
figures to arrive at dif ferent conclusions]. An example of this would be the
study by Marta Lamas (1999: 175) at the Centro de Estudios Demográficos
Introduction 35

de Cuba [Centre for Cuban Demographic Studies] (CEDEM), entitled

‘Usos, dificultades y posibilidades de la categoría de género’ [Uses, difficul-
ties and possibilities of the category of gender].

Reducir la complejidad de la problemática que viven los seres humanos a una interpre-
tación parcial que habla solo de la ‘opresión de las mujeres’ no es únicamente reduccio-
nista, sino que también conduce al ‘victimismo’ y al ‘mujerismo’, que con frecuencia
tiñen muchos de los análisis y discursos feministas. Requerimos utilizar la perspectiva
de género para describir cómo opera la simbolización de la diferencia sexual en las
prácticas, discursos y representaciones culturales sexistas y homófonas.

[To reduce the complexity of the problematic in which human beings live to a partial
interpretation that speaks only of the ‘oppression of women’ is not only reductionist,
but it also drives the idea of the woman as ‘victim’ and also promotes ‘mujerismo’,28
that often taints much feminist discourse and analysis. We want to utilise the per-
spective of gender to describe how the symbolisation of sexual dif ference operates in
sexist and homophobic cultural practices, discourses and representations.]

It seems evident that the gender debate in Cuba focused on the develop-
ment of opportunities for women to enter into the workplace, in a very
Marxist, and often reductionist, appraisal of a highly complex terrain.
Cuban female cultural and social production would appear to begin from
a point of dif ference, that is to say that women’s cultural production is seen
as in some way inherently dif ferent from that of men. As writer and critic
Mirta Yáñez (1996: 13) states:

[…] igualdad no quería decir similitud. Un falso igualitarismo entre los sexos sim-
plificaría hasta la caricatura el problema. Existen y existirán diferencias, mas ellas no
pueden imponerse arbitrariamente ni porvenir de la primacía de un grupo social
sobre otro. La mujer, dentro de un determinado conglomerado humano, tanto fami-
liar, como productivo, como intelectual, en un contexto histórico dado, manifiesta
rasgos particulares que provienen de un sedimento de su evolución, así como por
su naturaleza concreta.

28 I interpret mujerismo here as an ideology that sustains sexual discrimination; the

opposite of feminism.
36 Introduction

[… equality did not mean similarity. A false egalitarianism between the sexes would
simplify the problem to the point of caricature. Dif ferences exist and will exist, but
they cannot be imposed arbitrarily or determine the primacy of one social group over
another. The woman, within a given human group, within the family, as a productive
individual or as an intellectual, in a given historical context, expresses characteris-
tics that come from the sediment of her evolution, as well as from her particular
nature.]

This starting point of dif ference does have its dif ficulties and this study
aims to highlight some of these through the examination of the major
films of the period.
When the FMC was established in 1961, one of the dif ficulties con-
fronting it was in attempting to equate the egalitarian principles of the
Revolution with the partisan principles of a movement seeking to promote
the cause of one particular section of society (albeit half the population).
The feminist movement throughout the (Western) world, since the end
of the eighteenth century, has always operated within a wide political
spectrum. But within it are inscribed the pioneers of socialism in Europe
creating a feminist/socialist current that still exists and the FMC has, since
its inception in 1961, been at the forefront of socialist feminism within
Latin America. In the majority of the films in this book, socialist ideals
are clearly very strongly advocated.
The balancing of these two ideologies (feminism and socialism)
has thus been a prime concern of the FMC, it being sought through the
notion of participation. Women can take their place in the Revolution
through work. According to Espín (1990: 1), their purpose is to support the
Revolution. Through participation in all walks of life, women should be able
to free themselves from the alleged drudgery of domestic labour. However,
in some cases, the long arm of tradition dictates that women continue to
perform domestic tasks and other revolutionary activities besides, as the
film Retrato de Teresa, discussed in Chapter 4, clearly highlights. Part of the
struggle for female equality lies directly in the ideological standpoint of the
FMC, which believes that the problems of the nation are more important
than the search for female liberation, as Espín (ibid. 73) confirms:
Introduction 37

[…] pesan más los problemas de nuestros pueblos y son más importantes estos que las
reivindicaciones netamente femeninas: los problemas de supervivencia, de lucha por
la liberación, los enfrentamientos a la explotación imperialista tienen un peso superior,
porque son problemas más apuntantes. Nuestra labor se dirige a hacer conciencia
en las mujeres sobre sus problemas, y a hacérsela a toda la sociedad para propiciar la
participación de la mujer junto con el hombre en la solución de esos problemas.

[… the problems of our people outweigh and are more important than the purely
feminine claims: the problems of survival and the struggle for liberation, the confron-
tation with imperialist exploitation; these carry more weight because they are more
relevant problems. Our work aims to raise awareness among women and throughout
society about women’s problems, to encourage the participation of women along
with men to solve them.]

For the FMC, the struggle in Cuba appears not to be so much an internal
struggle between the sexes but a (Marxist) ideological confrontation that
has more to do with class than sex. The radical feminists’ point of view that
man rather than class is at the root of women’s oppression is not considered
by the FMC: ‘Estas últimas ideas, antinaturales y absurdas, no tienen nada
que ver con nuestra concepción científica y con la realidad de que la lucha
que existe en el mundo es un problema de clases’ [These recent anti-natural
and absurd ideas, have nothing to do with our scientific conception and
with the reality that the struggle that exists in the world is a problem of
class] (ibid. 63).
As Espín (ibid.) comments, women are dif ferent biologically: ‘es el
recinto del niño que va a nacer, el taller natural donde se forja la vida’ [she
is the enclosure for the child who is going to be born, nature’s workshop
where life is formed]. Such a celebration of the biological miracle of women
and motherhood is, as Germaine Greer (2000: 43) points out, tantamount
to heresy in today’s modern Western feminist theory, although the contex-
tual dif ferences in which the two operate must be taken into account when
these opinions are considered. Thus, Cuban feminism is fundamentally a
Marxist feminism and the fundamental relationship between Marxism and
feminism lies in the knowledge that Marxism does not consider women in
relation to men but in relation to the prevailing economic system. Women’s
oppression, from a Marxist point of view, is seen as the oppression of one
more of the downtrodden classes. Women are thus seen in terms of class
38 Introduction

rather than sex. Economic goals have always been put before female lib-
eration or independence (Bunck, 1994: 93). As Heidi Hartmann (1981: 3)
points out, Marxism sees women’s oppression as being directly related to
production (or a lack of it).
Thus, the more important relationship becomes that of man and wom-
an’s relationship to capital – which subsumes the relationship between
men and women as dif ferent sexes. By destroying the sexual division of
labour, it was assumed by Marxists that the oppression of women by men
would disappear. From what we have seen of the work of the FMC, this is
the basis of their argument also – following Marx, Engels and Lenin. For
example, Engels recognised women’s inferior position and attributed it to
the institution of private property, believing that no oppression existed
amongst the working classes (Sargent, 1981: 210). The problem with the
ideas of Marx, Engels and Lenin is that they ignore socio-cultural changes,
privileging the economic argument. Women’s position in society changes
regardless of the economic situation – changes that are bound up with a
multitude of dif ferent factors but not least with the power of tradition.
Simply to change the economic parameters of a nation cannot erase hun-
dreds of years of socio-cultural politics. In the case of Cuba, the situation
is made even more complex by the multiplicity of ethnic communities that
inhabit the island, bringing with them their own cultural traditions. Yes,
equality of economic production and opportunity are important, and it
appears that Cuba has made important advances in this respect, but, as Lise
Vogel (1981: 195) points out, socialist feminists subordinate their feminism
to their Marxism.
In Cuba, this Marxist, materialist-based approach to feminist issues
fails to consider the unequal relationship between men and women at the
private, domestic level where, as we have seen, cultural traditions, created
by men, force women to work the ‘double-shift’. So, does this failure of
Marxism to consider the private sphere, i.e. the relationship between the
sexes in the home, imply the ultimate failure of the alliance of Marxism
and feminism in a Cuban context?
Lydia Sargent (1981: xiii) makes a valid point concerning women and
revolution, arguing that revolutions are often led by white middle-class
males (Cuba is no exception) and that the women are mobilised to ‘keep
Introduction 39

the home fires burning’, functioning as nurturers and ‘occasionally even

participating on the front line as quasi-revolutionary cheerleaders’. In this
sense the work of the FMC becomes like the push-me, pull-me two-headed
llama, at once giving women opportunities to pursue new objectives other
than purely domestic ones, while at the same time perpetuating a particular
social and political structure that derives part of its power from the subor-
dination of women. So ‘the material conditions and legal rights [of women]
improved considerably’ (Davies, 1997: 118), but ‘it was dif ficult to eradicate
deep-seated masculinist attitudes, either in the family or the public domain
[…] The universal socialist subject has always been implicitly male’ (ibid.
119). The Revolution considered feminism a ‘white, middle-class phenom-
enon which had no role to play in Cuba’ (ibid.) and the Revolution was
largely male-oriented. The Revolution, Davies (ibid.) continues:
[…] implicitly condoned traditional attitudes towards women. Abstinence or sexual
restraint was expected outside marriage, particularly of women. Sexual matters were a
public embarrassment. Sexuality was not an issue; rape, domestic violence and sexual
abuse were invisible topics; pornography, homosexuality, the expression of female
sexual desire were taboo at least until the 1980s. The main aims of the Revolution,
then, with respect to women, were profoundly contradictory.

This work argues that Cuba, throughout the period in question (1974–90),
was a patriarchal society, in the broadest sense that men make the most
fundamental and important decisions and that they, not women, are the
dominant force in society, following Simone de Beauvoir: ‘patriarchal
ideology presents woman as immanence, man as transcendence’ (Moi,
1985: 92). But the condition of patriarchy for Cuban women is not only
metaphysical or existential, but also material. Evidence of this will be pro-
vided throughout the book, in the general discussions of women’s roles in
Cuban society in this introduction, and in the theoretical introductions
(Chapters 1, 3 and 5) to the film analyses (Chapters 2, 4 and 6).
Suf fice it to say here, as Álvarez (2000: 122) argues, with all the trans-
formations in Cuban society and the undoubted benefits that women have
obtained, patriarchy still exists in Cuban culture, in values perpetuated
in individual and social subjectivity and in the lack of a suf ficient level
of consciousness concerning issues of gender and gender discrimination.
40 Introduction

The inequalities between men and women are seen more in the area of
the private sphere and in the access women have to decision-making posi-
tions. There appears to be a pyramid structure of power, feminised at the
bottom and masculinised at the top, with 66.6 per cent of the professional-
technical workforce being women (Arés, 2000: 23). In general, women and
men are seen, in Cuba, as essentially dif ferent. In 1970, the Cuban Labour
Minister Jorge Risquet (Bunck, 1994: 106) said: ‘There are men and there
are women. The problem isn’t the same for both. Women have the job
of reproducing as well as producing. That is they have to take care of the
house, raise the children and do other tasks along these lines […] from the
political point of view our people wouldn’t understand if we were to treat
women and men alike.’29
And Fidel Castro’s paternalism is evident in the following quote from
1974, when he called women ‘nature’s workshop where life is formed’ (ibid.).
‘Men are obliged to give their seat to a pregnant woman on a bus, or to
an elderly woman […] you must always have special considerations for
others. We have them for women because they are physically weaker, and
because they have tasks and functions and human burdens which we do
not have.’
However, in the same year Castro (ibid. 107) acknowledged the fail-
ure of the Revolution to adequately deal with the problem of inequality
between the sexes when, in a discussion about sexual equality he admit-
ted: ‘After more than 15 years of revolution […] we are still politically and
culturally behind.’
There exists a sexist division of domestic roles and a lack of material
resources and support services sharpened by a general economic crisis that
impacts unfavourably on the equitable functioning of the family (Álvarez,
2000: 124). Other symptoms of a patriarchal society are subjective, such
as the persistence of representations that undervalue women. For exam-
ple in 1990, president of the FMC, Vilma Espín (1990: 112) commented
on the new role of peasant women immediately after the triumph of the
Revolution: ‘El saber coser, el saber cortar una ropa bonita era siempre un

29 Bunck cites from Granma, 9 Sept. 1970 (her own translation).

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Footnotes:

[1] Our frontispiece, a Collotype by S.B. Bolas and Co., is an excellent

example of this process.
[2] The copper deposited by electro-deposition is little more than a thin
skin of metal, which is then backed by a block of type-metal of the same
thickness as the usual letterpress type.
[3] See remarks on printing in Chap. X.
[4] The term "tone," as used here and elsewhere throughout this book, is
a word universally employed in art to express varying degrees of lightness
and darkness irrespective of colour. The word "shade," as commonly used
and accepted, comes nearest to its meaning, but that shade refers rather
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pink." "Shade" is also used to express the reverse of "light," as "light and
shade." Objects in nature, when represented in correct relationship of
lightness and darkness, are said to be in correct relative tone.
[5] Refer to p. 72.
[6] Here, with all due deference, I may draw attention to the unpleasing
effect of an illustration of elliptical or "cushion" shape, especially when
mixed with letterpress on a book page, the general scheme of which is
square or rectangular. Unless an irregular shape is for a special purpose
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Transcriber notes:
Fixed various commas and full-stops.
P.16. 'astist' changed to 'artist'.
P.32. 'ana' changed to 'and'.
P.109. 'reveiwed' changed to 'reviewed'.
Add: Camera: to 'be be raised', changed to 'be raised'.
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