In the film, Fresa y Chocolate, directors Tomas Gutierrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabio, touch upon the controversial subject of homosexuality, and it implications in relation to social and political views. The setting is the city of
Havana,
Cuba. The time period in which the film takes places is during the reign of Fidel Castro. The intolerance and cruelty he is known for set the stage for a dramatic plot, and do not foreshadow a happy ending.
Tomas Gutierrez Alea, the man whose story comes to live in this film and co-founder of ICAIC (El
Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Cinematográficos), rapidly became the premier Cuban filmmaker. Among his features,” Memories of Underdevelopment" (1968) was about an uneasy intellectual who would not commit to the Revolution. Something along those lines resurfaces in "Strawberry and Chocolate." Film reviewer Liberito sums up the film as: "Gay, independent intellectual and straight conformist become friends." However, the cinematic experience and the underlying themes it conveys are much more complex than such a succinct description could afford.
In 1979
Havana, the gay character, Diego (Jorge Perugorria), a photographer and all-around esthete, picks up somewhat younger University student David (Vladimir Cruz) at an ice-cream cafe where, symbolically, the two men choose different flavors. Diego with much humorous persistence, persuades the student to follow him to his apartment and look at photographs that include David. Diego's cramped place is overflowing with books, records, paintings and sculptures. Out of sync with revolutionary political correctness, Diego is only committed to art and culture. Resolutely heterosexual David (still a virgin), is a true believer in the regime and calls himself a dialectic materialist. He is, for good reason, most suspicious of Diego who comes on with blatancy and flamboyance. But these mannerisms gradually get toned down as he dazzles his reluctant guest with, the forbidden fruit of non-conformist thinking and the rare fruit of hard-to-find works by Cuban and foreign authors, arias by Maria Callas and other such attractions. In poverty stricken
Cuba, strapped for the luxuries of the senses, Diego has a bottle of real Scotch. He serves tea to David. "Look, Indian tea in French porcelain!" With those hedonistic goodies come references to famous gays "Wilde, Lorca, Gide, Achilles and Patroclus. Sexual enticements fall on David's deaf ears --but not on a closed mind. He continues seeing Diego so as to monitor him as a "counterrevolutionary." As for Diego, he rapidly realizes the futility of any sexual rapport and settles for friendship, a decision which serves as a key point in the film. He becomes a kind of irresistibly charming Pygmalion for David whose heart is in literature although he studies Political Science. It is inevitable and natural that, whatever their original motives, the two will become fast friends. However, the story gets complicated by Diego's desire to mount an unorthodox art show. When the authorities reject the project, Diego's furious protest letters do not exactly endear him to the regime.
If we agree that in the film Diego is not just a gay man but a Cuban nationalist and, in the end, a future exile, and further, that David is not just a straight man but a reformed or newly-enlightened young Communist, then it is clear that under the banner of a strong nationalism the film proposes the eventual reconciliation of the two political halves of the Cuban nation, torn asunder for almost four decades by the Communist regime. In one of the film's final scenes, when the two friends are taking a view of
Havana harbor, Diego laments that he is enjoying that view for the last time, to which David responds by questioning whether in fact it would be his last. Barring the possibility that here David is referring ironically to Diego's future reconversion to revolutionary zeal, his question suggests that Diego will indeed return to
Havana after the disappearance of the regime's historic intolerance, perhaps even the disappearance of the regime itself.
Few countries in Latin America have been as swamped as
Cuba by so many chronicles of the island, both for those who still live in it, as well as those who are part of the rest of the world. Sociologists, economists, political scientists, tourists, filmmakers, critics, and historians, have all contributed to the library of accounts that comprise most of the knowledge and opinions that encircle the communist nation. Today, travel brochures read out to tourists: “Come to
Cuba, come to see what we have done,” as speculation and reflection upon its sensational revolution abound in the minds of natives, visitors, and exiles alike. However, this invitation also signals an underlying network of desires. The desires of the Cuban people that existed only in the minds of silent dreamers and solo revolutionaries were growing long before the revolution in 1959. When the dictatorial government was finally overthrown, it led to the birth of the first socialist republic in
Latin America. Ironically, this government was located on an island only 90 miles away from the nation which arose from rebellion and became known as “The greatest nation in the world.” Since its rebellion, Cuba has served as a golden destination for wealth Americans seeking relaxation and pleasure upon its golden shores, taking upon itself a much wider representation- one of freedom from imperial devices that lack any form of
ideology. “While the nation of
Cuba has always been linked to the outside world through threads of desire, in most recent years one issue that has placed it at the center of cultural, social, and political discourse is the controversial relationship between homosexuality and the revolutionary culture.” (Sex and Sexuality in Latin America.133)
One has only to observe the Cuban literature that has emerged since 1960 to see that homosexuality has been at the center of the social process. This process has articulated a series of critiques of the Cuban culture in terms of class, politics, and gender, but maintains a strict opposition to homosexuality.
The film, Fresa y Chocolate, serves as a portal that zeroes in on one of the more controversial aspects of the revolution. It shows how the Cuban government has sought to present openly a situation that, on the one hand, plays on the affective subversion of the forbidden, while on the other hand, falls behind the social realities of the moment. While the revolution changed the way of life for many Cubans, and while the resulting growth of culture persisted, there was never really a change in terms of the perception of the word “homosexual.” This is evident when observing the Cuban Penal Code enacted in 1938, which was in force until 1979. The 1938 Law penalized "habitual homosexual acts, homosexual molestation, scandalous, indecent behavior, [and] ostentatious displays of homosexuality in public".
Before 1959 there was no manifest difference between the situation of homosexuals in
Cuba and the rest of Latin America, or in relation to Latin cultures in Europe, such as
Spain and
Portugal. The Cuban Penal Code enacted in 1938, which in turn originated from Spanish laws, was in force until 1979. The 1938 Law penalized "habitual homosexual acts, homosexual molestation, scandalous, indecent behavior, [and] ostentatious displays of homosexuality in public".
Maybe because the liberation struggle traditionally associated male bravery and revolutionary virtues, maybe due to influence from homophobic Soviet laws (a "decadent bourgeois phenomenon"), combined with Cuba's own Latin, Catholic and African homophobia, homosexual men, whose manners were mostly effeminate according to Cuban tradition, could be branded as anti-social in the mid-1960s. In 1965 the so-called UMAP camps (Military Units to Help Production) were created. In practice they were military labor camps for young men considered unfit for military service, e.g., homosexuals or objectors. They were intended for men who neither worked nor studied, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Seventh-Day Adventists, who refused to do military service, and the like. The camps were closed down after two years after vast internal criticism in
Cuba, and the internees released. Most internees were heterosexual but the main subject of criticism was the internment of homosexuals and believers, which also persisted as an image of repression in
Cuba.
Since those days, however, a lot has happened, but for many reasons, particularly the anti- Cuban and counterrevolutionary propaganda that dominates Western mass media, the image of repression both against believers and homosexuals still prevails. The 1938 Law, still in force in the 1970s, was not enforced against "habitual homosexual acts", but in some cases, it was applied to "homosexual molestation, scandalous, indecent behavior, and ostentatious displays of homosexuality in public". During the second half of the 1970s, however, the attitude towards homosexuality was questioned in various ways. In 1977, the Centro Nacional de Educacion Sexual (CNES) was founded on the initiative of the Cuban Women's Federation (FMC), and their seminars and publications encouraged a more enlightened outlook on homosexuality and started to undermine traditional sexual prejudices and taboos. The work done by this center has contributed to changes in attitudes and laws, and the credit for the fact that the AIDS problem has not been handled with a homophobic outlook is largely attributed to this endeavor.
In 1979, homosexual acts were removed from the Penal Code as a criminal offense, and it became formally legal for consenting adults. However, "ostentatious displays of homosexuality" were still against the law, as were "homosexual acts in public places". And male homosexual acts with minors were more severely penalized than heterosexual acts of the same kind.
In recent years,
Cuba has been more tolerant to homosexuals, but only in political terms. The social barriers caused by fear and hatred of the unknown and the misunderstood still plague Cubans of all sexual orientations. While it is unlikely that such strong feelings will subside in Cuba (or any other country for that matter), those with the power to reform will be urged to do so, not merely with words, but through the mediums of artisans in the fields of music, art, and perhaps most powerfully of all, world cinema.
Bibliography
- Bjorklund, Eva. "Homosexuality Is Not Illegal In Cuba." Swedish Cuba Magazine: 36-39.
- "Fine Film, But Some Versions Edited." IMDB. 25 Apr. 2005. 20 Apr. 2009 .
- Sex and Sexuality in Latin America. New York: New York UP, 1999.
