The future's past: re-imaging the Cuban revolution

Afterimage, March-April, 1999 by Jeffrey Skoller

For instance, there is an interview with a young woman who is in a relationship with an American in which she discusses the positive and negative aspects of emigrating to the U.S. and how she would have to make a choice between her American boyfriend and ongoing contact with her family. For other young characters in the film the desire to leave is deeply intertwined with a desire to see other places and to explore new experiences not available to them on the tiny island of Cuba. At one point China says "I don't care about religion or politics. I don't want to waste my youth." Leaving has not only to do with what the Revolution can or cannot offer, but also with a youthful desire to be in the world. For the educated China, being loyal to the Revolution becomes synonymous with the isolation of island living. She, like Katia and others of her generation who were born and grew up within the Revolution, have no memory of the conditions in which average Cubans lived before the Revolution; hence she perceives the Revolution as limiting her options rather than expanding them. Arsenio and Raul, however, know firsthand how their lives and living conditions were changed for the better.

Floating between the two families and the different arguments that occur throughout the tape is the character of Nieves who serves as a kind of narrator who, through a direct address to the audience, tries to make sense of all the contradicting arguments and positions. Nieves is a record producer who works for the Cuban record company ARTEX and travels all over the world promoting Cuban music. As the most worldly character in the tape she is able to be critical of the political situation in Cuba and debunk the myths that it is better "over there" or that a true commitment to Cubanismo can only be expressed by living on the island. Although she can travel freely, she has chosen not to emigrate and recognizes that with all of Cuba's problems there is no place like home. She tries to convince the young to commit themselves to staying in Cuba, while at the same time help their elders understand that the younger generations desire to leave is a natural impulse and not a betrayal. Perhaps it is because Nieves is able to leave and reenter the country that she has the luxury of being the voice of reason and compromise. Her character is the most optimistic as she maintains her belief in the possibility that staying with Cuba and struggling to make the necessary changes will allow both generations to realize their ideals.

But Cuban music has the last word in TropiCola, seeping in everywhere: Arsenio and family break into song in the middle of an intense discussion, two elderly women sing after having read an old Cuban poem and an a cappella trio hang out on the street corner. Song now expresses more in contemporary Cuba than the ideological rhetoric of Revolution. As Fagin has said, "In Cuba people are always quoting song lyrics at you . . . Music that I used in TropiCola by bands like Charanga Habanera and El Medico de la Salsa has become the shared tone and pitch that are heard as the echo of everyday life." Fagin uses songs in place of dialogue throughout and has a knack for finding just the right song, whether traditional or pop, to accompany the images of Havana streets or Busby Berkeley dance parodies that also serve as additional interludes to the melodrama. At the end of TropiCola, Nieves sums up the current situation in Cuba in a moving speech about Afro-Cuban music being the deepest expression of Cuban culture. In '90s Cuba, the iconographic images of the old revolutionaries such as Guevara, Castro and the Cuban flag are now replaced by images on the album covers she holds up of great Cuban musicians such as Beny More, Enrique Jorrin and Arsenio Rodriguez. Nieves says "after the 'special period' we have to sell more than just recordings. We are selling the voice itself, the heart, the spirit . . ." suggesting that whatever happens politically it is in the music that Cuba's essence can be found. She pays homage to Rodriguez, the greatest songwriter and tres player in the history of Cuban music, who in his attempt to push his extraordinary music beyond the island shores died in obscurity, blind and penniless, in Los Angeles. Nieves reclaims Rodriguez for this moment in history, saying "you are Cuba's history, you are our heart and soul, our spirit . . . you will never be forgotten here."