HAVANA (AP) – A young Afro-Cuban performance artist transformed a Havana cultural center into the stage of a black hairstyle competition this weekend in a rare public commentary on racial beauty standards in Cuba, where prejudice remains widespread and largely undiscussed.
Politics, particularly detente with the U.S., is a common subject matter at this year’s international art fair. Few works touch on discrimination against black and mixed-race Cubans, which remains commonplace more than a half-century after the island’s socialist revolution promised to eliminate racism.
Susana Delahante, an internationally known 30-year-old Havana artist, invited black and mixed-race women to compete in three hair categories – natural, braided and dreadlocked.
After a two-hour competition in which 70 women competed Saturday evening, the audience of about 300 people voted by applause, handing the natural-hair prize to 72-year-old Felicia Solano, whose white outfit dramatically set off her halo of white hair, and the braids award to Marbelys Gonzalez, 15, with a cascade of tight braids decorated in brightly colored beads. There were no entries in the dreadlocks category.
Delahante and participants in the competition described it as a way of rebuilding pride among Afro-Cuban women in a society where kinky hair and black skin often are seen as less beautiful than straight locks and pale complexions.