Re: Prostitution in Cuba

["dms" <dmschanoes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxx>
To: <marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, June 27, 2003 9:45 PM
Subject: Re: Prostitution in Cuba


> Who is Armando Diego and why does he
> say all these terrible things about Cuba?
_____________________________________

Don't know the man personally, but nothing he said qualifies as terrible
things or lies about Cuba.  Mistakes perhaps, but the essence of his
comments, made here on this list, not the US press, is that prostitution is
an index to the stress in the economy.  This is recognized by the Cuban
people and the government itself.  Fidel made a remark to that effect, spoke
of it as an indicator of deeper problem in the speech I heard in public in
Havana. (conference--Encounter on Problems of Developing Economies and
Globalization).

Embargo, blockade, economic strangulation and sabotage, etc.  Comrade AD
clearly is aware of the unremitting hostility of US capital to the Cuban
Revolution.

Comrade AD is absolutely correct when he says the Revolution prided itself
on abolishing Cuba as a sexual colony for the US after the movement took
power.  The current rise in prostitution from those levels corresponds to
the distress in the economy and the replacement of Soviet subsidies by the
tourist industry in order to provide hard currency access to the world
markets.  Tourism, like international debt, is the vector for the seeding of
capitalist and petty capitalist relations in the economy.

Yes, Cubans are allowed into international hotels, clubs, discos, etc.  Such
entrance is utilized by young women for meeting foreign men.  "Dance
Instruction" can and will lead to sexual commerce.  Sometimes the Cuban
government cracks down, sometimes not.

Is prostitution a big problem?  Morally? absolutely not.  But when men,
mostly white, mostly European/North American, mostly older, utilize hard
currency to purchase sex from women, mostly of color, mostly younger,
certainly poorer-- that is the problem.  It reminds me, but on a much less
harsh level, of the Saudi men who travel to Egypt, marry a young Egyptian
woman, stay with her for several months for sex, abandoning her pregnant and
returning to Saudi Arabia.  Isn't the power of money, that is to say the
desperation of the lack thereof, frightening?

Sometimes the Cuban cops are "protecting foreigners" from hustling, you say?
>From what?  I've been hustled in Cuba and never found it threatening.  I've
never been panhandled in Cuba, a testament to, still, the enduring strength
of the Revolution.

So whatever comrade AD's organizational and analytic affiliations, there is
nothing immoral, anti-revolutionary, about looking reality squarely in the
face and not flinching.

Comradely,
dms