Adventure Divas (4 page)

Instinto performs three nearly flawless takes for us and in between each we talk about what fuels their music, and the effect they have. In broken Spanish, I ask the obvious.
“¿Hay instinto en su música?”
Is there instinct in your music?

“There is sooo much. Too much. Everything we do, we do with instinct. Everything comes out very fluent,” says Iramis, “very, very spontaneously.”

“We are like a vitamin for other young women,” adds Janet (pronounced
yan-nay
).

“We are seen as a symbol of courage, because rap is a genre that is almost always about protest. So we are different from other women’s groups in Cuba, which are mostly salsa, and they don’t have the flexibility to say what we say in our music. We are proud of that,” she concludes, chin up, smiling at her colleagues.

Wobbly antennas atop high-rises may have yielded the first sounds of hijacked rap from the shores of Miami, but Afro-Cuban rhythms, identity politics, and local realities were quickly infused to make a distinctly Cuban art form. Rap has become a vehicle to express frustration about poverty, racism, and the daily challenges of living in contemporary Cuba.

“We take the North American influences of hip-hop, soul, and rap and put it together with our roots, which are salsa, rubancora, rumba. Then we sing—we have these three beautiful voices, no?” She grins. “—and say what we want to say.”

Word is we’re smooth as wine.

We are instinct personified.

Rap is my addiction,

To deny the affliction of prejudice.

Yes, this music has more Americana flavor,

But it’s made by my people and me.

We mix and we conquer.

We do it for you.

My rhythm is smooth.

My group is smooth.

My wine is red.

Instinto brings it all to you.

Satisfied with our footage, we sit with Instinto on a stone stoop, drinking flat soda, watching children of all shades play in their clean, worn clothes. A couple nuzzles in front of a brown building across the street. A smiling man sways his hips as he perches his baby on the hood of his old blue De Soto. He is holding her arms in the air, and teaching her to dance. Relaxed couples bike by us—girls on handlebars, boys peddling—and the light turns from rich yellow to rose to hazy burgundy, a muted rainbow that works in sync with the colors of the buildings. A man and woman lock eyes ever so briefly as they pass each other on the street. Both look back.

At the risk of trading on certain Latin stereotypes, I’ll say that sensuality is a food group here. Cuba feels intrinsically
sexy,
in the best sense of the word. There is a particular self-possession that shows itself in everything from a glance during a salsa move, to the deliberate stir of a mojito, to the steady gait of a cane cutter making toward the fields.

From what I’ve witnessed, checking one another out is normal, and it goes both ways between men and women. The streets are filled with lingering, unself-conscious head-to-toe-to-head-again appreciations that begin and end with eye contact. This is a bit of a shock to my system, as Seattle is the home of loose-layered fleece and Nordic reserve. A Cuban “appreciation” in Seattle would probably result in a restraining order.

Two women, both in tight red pants, are walking toward us. One wears a tight lime-green halter top, the other a white sleeveless blouse. I am starting to discern a certain dignity, a two-thousand-calorie richness with which Cuban women move through space. Both have a magic, invisible string connecting their well-postured shoulders and fully possessed, proud, round buttocks. I wonder if booty consciousness suggests an alternative seat of power here in Cuba and, if less impacted by the shame and insults imparted by consumer cultures that employ the female body primarily as a marketing tool, women here experience a healthier delight in the sensuality of life—in other words, are better set up to “own it.” As the two women pass by I see they are carrying a white sheet cake on a piece of cardboard.

As we pack up, Janet tells us they will create a rap for us to use in the show, and Catherine agrees to mail the song to us after our departure. We will use their rap to mimic a classic device in Cuban films in which an omniscient singing narrator tells the stories of the characters in the film. Rap has the ability to tell many stories, and theirs will help create the TV parable of our cross-island road trip. “Great job,” I say to Paul, who has had to maneuver almost as deftly as Instinto (and do so backward) in order to film them. I turn to wave as we are about to leave and see Iramis snapping her fingers, teaching a little girl in a white cotton shirt and red skirt a particular hip-born move.

We speed across town
to see Lizette Vila. Paul is getting whiplash admiring the old cars that weave through the potholed streets.
“Qué bonita,”
he muses as we idle next to an old De Soto at a stop sign. These old cars are painstakingly preserved and have been maintained through decades of extremely limited resources. They’re very valuable to their owners as taxis, which provide access to tourist dollars.

We arrive in Vedado, a beautiful neighborhood filled with mansions built in the teens and the twenties, and now the center of Havana. We pull up in front of a magnificent Spanish colonial mansion—once a rich guy’s house but now the headquarters of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC). The rich guy is probably in Miami with his bag packed, ready to return to this grandeur the moment Castro dies. That will be an interesting knock at the door.

Catherine hands the driver a dollar.
“Muchisimás gracias,”
she says.

Having sat in a fair share of dismal basement offices with putty-colored carpet and pressboard furniture usually missing a leg—that is, the typical “women’s organization” office in the United States—I find the marble and swank of the Federation of Cuban Women refreshing. The federation, a nongovernmental organization to which most women in the country belong, was created by Castro right after the revolution to defend Cuban women legally, socially, economically, and culturally. Castro officially criticized the macho ideal (which saw women at home and inferior) because it was at odds with the society he was trying to create—a socialist society in which all people work together to create political and economic quality. It’s ironic that in the most deadlocked years between the United States and Cuba, the seventies, both countries endeavored to make significant feminist strides. Cuba worked from the top down, implementing policies and laws to institutionalize equality. The United States, working from the bottom up, was abuzz with consciousness-raising groups but failed to pass the Equal Rights Amendment.

Lizette Vila shares the values of the FMC and has created what seems to be the Cuban version of Adventure Divas. We have landed an interview under the guise of covering her show and getting some interview leads, but Lizette herself has a reputation as a
pistola,
whose frankness sears through rhetoric, political or otherwise. She is a honcho in the government-controlled television association and represents Cuba on the international stage. In a nation where no women worked in television and film before 1960, Lizette has now made her mark as the president of the Cuban Association of Cine, Radio, and Television; a prolific producer; and the creator of
Te Cuentan las Estrellas
(“The Stars Will Tell You”). Despite its soap-opera title, the show is about the achievements of take-no-crap Cuban women from all walks of life who, by example, inspire others.

Lizette arrives solo yet enters the room with the g-force of a person with an entourage. A blur of energy in a bright pink silk shirt and scarf, she plants a kiss on each of my cheeks.
“Bienvenido mi amor, mi amor,”
she says dramatically, her short brown hair perfectly framing her face.

I give her the calcium pills we brought from the States at her request. The embargo and the country’s general economic disarray have left medicines and vitamins in short supply.
“Gracias, mi amor,”
she says.

We sit in the windy, sun-dappled courtyard of the mansion. In Spanish, with Catherine translating, she explains her TV show.

“A housewife—a star; a scientist—a star; an athlete—a star. But the concept of ‘star’ is about the light she radiates, the space she fills. How can I tell you . . . the environment she illuminates,” she emphasizes with a smile, as a thick band of sunlight washes across her face in uncanny timing. “It is with this vision that the program was created,” she says.

“How does that go down with men?”

“I have received criticism from men, even from intellectuals who work in my field. They don’t understand. Some people think that feminism is ‘anti-men,’ but that simply isn’t true. Cuban machismo is special. I call it ‘Machismo-Leninismo,’ ” she declares with a laugh, playing off Cuba’s Marxism-Leninism, an equally powerful institution.

While she’s speaking, Lizette’s arms and hands move in front of her face, as if molding the ideas in front of her.

“I think it’s terrible,” she adds, jutting a shoulder forward and raising her eyebrows, “because you can say that feminism has a philosophical current—it is full of ideas, aspirations, tendencies. But machismo,
es nada!
” she says with a wave of her hand, as if swatting away empty ideas.

“Machismo has never hurt me. I have prepared for that story, you know what I mean? Machismo is just an awful thing, absurd, uncultured, indecent—I mean, who can defend such an idea? But those are things that culturally take many years to change, and are sociocultural, historical phenomena.”

Castro’s revolution allowed women, even poor women, access to education and health care and routes besides prostitution out of poverty. That is the upside. The downside is that while the ladies may have equal rights on the books, and now comprise 50 percent of professionals (and might even have mansions for offices), that equality often does not translate into day-to-day reality. There are socks to be washed (by hand, in the developing world) and children to care for, and it’s women who get saddled with the entire domestic burden. In short, cultural traditions, such as machismo, often trump official edicts.

“Do you ever feel embattled? Tired?” I ask Lizette.

“We Cubans live in terms of comedy or, rather, in those elements of laughter and sadness which are magnified by the current situation,” she says, referring to the Special Period. “Humor is central to the Cuban sense of resistance. My god! The way we laugh about things. If you are able to resolve things with a certain sense of humor,
chica
!” she says with a Latina flourish of the hand, “that is the most important thing in life. Yes?”

Lizette articulates something I’ve been sensing but couldn’t put my finger on: a sort of Cuban duality. There is real struggle, but a joie de vivre appears to win out. And enlisting humor and love as allies seems to be part of the recipe. Bus drivers hug their passengers regularly. Couples nudge and smooch in public like puppies at play. Music and cake are as much staples of the Cuban diet as rice and beans.

“Life in this country is very intense and people have a strong desire to live and accomplish many things,” Lizette continues. “Maybe I am exaggerating, but this is what I feel happening. I feel so happy. I feel . . .”

Her eyes get glassy; she looks up and composes her thought.

“I don’t know, like a missionary.”

She wipes a tear of pure, unadulterated emotion.

I am agog. And hoping like hell our film roll doesn’t run out. This is a coup—to have your subject actually cry on camera is akin to getting to the scene of the crime when there is still blood on the street. (“If she cries, it flies” and “If it bleeds, it leads.”) But mostly I am surprised because she is among the most powerful people in Cuba, a player in the government, and she has the self-assuredness to cry on camera.

“I am very passionate. I enjoy emotions very much. The good ones and sometimes the bad ones too,” she continues, brushing away a tear without stopping her train of thought. “But what I say to you, I say from my soul. Truly.”

Unapologetically passionate, Lizette is revolutionizing Cuban television and changing the system from within. I leave the headquarters of the Federation of Cuban Women with fewer calcium pills, a satchel full of diva leads, and a reminder that emotion is an undervalued source of power.

We spend the first
half
of the following day in the countryside outside Havana shooting b-roll.
B-roll
is a term for a collection of pretty or illustrative pictures used to glue together the storyline in a film or television show; visual support for a described action or idea. Plus, whenever someone coughs or swears or says something uninteresting in an interview we can simply “cut to b-roll” to cover up the edit of the offensive or dull moment. B-roll is another thing, like Instinto’s rap, that we are collecting in our bag of tricks that will enable us to take big, messy, wonderful meandering epics (a.k.a., life) and reduce them all to a snazzy little story: TV.

Afterward we speed back to Havana on the country’s biggest highway in a white rental van, running late to meet with filmmaker Gloria Rolando. She has been on our list ever since we read on the Web a speech she gave at a black women writer’s conference.

Many of our ancestors shed their tears, but many others never shed theirs because they converted those tears into rage, into rebellion and history. . . . Oral literature, the personal histories of our people, are the obligatory reference to penetrate into this universe of the collective memory.

I respect this independent filmmaker’s commitment to leveraging personal histories for political change, and I am particularly interested in that she explicitly explores race in her work. The party line is that racism doesn’t exist in Castro’s Cuba, and certainly Cuba has less racism than a generation ago, but the realities of race and racism here are complex. As Instinto singer Dori said when talking with the writer Margo Olavarria, “I am Cuban. I am black, very black, but my grandmother was Filipina and my grandfather was Catalan. I have a whole world in me.”