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. 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.

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. 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. "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 a girl. "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". "I was married once", one of the girls 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."

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.

[...continues...]