I have one informant who had not celebrated her quince.63 Despite the centrality of the quinceañera’s mother in the organising of the celebration, Xiomara – the girl without quince – did not harbour bad feelings towards her mother for such neglect. She knew that her mother had absolutely no money to spend on her celebration at the time, in the middle of the Special Period after the fall of the Soviet Union. The mother had spent the little money she had to take her children to the Havana zoo in order to mark her daughter’s 15th birthday somehow. However, Xiomara was very bitter towards her father for a long time for not having sent money for her quince.
The girl’s father sometimes pays for the photos and the video. Especially if a girl’s mother is not able to cover the cost of the photo shoot, the girl’s father is expected to pay for it. This is also the reason why Xiomara was so resentful towards her father years after her quince: since he had not sent her money – knowing that her mother did not have the means – she was left without photos; she did not have quince.
63 Curiously, she was also one of the very few informants who suffered from infertility – coinciding with quince as the ritual that makes girls mature and fertile.
Despite the father’s generally very marginal position in a girl’s quince celebration, important expectations are directed towards the girl’s father to provide money for the occasion. Both the girl and her mother expect the father to contribute money, or at the minimum, some other type of material assistance. Failing to meet these demands may have long-term repercussions to a man’s relationship with his daughter. In its most extreme, a man’s failure to provide money for his daughter’s quince may be interpreted as a denial of the relationship altogether, which may lead to a complete break-up of their kin bond. It is thus very important for a man to participate in the expenses of his daughter’s quince – in any possible way. It does not matter whether a man has had little (or no) contact with his daughter before she turns 15 or if he has separated from her mother, the expectation is there all the same.
If the girl’s father fails to supply her with money, her mother’s new partner sometimes takes on the responsibility of providing the money for the party.64 I had one informant whose mother’s new foreign partner paid nearly for her entire quince party – a feisty celebration where the whole neighbourhood was invited. The girl’s parents were separated and her father lived in the same neighbourhood, but he avoided the celebration site on the day of the party.
My informants stated that the father must have “been ashamed” (le dio pena) to have another man pay for the party.65 The mother’s new partner occupied the father’s ritual position in the celebration, both escorting the quinceañera at her entrance to the party salon as well as dancing the waltz with her. Since he had supplied the great majority of the money for the occasion, he had in a way replaced the girl’s biogenetic father in all aspects of the ritual. (However, I was told that the girl took her father a piece of cake after the party, as a way to include him even a little).
The girl’s father has a central ritual role in the normative form of the ritual – he is expected to escort his daughter at the entrance to the party and to dance a waltz with her. However, in practice, a girl often dances with another male figure, such as her matrilateral uncle, a cousin, her mother’s new spouse, or her own boyfriend. The ritual structure is thus flexible in this regard. For such ritual tasks the girl’s father may be easily replaced by another man with no major consequences. However, a man’s failure to contribute materially to his daughter’s quince is interpreted by his daughter as a serious sign of disregard for their relationship.
A quince party carries the potential for a man to renew and strengthen his relationship with his daughter if he is willing to seize this possibility. If he
64 Sometimes this can also be another male figure who has a close relationship with the girl, for example the moth-er’s ex-partner who was around when the girl was a child.
65 The girl’s father gave her a little money, but significantly less than her mother’s new partner.
has had little contact with his daughter (sometimes for years), quince provides him an occasion to state his love and care for his daughter and to affirm his position as the girl’s father in a socially significant way. However, if he is not able to fulfil the expectations, quince also provides the possibility of creating an even deeper cleavage between himself, his daughter, and the girl’s mother.
Sometimes the girl’s father pays abundantly for the whole party. If he is not short of money, this is a good opportunity for him to make it socially noticed and let everyone know that he is doing well economically. I had one informant whose father paid for the girl’s godmother, the godmother’s boyfriend, and a group of other people a flight ticket from Havana to Santiago de Cuba so that they could attend the girl’s quince party at the other end of the island. Most Cubans have never been on a plane so this is quite an extreme case of spending from the father’s part. Another informant’s father was working two jobs and putting money aside for quite some time in order to make a contribution to his daughter’s quince. One of my male informants had two daughters by two different mothers that both turned 15 within two months of each other. He contributed money to both girls’ parties; in the case of the first daughter, her mother’s new foreign partner helped importantly in paying for the party, but Pablo occupied the normative father’s position in the ritual. In the case of Pablo’s second daughter, her fancy quince party was paid jointly by her father, her mother, her matrilateral grandmother, and her patrilateral sister who had recently migrated to Puerto Rico. (In both cases, the girls’ patrilateral grandfather offered to contribute some money for the celebration but their father said that there is no need for it).
Male informants often saw quince as a ritual that is predominately about money and showing off wealth. Women, on the other hand, stressed more quince’s position as a very special occasion that happens only once in a lifetime, and as a ritual that is essentially about the quinceañera’s beauty and about her mother’s accomplishment in raising up such an attractive daughter.
Thus the body becomes highlighted in women’s views, while men emphasise the significance of wealth.
Men are expected to provide women with money in their kinship relations on various distinct occasions. Indeed, money represents the type of care that is expected from men. In contemporary Cuba, money makes things happen, including things that are of crucial importance for the reproduction of the local kinship system – such as enabling the organising of a girl’s quince ritual. In this sense, money is an instrument in the service of reproducing gender difference, for quince parties are what being a girl is about in Cuba:
as boys are excluded from such practices, they are ways to reproduce gender
as a difference. But money makes gender also in the sense that money is something that is primarily a contribution that is expected to flow from men to women and children. In this sense, money is an object that makes men’s kinship links visible: it materialises a man’s position as part of the kinship structure and allows men to create and reproduce relationships as gendered beings.