Being a woman in Cuba can be annoying. Some have told me that my experience extends to all of Latin America, or at least the Caribbean, but I’ve only been to Cuba, so I won’t generalize. All American women know what it is to receive a catcall, how awful it can feel, how it can make you enraged, hurt, vengeful, and depending on where you are, extremely unsafe. Recently there has been a powerful feminist movement speaking out against catcalls in the US. Women try to communicate their realities, the constant objectification they feel on the street, trying to quantify and demonstrate the lack of entitlement they have to public spaces and their own bodies while men either look the other way, deny their realities, or patiently and empathetically listen.
The first thing you notice is the hissing. The hissing is supposed to get your attention, but it just sounds slimy. In the beginning I would look, now I just ignore it. There’s the whole “beautiful lady!” or “hello! hello!” thing in English, which is kind of annoying because they’re assuming I don’t speak Spanish, but I’m similarly annoyed with “linda, bella!” I tend to get a lot more upset with comments like “que figure rica tienes” and worse, which I won’t mention here. And the thing is, they’re not singling anyone out or anything. This is just a reality of being female in Cuba, extranjeros and permanent citizens alike. I think it may happen more to people who look like foreigners, but since I look like such a foreigner, it happens every time I go out. Every group of men I pass on the street. The backpack, the shorts, and the strange clothes mark me as such.
Things sometimes get more serious, one girl on our trip was robbed the other day outside of our house, so now her computer and $300 are gone. Someone stole my wallet at a concert, right out of my backpack, and multiple other times walking down the street, minding my own business, my backpack has been opened by people just walking behind me. My friend and I witnessed two robberies within a block of our house, both female tourists at night who had left a bag on the ground next to them while they were doing something else. Whenever one of us gets robbed or bitten, our host father (actually that’s a stretch, he’s more of a landlord) laughs, wags his finger and says “I told you so.” There is very little violent crime here, few murders, few robberies and few rapes, but robberies are extremely common.
So not only are women victim of constant sexualization and objectification in public (and private!) spaces, they are seen as weak and unable to defend themselves. And to guard yourself against things like these, you must act preventatively and not defensively. This means dressing more conservatively, not ever leaving your backpack or purse alone, etc. And I don’t want to do that. It’s really hot here and wearing long pants and sleeves probably wouldn’t deter that many. After all, I have light hair and light eyes and light skin. So there’s really nothing I can actually do.
There are little things, like the unevenness of the sidewalk, the smell that hits you without warning randomly, the bus you’re on breaking down, the bus being late, the bus being too full, the electricity going out sometimes, the water supply ending mid-shower, and the heat, that can get to you if you’re already having a bad day. But these things just teach you to go with the flow because you have absolutely zero control over them. For me though, when someone grabs your arm on the street, or touches you on the bus, it can be hard to just brush it off, especially if it’s been happening to you all day.