Cuban actor Vladimir Cruz today remembers with clear clarity the day in 1995 when, under the roof of the Carlos Marx Theater in Havana, he and other actors jokingly told Russian film director Nikita Mijalkov that they had snatched the Oscar from him Cubans . Mijalkov hugged her, laughing. He confessed to them that everyone in Cuba had told him the same thing. Last year, at the 67th Academy Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, comedian David Letterman announced that the Best Foreign Language Film award went to Burnt by the Sun and not to the Belgian Farinelli or the Taiwanese Eat. Drink, love, nor for the Macedonian Before the Rain, nor for the Cuban strawberry and chocolate.
Cruz believes that the greatest prize was undoubtedly the one that the audience from his country placed in his hands: “The fact that the Cuban people overwhelmingly thought we deserved the Oscar was our true prize,” he tells EL PAÍS.
Just 30 years ago, in December 1993, Cruz conquered a place among the main faces of Cuban cinema as the protagonist of Fresa y Chocolate together with Jorge Perugorría. The film that appeared at the opening of the XIII. Premiered at the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, it won the festival's Grand Coral Award that year, won the Silver Bear at the 1994 Berlin Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar. Its directors Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío have brought an undeniable artistic piece to Cuban and universal cinematography. The 108-minute film is set in Havana in the 1970s and tells the story of a young heterosexual (Cruz, in the character of David), a political science student and communist, who meets another young homosexual (Perugorría, in the character of Diego). Readers of Lezama Lima, Martí or Cavafis, with whom he developed a friendship, one could say a love, that exploded in the minds of Cubans in the early 1990s.
The big theme of “Strawberry and Chocolate” remains controversial: it deals with homosexuality, but the protagonists don't even get to kiss each other; rather, the man ends up leaving with a woman and the conflict is resolved in friendship, with the mythical Hug. from the last scene. “What would happen if the archetypes were more heteroflexible or pansexual like in Reinaldo Arenas’ story?” asks queer Cuban filmmaker Lázaro González. “Or, seen another way, putting the stamp of queer, cuir, queer, Bird on a film in which homoerotic desire is never expressed, not even like a stolen kiss; and on the other hand, every sexual scene represents the joy of voyeurism of a heteronormative gaze.”
Another big theme in the film is tolerance: “I believe that everyone has the right to live their life the way they want,” says David’s character in the film. But when we speak of tolerance, we mean not only respect for sexual choice, but also for its opposite in every respect, which in this case is expressed in the figure of the revolutionary and the counter-revolutionary. If there are two major antagonists in the film, more than the homosexual and the heterosexual, it is these. The first to preserve posters with the most pop side of Marilyn Monroe, copies of Time magazine and those who consume whiskey, “the drink of the enemy”, reading Vargas Llosa, Severo Sarduy and Goytisolo, demonized at the time in Cuba. The second, whose only saints are Che, the insignia of the 26th of July Movement and his young communist card. The counter-revolutionary is the homosexual, the dissident who does not guard the CDR (Committee for the Defense of the Revolution) or the volunteer work, and the revolutionary is his counterpart, “the new man” that Fidel Castro wanted to build in Cuba. Sometimes the film throws critical arrows into the heart of the system. Sometimes it seems like he tolerates it.
“The reception of a film always depends on the viewer’s expectations,” says Cuban film critic Juan Antonio García. “However, from what I have been able to research, I see Fresa y Chocolate as more of a political mission than Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s need to bring his own ideas to the public.”
Frame from the movie Strawberry and Chocolate.
In some of his dialogues, the character Diego says: “In socialism there is no freedom, the bureaucrats control everything,” a criticism that was not insignificant in those years. At the same time, depending on how you look at it, it is a film that could sometimes whitewash the government's face: “What I'm going to show you is that we communists are not as cruel as you make us out to be,” says the character of David in another of his scenes. There are even expressions that cannot be defined if they lie on the spectrum of criticism or absolution. “It's unfortunate but understandable that mistakes are made, like sending Pablito to UMAP,” David says in a particular scene. By this he means the Military Production Assistance Units, a kind of forced labor camp to which the Cuban government sent religious, criminals and homosexuals with the desire to reorient them politically, ideologically and sexually. Among others, the Cuban singer-songwriter Pablo Milanés was there.
Many believe that “Strawberry and Chocolate” does not start a tradition of homosexual themes in Cuban cinema, although there were already works such as “Improper Conduct” by Néstor Almendros, “Tent City” by Miñuca Villaverde and “Y female is my soul”, by Lizette Vila or Butterflies on the Scaffold, by Luis Felipe Bernaza and Margaret Gilpin. There are those who believe that “Strawberry and Chocolate,” which waited 14 years to be broadcast on a national television network, had the support of authorities and cultural activists. The truth is that the island's audiences and critics welcomed, as never before, a feature film that explicitly addressed the issue of homosexuality, an area directly attacked by those responsible for the 1959 revolution: guerrillas, bearded, male, with young bodies covered in olive green, which from the beginning condemned any sexual manifestation that was not between men and women.
Three decades after the Castros came to power, a film repeating the words “gay” or “faggot” was released in the same country that was the scene of the so-called Night of the Three Ps, when a police raid was made on prostitutes , pimps and “birds” (homosexuals), including the writer Virgilio Piñera. The same country that has banned homosexuals from universities or workplaces. The same one where the well-known Gray Quinquennium was founded in the 70s and artists who moderately disagreed with the system were persecuted and homosexuals were particularly marginalized. In 1971, the National Congress of Culture and Education insisted that “recognized homosexuals” should not be tolerated despite their “artistic merits.” In the 1980 exodus from the port of Mariel to the United States in an attempt to “purify Cuban socialist society,” many homosexuals left the country, including the writer Reinaldo Arenas. In a 2010 interview published by the Mexican newspaper La Jornada, Fidel Castro was asked about the anti-gay crusade and admitted that he was the main perpetrator. “If anyone is responsible for this, it is me,” he said, later adding that he did not have time to deal with the problem because he was immersed in political issues such as the October Crisis. “We had so many terrible problems, life and death problems, you know, that we didn’t pay enough attention.”
Strawberry and Chocolate came a few years after some movement towards government acceptance of homosexuality, which had enabled the opening of the National Center for Sex Education (Cenesex) and the integration of gay men into the army. After 30 years, authorities reported a total of 745 same-sex marriages in Cuba as of April, after adopting a family code recognizing same-sex marriages in 2022. Many thank the film for paving the way for dialogue about homosexual issues in Cuba. But if the Cuban viewer of the 1990s feels a sense of wonder, recognition or discovery towards the film, this is not the case with today's viewer. Today's viewer, who can marry whomever he wants, approaches a document, a certificate and a mirror.
There are many other stories in “Strawberry and Chocolate” that seem unchanged to the viewer of yesterday and the viewer of today. For example, censorship. The film revolves around an exhibition that ends up being censored in a country that, 30 years later, restricts many forms of expression and possibilities in art. An avant-garde film that speaks of censorship when the Cuban Institute of Film Arts and Industry (Icaic) keeps some of the most notorious episodes of recent times on the island. Nevertheless, García believes that today's Cuban cinema, or the “audiovisual body of the nation,” as he likes to call it, “enjoys great health, especially because there is a group of young filmmakers who have managed to reclaim international spaces, and .” place their films in various circles around the world. Paradoxically, the state does not understand these new processes and continues to pursue cultural policies that are completely surpassed by history.”
In Strawberry and Chocolate we see a David and a Diego suffering from the decay of Havana. “You drop it,” one of the two says at one point, and it seems like the monologue of every Cuban walking through the city. While viewers of the early 1990s witnessed the fateful special period, today's viewers are still in a crisis that many believe has already surpassed all others.
The film is about emigration. “I had problems with the system,” Diego says, before announcing to David that he is leaving Cuba for good, a news he keeps secret almost until the end of the film, like almost everyone in the country who keeps their secret to themselves Until then, the departure can no longer be hidden. Thirty years later, many viewers of “Strawberry and Chocolate” are part of the great exodus that Cuba is experiencing, the largest in its history, reaching almost half a million emigrants in just two years.
It is worth asking three decades after “strawberries and chocolate” what kind of country Cuba is. Vladimir Cruz believes without a doubt that it is not a better country. “It is strange to see how time seems to have eroded only the physical structure of our city, but not the narrow-mindedness and dogmatism of many officials and cultural institutions who are more concerned with politics than with culture itself,” he says. “Given this situation, it is worth asking whether a similar film could be made and exhibited in contemporary Cuba. To be honest, I’m afraid not,” he replies. “I have to say that we have a worse country, at least in this respect.”
Strawberry and Chocolate begins with a scene at the popular Havana ice cream shop Coppelia. Diego comes with a bouquet of sunflowers, a book and his hunter's eyes. He asks permission to sit down and enjoy his ice cream. “I couldn't resist the temptation. “I love strawberries,” she tells David. The Coppelia is also a worse place. The streets Diego and David walk down or the bookstores they visit are a worse place. No better place is the mythical Guarida, the film's main setting, now converted into one of Havana's most sophisticated restaurants, in the middle of one of the neighborhoods where the most building collapses have been reported in recent years.
The question arises whether Vladimir Cruz and Jorge Perugorría have remained true to the spirit of Diego and David after 30 years. Perugorría did not respond to a questionnaire from EL PAÍS. For his part, Cruz believes that he tried to be compatible with the film: “The only thing I can say is that in the last 30 years, starting with my work in Fresa y Chocolate, I have done all the main actors who “I did it with that spirit and that responsibility in mind.” Both professionally and personally.