Cuban Prostitution, Then & Now

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

What are the differences between prostitution in the
pre-revolutionary Cuba and that in the "special period"?  Before the
revolution, the main clientele of prostitutes were Cuban men of all
classes, from cane cutters to middle-class boys; now, clients appear
to be mainly dollar-bearing foreign tourists (though films such as
_Guantanamera_ suggest otherwise):

*****   [Before the revolution, P]rostitution remained largely a
function of Cuba's own patriarchal society.  In the countryside
prostitutes made their annual migration to service cane cutters
during the sugar harvest.  One out of four births occurred outside
marriage, a rate that had remained constant for thirty years.[79]...

...Conventional wisdom held that masturbation could cause insanity,
but no sexual release at all could be equally dangerous.  If denied
access to females, boys might engage in bestiality or, worse,
homosexuality.  In the interest of mental health, middle-class boys
were encouraged to experiment with their maids' children.  Others
were taken by male relatives to be sexually initiated in a local
bordello.

[79]  Mirta de la Torre Mulhare, "Sexual Ideology in Pre-Castro Cuba:
A Cultural Analysis" (Ph.D. diss, University of Pittsburg, 1969), p.
264.

(Lois M. Smith and Alfred Padula, _Sex and Revolution: Women in
Socialist Cuba_, NY & Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996, pp. 21, 170)   *****

Before the revolution, prostitutes came from widely divergent
economic backgrounds & their earnings differed dramatically:

*****   [Before the revolution, t]hese notions of the imperiousness
of male sexuality led to the need for the "fallen" woman, the
mistress, the prostitute.  Thus, while a wife might enjoy her
husband's respect, it was his mistress who received his ardent
attention.  The number of mistresses and the manner in which they
were kept were signs of male status.  According to the masculine
code, a husband must avoid embarrassing his wife by flaunting his
liaisons, though he would certainly share news of his conquests with
his male friends to enhance his masculinity.  Any children born of
such unions would be illegitimate, a distinct handicap in a
family-oriented and lineage-conscious nation.

The social status of the fallen woman varied.  Mistresses were
allowed a certain amount of freedom unavailable to wives, and they
could even attain high social standing.  Prostitutes who consorted
with upper-class men had a higher social position than those who sold
themselves to field hands.  One former prostitute recalls choosing
her trade over marriage during the 1950s because "my strongest desire
was to be independent."[12]  Prostitution afforded her a decent
income and the freedom to spend it as she chose.

[12]  Lewis, Lewis, and Rigdon, _Four Women_, p. 278.

(Smith and Padula, p. 171)   *****

On the other end of the spectrum from prostitutes who consorted with
upper-class men & attained high social positions, there existed Yina:
"Born to a family of eight with no father and no hope, sold into vice
at age eleven to service poor men in backwater towns for forty cents
a lay" (Smith and Padula, p. 8).

In contrast, now that the revolution did away with much of class &
income polarization, all Jineteras are educated & some of them very
well educated; no one is sold into prostitution -- all women who
practice sex work in Cuba now do so out of their own personal
decisions, weighing economic needs, cultural mores, individual
morals, etc., without being leeched by pimps, brothel madams, etc.:

*****   6. The Politics of Sexuality and Cuba's Economic Crisis

The return of sex work has caught the attention of both the Cuban
government and the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC). The official
position on sex work argues that unlike women who worked to survive
or were deceived into prostitution during the period of economic
destitution before the Revolution, these modern-day sex workers are
trading their bodies for consumer goods and recreational
opportunities otherwise unavailable to them (Diaz, 1996, pp. 1-33).
Because many of these young women are well-educated--some are even
university graduates--their turning to sex work puzzles and dismays
many Cubans, whether or not they support the policies of the
revolutionary state. Researchers from the FMC and MAGIN (organization
of prominent women from the National Women's Press Association)
report that the circumstances for prostitution in today's Cuba are
vastly changed from the period leading up to the Revolution in 1959.

...Some of the important differences between present-day jineterismo
and pre-revolutionary prostitution are in the type of clients,
educational access, family and social reactions, and levels of
self-esteem. These changes are linked to the rapid development of
tourism and increased opportunity for contact with foreign men.

Prostitution's customers used to be primarily Cuban men; today's
clients are tourists from all over the world. Most young women today
have the benefit of extensive educational opportunity in Cuban
society compared to opportunities for most women before the
revolution. Based on research conducted by the FMC, many jineteras
are not rejected by their families or by most of society. In fact,
few have low self-esteem compared to women stigmatized prior to 1959
as putas or whores (Weisman, 1995, pp. 24-27). What has remained the
same is in the social definition of illegality; yet, today's
government prosecutes and offers treatment (especially in the case of
related drug addiction) to jineteras.

Mirta Rodríquez Calderón, a leading journalist and co-founder of
MAGIN, who has written and published extensively on gender and sexual
politics in Cuba (including Digame, Usted!, a collection of
thought-provoking columns in Granma), has interviewed women who have
relations with tourists. She characterizes jineteras as young women
who, with very few exceptions, do not have to practice commercial
sexual relations to survive. Instead, she believes, what motivates
most of these young, mainly dark-skinned, Afro-Cuban, women to
practice jineterismo is the desire to go out, to enjoy themselves, go
places where Cubans cannot afford to go and have fancy clothes. Other
women, a minority, she estimates, may be engaging in jineterismo
because they have families and truly need the money and goods.
Rodríguez Calderón further describes the differences between
modern-day jineteras and pre-revolutionary prostitutes in terms of
power. Today's young women practice jineterismo for the "freedom" to
go out-dancing, dining, to concerts, to visit Varadero Beach or other
resorts, and to shop in dollar stores. Some of these young women are
looking for potential spouses in foreign men in order to leave Cuba
for a more stable and consumer-oriented life. Others look at current
options in Cuba to earn a living and make money. A secretary, for
example, currently earns 190 pesos a month (roughly $9.50--given the
current exchange rate of roughly 20 pesos to $1), while a family
doctor (the majority of whom are women) earns 250 pesos or about
$12.50 practicing medicine, compared to $35 to $50 for one evening
for a woman who is practicing jineterismo.

Calderón also theorizes the interaction of racism and prostitution.
Many of the people who left Cuba since 1959 are light-skinned and
living primarily in the United States; they are sending money to
their relatives still living in Cuba to lessen the economic
hardships. Young women without access to family resources in the U.S.
have a greater need for the economic assistance of this kind of work,
adding to increased racial segmentation in both class and gender
status. Racism and the double sexual standard also create the market
among European businessmen for the exotic/erotic "other." The
combination of foreign men seeking sexual partners who are racially
and culturally different, coupled with the sexual double standard's
separation of women into "good" versus "bad" ones, reinforces the
desirability of darker-skinned Cuban women as sex objects.

The government's inconsistent response to the rapid rise of sex work
reflects the double gender standard. The major focus is on changing
the behavior of women, not the behavior of male prostitutes
(jineteros), foreign businessmen or tourists. A number of feminists
have called for a shift in emphasis. Instead of attacking the supply,
attack the demand....

...Given the underlying cause of economic scarcity, the extreme
difficulties of solving the economic crisis, and its further
exacerbation by the U.S. government's foreign policy, can (or how
can) the Cuban government overcome these structural barriers? The
problem requires a gendered analysis of the construction of
sexuality. For example, which women are jineteras and who decides
what behavior is prostitution? Given the still unequal sexual
division of labor in Cuban society and the relatively traditional
socialization of men and women and their sexuality, how does "the
Revolution" change the culture that creates the desire for
prostitution by men and the perception of economic power by women who
practice jineterismo?...

<http://www.colorado.edu/EthnicStudies/ethnicstudiesjournal/Jineterism
o.html>   *****

Behind the predominance of Afro-Cuban Jineteras, it seems that there
lies Cuba's inability to get rid of racial stratification in the
labor force completely.  One sign of positive change is that unlike
the pre-revolutionary Cuba, Jineteras now are not rejected by their
families & few of them have low self-esteem.  It appears that the
Cuban people are somewhat less moralistic & hypocritical when it
comes to sex & sexuality than the high-level government officials.

Yoshie