Screening Cuba: Film Criticism as Political Performance during the Cold War

6. Lucia

Chapter 6 Lucia Lucia (Lucía, 1968, d. Humberto Solás) is composed of three stories of three women named Lucia. “Lucia 1895” narrates the story of a wealthy, single, white, sexually conservative Cuban woman in 1895, at a time when Cubans were engaged in a war for independence from Spain. Lucía wants to marry and she is happy when a Spanish man, Rafael, begins to court her. Though Lucía’s allegiances are with the independence fighters, who include her brother, she pursues her relationship with Rafael who, lying about his romantic intentions, tricks her into giving him the location of revolutionary forces. Promptly, the Spanish attack the hideout, killing Lucía’s brother and many others. Lucía goes mad and kills Rafael with a knife. “Lucia 1932” is the story of an upper-middle-class, white, conservative young Cuban woman in 1932, at time in Cuban history when insurgent forces were attempting to put an end to the ruling of President Machado. Lucía becomes involved with Aldo, a radical member of the insurgency. Abandoning her class roots, she takes off with Aldo, sharing danger, poverty, and idealism. They marry just before the insurgency forces triumph. Aldo becomes part of the new government but, confronted with the slowness of change, he becomes radicalized, only to be killed. Lucía, then pregnant, is left isolated from her class and alone. “Lucia 196 . . .” narrates the story of a poor, mulatto, uneducated woman from rural Cuba during the early revolutionary years. A newlywed to Tomás, she soon discovers her new husband’s jealousy and its consequences. Tomás is intent on isolating her, forbidding her to work, interact with others outside the home, and from benefiting from the now-famous revolutionary government’s alphabetization campaign of 1962. Her struggles against Tomás’s narrow-mindedness are helped by Tomás’s coworkers, who try to pressure him 126 P E R F O R M I N G F I L M C R I T I C I S M / L U C I A into stopping his brutish behavior. Unable to succeed, Lucía leaves him, which causes Tomás to go into emotional despair. Eventually, he recognizes that losing Lucía is more catastrophic to his life than holding on to atavistic ideas regarding gender and sexuality. In the final scene, Lucía and Tomás struggle for a compromise, but the film ends before one can be reached. Lucia in Cuba The film was released on October 12, 1968, less than two months after Memories . It showed in four Havana theaters and competed for audiences with other Cuban films that included Memories (Alea) and The Adventures of Juan Quin Quin (Las Aventuras de Juan Quin Quin, 1967, Espinosa) (Cartelera, Oct. 12 1968). Like Memories, Lucia was a film that was textually invested in the revolutionary hermeneutics. It was political, represented existence as confrontation , and narrated Cuba’s history as a series of revolutions while exploring the lives of common women. The film was not the first Solás project exploring female characters in revolutionary settings. In 1966, he released Manuela, a film about a woman guerrilla fighter who gave her life for the struggle against Batista (Chanan 2004, 255). Representing women’s participation in the armed struggle was common during the 1960s. In 1968, while almost every magazine dedicated issues to Che Guevara’s life, to commemorate his death, the popular magazine Mujeres published a number of articles about women guerrilla fighters. In 1960 Mujeres started offering an interesting mixture of feminist politics, current events, fashion, and cultural news. Women’s participation was the emphasis in each of these areas, and this participation was always framed as revolutionary . In this tradition, the 1968 issues of the magazine included articles on Guevara, women’s emancipation, hygiene, parenting, animated children’s film, and cooking. The magazine’s third number that year celebrated Tania La Guerrillera, a fighter who had become a popular icon and who was linked, in the mind of most Cubans, to Guevara (according to Mujeres, 1968). Tania and Che had fought together and, with Camilo Cienfuegos and Fidel and Raul Castro, were recurring figures in narratives of revolution. Lucia began screening about the same time that Mujeres released the Tania La Guerrillera issue. Though the three Lucías are not, like Tania, guerrillas (women guerrilla fighters), they nonetheless are involved in revolutionary activities, linking them to Tania and to Che and making them...