She Is Cuba She Is Cuba A Genealogy of the Mulata Body Melissa Blanco Borelli 1 1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 © Oxford University Press 2016 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Blanco Borelli, Melissa. She is Cuba : a genealogy of the mulata body / Melissa Blanco Borelli. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–19–996816–9 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–19–996817–6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Racially mixed people—Cuba—History. 2. Women—Cuba—History. 3. Stereotypes (Social psychology)—Cuba—History. I. Title. HT1523.B54 2015 305.80097291—dc23 2015008909 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Para Elba y Carmen, Para Carmen y María, el pasado Para Teresita y Ramoncito, el presente Para Sebastian y Sofia, el futuro For my grandmothers and great-grandmothers, the past For my parents, the present For my nephew and niece, the future Ellas: ¿quiénes serán? ¿O soy yo misma? ¿Quiénes son estas que se parecen tanto a mí, no sólo por los colores de sus cuerpos sino por ese humo devastador que exhala nuestra piel de res marcada por un extraño fuego que no cesa? Who are they, these women? Or are they me? Who are they, who look so much like me not only in the color of their bodies but in the devastating smoke that rises from our animal hides, branded by a strange, unceasing fire? —excerpt from Nancy Morejón, “Persona” (2000), translated by David Frye CONTENTS Acknowledgments  ix Prologue: Entre Familia(s), Entre Comillas  1 Introduction  5 1. Historicizing Hip(g)nosis  29 Interlude 1: Telling Stories/Echando Cuentos  50 2. Hip(g)nosis at Work: Rumors, Social Dance, and Cuba’s Academias de Baile  61 Interlude 2: A Marriage Proposal  106 3. Hip(g)nosis as Pleasure: The Mulata on Film  111 Interlude 3: Lost Baggage  161 4. Hip(g)nosis as Brand: Despelote, Tourism, and Mulata Citizenship  167 Conclusion, or Rear Endings  187 Notes  191 Works Consulted  205 Index  219 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS If it were not for the people I am about to thank, this book might still be in fragments, spread out among Dropbox, box, Google Drive, or some other virtual storage site. Virtuality seems less frightening a space to store ideas, feelings, and stories. On the page they glare back, asking for certainty, beg- ging for one more rewrite. Yet, from virtuality I come back to the material reality of my book and the immaterial sentiments that feel overwhelmingly real as I write this section. This project began as a doctoral thesis many years ago at the University of California, Riverside. My thesis adviser, Anna Beatrice Scott, helped me summon many of these ideas. Thank you, Anna, for encouraging me to let my hips loose, to think broadly and differently, and to move along with my writing. My professors at Riverside and UCLA consistently provoked and inspired: Susan Leigh Foster, Marta Savigliano, Jacqueline Shea Murphy, Alicia Arrizón, Linda Tomko and Jenny Sharpe. Alicia Arrizón and Deb Vargas published excerpts from c hapter 3 in their special edition of Women and Performance. I think it was my first academic publication, and it went on to receive Honorable Mention for the Gertrude Lippincott Award at the Society of Dance History Scholars’ June 2009 conference. I thank them for being early supporters of my work. Sections of chapter 3 and the intro- duction were originally published as “Y ahora qué vas a hacer, mulata?: Hip choreographies in the Mexican cabaretera film Mulata (1954)” Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory (2008) 18:3. Chapter 1 first appeared in a shorter form as “Hip Work: Undoing the Tragic Mulata” in Thomas F. DeFrantz and Anita Gonzalez’s edited collection Black Performance Theory (Duke University Press, 2014). Nadine George Graves and Anthea Kraut invited me to do a keynote address at the joint ASTR/CORD 2010 conference. There, I presented what eventually became c hapter 2. I am grateful for the opportunity they provided. Marta Savigliano came up to me after my talk, and she calmly asked, “Melissa, what if you can’t find an aca- demia dancer?” Little did I know that such a practical question would open