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

266 reframing latin america
The spectator is poised to identify with René, the idealist revolutionary
in love with María, as well as to sympathize with María/Betty’s exploitation,
which is parallel to Cuba’s exploitation, fi rst by Spanish conquerors and
proselytizers and then by North American capitalists. When René storms
indignantly out of her shack, the implication is that María, as a Cuban accomplice
to U.S. imperialism, is worse than the North American, since she
not only sabotages Cuba but does so as a traitor to her own people and especially
to Cuban men. Thus, the fi lm reveals the way in which the revolution
is unwittingly gendered. It asks the spectator to sympathize with the
victimized Cuba, personifi ed in María. Once she loses her virginity, however,
María is outside the revolution. The fi lm seems to forget that she has
no choice in the matter, and the class issues that frame the rest of the fi lm
curiously cease to apply here. María is ultimately reduced to being a loose
and deceptive woman who deserves to be abandoned by René. The fi lm thus
contradicts itself by defi ning María fi rst and foremost as a woman, not as a
poor person. In so doing, it reinforces the notion that a discourse (patriarchy,
in this case) can seep into a fi lm text that ostensibly advocates gender, class,
and racial equality.
The fi lm makes an overt attempt to delegitimize Catholicism’s value in
Cuba by portraying Cubans’ religious faith as a belief in hollow dogma that
serves to further the injustices they suffer. Nevertheless, this attempt proves
counterproductive because what remains with the spectator is the strong
presence of the faith that was strictly prohibited after the revolution.
To the extent that Soy Cuba strives to capture a unique Cuban essence
in its attempt to promote Castro’s socialist revolution, it embarks upon a
nationalist discourse that undermines socialism’s tenet of a unifi ed essence
for the global proletariat.
Discussion Questions
• How do the discourses operating in the fi lm cut across the fi lmmakers’
intentions?
• The fi rst of the four episodes of Soy Cuba recalls the connection
between landscape and bodyscape that Julianne Burton emphasizes as the
broader sexualization of Latin America in The Three Caballeros. Can you
think of other ways in which Burton’s argument that female Latin America
is cast as spectacle and as a willing subject for male North American
consumption play out in this fi lm?
• Keep in mind what is being portrayed regarding our four identity
categories and the visual and aural means by which the fi lm puts forth