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History and Hipness, All in One Garment
Most Latinos can recognize the guayabera as the comfortable yet stylish shirt worn by their fathers and grandfathers. My favorite photo of my parents shows Mami and Papi at their engagement party circa 1957, Papi decked out in his dress whites, with an elegant, long-sleeved guayabera, matching linen pants, and brilliantined hair, à la Ricky Ricardo. White was de rigueur for guayaberas then, but this garment has quite a colorful history.
Some sartorial scholars claim the birthplace of the guayabera was the city of Sancti Spiritus, in central Cuba, an area noted for the Yayabo River. It is said that a Spanish immigrant asked his wife to make him a loose, comfortable shirt, with pockets by the hips and chest, in which to carry his smokes. According to history or legend, the practicality of this shirt was quickly imitated, and it spread beyond the area of the folks known as "yayaberos," in reference to the river. Some say that the roomy front pockets were well suited to carry guayabas (guava fruit), a common treat in the Yayabo River area, and thus one way or another the shirt came by the name. Other say that yayabera became guayabera as the shirt spread outside the Yayabo area, like a game of telephone.
We do know with some certainty that by the 1860s, during the struggle against Spanish colonialism, the shirt was seen as a symbol of independence by Cubans and Spaniards alike. Insurgent generals were known to favor it, and the design came to include the shape of the Cuban national flag, in the triangular yoke and parallel seams on the back. It is said that the young Cuban republic chose July 1 as el Día de la Guayabera, also the birthdate of a Cuban poet, Juan Cristóbal Nápoles Fajardo (1829-1862), who celebrated the national garment in his work.
By the 1940s, the guayabera had become a popular garment for Cuban men of all classes, to the extent that elite social critics lectured on the dangers of guayaberismo, where coat and tie were abandoned in favor of comfort and practicality, even at evening events. Some considered this to presage the end of civility and good taste. But the guayabera continued its global expasion, becoming a garment favored by business and political figures all over Latin America, often worn with a certain ethnic pride.
Today, we see the classic long-sleeved white linen guayabera still sold in Latino neighborhoods all over the U.S., as well as more casual, easy-care cotton-blend versions, in short sleeves and a wild range of colors. Short-sleeved black guayaberas have become standard in salsa clubs all over the U.S., favored by well-groomed young men out for a night of dancing. Anglo businesses have adopted elements of the guayabera design, keeping the button-front, untucked shape, and adding contrasting fabrics and trendy colors to the front vertical panels, now marketed as "Havana shirts." The guayabera has even evolved into gender equality; one can now find elegant women's versions, designed for female proportions.
The guayabera - practical, patriotic, and ever popular - get one for your Papá for Father's Day, or for yourself, to wear when you go apogeando this summer.
Sources: "Porque la Guayabera es Puramente Cubana" Ruben Díaz-Abreu, http://www.autentico.org/oa09148.php; "Guayaberismo and the Essence of Cool," Marilyn Miller, in The Latin American Fashion Reader, ed. Regina Root, 2005).
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