Set against a backdrop of the chaotic, crumbling Cuban capital and the multiple crises of the Special Period, Ena Lucía Portela's 2002 novel Cien botellas en una pared portrays both consequences of economic collapse and the breakdown of traditional paradigms of gender and sexuality. In the text, the connection between biological sex and gender performance appears to be arbitrary; virtually all of the female characters are lesbians, while the male characters are either gay or emasculated heterosexuals. This essay argues that Portela's novel problematises the (hetero)sexist norms that have persisted in Cuban society, dismantling patriarchy in favour of a fluid, amorphous social structure in which power itself becomes ephemeral. While the image of La Habana presented in Cien botellas en una pared is far from utopian, the text nonetheless questions rigid hierarchies of gender and sexuality to a degree that is trailblazing in Cuban fiction of the Período especial.
As Mabel Cuesta observes in Cuba post-soviética: Un cuerpo narrado en clave de mujer, ‘durante esos años la mayor parte de las casas editoriales del país se veían imposibilitadas de cumplir con sus compromisos de publicación por la escasez absoluta de recursos materiales’ (53).
Other noteworthy Cuban women writers who have published exciting and often ground-breaking fiction since the 1990s include Marilyn Bobes (Alguien tiene que llorar, 1995); Zoé Valdés (La nada cotidiana, 1995); Karla Suárez (Espuma and Silencios, 1999); Anna Lidia Vega Serova (Catálogo de mascotas, 1999; Limpiando ventanas y espejos, 2001; Noche de ronda, 2002); Nancy Alonso (Cerrado por reparación, 2002); Odette Alonso (Con la boca abierta, 2006); and Wendy Guerra (Todos se van, 2006). See Campuzano, ‘Literatura de mujeres y cambio social’ and Mabel Cuesta, Cuba post-soviética: Un cuerpo narrado en clave de mujer for discussion of these and other writers. Cuesta's study of 12 Cuban women writers explores implications of residence and publication site (within Cuba or outside the island) with regard to the relative openness of an author's critique of political and social structures.
This term, coined by Eduardo Heras in 1989 and later popularised in Salvador Redonet's 1993 anthology Los últimos serán los primeros, refers to Cuban writers born between approximately 1959 and 1975. See Carlos Uxó, ‘Los Novísimos cubanos: primera generación de escritores nacidos en la Revolución’ for a discussion of this generation of authors.
See Nara Araújo, 'Erizar y divertir: La poética de Ena Lucía Portela (Cuban Studies/Estudios cubanos 32[2001]: 55–73); Emilia Yulzarí, ‘Manifestaciones de biculturalidad en Cien botellas en una pared de Ena Lucía Portela’ (Discurso sobre fronteras – fronteras del discurso: estudios del ámbito ibérico e iberoamericano, Poznan, Poland: Universidad Adam Mickiewicz [2009]: 101–107); and Nanne Timmer, ‘Dreams that Dreams Remain: Three Cuban Novels of the 90s’ (Cultural Identity and Postmodern Writing, New York: Rodopi [2006]: 185–205).
In her discussion of the scarcity of Cuban women's writing in the 1960s through the 1980s, Cuesta argues that the message behind the FMC logo had a considerable impact on feminist initiatives in Cuba. She views the uniform, Che Guevara-style beret, and rifle as forms of gender performance ‘que intentaron por un lado mimetizar el patrón masculino y, por el otro, borrar toda identidad diferenciada que promoviera coherentemente un programa de acciones al margen del proyecto único que la dirección del país proponía’ (19).
Responding to the gala ‘espectáculo de transformistas’ that culminated the first Jornada Cubana contra la Homofobia in 2008, Rufo Caballero lauded the efforts of CENESEX, which he described as ‘[una] institución que encabeza las fuerzas democráticas de una Cuba abierta al cambio; institución sabedora de que Revolución quiere decir que la gente viva, sin odiosas exclusiones, sin pretericiones, sin prohibiciones, sin silencios’. Cuba's struggle against homophobia and gender discrimination is ongoing. A description of CENESEX-sponsored activities on May 10, 2013 that was posted on the CENESEX website states, ‘Ganar una perspectiva cada vez más rica, polémica y trascendente que no se reduzca a la fecha del 17 de mayo, sino que siga ampliándose hasta hacerse parte nítida de la Cuba diversa que somos, es el propósito de la Jornada Cubana contra la Homofobia’ (CENESEX). See also Frances Negrón-Muntaner, ‘“Mariconerías” de Estado: Mariela Castro, los homosexuales y la política cubana’. Nueva sociedad 218 (Nov.-Dec. 2008): 163–179.
In ‘Imitation and Gender Insubordination’, Butler suggests that ‘[A]ll gendering is a kind of impersonation and approximation … gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original; in fact it is a kind of imitation that produces the very notion of the original as an effect and consequence of the imitation itself’ (312–313).
While many Cuban women writers of the 1990s (including those mentioned in note 2, above) deal with previously taboo themes of (homo)sexuality, domestic violence, and prostitution, Portela arguably pushes the limits of social convention further than any other writer of her generation. Campuzano describes Portela's writing as sin duda el más nutrido, ambicioso y logrado corpus de esta década, por el que desfilan y se intersectan personajes que, en su mayoría, pertenecen a un pequeño mundo intelectual, underground y bastante sórdido, desde el que, cínica e intensamente, es presentado el entorno social, entre bromas y humor que no perdonan a nadie ni a nada (45). Likewise, Cuesta argues that prior to the publication of works by Portela and Sonia Rivera-Valdés in the late 1990s, the exploration of ‘las subjetividades homoeróticas femeninas’ was ‘la [temática] más prohibida de todas’ in Cuban literary production (41). The fact that Portela writes from within Cuba distinguishes her corpus from that of exiled writers such as Valdés, Suárez, Odette Alonso, and Teresa Dovalpage, among others.
Campuzano examines this strategy in fiction by Portela and other Cuban women writers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. She observes that these authors tend not to make explicit reference to specific people or occurrences of the Período especial ‘sino que los tratan sesgadamente, desde el humor y la ironía, los rozan o los aluden lateralmente en textos que a simple vista no parecen tener relación con estos referentes’ (41). Indeed, Portela never mentions Fidel Castro by name in Cien botellas en una pared, and her allusions to historical events are vague and indirect.
Nara Araújo asserts that this type of sado-masochistic relationship is characteristic of Portela's narratives. The abusive relationship between Zeta and Moisés is one such ‘escenario’ in which ‘el cuerpo es un territorio que sirve a un placer destructivo, que es placentero por perverso, por ser impulso de la repetición aniquiladora y sacrificial, del cual se deriva un placer más tanático que erótico’ (82).
Yadelis is another character who embodies a view of gender roles that circulated in the Cuban social imaginary during the first few decades following the triumph of the Revolution. She exemplifies what Moya Fábregas describes as ‘the image of the domestic woman whose main concern was tending to her husband and children’ (63).
During 2000, women represented approximately 50% of the Cuban work force in areas like finance, social and community service, and ‘servicios personales’, while in sectors such as agriculture, mining and quarries, and construction, less than 20% of the workers were female, and only 33% of industrial manufacturing jobs were held by women. See the Oficina Nacional de Estadísticas' 2011 report, Mujeres y hombres en Cuba (http://www.one.cu/estdegenero.htm).
As González Pagés asserts, marimachos are often considered ‘usurpadoras ridículas de algo que sólo le pertenece al hombre’ (119). The mujer fuerte described by Carrie Hamilton's interviewees suggests a more multi-dimensional lesbian subjectivity that includes ‘characteristics typically associated in Cuba with masculinity and even machismo: a low voice, commanding respect in the street, dressing in comfortable clothes, being a rebel and/or promiscuous, and being “authentic”’ but also expressing confidence and pleasure in the female body (183).
Certain aspects of this character evoke comparison with the iconic Remedios, la bella in Cien años de soledad. Like Alix, Remedios is stunning, known for her ‘hermosura legendaria [que] se hablaba con un fervor sobrecogido en todo el ámbito de la ciénaga’ (241). Making a statement that later becomes reality, García Márquez's narrator declares that ‘Remedios, la bella, no era un ser de este mundo’ (242).
These lesbian characters are examples of what Cuesta identifies as ‘imágenes … que desconstruyen las esencialidades homoeróticas’ (231).
Although the context is different, Moisés bears some resemblance to one of the protagonists in Oscar Hijuelos' The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. This novel features Cuban immigrant Cesar Castillo, who struts his machismo not through abuse but rather through an endless string of sexual conquests. My critique of Cesar's macho ‘drag’ in Show and Tell: Identity as Performance in U.S. Latina/o Fiction applies to Moisés' violent demonstrations of his power over Zeta as well (Christian 75–76). Judith Butler analyses this phenomenon in ‘Imitation and Gender Insubordination’: ‘[I]f the “I” is the effect of a certain repetition … then there is no “I” that precedes the gender that it is said to perform; the repetition, and the failure to repeat, produce a string of performances that constitute and contest the coherence of that “I”’ (311).
The intense debate that surrounded the United States military's ‘Don't ask, don't tell’ policy reflects the military's conflicted relationship with gay and lesbian service members.
I am grateful to my colleague Brett Bodemer for his perceptive observation of the counterpoint between this impulse to fix things that are not broken with the proliferation of broken things that were not fixed during the Período especial. Nancy Alonso's short story ‘Historia de un bache’, from her appropriately named Cerrado por reparación collection, captures the spirit of Cubans' frustration with inefficient bureaucracy. The protagonist, Noelia Torres, engages in an ultimately futile battle to get the enormous pothole in front of her house repaired. The first government official she contacts is in such a state of despair over ‘los trámites iniciados para solucionar esa y otras dificultades que afectaban a la comunidad, como la reparación de las viviendas, el mal estado del parque infantil, la filtración de los techos del policlínico y los vertederos de basura por doquier, sin resultados satisfactorios’ that Noelia ends up comforting him (53).
This reference to police intervention brings to mind reports of police harassment and arrest of gays and lesbians in popular gathering places in Cuba, a problem that persists according to Hamilton's interviewees (144, 178). Both Amalia Cabezas and José Quiroga report similar recent incidents of harassment and, in some cases, arrest. See Cabezas, Economies of Desire: Sex and Tourism in Cuba and the Dominican Republic (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009); and Quiroga, ‘Cuba: La desaparición de la homosexualidad’ (Una ventana a Cuba y los Estudios cubanos. San Juan, Puerto Rico: Ediciones Callejón, 2010, 193–210).