Thinking politics and fashion in 1960s Cuba: Hownot to judge a book by its coverMaría A. Cabrera Arús1Published online: 8 November 2017# Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2017Abstract This article presents fashion as a mechanism of domination and politicallegitimacy, focusing on Soviet-type state socialist regimes. In particular, it documentssome dynamics shaping the politics of fashion in the socio-political context of 1960sCuba arguing that the consolidation of a radically new political order in the country wasbased, in part, on the production of denotative logistics that associated clothes withpolitical values. The article concludes that denotative logistics are activated as mechanisms of impersonal rule in periods of political transition or regime change, such asafter the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. In those moments, they articulate processesof social engineering oriented toward producing a new society and a new man.Keywords Cuban1960s.Cubanstudies.Denotativemeanings.Materialculturestudies.Sociology of fashion . State socialist regimesIn the last three decades, the academic literature concerned with explaining the ways inwhich material culture shapes social life has surged. Mainstream cultural sociology,however, has marginally incorporated material analyses, which are extremely rare in thesmaller yet diverse group of academic works focusing on the impact of materiality onpolitics (Molnar 2013). Mainstream sociologists have actually paid too little attention tothe ways in which artifacts, fashion, architecture, and physical spaces purport politicaldiscourses that support domination or resistance. With few exceptions (e.g., CarrollBurke 2002; Latour 2005; Molnar 2005, 2013; Mukerji 1997, 2002, 2009, 2010, 2012),they have slightly studied, as well, the role that everyday material practices play in theconsolidation or destabilization of mechanisms of power.The lack of a sociological understanding of the politics of material culture is dire inthe sphere of fashion, in spite of the soaring number of graduate programs, specializedTheor Soc (2017) 46:411–428https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-017-9299-x* María A. Cabrera Arúsmac29@nyu.edu1 King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, New York University, 53 Washington Square S., Ste. 212, NewYork, NY 10012, USAjournals, and book series lately dedicated to scrutinizing and theorizing this practiceand its associated industry. The relationship between fashion and politics has yet to beexplained (Küchler and Miller 2005). Apart from Gilles Lipovetsky’s (1994) classicalwork on the politics of fashion in western democratic societies, the mechanismsthrough which politics and fashion influence each other continue to elude thediscipline. As sociologists Diana Crane and Laura Bovone (2006) pointed out morethan ten years ago, most of the research on the social impact of fashion is “done outsideof sociology by researchers in other disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities” (p. 321). The shortage of sociological approaches has probably contributed to thefact that recent attempts to define, or at least think about, a sociology of fashion (Aspersand Godart 2013; Crane and Bovone 2006; Entwistle 2000) have failed to include asingle empirical study on the relationship between fashion and power.This article discusses some aspects of this relationship in state socialist regimes,focusing on the Cuban case. It analyzes, in particular, the Cuban regime’s endorsementof denotative understandings of material culture (Buchli 1999) that linked, in astraightforward manner, fashion and politics. Examining the production of denotativelogistics during periods of radical change, when the destruction of an old political orderand the creation of a new one is at stake, this article points out the hybrid nature of thesartorial semiotics produced by revolutionary regimes after they seize power,discussing in detail the role that denotative understandings of fashion played in theconsolidation of the Cuban postrevolutionary state.Many works have, in the last 30 years, focused on the politics of material culture instate socialist regimes, with only a handful of them being attentive to fashion dynamics(e.g., Bartlett 2004, 2010; Medvedev 2008; Stitziel 2005). These works argue thatfashion played a role legitimizing and contributing to the collapse of state socialism inEastern Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. According to these authors,fashion articulated mechanisms of political socialization as well as resistance thateventually ran counter to the interests of the socialist state. However, these studieshave failed to pay attention to the Cuban case, one of the few regimes of Soviet typethat did not collapse after the disappearance of the Soviet Bloc. This article incorporatesthat country into the analyses of the politics of materiality in state socialist regimes,further contributing to explain the endurance of Cuban socialism after the fall of itsEuropean allies. Paying attention to one of the few countries of the former Soviet Blocwhere socialism did not collapse when the Berlin Wall was knocked down in 1989might contribute, as well, to the knowledge of the causes of the endurance, reform, andcollapse of the regimes of state socialism in general.In the discussion that follows, I adhere to sociologist Chandra Mukerji’s definition ofmaterial culture as “all parts of nature that have been made meaningful within systemsof cultural actions” (Mukerji 1994, p. 158), understanding that its meanings areproduced by both social actors and institutions through daily practices and processesthat are dynamic and tactical (Griffin 2002; McVeigh 2000). I therefore understandfashion as material culture, defined as “a visual and material system of symbols andmeanings” (Lee Blaszczyk 2008, p. 3) associated with practices of dress and adornmentthat include the production, circulation, consumption, and transformation of clothing,footwear, and accessories. This definition conceives of fashion as “the systematic,normative reserve from which the individual draws their own clothing” (Barthes2005, p. 8; also, Paulicelli 2004; Steele 1997a, b), not as the seasonal production of412 Theor Soc (2017) 46:411–428novelty and change (Aspers and Godard 2013; Entwistle 2000; Lee Blaszczyk 2008;Tranberg Hansen 2004) as it is commenonly understood. More in particular, in thecontext of this article I will refer to the sartorial system of symbols and meanings thatshaped Cuba’s “revolutionary” etiquette in opposition to the “bourgeois” forms ofdress.The discussion and claims made here are based on data obtained from both primaryand secondary sources, including interviews, published memoirs and testimoniesavailable online, and archives, such as the website Cuba Material and garments fromthe author’s collection of socialist material culture and fashion.1 Secondary data wereobtained from social science and humanistic literature. The article is divided in twoprincipal sections. The first part proposes a theoretical framework to understand thepolitics of fashion in state socialist regimes during periods of radical political change,while the second discusses these dynamics in the Cuban context, during the “formativemoments of utopia” (Merkel 2008, p. 328) that followed the triumph of the CubanRevolution. This period, which in Cuba extends from the victory of the Rebel Army onJanuary 1, 1959, through the late 1960s, had a long-term impact on the social andpolitical dynamics that later unfolded in the country. As cultural historian Ina Merkel(2008) has argued for Eastern Germany, many state policies and “expectations, demands, and perceptions of normality” (p. 328) that later unfolded in that country tookshape in those early years. This makes the study of the politics of revolutionary fashionin Cuba necessary to further understandings of the Cuban experience, both during theSoviet era and in the present.Fashion and power: denotative logisticsIn her study of the absolutist regime of King Louis XIV of France, Mukerji (2012,2010) argues that, alongside the most traditional forms of domination or strategicpower, the built environment exerts a form of power that, having a different nature,she calls logistics. When power is logistical, Mukerji claims, material regimes becomemechanisms of impersonal rule. That is, they give shape to political forms of sharedconsciousness or figured worlds of power. Figured worlds are shaped, according to thisauthor, by analogies and heuristics produced by the disposition and style of the materialenvironment. These systems of signification based on material attributes and practices,in other words, this “political culture embedded in things” (Mukerji 2010, p. 406), isable to transform political subjectivities, shaping loyalties and subordinations. Still,they are perceived as “a reality that seems inevitable, natural, or true” (p. 404; alsoMukerji 2012). Referring to this mechanism of power, sociologist Virag Molnar (2013)maintains that logistics “is as important and consequential as the much more widelydocumented representational power” (p. 12).The literature on state socialist regimes abounds on empirical analyses of whatanthropologist Krisztina Fehervary (2013) calls aesthetic regimes, a category defining“politically charged assemblages of material qualities that. .. [provoke] widely sharedaffective responses” (Fehervary 2013, p. 3; also, Fehervary 2009). Some of thesestudies discuss the politics of fashion in socialism (Bartlett 2004, 2010; Kiaer 2001;1 See, in http://cubamaterial.com, entries under the tag “fashion” and the categories Socialism and Revolution.Theor Soc (2017) 46:411–428 413Medvedev 2008; Stitziel 2005), establishing that the regimes of Eastern Europe and theSoviet Union “thrived for a monopoly over [fashion and] all its components: design,production, pricing, distribution, exportation, importation, meaning, and visual documentation” (Medvedev 2008, p. 252). In the most comprehensive of such studies,fashion historian Djurdja Bartlett (2010) outlines what, in her view, are the threeprincipal sartorial narratives in the Soviet Bloc regimes: “utopian dress,” “socialistfashion,” and “everyday fashion.” The first two narratives correspond to ideologicaldiscourses produced by the state, which can also be understood as aesthetic regimes,while citizens produce the latter in the everyday. All three, however, fall short when itcomes to explaining the mechanisms through which fashion becomes an instrument ofpower in the political realm. The historical continuity that, according to Bartlett (2010),characterizes these narratives, moreover, does not explain the concurrent production ofutopian and socialist sartorial regimes in many periods, notably during the BolshevikCultural Revolution, as Bartlett herself points out. Nor does it explain the concomitantendorsement, at the time, of asceticism and functionalism, on the one hand, andelaborate fashion proposals based on nationalistic referents and rustic materials, onthe other (see Bartlett 2010).The semiotic model that anthropologist Victor Buchli developed to explain thepolitics of the material culture of domestic space and architecture in the Sovet Unioncould explain the contradictions mentioned and the political dynamics of the sartorialregimes that shaped some of the contexts of social life in state socialist societies.According to Buchli (1997, 1998, 1999), the Bolshevik and, to a certain extent, thepost-Stalinist regimes endorsed denotative understandings of material culture thatlinked, quite directly and without the mediation of contextual elements, the attributesof the material world with political values. This straightforward association betweenmaterial culture and politics allowed Bolshevik and post-Stalinist officials to convey aradical break with the past, sanctioning new “normative notions of good and bad taste”(Buchli 1999, p. 162) that juxtaposed the socialist and the bourgeois material regimesand their associated values (also Reid 2002, 1997a, 1997b). “When taste becamerationalized and structured the material world denotatively,” Buchli (1999) asserts, “itcould be marshaled against the old material world and direct an individual towards newrules and understandings to describe an entirely new order” (p. 174). Following thissemiotic approach, the straighforward association that Bolsheviks endorsed betweenboth rustic ornaments and modern functionalist forms on the one hand and socialistideology on the other—or the concomitance of utopian and socialist sartorial narrativesat some periods—would find an explanation in their role dismantling previoussmaterial regimes of opulence and luxury—either bourgeois or Stalinist.Examined under Mukerji’s theory of figured worlds, denotative understandings ofmaterial culture can be viewed as mechanisms of impersonal rule or logistics producedto convey meanings of renovation and change. A review of the literature on socialistfashion evinces, moreover, that, in this sphere, like in domestic space, these regimes—specially during the Bolshevik and the post-Stalinist eras—endorsed a straightforwardconnection between clothes or styles and political views (see Arvatov and Kiaer 1997;Bartlett 2010; Fitzpatrick 1974; Kiaer 2001). During those periods, officials attachedcounterrevolutionary values to bourgeois fashion, and associated work clothes andconstructivist sartorial designs with the proletariat as a class and socialism as ideology.414 Theor Soc (2017) 46:411–428This dual logistics identified military boots and working clothes with the proletariat,and classic suits, ties, spectacles, and pince-nez with the prerevolutionary bourgeoisie.Understanding these sartorial dynamics as mechanisms of impersonal rule based ondenotative logistics contributes to explain the politics of material culture and fashion instate socialist regimes during periods of radical change. In those epochs, the emergence ofradically new sartorial regimes contributes to empower and disempower elites; transformclass relations; create a paternalistic, condescending relationship between those whodetermine the appropriate socialist forms and styles and the rest of society; favor theintervention of the state in the private sphere; and sanction the use of repression to punishviolators (Fitzpatrick 1974; Gerchuk 2000; Molnar 2005; Reid 2002, 1997a, 1997b;Stitziel 2005). Understanding denotative sartorial dynamics as logistics, moreover, facilitates a view of socialist fashion as a phenomenon that, as Katalin Medvedev (2008)maintains, was “complex, dynamic, and context-specific” (p. 251). In the followingsection, these claims are evaluated in the specific context of the Cuban case.The Cuban 1960sNot many works in the vast production that characterizes the field of Cuban studieshave paid attention to the material bases of power in the postrevolutionary era—noteven during the first decade of socialism in the country, a period otherwise profuselyscrutinized, except for some analyses carried out by historians Lillian Guerra (2012 andLouis A. Pérez (1999)—see also Chase (2015) and Serra (2007). This sectionundertakes such a task in a more systematic way, focusing on the politics of fashionduring the little more than a decade that preceded the institutionalization of socialism inthe country, a period that extends from January 1, 1959, to the proclamation of a statesocialist constitution in 1976. More in particular, the discussion that follows presentsthese dynamics as a mechanism of political legitimation of the Cuban revolutionaryregime during its formative years.In the 1960s, three principal political discourses helped to legitimize the revolutionary regime: egalitarianism, nationalism and emancipation, and progress (Bobes 2007;Farber 2011; Guerra 2012; Pérez 1999; Pérez-Stable 1993; Rojas 2011, 2008, 1998).Sartorial dynamics not only visibilized and conveyed these notions, they also put forthdenotative logistics that straightforwardly associated some styles and clothes withpolitical values (Cabrera Arús 2015). Arguing that fashion has the capacity to shapeand corrupt individual and collective subjectivities, Cuban revolutionary leaders, echoed by the media, endorsed denotative sartorial regimes that functioned as mechanismsof impersonal rule and social engineering, aimed to produce a “new man.”Addressing the people of Santa Clara during the celebration of the fourth anniversary of the integrated youth movement, Castro (1964) elaborated on the capacity ofclothes to transform values, a notion also represented in Fig. 1:And surely that soldier, surely that youth . . . does not become a fashionista, doesnot become an Elvis Presley—how would you say it?—a “little Elvis.” [Thetransformation of] that young man begins when he cuts his hair short; when he isadmitted into the military barracks he develops different manners, he develops adifferent demeanor, he develops a different character; he develops new habits, heTheor Soc (2017) 46:411–428 415develops habits quite different from those habits that can be spotted on somestreet corners, that you can see in some parks: nonsense, senseless things,[sartorial] fantasies, all disappear from the mind of this young man, and heprepares his mind and strengthens himself against the influence of all extravagantand outlandish things. (Castro 1964; all translations from Spanish are by author)On the occasion, Castro delved on the relationship between clothes and politicalattitudes, linking “revolutionary” virtues with olive-green fatigues, and contemporarystyles of dress with “counterrevolution” and “deviancy.” Before, four days after thetriumph of the Rebel Army, in march toward Havana in what was known as theCaravan of Victory, Castro had hinted the relevance he expected olive-green fatigueuniforms would have in the new society. Addressing the cheering crowd that receivedthem in the province of Camagüey, he talked about the plans for demobilization of theRebel Army and other revolutionary organizations, declaring that: “When normalconditions return, guns will be taken off the streets. For what and against what dopeople need guns? Rifles [will be] kept in barracks” (Castro 1959b). Yet if, in his view,guns were to be reserved only for the professional army, he expected that the guerrillauniform be donned by all. “Olive green, of course!” he stressed, adding, in response toa comment voiced from the public related to the beards of the rebels: “What’s with thebeard? [You say] that [soldiers] should shave their beards? Well, in that case, I wouldsuggest that everyone should let his beard grow.”Fig. 1 “Distinct and different.” Sketch by Antonio Mariño Souto (Ñico) published in the weekly humoristictabloid Palante 24 (April 9, 1964) representing the transformation of a young man drafted by the mandatorymilitary service after a simple change of clothes—from an eccentric civilian outfit to an olive-green militaryuniform. (Photo courtesy of Abel Sierra Madero; originally published in Cuban Studies 44 (2016), 318)416 Theor Soc (2017) 46:411–428Indeed, after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, olive-green fatigue uniforms didactually displace formal suits and guayabera shirts—customarily associated withpoliticians and public figures in the prerevolutionary era—as element of distinctionand political merit (Pérez 1999). The ensuing militarization of dress prompted a Sovietobserver to compare, in an article published in the magazine Mella (1964), whichcatered to the youth, Cuban revolutionary fashion with the sartorial discourses of theKomsomolsks (Castellanos 2008). Other testimonies also attest that, in effect, duringthe 1960s “university professors and students [attended classes] wearing khaki clothesor with military uniforms and boots” (Pérez Cortés 2004, p. 47) and, as media scholarYeidy M. Rivero (2015) notes, even TV stars, performers, and soap opera charactersappeared on TV clad in olive-green fatigue uniforms to convey their support of therevolutionary transformations.2If, in the officials’ view, olive-green fatigues indicated people’s allegiance to therevolutionary regime and its political ideology, not to wear them revealed bourgeoistendencies. Minister of Industries Ernesto Guevara (Che Guevara) introduced a subordinate to the Deputy Prime Minister of the Soviet Union Anastas Mikoyan, on the occasionof his visit to the country in 1960, as the “representative of the national bourgeoisie”(Borrego 2001, p.131). The reason was that the Cuban official attended the receptionwearing a suit, unlike Guevara and the other cabinet members, all clad in fatigues.The olive-green etiquette helped individuals to transform their political identities inaccordance with the archetype of the guerrilla leaders and, quite particularly, Fidel Castro,giving shape to a figured world of power that extolled Castro’s leadership and portrayedsociety as a pueblo uniformado, that is, in uniform (First Congress of the CommunistParty of Cuba. Memoirs 1976, p. 29), under Castro’s command. This sartorial logistics,moreover, fostered the radicalization of individuals in favor of the new regime, itsinstitutions, and its values, as it gave origin to practices of socialization that often collidedwith customary practices of the prerevolutionary society or with the sartorial normssanctioned by other institutions, such as the Church. The following testimony illustratesthe estrangement from the Catholic Church a parishioner endured in the early 1960swhen, compelled by the demands of postrevolutioary life, she went to mass clad in themilitia uniform:I went to Communion, as I usually did. I went, I confessed, I went to takeCommunion, and when the priest stopped in front of me to give me the Host hedid not give it to me. I thought, well, maybe he made a mistake. That is what Ithought, he skipped me and made a mistake, but he passed by me again [aftergiving the host to the whole line] and again he did not give it to me. The thirdtime, I grabbed him by the arm, which is something you are not supposed to dobecause, you know, it is sacrilege to do that, to talk there, in front of the Host youcan’t do that. I stopped him and I told him: “Father, you did not give me theHost.” And he said: “No, you are in mortal sin.” And I said: “Me? Whoconfessed?” Actually, I didn’t think anything of it, I just told him: “I confessed.”He said: “Yes, but [look at] what you are wearing.” And then I looked at myself,and that was when I erupted. I said to him: “What? Am I in mortal sin because ofthis [militia uniform]?” And that’s when I smacked the ciborium and all the Hosts2 Ismael Sarmiento Ramírez, Facebook message to the author, February 16, 2016.Theor Soc (2017) 46:411–428 417scattered; well, they rolled throughout the hall, with the ciborium on the floor.(Pilar Cabrera in Sejourné and Coll 1980, p. 178)Denotative sartorial logistics also helped individuals to communicate political allegiances through their clothes and sartorial performances. Castro’s illegitimate daughter,Alina Fernández (1998), recalls in her memoirs that her mother, a former socialite,changed her skirts and pearls for “the blue-green uniform of the militias, with a Spanishberet like that of the bodeguero, the grocery-store owner” (p. 30). According toFernández (1998), her mother wanted to convey her full transformation into aproletarian. Even women as influential as Celia Sánchez, Castro’s personal assistantand close collaborator, found herself compelled to swap the fancy dresses she bought atthe famous department store El Encanto upon arriving in Havana for the guerrillauniform. According to Sánchez’s biographer (Stout 2013), “by the end of 1959, it wasclear [to her] that a certain kind of revolutionary etiquette had been established” (p. 343),and not even Sánchez dared to violate it. On occasion, these sartorial performances thatalso corporealized the state (Parkins 2002) were taken to extremes, as architect MarioCoyula (2007) attests. Describing the political commissar of the School of Architecture,Coyula portrays him as “a grotesque character . . . [who] walked around the CUJAE[campus] dressed up in an olive-green uniform and with a Makarov [revolver] in his belt,which he carried even though he had never been an insurrectionary” (pp. 11–12).Individuals also communicated their political allegiances transforming their bodiesor enduring strenuous physical tests, such as climbing Pico Turquino, Cuba’s highestmountain, up to five consecutive times. Blisters, associated with working in the fields,also denoted virtues in the revolutionary figured world. Coyula (2007) observes that,for many people, “getting your hair cut, wearing gray khaki pants, and getting blistersfrom hoeing the fields” (p. 12) sufficed to turn people into exemplary revolutionaries. Afemale volunteer cane-cutter interviewed in 1970 by the official newspaper Granmadeclared that “a blister on the hand was more beautiful than a sapphire” (in Guerra2012, p. 240).To the archetypical “new man” (who also served as a model for the “new woman”),the polarized etiquette of the revolutionary figured world of power opposed the“worms,” also identified by their clothes. A marked penchant for contemporarycapitalist fashion fads characterized this group. In the officials’ view, this trait exposedindividuals to ideological contamination and corruption. Castro, echoed by the media,led this crusade, attributing contaminating effects on values to countercultural styles,and presenting these styles as vehicles of deviancy and counterrevolution. Only a fewmonths after having seized power, on November 18, 1959, he compared the “littlegangs of mama’s boys that dress up” and the “groups of treacherous fashionistas inCadillacs” (Castro 1959a) with rats that abandon a sinking boat, contrasting theseindividuals with the humble working-class Cubans. Two years later, during theMarch 13, 1963, speech in commemoration of the attack on the Presidential Palaceorganized by the anti-Batista Revolutionary Directorate, the leader of the CubanRevolution called the middle-class teenagers who dressed up or wore skinny pants“specimens” and social “byproducts,” directly associating their appearance with socialdeviancy.That same year, Mella (issue 214, April 6) published a front-page feature called“What They Do and What They Believe in . . . A Little Gang of Elvispreslians,”418 Theor Soc (2017) 46:411–428illustrated with photographs that showcased the style of the “deviant” youth (seeFigure 2). In 1968, the official newspaper Juventud Rebelde—created after Mellastopped circulating—published a similar feature titled “Fourth World Boys,” explainingthe logics that linked some clothes with “counterrevolutionary” values (in Veltfort2008).3 The 1964 article “The “Indolent” Disguise Themselves as “Invalids,”” alsopublished in Mella (issue 293), illustrates in detail the straightforward connection thatofficials established between fashion and ideology:Grouped into legions that walk through the capital, the deviants can be identifiedby their costume: . . . sunglasses, sandals, and side bangs.Striped t-shirts and plus-sized shirts. Skinny pants. Accatone and Nero hairdos.Hair that is disheveled or dyed different colors. Miniskirts that show bare legs.Lockets on long necklaces. Thin sideburns. Books under the arm. Everything canbe combined, according to the gender. It is not that the cowl always makes themonk, but those that are “sick,” unlike the young workers, the peasants, thesoldiers, or the students, can always be identified by one thing: their extravagantclothes.4 (In Castellanos 2008, p. 12)Denotative sartorial logistics also surface in the comic strip “Life and Miracles ofFlorito Volandero,” published in Mella in 1965 (in Guerra 2012, pp. 150–151; also, inVeltfort 2007) (see Figure 3). This didactic cartoon illustrates the link between capitalistfashion fads and political values through the story of the ideological transformation ofFlorito, an effeminate young man that is politically “confused” and, unable to distinguish good from bad, throws himself into the arms of an American soldier looking forprotection. Indicative of the direct association between clothes and values is that thisgraphic story not only conveys Florito’s “weakness”—his homosexuality—and associated political confusion through the character’s body language but also through hisclothing. The boy, notably, wears sandals and tight pants.5A particulr case of association of certain styles of clothes with political deviancy is theblue jeans or pitusa, as this garment is called in Cuba.6 Using a metonym—or symbolicsubstitution of a small part for the whole—, during the act commemorating the sixthanniversary of the attack on the Presidential Palace in 1963, Castro called pitusas the3 Juventud Rebelde, founded in 1965, is the national newspaper of the Cuban communist youth.4 People called “accatone” a hairstyle inspired in the Italian film Accatone, directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini in1961 (Castellanos 2008).5 Elisabeth Wilson (1985) observes that in nineteenth century England, sandals were also associated withhomosexuality because the libertarian socialist, gay, and feminist advocate Edward Carpenter wore them as asymbol of political protest. Nineteenth century Cuban intellectual José de la Luz y Caballero also associatedthe exaggerated interest in the fashion typical of the petimetre (a tropical “dandy”) with a lack of “masculinity”and “confusion” in terms of sexual preferences (Goldgel 2013).6Pitusa was a Cuban brand of denim pants that disappeared with the nationalizations of the 1960s, but theword continued to designate jean pants that, initially, were skinny, in the style of Elvis Presley, and later allblue jeans made with denim fabric. Historian Abel Sierra Madero (2016) claims that the name pitusa comesfrom the popular association between the brand “Pit” and USA, country where it was produced, but literaryscholar María L. García Moreno (2014) suggests that the word might have come from pituso(a), Spanish for“cute.” This “cute girl” etymology seems more related to the brand’s logo, which interviewees remember as acowgirl throwing a rope in the air (María L. Pérez, communication to author, October 20, 2013, Weehawken,New Jersey).Theor Soc (2017) 46:411–428 419individuals who donned tight blue jeans. On the occasion, he associated pitusas withpolitical deviancy and opposition to the regime, declaring that “the little lumpen, the lazy,the Elvispreslian, the pitusa” (Castro 1963) were similar manifestations of a counterrevolutionary ideology.The media reproduced Castro’s metonym and the following issue of Mella (209, 1963)accused “Elvispreslians, challengers, pitusas, mama’s boys, [and] the ‘liberated’” of being“depraved carriers of the decayed and stinking petit-bourgeois ideology” (in Castellanos2008, p. 7). In 1964, a poem published in the humoristic tabloid Palante ridiculized thesetight jeans, linking pitusas to anti-social behaviors (in Sierra Madero 2016). In 1968, a fakeclassified ad in the satirical publication El Anti-lumpen announced: “I am selling, donating, exchanging, swapping, or transferring super skinny pants, of the kind you have to sewshut after you put them on. It is a legitimate ‘Pitusa.’ I urgently want to get rid of them, justin case. Yoyito. You may reach me at the phone number 56096543” (in Veltfort 2010).Finding justification in these logics, the state persecuted and punished individualsbased on their clothes. In the documentary Improper Conduct (1984, directed by NéstorAlmendros and Orlando Jiménez Leal), interviewees describe the persecution thatCuban gays suffered, referring to the fact that police agents identified them by theirclothes. In her personal blog, actress Yolanda Farr (N.d.) also recalls that, during the1960s, not to be taken for a homosexual—and therefore a moraly weak and potentiallycounterrevolutionary individual—entailed that a man’s pants’ legs had to be wideenough for an orange to roll through them, a method the police actually used to decidewhom to pull from the street in their operatives. Lack of space for the orange orwearing men’s sandals would indicate homosexuality or counterrevolutionary views.Making fun of those who violated these rules, while also warning them to live with theconsequences, a satirical text in El Anti-Lumpen (1968) advises:7 “Don’t buy Yeyésandals before seeing my collection. I sell them for practically nothing. I’d also like toFig. 2 “What They Do and What They Believe in … A Little Gang of Elvispreslians.” Editorial published onthe cover of issue 214 (April 6, 1963) of Mella’s weekly graphic supplement.7 This tabloid was announced as the first issue of a new, supposedly nationalized magazi
