Most of the people see Havana as an attractive and exotic tourism center of Cuba, a center for prostitution, a backyard for honeymoons or a playground for vacations, where you can find yourself getting carried away with illicit pleasures and risky amusements. (Perez Jr, p.468) Cuba and its capital city, Havana, are more than that of course. It would be a great mistake and disrespectfulness to refer Havana as an amusement park as it was once a shocking case for the entire political world with its brave strife against U.S. hegemony. In this paper, I will first give a short summary of independence of Cuba starting in early 1900s than analyze the Cuban movie named “Memories of Underdevelopment” in the perspective of development – underdevelopment challenge of Cuban people.
To begin with, Cuba, an export oriented country with a tropical economy, lies in the south of the United States of America. Before coffee and tobacco, the most important export product of Cuba is sugar cane which Cuban economy vulnerably leans its back against. Along with the geographical importance of the island, this economic dependence on one product caused sovereignty issues several times in Cuban history, especially in the relations with U.S. and U.S.S.R.
After the Spanish-American war in the late 1800s, with the defeat of Spanish troops, Cuba declared its independency, which was ensured by the Platt Amendment signed between the U.S. and Cuba. Platt Amendment made U.S. have legal involvement in Cuban affairs in both foreign and domestic policies of the island. (Skidmore and Smith, p.261) Until 1933, the start of Batista regime, we see a number of U.S-free independency efforts in the island with some democratic try outs. With the help of United States, Fulgencio Batista ruled the country as a dictator until 1959 revolution and during this time he made the island a casino and prostitution based tourism center. During this period an economic pyramid of a large rural proletariat, a tiny middle class and a rich foreign landlords group was shaped. Beside this most of the people were suffering because of poverty and they were fed up with the Batista regime.
In 1959, under the command of Fidel Castro, a middle class member of the society with a socialist background, the revolution against the U.S. involvement in Cuba occurred. This meant the removal of U.S. forces from the island and the real independency of Cuban people over their territory. This also meant a difficult task for Castro and his friends as they took the lead of an underdeveloped and corrupt society with an economy of mainly underlying an unequally distributed possession of goods. While facing the embargo of U.S, they got close to Soviet Russia which is the cold war opposition of Americans. With the help of U.S.S.R, Cuba tried to maintain its sovereignty and get rid of underdevelopment in economic, social and political spheres through adopting communism, centralizing economy, nationalizing private institutions and building a national and independent identity.
It is not surprising that Cuba was unintentionally underpinning the tension between Cold War actors because of the island’s strategic closeness to U.S. When Cuba got close to Soviets economically and politically, it severely damaged the ongoing U.S tradition of protectionist policy which started with the Monroe Doctrine in 1823. According to this doctrine, any interventionist European power in the North and South Americas would be accepted as aggressive and let several harsh measures to be taken. Soviet relationship of Cuba meant Monroe Doctrine to be spoiled unavoidably and this indicated as a national security and integrity problem for the U.S. side. (Perez Jr, p.470) The peak of this Cuba-related Cold War tension was in 1962 when Soviet nuclear missiles were installed in the Cuban island to threaten the Americans and avoid them interfere the integrity of the island. Moreover, there is the Bay of Pigs incident in 1961, in which the unofficial U.S. troops tried to invade the island and overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro but failed. (Castaneda, p.199) These were times that Americans seemed to be obsessed with the Cuba issue and they were repeatedly overcome by Castro and his friends.
Memories of Underdevelopment, which takes place in the year 1961, is the story of a Cuban elite named Sergio who unlike many other Europeanized Cuban elites decides to stay in Cuba and not to leave his revolutionized country. In several scenes, we see that nicely dressed elite people leaving the country for the hope of a better place, better than a communist land. They probably think that Havana, the Paris of Caribbean, will now leave its European atmosphere and be a less developed, bald city. In contrast, Sergio is eager to find out what will happen next in the island. He chooses not to participate in politics but to be an obscener like a political scientist. In one scene, Elena, a 16 year old uneducated girl he seduces, states his neutral standing as being nothing: “You are neither a revolutionary
nor a counter-revolutionary. You are nothing” she says. Maybe he escapes from the possible trouble in getting into the complicated politics in Cuba, maybe he prefers to be outside and just observe or maybe he believes that he doesn’t have the power to change things but the point is that although he seems impartial, throughout the movie he questions the underdevelopment issue of his country and in a materialized and minimal way he tries to change the women he meets to be more developed.
During the movie, Sergio, the elite macho that seduces women and classifies them as developed or underdeveloped, is usually contemptuous over underdeveloped people, especially women. Feeling alienated and alone in the new political era of the island and still not leaving the country, he tries to change things in his own way. We meet with four women in his life: first one is his ex-wife who leaves him for not being as she prefers him to be; second one is his housekeeper whom he sexually dreams of; third one is Elena which is mentioned above and the last one is Hanna which he likes and misses most as she projects a more developed woman. Early in the movie one can feel that Sergio is shaping and determining his life over women and sexuality. But throughout the movie it is understood that it is the way of him reasoning development-underdevelopment challenge in his mind. He asks himself repeatedly: “How do you get rid of underdevelopment?” The point is: does he ask this question as an elite writer of the society or an elite playboy who enjoys being with women? How and where are the women situated here for him? What do they mean to him? A materialized and symbolized way of the country or a sexuality object?
The most detailed relationship that is shown in the movie is the one with Elena, the uneducated slum girl who dreams of being an artist. As Sergio loses his sexual interest of her, he starts questioning about her level of development in his standards. "She doesn't relate to things," he tells himself. "It's one of the signs of underdevelopment. Elena, like other Cuban women", he says, “has an "inability to relate to things, to accumulate experience, to develop." At that point, it is obvious that he symbolizes Cuba and the society’s underdevelopment in Elena’s prospect. He takes her to art galleries and the museum of famous writer Ernst Hemingway but cannot make her interested in these. At one point he reflects, "I discovered Elena didn't think as much as I did. I try to live as a European and she makes me feel the underdevelopment at every step." While the movie shows this dissatisfaction in many scenes, it doesn’t mention how to get rid of underdevelopment or how elites should behave to level up the underdeveloped population. Is being more involved in arts be sufficient to be more developed? Is an art gallery the place where you are developed?
In brief, Memories of Underdevelopment is the story of a frustrated Cuban elite that is stuck between his intellectual convictions and the reality of Cuban life in the wake of the revolution. His alienation from the underdeveloped society and desire to observe the newly revolution’s effects is the core of the film while the director gives us an idea about the current issues in these times using documentary cuts about Bay of Pigs invasion and missile crises. This is an admirable effort by the director who makes the audience feel the same way Sergio feels and question the society as he does. The last question in my mind about the film and Sergio is: Does his inability to keep his interest in underdeveloped women or incapacity to change them in the way he wants make him believe that he is not that powerful alone to change the country in a more developed understanding? Isn’t it possible that this parallelism make him confused and alienated?
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