http://www.futurodecuba.org/SEX%20TOURISM%20AND%20CHILD%20PROSTIT
UTION%20%20IN%20CUBA%20_%20Arch%20Kielly,%20LtCol.htm

SEX TOURISM AND CHILD PROSTITUTION
IN CUBA

Arch Kielly, LtCol, USAF, Retired.

VIRGINIA, August 17, 2002

http://www.futurodecuba.org/SEX%20TOURISM%20AND%20CHILD%20PROSTIT
UTION%20%20IN%20CUBA%20_%20Arch%20Kielly,%20LtCol.htm

SEX TOURISM AND CHILD PROSTITUTION
IN CUBA

Arch Kielly, LtCol, USAF, Retired.

VIRGINIA, August 17, 2002



Communist Cuba is attempting to right its

economic problems by permitting the sexual trade of

its children for badly needed monetary resources. A

generation of young people may have been invested to

make Cuba's tourism more appealing to foreign tourists

looking for more than beautiful beaches and soft trade

breezes. Fidel Castro maintains his grip on the Cuban

people as long as Cuba is able to produce funds to

keep his regime afloat. Take away tourism dollars and

Castro may self destruct and free a generation of

Cuba's children from sexual exploitation.



Tourism is Cuba's most important moneymaker,

generating almost $2 billion last year. In Spain

alone, twenty flights leave for Havana every week,

carrying to the Caribbean island a yearly total of

some 200,000 single male tourists, all in search of

cut-price sex. (Tunku Varadarajan, "Time-bomb that

Flies in From Havana," The Times, July 10, 1996.

Lexis-Nexis document.) Most tourists come from

Canada, Spain and Italy. Tourism has recently replaced

sugar as the single most important export in the

economy. Much of this tourism, however, centers on

travel for sex. Foreign tour companies use code words

such as "Cuba Amor" to advertise package tours. At

least one Spanish travel company offers a catalogue of

Cuban women who would serve as companions during a

tourist's stay. (Adams, p. 1A). By 1995 the Italian

travel magazine Viaggiare recognized Cuba as the

"paradise of sexual tourism," awarding it five stars

for its "general erotic level." According to the

magazine, Cuba beat out such competitors as Brazil and

Thailand. (Adams, p. 1A; Dalia Acosta, Culture

Tourism: Cuba Brushes up its Tourist Image, Interpress

Service, Sept. 19, 1997. Lexis-Nexis).



Some reports suggest girls will sell sex acts for

less than $10 and sometimes for as little as $3.

Inexperienced women and girls can be persuaded and/or

tricked into spending a whole night with a client for

the cost of a meal, a few drinks or small gift.

"Habitual sex tourists state that it costs them less

to spend two weeks indulging themselves in Cuba than

it does in other centers of sex tourism, such as the

Philippines and Thailand. (O'Connell Davidson, p.41)

Sex tourism is often a means to satisfy very specific

sexual preferences. Many men choose to travel to

particular destinations because they know that it is

possible to pursue their tastes more cheaply and

safely. Pedophiles are an obvious example of this

type of sex tourist, but more common are men who have

a preference for experiencing multiple, anonymous

sexual encounters with teenagers and women in their

early 20s. Sexual access to girls between the ages of

14 and 16 is not difficult to attain, and girls

between the ages of 16 and 18 are very accessible.

More disturbing still, such tourists are paying older

Cuban women and men, often prostitutes themselves, to

procure 14 and 15-year old boys and girls for them.



Sex tourists are also frequently drawn to Cuba

because of the prospect of exotic encounters that

contain a racial component. This is especially the

case for those consumers who find it difficult to

satisfy racialized fantasies at home. As is the case

elsewhere in Latin America, sex tourists view Cuban

women as caliente--hot. In addition Davidson reports

than many sex tourists are either openly racist and/or

fascinated with Black sexuality, which they imagine to

be untamed and uninhibited. (O'Connell Davidson, p.

46) Interestingly, the government of Cuba uses racial

stereotypes "showcasing 'traditional' Afro-Cuban

religious rituals and art, 'traditional' Afro-Cuban

music, and of course, Afro-Cuban women (Fusco, p. 67).

in conjunction with other images of Cuba as tropical,

exotic and full of scantily clad native women. These

same stereotypes carry over to the sex tourism

industry and feed into the sexual fantasies of the

male tourist. As Davidson notes, many more jineteras

are Afro-Cuban as opposed to mixed race or white.

(O'Connell Davidson, p. 45. See also Fusco, p. 64)



The explosive growth of sex tourism in Cuba in the

1990s has coincided with the island becoming a major

destination for international tourists. The Cuban

government began to emphasize foreign tourism as a

development tool in the 1980s, in part as a response

to a stagnant economy. (Espino, p. 153; 158). Said

one foreign diplomat of the boom in prostitution, "the

decline and fall of Cuba's economy and the turn to

attracting foreigners has made it inevitable. The only

way for most of these kids to survive is to sell

themselves. (Freed, p 1). The Fourth Party Congress

in 1991 declared tourism to be "an important source of

revenue for economic development. (Quoted in Espino,

p. 147). The government has, particularly through

government agency INTUR and state-run corporations

Cubanacán and Gaviota, built up tourism infrastructure

and welcomed foreign investment through joint ventures

in hotels. It has also aggressively marketed Cuba as a

tourist destination abroad, especially in Europe and

Canada. To at least some degree the government has

used sexuality to promote tourism.



The government has been aware of the explosion of

sex tourism for some time and officially has

distinguished prostitution under socialism from that

of earlier periods: "this prostitution was different

from that prostitution: that prostitution was what

women did to buy food for their starving infants; this

prostitution reflected a malaise born of boredom and

frustration rather than economic desperation.

(Gordon, p. 20). Reflecting the official line, Fidel

Castro remarked in 1993 that thanks to socialism Cuban

girls must make the cleanest and best-educated

prostitutes in the world. (Thomas Von Mouillard, Sex

Tourism Arrives in Cuba, The Ottawa Citizen, March 13,

1993, p. K5. (Lexis-Nexis); Adams, p. A1) Castro said

in 1992 in a speech to the Cuban National Assembly:

"There are no women forced to sell themselves to a

man, to a foreigner, to a tourist. Those who do so do

it on their own, voluntarily, and without any need for

it. We can say that they are highly educated hookers

and quite healthy, because we in the country with the

lowest numbers of AIDS cases. Therefore, there is

truly no prostitution healthier that Cuba's. He also

said in 1992 that: "Cuban women become jineteras

(prostitutes) because they like sex."



Cuba, which traditionally has had one of the

world's lowest levels of positive HIV cases, has seen

an increase there and in other sexually transmitted

diseases. (Adams, p. 1A). The number of international

tourist arrivals to Cuba has continued to rise. The

Cuban economy, while recovering somewhat compared to

the early and mid-1990s, is still struggling and most

ordinary Cubans continue to scramble for scarce

dollars. With no new large-scale crackdowns having

taken place, thousands of sex workers continue to work

openly at Varadero, Havana, and other tourist centers

on the island. The New Republic, June 2000 claimed,

"The government referred to the women as "promoters of

tourism." Travel Intelligence, AA Gil 2001 reported

that "The sex, of course, is what most of the tourist

come to Havana for. Have no doubts about this.

They're not here to show solidarity with 40 years of

continuous revolution, or to study architecture, and

they certainly aren't for the food".





Arch Kielly, LtCol, USAF, Retired. Member of the

Cuban-American Military Council (CAMCO). CAMCO is an

organization that seeks to bring democracy to Cuba

through peaceful means. CAMCO's over 1000 members

served in the Pre-Castro military, in the Castro's

Armed Forces (FAR), the Brigade 2506, and in the

United States Armed Forces. CAMCO's men and women

served in all the branches of the military and held

ranks from the lowest grades to General officers.

CAMCO's Chairman is Major General Erneido Oliva, DCNG,

Retired. See CAMCO's web page:

http://www.CAMCOCUBA.org





--
Viva Cuba Libre!
"DE OPRESSO LIBRE"