Luchando

Luchando
Noelle Stout
2007, video, 67 min.

Luchando follows a day in the life of four Cuban hustlers—a travesti, a lesbiana, and two pingueros—who set out to resolve their touching and at-times humorous predicaments in Havana’s gay underground. Luchando takes place in the last days of Fidel Castro’s Cuba, a late-socialist nation schizophrenically torn between the ideals of socialist equality and a rapidly growing division between the rich and poor. The film’s title 'luchando' has historically meant the fight for Cuba’s socialist revolution, but has become a slang term that hustlers use to describe their sexual encounters with clients. Shot in verite style over the course of a year, Luchando refuses sensationalism and instead emphasizes the subjective and experiential qualities of everyday life. The film explores the ambiguity of cultural categories such as 'homosexual' and 'hustler' that are continually renegotiated by the film’s subjects. Through a long-term, intimate engagement with the characters Luchando humanizes the sex trade in Havana by presenting characters who are at once vulnerable and in-control, affectionate and opportunistic, and whose ultimate strength comes from the bonds they share with one another.