Intervention: Public women and public history: revolution, prostitution and testimony in Cuba

Abstract

This study explores some of the tensions between personal narratives and the representation of public history in revolutionary Cuba, through an examination of the testimonio of two prostitutes in the pre-revolutionary period, Tomás Fernández Robaina's Recuerdos secretos de dos mujeres públicas [The secret recollections of two public women] (Havana: Letras Cubanas, 1984). Contrasting the prominent position of the pre-revolutionary prostitute as symbolic of the imperial and capitalist exploitation of Cuban women in public representations of revolutionary history with the lack of historical research on the lives of prostitutes before 1959, the author argues that the voices of the two women presented in Recuerdos secretos challenge the construction of the revolutionary subject typical of testimonio in Cuba, as it offers evidence of everyday life in the past which challenges the public history of public women in the prerevolutionary period.