Reframing Latin America: A Cultural Theory Reading ... - BGSU Blogs

the socialist utopia 261
that is about to evict him, to the university students who are murdered for
protesting and plotting against the government, to the simple peasant who
is driven from his home by Batista’s air raids and is welcomed by Castro
and Che into the rebel army, the fi lm strives to locate the island’s national
identity in the moment of popular rebellion. Not unlike Facundo and Doña
Bárbara, Soy Cuba locates national identity in the supposedly unique land
and peoples of the nation, privileging the individual (Cuba) over the whole
(the global worker).
We will focus only on the fi rst of the four narratives in the fi lm, partly
for brevity but also for clarity, because it offers explicit examples of the text
working against itself. This is the story of René, a fruit vendor who clandestinely
but actively supports the revolution, and María, a girl from the slums
who hides the fact that she prostitutes herself to survive.
From its opening scenes, the fi lm establishes Cuba as a glamorous playground
for wealthy (particularly male) North Americans. Stunningly vanguard
cinematography combines with omniscient narration in revealing
the fi lm’s intention to expose the glaring disjuncture between the poverty
of Cuba’s citizens and the commodifi cation of the nation and its people,
fi rst by Spanish conquerors and then by U.S. businessmen and tourists. As
the initial images invite the spectator to peer into rural Cuba from a bird’seye
camera angle (what has come to be known as the “helicopter shot”),
a melancholy voice-over narrates the arrival of Christopher Columbus to,
in his words, the “most beautiful land ever seen by human eyes.” While
the camera pauses on a large white cross made enormous and imposing by
a low-angle shot, the narrator addresses Columbus with a painfully ironic
“Gracias, Sr. Colon” (Colon is Spanish for Columbus). The camera then descends
to water level on a river to witness the honest and tranquil labor of
Afro-Cuban mothers and workers and then abruptly cuts to distorting and
uncomfortable closeups of musicians blaring North American swing music
while beautiful (and white-skinned) hotel guests drink, lounge, gaze, and
bathe poolside. Even the Cuban beauty pageant contestants that the camera
seems to caress and follow into the pool and under water are as lightskinned
as the guests, suggesting that beauty will be defi ned as a refl ection
of the tourist market. As the complexity of the river water is replaced with
the shallow transparency of the water in the pool, melancholy tranquility
is juxtaposed with fl ashy superfi ciality representing the immoral and
egotistical behavior which, in pursuit of conspicuous indulgence, exploits
Cuba and its people. In this way the fi lm reminds us of the forgotten Cuban
whose hard work supports this lighthearted merriment and whose poverty
is a direct consequence of it.