Yesterday I was watching a television documentary about the prostitution in the Caribbean, men and women. It is a phenomenon that goes hand in hand with the international tourism that many countries in the area receive and in each one it has adopted particular characteristics. For example, what about prostitution in Cuba?
El sex tourism on the island it began when the government decided to encourage the tourism industry in the early 90s. At the time, the Cuban economy was in a frank crisis because the Soviet Union, the country that sent it the funds to support itself, had collapsed and a new form of foreign exchange income had to be found. First came the hotel groups, mostly Spanish, and then the flow of American and European tourists in search of beaches, the sea and a bit of sex.
Well, you cannot talk about prostitution without focusing on the socio-economic situation of Cuba and the history of the country in the last 50 years. When the revolution triumphs, the first thing that is done is to prohibit the practice of prostitution throughout the island, the brothels were closed and the "tolerance zones" were canceled. The measures helped Cuban women occupy another space in society, helped them to leave their home to go to university and to work alongside men. In a word, prostitution was abolished in Cuba just as slavery was abolished.
So why the «prostitutes»Famous return before the end of the twentieth century, in the same government that knew how to ban them before? Well, that prostitution begins to appear again in the decade of the '80s, very slight, and it is definitively installed again in the' 90s when the standard of living falls to intolerable limits. Today there are 5,6 million women in Cuba and 2 million are between 16 and 35 years old, but there are no official figures on how many are involved in "jineterismo", as they say here. Some dare to say that there are many, others that there are really few compared to other third world countries, but well, there are prostitutes anyway.
Today we can see women (jineteras) and men (penguins) work discreetly and according to some, in a government-controlled manner. Fees are handled between 35 and $ 80 and women can be found online, asking in hotels or going to dance at the disco The tunnel, the preferred site where the tourist can contact what they are looking for. The economic crises do not help to banish the oldest profession in the world and the sad thing is that these women do not bury the hope that someone will fall in love with them and take them out of the country.