From Salvation and Impurity to Renunciation: Pilgrim Representations and Cuban Women's Militant Roles

Abstract

How have the representations of the cinema of political pilgrimage turned the stereotype of Cuban women into one of political sacrifice, that is to say, woman as saviour figure and woman as figure of renunciation? How have political stereotypes defined the kind of behaviour by women that could be part of Communist society? Starting from these questions, this article discusses the beginnings of the imaginary of militant Cuban women and its connections to the revolutionary Cuban imaginary: a symbolical register negotiated between the political Other and Self, that is, between the revolutionary institutions and the Left intellectual sympathisers who from its inception have visited the Cuban Revolution and have been its political and ideological guests. Specifically, I analyse three films of this cinema of political pilgrimage (Realengo 18, Cuba 58', Soy Cuba) as some of the founding productions of the Cuban revolutionary imaginary.