Images of mulatas and the performance of mulataje (the quality of being or performing like a mulata) have been woven through Cuban culture since European slavery introduced Africans onto the island and Europeans and Africans produced mixed-race offspring. As the island reached toward and eventually achieved independence, tropic characters helped the nation to define its identity.
The so-called triumph of the revolution in 1959 sought to overturn the negative aspects of these stereotypes of identity and replace them with a pedagogy of citizenship. The mulata, as characterized in revolutionary cinema, protagonized this process. One of the first achievements of the revolution was the establishment of a national film institute, and it was through this institution, films that reframed Cuban history, and films that revised the future were produced. These films, along with other ambitious revolutionary campaigns, sought to recuperate marginalized people, especially women and Afro-Cubans, and integrate them into the new society.
