Grisaida sits like a queen on her throne atop the back seat of a fancy 1950’s Chevy convertible, horn blaring, cruising Havana’s favourite seaside promenade, the Malecón.
She is wearing a wide, red Rococo styled dress complemented by elbow-length white gloves. Fake diamonds dangle from her ears and form a loop around her neck. On her head sits a crown. She smiles radiantly; she is living the moment she has dreamt of for the past 10 years.
A girl’s 15th birthday is celebrated as a very special occasion and usually at great expense to her family – especially the girl’s mother, who typically has to save for years to pay for the festivities. Often celebrations include a lavish party and expensive professional photo sessions of the girl and the whole day is captured on video. If the family is too poor to organise a big party, a house party often takes place at the girl’s home or out in the street with all the people of the neighbourhood invited. Only girls’ 15th birthday is celebrated as a special, socially important occasion; a boy’s 15th birthday passes without any special celebration, making quince a very gender-specific ritual.
A quince party is seen as a popular social event and can feature a guest list of up to 300 invitees: the girl’s – and most importantly her mother’s – kin, friends, neighbours, and schoolmates are all invited to attend. The girl’s mother carefully chooses the outfits, decorations, locale, program, and food and drinks for the occasion. In the most extravagant cases, a court-style ballroom dance-event is organised, featuring 14 couples in addition to the quinceañera and her male dancing partner, el galán. A professional dancer has choreographed the piece and the young performers have practiced it between one and three months in preparation for the event, often under the supervision of the girl’s mother.
On the day of the party, the quinceañera is paraded around the city in either an old, American convertible or in a horse-drawn carriage, wearing a wide, 18th century-style dress known as traje colonial. The drive ends at the location of the party where she enters accompanied by her father – or another male figure – and a little girl called la damita, acting as a court maid carrying flower petals and sprinkling them before the quinceañera as she advances.
In the party hall on a centre stage there is a huge cake, often lavishly decorated with adornments such as running-water fountains, lights, candles, little dolls depicting the dancers on the lower levels of the cake, and the quinceañera standing on the top level of the cake.
The dance always begins with a waltz. Dancers performing in this formal phase of the event are wearing 18th-century style outfits imitating the Spanish colonial era; girls in puffy wide dresses similar to that of the quinceañera and boys in black or white suits, often tuxedos. After the waltz, the dancers perform other dances in which the quinceañera takes the lead role (such as casino, danzón or reggaeton).53 After the conclusion of the formal events, the dance-floor is free for the attendees to take over and the festivities continue into the early hours of the morning.
53 Danzón and casino are traditional Cuban dances; reggaeton is a newer import from Puerto Rico, very popular amongst young Cubans.
FIG. 5: A QUINCE CAKE
In addition to the party, the photos – taken by a professional photographer in specially chosen locations and scenes – are an important element of the ritual. Photos are often viewed as even more important than the actual quince party (see also Rosendahl 2010: 50). Even when a girl’s family is very poor and unable to organise a party for her birthday, they usually make everything in their power to provide her with proper quince photos. Quince photos represent a specific, well-established cultural format in Cuba, much like wedding photos in most parts of the western world. The photos represent the minimal
‘condition’ that has to be filled for a girl to “have quince” (tener quince); to have undergone a ritual celebration that marks her coming-of-age. Currently the photos are usually accompanied by a video. Even though the video follows a highly similar trajectory as the photos and the general outline of the quince party, it never undermines the importance of the photos.
In the photos the girl poses in “colonialist” settings wearing the traje colonial, as well as a range of more modern outfits. These may range from whatever is in fashion to fantasy set ups such as the girl sitting in the jungle next to a lion in leopard-skin garments, driving a motorcycle in thigh-length PVC boots, appearing as a mermaid with a fish’s tail, or appearing in the poster of the American TV series CSI Las Vegas (very popular in Cuba at the time of my fieldwork) as one of the stars of the show. In quince’s ritual imagery, girls are
never depicted as workers, soldiers, or students – roles that in reality are open to women in Cuban society – but rather as characters that are not in line with the ideology of the modern-day Cuba like pirates, royals, or oriental dancers.
In some photos the girl wears nothing at all besides a basket of flowers or other props to cover her breasts and genitals. In a playful way, the photos function as a testing ground for new ideas and ways of being to the girl – as a practice that allows for her to test, imagine, and dream of what it is like to be an adult woman.
The girl and her mother in particular take great pride in showing her quince photos to anyone who is willing to watch them. The photos are circulated widely in the community: shown to family, friends, and neighbours and hung on the walls at home (as well as keenly presented to foreign anthropologists, especially by women). Quince photos are also sent to kin living abroad: for example, there is a frequent interchange of girls’ photos between Miami and Cuba.
As all of these distinct aspects of the ritual imply, quince requires considerable amounts of money. In addition to the showy party featuring a professional dance group and a celebrity performer to host the event, the photo and video sessions with all their special effects can result in an overly expensive ceremony for an average family.54 It is not unusual for the quinceañera and her dancers to change their outfits up to seven times during the event and the organiser is expected to pay for all this. In addition, there are costs related to makeup, hairstyles, and manicure. No quinceañera wants to appear poor on her big day.
Everyone who knows the girl or her mother typically expects to get invited to the party (although such hopes do not always materialise in practice). It is expected to have food and drinks in abundance in quince parties (much more so than in weddings), as well as good music to dance the night away. One of my young informants was anxious before her party because according to her people are very quick to criticise quince parties for the lack of food or drinks and therefore she desired to have a night out in the disco with her friends instead.55 Mona Rosendahl (2010: 50-51) sees quince parties as an equalising income distribution mechanism in Cuban society. It is true that quince parties represent an important moment for the social sharing of resources in the community, when neighbours take turns at inviting each other reciprocally
54 At the time of my fieldwork in 2007, the average monthly salary was about 260 pesos, the equivalent of $10 USD.
However, almost everyone had other sources of income. During my fieldwork in 2008, there were rises in both salaries and prices. Since then, there have been continuous fluctuations and changes in the economy and the labour market.
55 This shows that while quince is a moment of fun and celebration, it may also resurface underlying tensions in social relations, as well as ambiguities between more relational and more individualistic orientations between the girl, her kin, and the whole neighbourhood.
to their daughters’ quince celebrations. However, in my view the ritual’s great importance lies first of all in the way in which it structures and restructures the quinceañera’s kinship universe and defines gender as the primary social difference in society.
Even though there are significant differences between the most luxurious and poorest quince parties, the ritual is not primarily an event marking class difference. While quince circulates imagery about appearing wealthy, even poor girls celebrate their quince in one way or another. Although my informants sometimes brought up the issue of wealth when discussing quince – stating the social pressure to organise a fancy party – they still emphasised quince’s significance as a gendered girls’ ritual beyond any class-related connotations the ritual may have.
Moreover, even though the ritual significantly employs Spanish colonial imagery, girls of all colours celebrate their quince more or less similarly. My informants never expressed that the ritual would have any significant ‘racial’
connotations despite the fact that they were very clear about the ritual’s symbolic imagery derived from upper-class Spaniards of the colonial era.
Thus, the ritual cannot be seen as race-specific or significantly differentiated racially.56
Girls often dream about their quince since they are children and wait for the day with great excitement and anticipation. In speech, the expression quinceañera is used to describe an idealised age where a young woman is at her most beautiful with the world at her feet.