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CUBA: There Are No Tough Guys; It’s Tough To
Be a Guy
By Dalia Acosta
HAVANA (IPS) - It has been three years since
he separated from his second wife and
realised he did not have a home to return
to. Although he has always been able to
count on a helping hand from one friend or
another, and his children help him out now
and then, Humberto Martínez spends most
nights sleeping on a park bench in the Cuban
capital.
"During this time I’ve found work as a night
watchman in places where I could sleep. But
now I’ve been unemployed for a few months.
Sometimes I sleep in the hall of some
building, or on the roof of a friend’s
place, but it can get really cold up there.
I almost always end up in the park,"
Martínez, 59, told IPS.
He stresses that he always has money in his
pocket and clean clothes (stored at a
friend’s place), and that he bathes
regularly. He has strived his whole life to
be an honest, hard-working man, he adds. But
when his life touched rock bottom, he did
not have a single friend or relative in a
position to give him a place to live.
With his first wife, the mother of two of
his children, a woman he says he still loves
"as much as I did on the very first day," he
was not even able to remain on friendly
terms. Looking back, he admits that he drank
too much, arriving home late and inebriated
every night. He says he covered her material
needs, but did not give her what she really
needed: "She never had me."
His three children are now grown up and busy
with their own lives. Despite the occasional
gesture on their part, their father has
essentially been abandoned and left on his
own. "There are no tough guys here,"
reflects a teary-eyed Martínez in one of the
most hard-hitting scenes in the documentary
"El padre nuestro: Lo masculino y lo
femenino de nuestras almas" (Our Father: The
Masculinity and Femininity of our Souls).
Cuban director Lizette Vila chose Martínez
to serve as the central thread running
through a story aimed at "recording in real
time" the social construction of masculinity
from a point of total emotional, sentimental
and human vulnerability.
A victim of one of the most critical social
problems facing Cuba, the housing shortage,
Martínez is also the epitome of the
working-class guy who has been taught from
childhood to conform to the narrow confines
of the dominant heterosexual male model of
masculinity. It is only being pushed to the
edge that has made it possible for him to
confront and discuss his emotions.
"If only men realised that they have a right
to cry, to talk about their feelings in
public, to wear more pleasing colours, to
live in harmony with the human and the
divine, then maybe we wouldn’t be here
talking about violence, about human
vulnerabilities, about challenges that
become increasingly difficult to overcome,"
Vila commented to IPS.
The general director of the Palomas cultural
project and director of a long list of
documentaries, many of them about men, Vila
is convinced that the Cuban "macho man",
like his counterparts in Mexico and Latin
America in general, "suffers a great deal
because he hasn’t been given the chance to
build his identity from a place of peace."
Male vulnerability
These men’s lives are defined by "latent
competition, the need to cheat on their
partners, to be sexual supermen, and they
end up in hiding when they encounter
problems with their sexual performance or
their prostates. They are slaves to an
imaginary power and have become very
vulnerable because they are neither as
hardened or as strong as they think; they
are human beings," said Vila.
In this Caribbean island nation of 11.2
million people, the divorce rate skyrocketed
from 0.41 per 1,000 inhabitants in 1955 to
3.2 per 1,000 in 2006, according to a study
by researcher María Elena Benítez from the
University of Havana Centre of Demographics.
Different studies have concurred that
despite living in patriarchal societies
where they wield power over their wives and
families, the socially instilled model of
masculinity places men in a situation of
vulnerability, largely due to general
disregard for their health and constant
exposure to the threat of violence.
In general, women are much better prepared
to deal with retirement and widowhood, for
example. Throughout their lives, they
establish bonds of friendship that are
deeper, more lasting and qualitatively
different from those of men, and in the
event of being left homeless or alone, they
are much more likely to be taken in by
relatives or friends.
Women, who are also viewed through the lens
of prevailing gender stereotypes and the
social functions they have fulfilled
throughout their lives, are taken in as a
potential source of help with housework and
childcare. But men, even if they contribute
money to the household, tend to be viewed as
an extra burden, someone who has to be taken
care of, and in extreme cases, a genuine
nuisance.
"Men succumb to loneliness, to depression.
They don’t know what to do with their lives.
Ultimately, their masculinity leads to total
dependence on women, to uselessness, to a
painful process," Julio César González Pagés,
a professor at the University of Havana and
coordinator of the Ibero-American
Masculinity Network, told IPS.
Although there are no official statistics on
people living in situations of indigence or
extreme poverty in Cuba, a research study by
social anthropologist Juana María Jiménez
found that the majority are elderly and
predominantly male, with no children or
other close relatives and at high risk of
alcoholism.
In different social conditions, men also
represent the majority of people living on
the street. A case study conducted in the
Spanish city of Barcelona found that 89.5
percent of homeless people there were male.
Unlike Cuba, however, 62 percent were
immigrants.
As of late 2007, there were 184 million
people living in poverty in Latin America
and the Caribbean, including 68 million in
extreme poverty, according to Social
Panorama of Latin America 2008, the annual
report published by the Economic Commission
for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
A total of 120 million people had no housing
or lived in shantytowns or slums.
Meanwhile, the latest national progress
report on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
submitted by Cuba recognises that despite
the country’s ample guarantees of social
security and assistance, a number of
vulnerability factors have been identified,
which include aging, low income and lack of
housing or adequate facilities.
Men with women’s souls
"I’m poor, I’m on the street, but I’m not an
indigent. I have to keep myself neat and
clean," declares Martínez in a sequence of
the documentary that alternates with other
images of men: an almost naked man sleeping
on a sidewalk, another holding a bottle of
rum, a third "diving" in a trash container,
and a group of others killing time by
playing dominoes.
"Doesn’t a drowning man need a helping
hand?" asked Vila, as she showed IPS a
series of photographs of a Cuban man pulled
from the sea too late. "Everyone saw him
drowning but no one made a move to help him.
What would have happened if it was a woman
who was drowning?" she wondered aloud.
Confident in her identity as a "woman-man"
since she came to accept the masculine side
in her, Vila believes that "if everyone
understood that these two psychological and
sociological components can perfectly
complement one another, then gender equality
would be much more sustainable."
"If men and women were able to recognise the
masculine and feminine within each one of
them, then the formation of their
personalities, social interaction, and even
rebuilding their lives under any possible
circumstances would be much more
harmonious," she stressed.
"And when I say harmonious," she added, "I
am talking about equity, justice and
rights." |
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