In Cuba, a girl becomes a woman at the age of fifteen.
Cuban women experience two major events in their lives – their 15th birthday and their wedding.
When a girl is fifteen years old on the Caribbean island she is thought to be mature enough to take responsibility for one’s actions. She is allowed to have boyfriends and even sexual life.
A lot of our tourists were astonished: “What a young bride!”, “Why is she wearing a blue dress rather than a white one?”, “Where is the groom?”, “But she is minor!”… They are celebrating “El Quince,” I tell them.
On the “EL Quince” day all the relatives and closest friends of the girl, who is now 15 years old, gather around her and everybody is taking photographs. The girl is wearing heavy make-up and a festive dress resembling a wedding one. The celebration continues the whole day. Towards sunset hours the girl takes off the heavy clothing and put on a bathing suit while at least two photographers take her pictures with the setting sun in the background.
This is a luxurious event that every family spends a lot on so that it would be a typical Cuban one – rich and colorful. There is a popular joke in Cuba that if a Cuban family’s savings amount to 1000 EUR /in the local currency/ the family would spend 2000 EUR on El Quince. They hire costumes, make-up artists, photographers, cars… Everybody has to see that they have a grown-up woman now. The El Quince tradition is handed down in Cuba from Spain, but it is also popular in Latin America.
If you have visited a Cuban family with a daughter/daughters you must have seen a proud portrait of their girl/-s staring bravely and defiantly into the future.
