CUBA: Prostitution Re-emerges on Heels of Economic Crisis

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Oct 30 1998 (IPS) - The revolutionary authorities in Cuba used to dismiss prostitution as a social problem linked to capitalism and were proud to have eradicated it, but it is rearing its head once again as a result of a prolonged economic crisis.

Experts see it as the most humiliating of social reactions to the economic crisis that the island has been enduring in the 1990s. It’s also “the most shocking for us, because we were used to seeing a society without prostitutes on the streets,” sociologist Aurelio Alonso said in roundtable on the issue.

When Cuba’s revolutionaries triumphed in 1959, there were around 100,000 prostitutes here, most of them from the countryside. The sex workers were later reincorporated into society through a series of social reintegration programmes.

Although some residual prostitution remained, the phenomenon has been re-emerging notoriously and alarmingly in the 1990s.

Initially, the authorities seemed surprised by a problem which, besides being dramatic for society, casts a shadow on the image of the Revolution. “We must admit that the phenomenon of the jineteras’ (prostitutes) caught us off guard,” Attorney-General Juan Escalona admitted in 1996 when reforms meant to update the penal code were being studied.

Two years on, the new laws have introduced punishment for pimps and people who in one way or another live off the sex trade, though there is no punishment for prostitution itself as it is not considered a crime. The new code does not condemn the women or men who offer their bodies as merchandise, rather the persons who benefit from their work.

However, several police raids – including the closing down of four discotheques in Havana in mid-October – have forced youths who offered their services to foreigners in hotels and tourist centres to beat a hasty retreat. Similar raids against prostitutes and pimps took place in 1996 in Varadero, Cuba’s main tourist center, located 140 kms east of the capital.

Last September, a network that brought youths to Havana from the eastern provinces and put them to work as prostitutes was dismantled. Its head was sentenced to 25 years in jail, while another five persons received sentences of five to ten years.

In October, another group of 11 people awaited judgement for pimping and other crimes associated with the sex trade. The official Cuban press published the names of the people who were implicated as well as a photograph of the building where rooms were rented for the lucrative business.

This seems to signal an effort to correct a kind of tacit tolerance by society and the family because, to a certain extent there is a notion that the prostitute is someone successful, according to some local media.

“Repression is one prevention measure, but it’s not the only one,” said psychologist Norma Vasallo, head of Women’s Studies at the University of Havana. She proposed more education and informal social control which, she feels, have weakened in Cuba.

When asked to identify the reasons for the expansion of a problem described by the authorities as typical of capitalism, Vasallo said social behaviour was complex and determined by multiple causes, so she could not point to a single cause.

But she felt there was an undeniable relationship between the economic crisis and certain negative social phenomena such as crime and prostitution. “Undoubtedly, prostitution is the easiest and fastest way of earning more income,” said the psychologist.

The family, the community, or peer groups are important social mediators who have an influence in the choice of solutions to the economic crisis, said Vasallo, who pointed out that changes in social consciousness came hand in hand with economic changes.

“Almost 40 years after beginning to build a different social project, there are still values, norms, traditions and behaviors that do not correspond with those profound new values,” she said. “That is why among certain sectors we see the reproduction of negative social phenomena.”

Most experts believe the solutions are invariably linked to economic recovery and overcoming the so-called “crisis of values”. They also say that even though it was relatively easy in the 1960s to wipe out prostitution, today the situation is far more complex.

Today, there is the presence of foreign capital, social inequality and the circulation of two currencies – the peso and the dollar. The process of rehabilitating sex workers and reintegrating them into society should take that reality into account, said sociologist Aurelio Alonso.