Negotiating desirability and material resources: changing expectations on men in post-Soviet Havana

Abstract

In post-Soviet Havana, material resources emerge as a factor in terms of which women assess a man’s desirability as a potential partner. These tendencies in current gender relations relate to the larger transformations in Cuba’s political and economic context. The fall of Eastern European and Soviet state socialisms seriously diminished the Cuban state’s ability to provide social services. Remittances generated through transnational kin ties and recent liberalistic changes in labour politics intensify the disparities of wealth. Moreover, Cuba’s dependence on tourism as a source of national income has brought about changes to the possibilities for social mobility available through the promises of migration and affluence that relationships with foreigners can offer. This article focuses on the gendered consequences of these large-scale transformations, experienced as the increasing intertwining of material resources and desirability, especially when it comes to men’s attractiveness. Coping with increasing demands from women, men draw on local notions of masculinity that include elements both of machismo and responsible manhood. Men thereby at times comply and at times resist women’s expectations on them.