Vol. 71/No. 34      September 17, 2007

Our Memory Is on the Future, 2005 documentary, directed by Octavio Cortázar, Spanish with English subtitles. The DVD is available at www.pathfinderpress.com.

BY CHAUNCEY ROBINSON  
“Women are weak, like delicate flowers.”

“They are afraid of everything.”

So say a group of men at the opening of the Cuban documentary Our Memory Is on the Future. Then the scene cuts to a woman parachuting out of a plane. Then shots of women deep-sea diving, operating heavy machinery, and holding a rifle.

The film, directed by Octavio Cortázar in collaboration with the Federation of Cuban Women, walks through the role of women in Cuban society from before the 1959 revolution to the present day. It gives an overview of advances made by women in Cuba since the revolution and includes at times humorous street conversations with Cubans on gender and equality.

The film, now available with English subtitles, is an honest film and an entertaining way to learn about the revolutionary changes in women’s role in society made possible by workers and peasants taking political power.

The documentary emphasizes that if it were not for the socialist revolution, leadership attention, and popular mobilization, true gains in the struggle for women’s liberation would not have been realized. It concludes that the revolution in Cuba of the exploited and oppressed is intertwined with the fight for women’s equality.

Women were some of the fiercest soldiers in the 1956-58 war by workers and peasants to overthrow a U.S.-backed dictatorship. The documentary shows footage of women guerrillas and highlights the Mariana Grajales Platoon. This all-women’s combat unit was named after a Black woman active in Cuba’s first war of independence.

After the triumph of the revolution, women played an important role as brigadistas in the campaign that wiped out illiteracy in 1961. Up until then some of the young women who went into the countryside to teach peasants to read and write hadn’t been allowed outside of the house without a chaperon, let alone able to take such a leading role in the transformation of society.

Cuban women were encouraged to join the workforce to break from economic dependence on a husband and to break out of the isolation of the home. The film reviews some of the measures that Cuba’s communist government has taken to help in the process. Today, the film highlights, women make up 66 percent of skilled workers in Cuba, and many work in jobs long-considered only for men.

During the movie, the film crew approaches unsuspecting Cuban men and women on the street and asks them questions like, “Should a woman be a virgin when she gets married?”; “Should men raise children?”; and “Do women possess the qualities of a leader?” The interviews give an insight into the changing perceptions of women in society. The answers show that although significant advances have been made toward women’s equality, there is still a ways to go. The interviews also show how this topic is being discussed by Cuban people young and old, male and female.

Our Memory Is on the Future shows what women are capable of within a socialist revolution that gets rid of the economic system that profits from sexist discrimination.
 
 
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