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

the socialist utopia 263
directs his song are prostitutes for the North Americans who frequent the
club, the fi lm suggests that love is neither what the North American male
tourists are looking for nor what the Cuban prostitutes can afford to desire.
Indeed, soon afterward we hear a trio of clubbing North Americans order
up prostitutes as if they are ordering food with their daiquiris: “I’ll take
that tasty morsel,” and “I’ll have that dish.” One of them is reluctant to
partake and admonishes his compatriots for their indecent behavior, saying
“I never touch stuff like that.” They call him a prude, and he is “awarded”
María/Betty (the name she assumes when in the club) in a game in which
the names of prostitutes are drawn from a hat. He then easily becomes consumed
with possessing both her and the crucifi x around her neck.
From the moment she walks into the nightclub, “Betty” is sullen and
refuses almost all conversation and anything offered to her, such as a light
for her cigarette, befi tting her reluctance to prostitute herself. When she
is pulled onto the dance fl oor and subsequently thrown between all three
North Americans—symbolic of Cuba’s domination by the United States—
the scene turns into something akin to a house of horrors as the wide-angle
lens rapidly pans across the faces of the admiring people around her, disfi guring
them. Maria hears the beat of an African drum, interrupting and distorting
the swing music playing for the crowd and triggering a “primitive”
response in her. Giving in to the ethnic rhythm supposedly natural to her,
María dances frenetically to it while clutching her head, as a presumably
Afro-Cuban essence surges out of her in a protest against having to sell her
soul to whites. This exaltation of the unique, essential qualities of Cubans
to heighten the sense of their exploitation contributes unwittingly to the
fi lm’s opposition to the message of socialism: the proletariat is universally
exploited by the bourgeoisie.
At the end of the night, the North American tourist insists on going
home with María/Betty. A taxi drops them off where the paved roads end
in the shantytown that is María’s neighborhood, and they must hop from
stone to stone over what the viewer can presume to be stagnant sewage to
make their way through a labyrinth of shacks where electricity lines resemble
fallen and distorted crucifi xes, emphasizing once again the perverse
role of the church in Cubans’ lives.
Working against this deliberate message of exploitation by imperialists
who have commodifi ed all that is Cuba, including the religion imposed
upon it by Spanish conquerors, however, is the way the fi lm unconsciously
cues the spectator to recognize that the innocence with which René regards
María is simply a product of his own naiveté and that the symbol of martyrdom
she wears like a trophy around her neck heightens María’s hypocrisy.