Beyond Essence: Performing Gender and Sexuality in Ena Lucía Portela's Cien botellas en una pared

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.5.2.0184
• Published date: 01 October 2013
• Date: 01 October 2013
• Pages: 184-201
• Author: Karen S. Christian
• Subject Matter: Special Period,Cuban fiction,gender,sexuality,heterosexism,power

I J  C S 5.2 S 2013

BEYOND ESSENCE: PERFORMING GENDER

AND SEXUALITY IN ENA LUCÍA PORTELA’S

CIEN BOTELLAS EN UNA PARED

Karen S. Christian

California Polytechnic State University

Abstract

Set against a backdrop of the chaotic, crumbling Cuban capital and the multiple crises

of the Special Period, Ena Lucía Portela’s 2002 novel Cien botellas en una pared portrays

both consequences of economic collapse and the breakdown of traditional paradigms

of gender and sexuality. In the text, the connection between biological sex and gender

performance appears to be arbitrary; virtually all of the female characters are lesbians,

while the male characters are either gay or emasculated heterosexuals. This essay argues

that Portela’s novel problematises the (hetero)sexist norms that have persisted in Cuban

society, dismantling patriarchy in favour of a f‌luid, amorphous social structure in which

power itself becomes ephemeral. While the image of La Habana presented in Cien botellas

en una pared is far from utopian, the text nonetheless questions rigid hierarchies of gender

and sexuality to a degree that is trailblazing in Cuban f‌iction of the Período especial.

Keywords: Special Period, Cuban f‌iction, gender, sexuality, heterosexism, power

The second half of the twentieth century in Cuba was marked by political,

social, and economic transformations with wide-ranging consequences. The f‌irst

of these transformations was initiated by the 1959 Revolution; the second, by

the 1989 collapse of Cuba’s principal trading partner, the Soviet Union. In one of

his off‌icial proclamations, Fidel Castro named this crisis El período especial en

tiempo de paz. The devastating implications of the Special Period for the Cuban

economy – and the Cuban people – have been the subject of volumes of writing

since the early 1990s. These publications, both scholarly and creative, include

a signif‌icant body of literature devoted to the deterioration of Havana. Odette

Casamayor Cisneros’ 2004 essay on ‘las ruinas habaneras’ is exemplary of this

focus on the decaying capital and the transformation of its social structure as

a result of the crisis. Casamayor Cisneros asserts that in novels of the Período

especial, the image of the city in ruins serves as a ref‌lection of the social and

IJCS5_2 184 27/11/2013 09:02

BEYOND ESSENCE 185

IJCS Produced and distributed by Pluto Journals www.plutojournals.com/ijcs/

ethical changes that began to permeate Cuban society (73). Likewise, in an essay

on f‌iction produced by Cuban women writers during and immediately after the

Período especial, María del Mar López-Cabrales (2007) highlights the recurring

portrayal of ‘una Habana decadente y deprimente’ and of characters ‘que tratan

de subsistir a diario con el estómago vacío … y buscando a diario con una jaba

cualquier cosa para conseguir la alimentación básica’ (181).

While such widespread shortages affected virtually all Cubans during the

Período especial, Cuban women arguably bore the brunt of the catastrophic

economic adjustments occurring in the 1990s. Economic restructuring caused

many professional women to be redirected into part-time, temporary, low-paying

service sector occupations with limited opportunities for mobility, and in general

‘many of the gains women made in the labor force as a result of the Revolution

have been severely eroded’ (Toro-Morn et al. 2002: 33). Furthermore, it is

debatable to what extent the increased entry into the labour force by Cuban

women in the decades following the Revolution was paralleled by a shift in

societal attitudes and social structures. In 1975 the Family Code went into effect

to replace pre-Revolutionary laws on marriage, divorce, adoption, and alimony;

included were articles that stipulated that men and women should have equal

roles in marriage, housework, and child-rearing. In addition, the code stated

that within the family, men and women should support each other’s pursuit of

education and jobs. Researchers have shown, however, that such Revolutionary

government mandates were insuff‌icient to bring about true gender equality

in the home. As historian Johanna Moya Fábregas (2010) aff‌irms in ‘The

Cuban Woman’s Revolutionary Experience: Patriarchal Culture and the State’s

Gender Ideology, 1950–1976’, the Family Code was not supported by plans for

enforcement, ‘[leaving] Cuba’s patriarchal social structure largely unchanged.

For that reason, it is not surprising to f‌ind that pre- and post-revolutionary con-

ceptualizations of women’s identity have remained anchored in a patriarchal

worldview of society’ (79).

The reinforcement of patriarchal dominance was ref‌lected in the cultural

sphere as well. Through the mid-1990s, literary production by Cuban women

continued to be limited not only by a lack of publishing venues which impacted all

writers1 but also by the valorisation of a particular type of narrative – primarily

produced by men – that had persisted since the f‌irst decades of the Revolution.

In her 2003 study ‘Literatura de mujeres y cambio social: narradoras cubanas

de hoy’, Luisa Campuzano examines consequences of this prevailing tendency to

canonise works characterised by a discourse of epic nationalism that supported

the ‘narrativa maestra’ of the Revolution (39). The apparent scarcity of f‌iction

by Cuban women in the late twentieth century – in contrast to the veritable

publishing explosion by their counterparts in other Latin American countries –

IJCS5_2 185 27/11/2013 09:02