Afterword

Summary

In the internationally acclaimed Cuban film, Fresa y chocolate (1993), Diego, an older homosexual and cultural dissident, attempts to convince David, his younger heterosexual revolutionary friend that he is not a racist. The conversation on race is initiated when Diego, in one of his attempts to seduce David, offers him tea served in fine china that once belonged, according to Diego, to an important family. As a self-declared homosexual in Cuba in the 1970s (the period in which the film is set), Diego, as far as the official national discourse is concerned, is not just an anti-social figure; he is also an outcast, someone who does not fulfil the ‘requirements’ to be granted revolutionary citizenship. The often-quoted words uttered in 1965 by the writer, painter and Cuba's then minister of culture, Samuel Feijoo, crystallize the extent to which men such as Diego represented an antithesis to the official vision of the new revolutionary society:

este país virilísimo, con su ejército de hombres, no debe ni puede ser expresado por escritores y artistas homosexuales o seudohomosexuales. Porque ningún homosexual representa la revolución, que es un asunto de varones, de puño y no de plumas, de coraje y no de temblequeras, de entereza y no de intrigas, de valor creador y no de sorpresas merengosas. (1965: 5)

But in addition to his attempts at making a sexual conquest of David, Diego's foreign tastes for exotic teas and global literature mark him out as not just suspect but as ideologically dangerous. David, on the other hand, in addition to satisfying Feijoo's (and, by extension, the official government’s) sexual requirements for revolutionary citizenship, is also orthodox in many different respects. He reads the literature prescribed by the Revolution, he carries his identity card around with him and he ventriloquizes the Revolution's official discourse on race. Comfortably ensconced in his living room, tea served and seduction strategy in full flow, Diego comments on how fortunate they both are to be enjoying such comforts while just outside there are people struggling in crowded and unsavoury conditions, with Blacks shouting at each other. Scandalised, David accuses Diego of being a racist and then repeats the mantra, ‘todos venimos de Africa’. Diego disagrees and distances himself from that idea, from the hapless Blacks on the streets of Havana and from the Revolution's totalizing rhetoric on race.