by Jesús Zúñiga, Independent Journalists' Cooperative
The average Cuban earns ten dollars per month while a beer in a club costs seven dollars. Suddenly, doctors and teachers, as well as carpenters and shoemakers are looking for ways to earn dollars, the only money that has any value in Cuba. Similarly, the number of women offering themselves to foreigners as temporary companions or potential wives has increased dramatically.
Since the Cuban economy crashed in the early 90's, the tourist industry has become the primary source of hard currency and foreigners are greatly sought after. The Tourism Ministry projects two million tourists by the end of this year. Among them are planes full men from Spain, Italy, Germany, Canada, and even the United States. These are men whose acquisitive power and social status is multiplied by ten once they come to a country with such a dire need for hard currency like Cuba.
Cuba is a place where these men can act out their sexual fantasies free of any police intervention. In Cuba they meet women who are looking for dollars, a good time and, frequently, a ticket out of the country. It's no secret that many Cuban women see the "Pepes" (foreign clients) as a replacement for a paternal government that can no longer satisfy their needs in life. One of the biggest salsa hits in the country now advises women to find a "rich daddy with a lot of bucks", that is to say, a protective older man.
When this latest wave of prostitution began many of the women were white, but the foreigners had their own fantasies about tropical women based on old tales about very sexy mulattas. Now, the majority of the women are mulattas who generally are poorer than their whiter counterparts. A considerable number of them are minors. Many work on their own while others, especially the young women from the provinces, are managed by pimps. They're almost never associated with any state- run enterprise.
Salsa songs, jokes and a new, obscene street art are leading Cubans to view these women as suppliers of sex whose sexual power is showing the failures of a decadent regime.
The Fallen Angels
A wave of repression has come over the Cuban prostitutes. The police harass them asking for their identification cards. If they're in the capital or in Varadero and their address is of a city in the provinces, they are immediately suspect for practicing prostitution. They are taken to a police station. There, a warning is issued and their personal information is entered on a computer. If it happens again, the same procedure is repeated and on the third round they lose the game. Although there is no law on the matter, they can be sentenced to six months in a re-education center where they will perform farm labor. Also, anyone who provides a room for committing the infraction can be sentenced as well as those who either directly or indirectly play the role of pimp or protector. No tourist has been bothered about paying for sex.
Regardless, nothing stops them. Joana is 16. She lives in Old Havana. The moving lights all around La Pantana discotheque cover her long neck and extremities as she balances her hips and her chest in opposite directions and her dress swings from side to side. The way she moves is called "mo¤o". It's just a step away from the movement that is done during sex.
She dances alone. A friend invites her to have a beer. I ask her why she's there alone. "I live in Old Havana with my girlfriends who are 'stationed' here, but the Pepe they found for me is really cheap", she responds, all sweaty and agitated. "So why do you stay?"
"Varadero is one of the most affordable rest stops for tourists traveling around Cuba. It's easy to get to them here. They're always out of control", explains this pre-University student. I ask if her parents know where she is.
A smile and the expression "Make like you're a foreigner" is her response. What's on sale here is out in the open: rum, cigars and mulattas.
The main road to Varadero, baptized locally as Calle Ocho in honor of the one with the same name in Miami, is that which carries in most of the tourists. Anita and Milagros are near 30. They've been working the streets for ten years. Milagros has a young son that she takes care of. Anita lives alone.
When they began, Anita tells me, their main clients were merchant marines and foreign technicians. Back then, possessing dollars was illegal. So they would get a hold of some African student who would buy them things in the government stores. They were careful - they still are - not to be too showy so as not to get someone jealous who might inform on them. Until now they've been lucky and have never been arrested but they have friends in jail.
I tell them about the image of the prostitutes outside of Cuba where they are frequently described as vulgar and unsophisticated with platinum blonde hair and tight pants. Anita has on a white t-shirt and loose white pants with a light maroon jacket and a little white cap. Milagros is wearing jeans, a light blue t-shirt and some plastic jewelry. Neither of them has died their hair.
"The natural look has returned", explains Milagros. "Even the white girls are getting permanents so as to look like mulattas." They both admit that hair styles are adapted to the tastes of the clients. The Spaniards like black girls with braids so all of the blacks wear their hair that way. The Italians like the mulattas with mussed-up hair.
When I ask them what they think of Cuban men, they both laugh out loud. "They see a Spaniard coming with a girl and they don't see him", says Anita. "Instead they see chicken, beans, rice: a full refrigerator."
"But the business is changing. Sometimes these guys show up with shopping bags full of underwear and they think that's good enough to get us into bed.," says Anita. "There are a lot more younger guys now who try to tell you that it's all 'por amore'. Before, some men would come and live with us for a while. I used to take guys home for a week. Now they want a different girl every night".
"What about the dangers?" "There have been some," they respond and they remember a prostitute who was impaled on a mop handle by a European tourist who then got rid of the body by tossing it off of the hotel balcony. The murderer was already out of the country when they found the body.
"Health risks?" Both acknowledge that they insist on the use of condoms and that health is an area where the government is still in control. Knowing of the deteriorating conditions in Cuban hospitals and the chronic lack of medicine, they're justified in watching out for themselves.
When I ask them if they ever think of getting out of the business, Anita tells me a story. This illustrates the dilemma facing Cuban women who have been socialized to believe in their equality, for they now face a polarized world that leaves them little room to maneuver.
"I was married once", she says with a smile full of bitter irony. "I thought I'd go to Spain and start a new life. But he was completely crazy. He wanted to have me locked up in the house all day. I lasted two months and then I realized that I had to leave. I had no money, nowhere to go, so I had to come back. He's so crazy that he still hasn't granted me a divorce."
Milagros as well as Anita told me that some of the prostitutes had done well in Europe, but others got stuck there. Some saw themselves obliged to fall into the hands of pimps who work them for long hours, seven days a week. At least in Cuba they could get by working a few times each month.