Tourism Apartheid and Prostitution: Bringing in the cash

Source: Jason Raish / www.jasonraish.com

       Something that I have found interesting while looking into Cuba is how the tourist industry catered to foreigners. Foreigners from all over flocked to Cuban beaches and desirable places for the beautiful landscape and water. To isolate these tourists from the rest of Cuba and their citizens, they often did not allow Cubans to come near the hotels and resorts and did not allow tourists to wander too far from these places. Before 1997, If a policeman found a Cuban citizen who was not working in the tourism industry talking with a tourist they would regard the Cuban as a thieve and throw him in jail, even if it was the tourist who initiated the conversation. Even the workers who were employed by the government were not allowed to mingle and conversate with the guests, for fear their capitalist ideologies would cause government dissidence in the Cuban population.

      But it is hard to see how these people would not become upset with the government, who promised so much yet gave so little to the population while catering to the foreigners. While the average Cuban had to ration their low quality food and receive it from the government, foreigners could eat as much high quality food they desired, something that the average Cuban could not even dream of doing. Another interesting fact I found was that during the special period, a Cuban who works in one of these tourist hotels would make more money in tips a day than a professional doctor would make in a months salary. Places like Havana in our book were transformed into tourist playgrounds, and it caused a massive economic and social divides.

Source:
Cuba Advisory (https://cubaadvisory.wordpress.com/)

      The solution for many, simply out of economic disparity and the need for basic necessities, was crime and prostitution. Many young women (minors, as well) saw how much money was pouring into the island from the foreigners, largely from Canada and Europe at this time. And sex tourism was no new thing in Cuba, where tourists came before the 1960's to see Cuban sex culture and how prevalent it was. Many websites and magazines at the time(most notably Playboy) had described it as a place where one could fulfill their desires, both hetero- and homo-sexually. I found this to be most interesting, knowing from the book and research how the average Cuban's view of homosexuality was. And although Fidel tried to eradicate it as best he could, he could not stop all of it. The allure of the money was too great, where a prostitute could make relatively massive sums of money in one day. To compare, the average Cuban was making less than the equivalent of $1 US dollar a day.

Sources of information: 

http://www.ascecuba.org/asce_proceedings/cuban-tourism-during-the-special-period/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/cuba/1396643/Cuba-apartheid-as-Castro-pulls-in-the-tourists.html

http://history.emory.edu/home/documents/endeavors/volume1/Brendans.pdf