ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how the body is used in Carmelita Tropicana’s feminist and queer performances as both means of and repository for the historical and personal split memory of US Cuban women. It begins with an analysis of the performance persona of Carmelita Tropicana via theories of tropicalization, followed by an analysis of Memorias de la Revolución / Memories of the Revolution (1986) focusing on the intersectional use of “choteo” (humor a la cubana), lesbian racialized camp, and gestic signifying. It shows how the play de-essentializes and racializes the “lesbian spectatorial community” prior to the advent of queer of color critique. The second half of the chapter focuses on With What Ass Does the Cockroach Sit / ¿Con Qué Culo Se Sienta La cucaracha? (2004). This one-woman play rewrites the Spanish folktale of La Cucarachita Martina anthropomorphizing the Elián González international conflict (1999–2000) and Cuban-Cuban American politics and divisions. Tropicana performs a whole array of animals, parodies hardline political positions in Cuba and in Miami, highlighting the importance of affective relationships. The reading of this queer political fable and of the queer cabaret Memorias interconnects gender with race, sexuality and national identity, desire, and geopolitics at the beginning of the 21st century.
