LASA/EANLAS: Rethinking Trans-Pacific Ties: Asia and Latin America

The Vedette China on Havana’s International Cabaret

• In Event: East Asia, Latin America, and the Decolonization of Transpacific Studies

Abstract

This presentation analyzes the rise of the vedette china on Havana’s 1950s cabaret stage as a reflection of Cuba’s complex histories of transpacific migration and cultural exchange. In Havana, the Cuban vedette catered to tourists, especially white Americans, who imposed fantasies of a seductive tropical beauty onto Cuba. Inside the cabaret, however, this tourist gaze met with the Cuban national symbol of the mulata, a figure that encompassed the legacies of Cuba’s African, Indigenous, and Asian presence. This included longstanding relationships between Cuba and Asia that dated back to Spanish colonial histories, which had resulted in cultural mixings and intimacies between former African slaves and Chinese contract laborers.
Using the lens of performance, I argue that the vedette china claimed her spot in the Cuban nation through a commanding performance of divahood that allowed her to transgress boundaries of race and gender. Her diva performances inhabited a realm of excess that approached the limits of normative femininity and, significantly, also disturbed Cuban racial categories. She folded herself into the national symbol of the vedette by performing a cosmopolitan vision of Cuba celebrated by elite Cubans at mid-century. Her performance of divadom exceeded the constraints of normative femininity and momentarily revealed Cuba’s longstanding if erased connections with Asia.

Author

• Rosanne Sia, University of British Columbia