Everyday Life and Love in Post-Soviet Cuba: Intimacy and Economic Transformation

Some of the most productive discussion on sexual cultures of Latin America and the Caribbean has emerged from research carried out in Cuba over the past two decades. Contributions include studies of sex and romance tourism (Cabezas, 2009), race and queer sexuality (Allen, 2011), interracial love and marriage (Fernandez, 2010), and the cultural politics of Cuban queers on and off the island (Quiroga, 2000). Noelle M. Stout’s After Love fits squarely into this body of work, contributing significantly to what we know of the remarkable turns in Cuban tolerance, even support, though not yet acceptance, of sexual difference from the time of the Special Period and economic crisis in the post-Soviet 1990s through the present. Stout’s project is notable for its broad embrace of multiple forms of sexual difference and experience and for a highly readable style that will make it appealing to diverse readers. Following the book’s introduction, she presents five substantive chapters that take us from the historical setting to an inside look at the lives of gay men and lesbians, sex workers, and sex tourists to a concluding chapter on the politics of intimacy and solidarity in Cuba.

Conducting research as a cultural anthropologist in Havana between 2001 and 2007, Stout carried out about 100 interviews, mainly with gay and lesbian Cubans and some sex workers, with an emphasis on the young and (more than in much of the literature) on lesbians. She also interviewed sex tourists to gain added perspective on the lives under study. The richness of the work, however, stems from her ethnographic method and her close attention to individuals in three households where she spent considerable time. We soon come to know people like Ruso, whom Stout met at the Yara Theater in the Vedado section of Havana and would see along the city’s famous Malecón (ocean-side drive). A self-identified bisexual who earned spending money with gay tourists, Ruso asserted that he was not a jinetero (hustler) and instead saw his mode of gaining a living as consistent with the work ethic of socialism. Stout argues that notwithstanding the greater inclusion of sexual minorities in Cuba since the 1990s, these Cubans have experienced disproportionate hardship with the economic crisis, along with racial minorities facing increasing inequality in recent years.

Many writers have commented on the contradictions of life in revolutionary Cuba, but Stout offers new insights as she considers the ways in which the post-Soviet era encouraged friendship and intimacy por interés (motivated by what can be gained in an instrumental, pragmatic sense). Such motivation can lead to solidarity among Cubans, but it can also produce strains in personal relations. And for foreigners in relationships with Cubans, it can lead to the uncertainty of knowing whether feelings are “authentic” or simply performed. Stout, who was keenly aware of her own sensitive position in relation to the Cubans she befriended, demonstrates that relationships were rarely entirely “pure” or “contaminated” by economic need but generally both in some measure. It might be argued that Cuba is not unique in that regard. However, conditions have put growing pressure on Cubans who have historically been marginalized. One acquaintance referred to Stout as la yuma (slang for “foreigner”) and regarded her as “part friend, part mark.”

Those whose lives Stout narrates often used the state rhetoric of luchando (struggling) to describe their self-interested activities to get along. Indeed, everyday intimacies were shaped by the collision of socialism and capitalism, as tourism and mixed-market socialism presented challenges for those lacking the means for a comfortable livelihood. This was particularly true at a time when growing public openness and space for gay nightlife fueled consumer desires in a changing social world. A pair of siblings, Lisette and Osvaldo, is the focus of one chapter that shows how the erosion of the state safety net contributed to poverty and vulnerability for same-sex-identified Cubans living in Havana. Stout reveals the tensions between some queer Cubans and sex workers as the former adopt an attitude toward the latter that is common among Cubans—that sex workers simply don’t want to do “honest work.” Some of her narrators went so far as to question why she would form relationships with sex workers. Difficult as it was to negotiate such field relations, Stout gained nuanced insights into social frictions from such revelations in her research.

In a chapter on urban gay men, Stout shows how and under what circumstances emotional-affective work is traded for food and housing as hustlers become live-in boyfriends. Friendship and sexual needs meet economic necessity in this new world of looming market capitalism, and in the process new relations of gender and sexuality are negotiated. Another chapter introduces us to Melba, who describes herself as mo-derna, meaning that she embraces new sexual opportunities to work as a jinetera (female hustler or sex worker) in order to survive the economic crisis. Similarly, her friend Yolanda dresses as either a man or a woman, embodying a form of flexible labor and performing as gay or straight depending on the desires of others as well as her own.

As she turns to examine sex tourism, Stout provides a revealing account of two gay men whom she came to know well. She acknowledges that she felt somewhat hustled by virtue of their desire to meet gay Cubans but also benefited personally from their patronage. Some readers might question the ethics of such forms of reciprocity in the field, but Stout is more transparent than most about the sort of quid pro quo that frequently characterizes in-depth ethnographic research, and her work is guided by clear expectations of mutual respect. Ultimately, from the transactional nature of relationships she encounters during field research, Stout is able to shed significant light on a nation that has been commodified for tourism and that produces relationships based on perceived exchange value

In her concluding chapter, Stout sorts through the complexities of queer vulnerability and visibility in post-Soviet Cuba, a time of dramatic economic shifts that have had reverberating cultural effects. She makes the important observation that to the degree that Cuban sexuality is “modernizing,” it has more to do with the nation’s own process, seen for example in the leading work of Mariela Castro Espín in the sex education and advocacy center CENESEX. She argues that we should avoid using a “U.S. yardstick” or seeking transnational currents to account for change on the island; we should instead consider how far the nation has advanced toward the extension of full rights and sense of belonging to those deemed sexually different. Perhaps because of the youth of most of the people she studied, Stout found that many had less to say about advances in sexual rights in recent decades and more to say about economic hardship. One wonders whether older queer Cubans might express greater recognition of the distance the nation has traveled, but it is certainly clear that persistent inequality in the midst of economic crisis has made queer lives in general more arduous.

This ethnographic study, well informed by queer and feminist theory, provides much food for thought about a nation in the throes of vast change, and it should be read widely by those interested in Cuba, intimate economies, and cultural politics in the region. I have adopted the book successfully in both introductory Latin American studies and a graduate seminar in feminist ethnography; my students have gained much from Stout’s engaging prose and perceptive analysis. After Love has my vote for one of the most exciting books to come along in recent years in Latin American gender and sexuality studies. It is a standout even in the crowded field of scholarship from Cuba.