By Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, Jun 11 1996 (IPS)

The famous Varadero beach, the renowned sexual paradise of the Caribbean, will lose its well-won prestige if the Cuban authorities keep up their “hard-line” tactics against prostitution.

Varadero, 120 km from the capital, Havana, is the main tourist retreat in Cuba and it had attracted a whole army of prostitutes, pimps and “wide boys” living off the illegal trade in sex, rum, cigars and drugs.

Up until March, these men and women had moved freely about the streets of this “blue paradise,” but now they skulk in the shadows hiding from the police officers indistinguishable from the icecream sellers and sunbathers on the beach.

Crossing the little bridge which connects the Varadero peninsula to the rest of the island is no longer an easy matter for the prostitutes, pimps and drug-dealers, who try to masquerade as workers, cyclists or loving couples.

“This cannot be a mere passing phase. Criminals are like cockroaches which hide when the fumigators come. If this isn’t done in a systematic manner, they reproduce and come back out again,” said Gilberto Ceballo, a Veradero taxi driver.

However, Cuban Communist Party weekly “Juventud Rebelde” declared triumphantly Sunday that “the crime network surrounding ‘jockeying’ is quite clearly on the way out.”

At the beginning of the decade, the Cubans christened all those who made money out of illegally dealing in dollars, and by extension all those selling sex to tourists or foreign residents, “jockeyers.”

The paper reported that joint action by the government, the public prosecutor and the ministry of the interior had destroyed a network of more than 7,000 prostitutes in 1995.

The police began their offensive on April 4, raiding 400 bawdy houses where the residents worked as prostitutes, and a large number of tunnels, bridges, dens, rooftops and public places which served as shelter for those who lived from sexual exploitation.

The municipal authorities of Varadero confiscated cars and brought court cases against the owners of 15 private restaurants which worked unlicensed and offered survices to the “jockeyers.”

The taste for accumulating dollars at all cost gained favour in some marginal sectors with the increase of tourism and the legalisation on the possession of currency in August 1993.

The “jockeying,” which was characterised by the buying of dollars and the almost improvised prostitution in the late eighties, soon turned into a complex network made up of pimps, prostitutes, clandestine taxi drivers, date-bars, private restaurants, black market salesmen and foreigners.

“I go with a tourist, I eat lunch, and for every client I take there, the owner pays me a commission,” said a 20 year-old woman who refused to give her name.

A survey carried out in 1995 by the Italian tourist magazine ‘Viaggiare,’ classed Cuba as the most attractive destination for sex tourists.

The publication described the island as a true paradise for men, women and homosexuals travelling alone.

The Cuban ‘jockeyers’ are not only looking for money for a few hours of sex. In general, they are seeking the attractive life they see in the hotels, cabarets and restaurants which only accept payment in dollars and they even dream of finding a true love who will take them to Europe or the United States.

“Every time I meet a foreigner I try to stay with them until they get onto the plane. Afterwards I write them letters and if they come back to Cuba it will be me they look for,” said Gaby, a 23 year-old ‘jockeyer’ who has been working at the trade for five years.

Gaby came to Havana early this month hoping to be able to move more freely than in Varadero, but the police here do not even allow her to approach tourists.

Prostitution and pimping are not crimes in Cuba, but they are persecuted under article 62 of the penal code, which covers dangerously “antisocial” behaviour.

Juan Escalona Reguera, Cuban public prosecutor, announced that reforms to the Penal Code would include punishing pimps and taxi drivers, or tourist sector personnel profiting from prostitution.

The new measures are really still only in the planning stage, but Escalona said the specific case of Varadero could not wait, as the situation on the beach “had reached the scale of an international scandal.”

“The jockeyers had spread through all the streets and they gave the foreign tourists the impression that there was a prostitute behind every Cuban,” said Carlos Martinez, manager of the Spanish owned Melia Varadero hotel.

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