I watch, enthralled, as a photographer captures Yusleidy posing demurely outside the exuberantly gauche Palacio del Valle. Then, right there in the parking lot, she strips down into swimwear, slips on six-inch rhinestone heels, and the family and photographers\u2019 entourage troop through the lobby of the Hotel Jagua for a more risqu\u00e9 shoot by the pool.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m shocked at the overt sexuality as Yusleidy\u2019s ostensibly conservative mom tells her to pop her booty, tug down on her bikini strap, and show more skin.<\/p>\n \u201cIncredibly, most girls ask to be photographed half-naked!\u201d says photographer Maricel V\u00e1zquez Molina. Many mothers, apparently, want their daughters to be photographed in lingerie or even nude, with props such as flowers covering the breasts and genitals.<\/p>\n Clearly this once genteel colonial-era tradition has morphed!<\/p>\n \u201cLos quinces\u201d coming-of-age parties\u2014the equivalent of the \u2018Sweet Sixteen\u2019 debutante ball in the United States\u2014have been held throughout Latin America for centuries, with each nation observing its own traditions to celebrate a girl\u2019s transition to womanhood. In contemporary Cuba, the ritual stresses female sexuality far more overtly than the chaste rituals stressing purity elsewhere in Latin America or pre-revolutionary Cuba.<\/p>\n Before the Revolution, quinces were mostly celebrated by Cuba\u2019s middle and upper classes, whose daughters upon turning 15 were considered ready for marriage. Families broke the bank to host sumptuous parties at the glorious Havana Hilton or private beach clubs.<\/p>\n After the Revolution, the ritual virtually disappeared with the rejection of the bourgeois, Spanish-U.S. colonial past in favor of socialist egalitarianism and the State\u2019s endorsement of more \u201cauthentically Cuban,\u201d Afrocentric Creole traditions. The\u00a0quincea\u00f1eras\u2019<\/em>\u00a0inherent symbolic vanity (she is typically photographed admiring her own beauty in front of a mirror), and the quinces\u2019 lavish opulence and elitist, aristocratic pretentions, clashed with Revolutionary principles. Quince parties became low-key affairs, most often behind closed doors at home.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I had my fifteenth birthday party, we never had the tradition of Cinderella dresses worn by\u00a0quincea\u00f1eras<\/em>\u00a0today, even though we belonged to the more affluent classes,\u201d recalls 73-year-old sociologist Marta N\u00fa\u00f1ez Sarmiento. \u201cIt\u2019s something that has evolved since the Revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe were more na\u00efve back then,\u201d adds Migdalia Carballosa Rodr\u00edguez, a 51-year-old tour guide. \u201cWhen I turned fifteen, it had nothing to do with the beginning of sexual life. It was the transition from childhood to adolescence. We couldn\u2019t have boyfriends, so we chose the most handsome boys of the school or neighborhood to accompany us to the waltz. My photos were in black and white. My party had romantic music from the \u201870s and \u201880s. No reggaeton with salacious dancing, like now.\u201d<\/p>\n Ironically, the reemergence of more ostentatious, often over-the-top, and openly sensual celebration coincided with the economic impoverishment of the \u2018Special Period\u2019 following the collapse of the Soviet Union. When the Cuban state relaxed its attitudes towards unsanctioned rituals and events, the popularity of quinces exploded. Heretofore low-key fiestas morphed into lavish, luxury-laden quinces owed to a huge increase in disposable income among a large sector of Cubans prospering on economic reforms permitting small-scale private enterprise, and a sharp increase in remittances from the USA since the Obama administration. These, in turn, have fostered the growth of photo and event-planning businesses promoting ever more extravagant quince packages.<\/p>\n \u201cNow everything is more elaborate and expensive. Girls want a professional studio photo album that involves changing clothes eight to ten times, with photos in the most beautiful places, and also a big party that involves renting a place with a buffet. And they want it all recorded on video!\u201d bemoans Carballosa.<\/p>\n The majority of Cuban families can\u2019t afford such luxury. If the family is too poor to organize a big party, a fiesta may be hosted at the girl\u2019s home. But many mothers\u2014in Cuba it is almost always the mother\u2014are prepared to sacrifice their entire life savings for a full-on ritual.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was a young girl, mom bought a piggy bank and said, \u2018This is for your quince,\u2019\u201d recalls 29-year-old Mar\u00eda Mu\u00f1oz Orbea. \u201cMy parents gradually saved money for years for that special moment. The quince wasn\u2019t just special for me, but also for my mother, who since I was a child always talked to me excitedly about the event, because she herself hadn\u2019t had one. When my big day came, mom told me she felt like she was 15 years old, and was living that moment through me. It was one of the times in my life that I\u2019ve seen the most joy on her face.\u201d<\/p>\n The celebration is more important to the mother than to the girl because the\u00a0quincea\u00f1era\u2019<\/em>s transition into adulthood transforms her into a potential mother, explains social anthropologist Heidi Harkonen. \u201cThis is significant to the girl\u2019s mother. It rewards her fifteen years of effort in raising the girl and makes her a potential grandmother or great grandmother, the respected head of a matrifocal kin group.\u201d<\/p>\n And, adds Harkonen, since motherhood doesn\u2019t require marriage in modern, sexually-at-ease Cuban culture, \u201cThe purpose of the Cuban quince ritual is [no longer] to prepare the girl for marriage, but for sexual life\u2014the moment when she is officially allowed to have a boyfriend, and in the process, sexual relations.\u201d<\/p>\n Such modern immodesty is wed to decorous aristocratic traditions that remain. Arriving at her party in a horse-drawn carriage or 1950s convertible, the\u00a0quincea\u00f1era<\/em>\u00a0(dressed in her 18th century-style traje colonial) is accompanied by her father (or a boy of her choice, el gal\u00e1n), dressed in tuxedo, and a little girl\u2014la damita\u2014who sprinkles rose petals at her feet. The party begins with an intricately choreographed waltz in which the\u00a0quincea\u00f1era<\/em>\u00a0dances around 14 boys (holding roses) and 14 girls (holding candles). As she waltzes around the circle with her father, she collects the flowers and makes a wish as she blows out each candle.<\/p>\n \u201cA few months before the big day, I selected my best friends to practice the waltz at home after school,\u201d recalls Mu\u00f1oz. \u201cWe always looked forward to rehearsal days because the afternoons became parties and jokes, especially when we had to teach my dad to dance. You can imagine the disaster that was, because my dad doesn\u2019t know how to dance. I remember that we moved all the furniture in the room for rehearsals and the neighbors, upon hearing the excitement and the music, came to the window to watch,\u201d she adds, laughing.<\/p>\n \u201cFinally, the big day arrived, we were all very nervous. The party was in the house, because I wanted it that way. About 300 people came. Mom prepared all the food except the birthday cake, which was a huge waterlily with a fountain and candles floating inside, and a doll representing me on top,\u201d Mu\u00f1oz reminisces. \u201cMom prepared punch cocktails, one with rum and one without rum. The next day we realized that we\u2019d only served the non-alcoholic drinks because Doris, our mare that had free roam of the house at that time, had gone in the kitchen and drunk the rum punch!\u201d<\/p>\n But it\u2019s the quince photos that are typically viewed as most important. Virtually every Cuban home is adorned with framed images of daughters posing as Wonder Woman, provocatively semi-clad, and in Cinderella dresses portraying the girl as a Spanish royal.<\/p>\n This portrayal of regal wealth has been amplified in recent years. Today\u2019s young generation was raised in the new era of elaborate quinces. They want bigger, more ostentatious fiestas. A nostalgic yearning for the past is now wed to a flaunting of a luxury lifestyle still economically unattainable to most Cubans. In recent years, quince parties have come full circle as a means for communist Cuba\u2019s\u00a0nuevos ricos<\/em>\u00a0to outdo their neighbors. (The most lavish parties tend to be organized by \u201cwhite\u201d families, since they receive more remittances from abroad and are, as a group, financially privileged.)<\/p>\n Cubans grounded in revolutionary ethics frown on such vulgarity and reverence of Spanish aristocratic symbolism. Nonetheless, the revolution\u2019s egalitarian policies have so reshaped the concept of \u2018self\u2019 and social distinction that today Cuban girls of all skin colors and economic levels celebrate this once exclusively white, upper-class ritual.<\/p>\n As Yusleidy\u2019s photo shoot ends, another\u00a0quincea\u00f1era<\/em>\u2014a beautiful Afro-Cuban\u2014arrives in a two-tone 1956 Dodge Mayfair. She looks like Brandy in Cinderella in her iconic turquoise cosplay costume. I smile, warmed by her radiance, and the undeniable beauty of this real-life fairytale that will end at the stroke of midnight, when she blows out the candle atop her birthday cake.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Foto-2.jpg\")
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