Category: Translator: Regina Anavy

He says that Social Security “because of my advanced diabetes helps me with 140 pesos (7 dollars) a month, which more or less allows me to get what I need from the store and buy meat and medicine.”

Undoubtedly, Osmel would like to have a family, sleep in a bed and have a daily bath. “I dream about this all the time. To eat hot food, have a wife and watch television with my kids. But how can I get that if what I earn in a month by selling old junk or cutting stone doesn’t cover my needs?” he asks, and he answers himself:

“So that’s why I have to get drunk. The money left to me goes for that. Maybe it’s the fastest way to kill myself,” he says and takes a sip of murky alcohol from a plastic bottle, filtered with industrial carbon.

Like Osmel, hundreds of indigents wander through the streets of Havana, trying to survive in “the revolution of the humble, by the humble and for the humble,” as Fidel Castro once described it, which in practice has been transformed into an incipient military capitalism that benefits very few.

The Cuba of the Castro brothers happened to have a functional Social Security, sustained by the blank check that the Kremlin provided, for limited aid to retired and sick people, among others, who receive a handful of pesos that isn’t even enough to cover a third of what they need.

The big losers of the tepid economic reforms undertaken by General Raúl Castro are the old people and those at risk of social exclusion. Not all of them are beggars without a roof, like Osmel, but many are obligated to sell newspapers, nylon bags, single cigarettes and cones of peanuts in the streets, or become night watchmen for private companies or State businesses to earn some extra pesos.

The worst isn’t the present; it’s the future. Keep in mind this date: In 2025, more than 30 percent of the Cuban population will be over 60 years. With emigration soaring, finances in the red and a lack of coherent politics that offers net benefits to women and men of the third age [retired], it’s evident that Cuba will not be a good place for old people to live.

Although the old are the most affected by the new economic direction, according to Argelio, a sociologist, “almost 40 percent of the citizenry lives below the poverty line accepted by international agencies, which is measured by those who earn less than one dollar a day. For those in extreme poverty, the figure on the Island hovers around 15 percent.

Specialists consulted consider that there are many reasons for the steep fall in the level of life in Cuba. “The prolonged economic crisis, which now has lasted for 27 years, an economy with ineffective structures, sluggishness in applying efficient models of business management, the circulation of two monies, low salaries and a decrease in productive and export capacity. Except for the sale of services and tourism, in most indices, Cuba has gone backwards,” says Jorge, a professor of political economics.

Raisa, an economist, blames the disaster on “poor governmental management, the decapitalization of the country by the dual currency system and low salaries, which distorts transactions, real productivity and the buying power of the population. There are three or four types of monetary exchanges in the export business and non-agriculture cooperatives that affect economic performance. Raising salaries without a productive base is counter-productive, but earning poor salaries is even more so. The dual currency should be repealed now, although it brings with it associated short-term phenomena that could trigger social conflict.”

In October 2013, the Havana Regime announced the unification of the dual currency and put into play a group of measures that would progressively culminate with the withdrawal of the Cuban Convertible peso (CUC), leaving only the Cuban peso (CUP). But the slowness and the new state of austerity made the autocracy think twice before initiating an in-depth monetary reform.

With an average salary that doesn’t exceed 27 dollars/month, the average Cuban must get by as well as he can to have one or two hot meals a day, get soap, deodorant and detergent and buy clothing and shoes. To reach a decent standard of living, Cubans need the equivalent of 20 minimum salaries of 300 Cuban pesos a month, which would add up to the equivalent 280 dollars per capita.

And probably this isn’t enough, since the accumulation of material hardships and lack of maintenance in the homes triple these figures. Although the Government doesn’t talk about the camouflaged inflation that affects, above all, the State workers who earn in Cuban pesos, the prices in the hard-currency shops — that require Cuban Convertible pesos — reveal the real state of the situation.

Three examples: If a worker wants to buy a flat-screen television, he needs a  salary of a year and a half. To furnish his house, a salary of five years. And if he dreams of owning a modern car, at the present price in State agencies, he needs a salary of 180 years.

If this isn’t inflation, let someone show me otherwise.

Diario Las Américas, September 9, 2015.

Translated by Regina Anavy

There, in the summer of 2011, the lawyer, Laritza Diversent Cambara, 36 years old, founded a law office to give legal advice to citizens without charging anything nor caring about the person’s ideological position.

“The last year we dealt with more than 170 cases. Most of the people were poor and without resources, and they felt helpless because of the State’s judicial machinery. We advised on homicides, cases of violence against women, drugs, prostitution and also for any dissident who needed it,” indicated Laritza, seated on a small roofed patio at the back of her house.

The judicial illiteracy in Cuba is lamentable. Very few know the Fundamental Law of the Republic or the proceedings that the police force must fulfill during arrests, confiscations or when they give a simple citation.

Since 2009, lawyers like Laritza Diversent has given lectures to bloggers, independent journalists and the opposition, so they would know how to act at the moment of an arrest.

But the laws in Cuba are an abstraction. They are a set of legal regulations that supposedly should be respected by the authorities. But the repressive forces are the first to violate them.

What occurred on Friday, September 23 is an example. Lartiza says that “several neighbors had warned us about an operation that State Security was preparing. About 20 uniformed agents presented themselves in the office, some with pistols in their belts, as officials of several State institutions. They brought a search warrant that didn’t comply with the requirements established by law. When we let them know it, they resorted to force and invaded the entrance of the Cubalex headquarters, which at the same time is my home.”

They destroyed the door to the patio and came into the living quarters after forcing the kitchen door. Now inside, they took away five computers, seven cell phones, a server, six security cameras, three printers, digital media, archives and money.

“They acted with total impunity and arrogance. The authorities assume they are above the law. They filmed everything. Then they stripped us one by one and body-searched us in a degrading way. It was really humiliating,” said Lartiza.

They took away and detained the lawyer, Julio Ferrer Tamayo, and the activist Dayán Alfredo Pérez, whom they freed 12 hours later. Ferrer was confined in the Zanja and Dragones police station, very close to the Chinese Quarter of Havana.

Laritza assumes that the olive-green Regime could send Julio Ferrer to prison. “From his family we found out that in a couple of days, Julio will be presented in the Second Chamber of the criminal court. We will do everything we can to prevent this.”

Ferrer Tamayo, perhaps one of the best prepared Cuban jurists, was a prosecutor in Guanabacoa and later a defense attorney. He knows like few do about the corruption, nepotism and trafficking in influence in the sewer of the legal system.

He has proof that points to several judges. When he decided to become an independent lawyer, he suffered all kinds of harassment from State Security. And in an underhanded legal plot, they sentenced him to three years in prison. But his legal knowledge obliged the olive-green autocracy to free him, without completing his sentence.

Now, everything indicates that they are going to prosecute him and incarcerate him again. The coercion of Special Services has no limits on the Island. Marienys Pavó Oñate, herself a lawyer and the wife of Ferrer, has been confined since 31 July 2012  in the women’s prison, Manto Negro, in a case that he considers a conspiracy.

Cubalex, like other law offices and groups on the State’s margins, operate in a real judicial limbo. In one form or another, they have tried to enroll in the Ministry of Justice Association’s registry. But either they haven’t received a response, or they have been denied the right to associate themselves legally.

In that regard, Laritza says that this indefinite or semi-clandestine status was the perfect pretext to launch the violent operation against Cubalex on Friday, September 23.

“At the head of the search was Lieutenant Colonel Juan Carlos Delgado Casanova and the prosecutor, Beatriz Peña de la Hoz. But to give it a veneer of legality, other officers participated, like the ones from the Institute of Physical Planning, the National Office of Tax Administration and the Integral Direction of Supervision, a body of inspection that forms part of the Council of Provincial Administration,” points out the lawyer from Havana.

The Cubalex team is worried about the legal actions that the State can take against Jorge Amado Iglesias, a collaborator of the office, since he has a license to work for himself and they can fine him 1,500 pesos. For her part, Laritza suspects that Physical Planning initiated a process in order to confiscate both the headquarters and her own home. Since it’s a process of investigation that can last for months, Cubalex cannot take on any cases.

Laritza Diversent is devastated. She believes that the operation suffered by the office, added to other cases of detentions and confiscations against opponents and alternative journalists, could be the beginning of an imminent repressive wave against the dissidence on a national level. “I never thought that by defending human rights I would have to go through all this,” she says.

And that new turn of the repressive screw brings back memories of the Black Spring of 2003. The only thing different in the modus operandi is the season of the year. To make it true, it would have to be in the fall.

Note: The photo of Laritza Diversent in her office was taken by Iván on Monday, September 26, three days after the police operation against Cubalex, which took place on the first floor of her house. In 2009, Laritza began writing as an independent journalist on the blog, Desde La Habana (From Havana). Her works from that period can be read in the folder entitled Las Leyes de Laritza (Lartiza’s Laws).

Translated by Regina Anavy

In that epoch – and now, according to what they tell me – journalists covered the subjects indicated by the Department of Revolutionary Orientation, which weekly dictated the guidelines to the communication media.

Most official journalists are scribes rather than reporters. They write on demand.

With the arrival of new information technologies and the transition from a personalistic and totalitarian society to an authoritarian country of incipient military capitalism, dozens of State journalists now publish with their names or pseudonyms in alternative digital media, generating a reprimand from their bosses.

It’s precisely in blogs and on independent sites that these correspondents can express their talent, tell their stories and pour out opinions that they never would publish in the dull, propagandistic Government press.

The most notorious case is Periodismo de Barrio (Neighborhood Journalism), spearheaded by Elaine Díaz, ex-professor of the University of Havana Faculty of Communication and probably the best journalist in Cuba. After dropping the official ballast, Díaz published excellent research on communities and citizens that never appeared in the Party media.

Doing independent journalism in Cuba brings risks. You won’t get a pension when you retire; you will suffer harassment from State Security, and the Taliban hard-liners will try to assassinate your reputation with every type of crude accusation. But those who manage to do it are free persons.

In my case, I choose the topics and how I’m going to present them. The only censorship is that imposed by reason or by the sword of Damocles represented by the Gag Law, which obliges you to revise the content with a magnifying glass so you don’t get tangled in a crime of defamation or accused of denigrating the President of the Republic.

Certainly, the chief editors with whom I collaborate make recommendations. Up to now, they haven’t censored the content nor the style of drafting. Only on two occasions did they not publish one of my articles (a right that newspapers or websites have). Then I uploaded them to my two blogs.

That an independent journalist doesn’t write on demand means that inside the Island several opposition organizations and dissident leaders try to use you at their convenience.

It seems legitimate to me that a dissident project aspires to having the best media impact possible. That’s not what I’m referring to. It’s the deplorable obsession of certain dissidents who want to manage the work of a journalist.

They use different strategies. One is to invite you to meetings where they paint a superficial picture of their organization and their chimeric plans. The story is like that of the Government, but in reverse. They exaggerate the number of members and present a battery of proposals that are forgotten after a few months.

If you ask uncomfortable questions, they simply take you off the list of their meetings and press conferences. If you’re too critical of the dissidence, they prepare a reprimand.

They never tell you that they disagree with you. They start the discussion by pointing out that you’re wrong. If voices are raised, accusations begin: that you’re an undercover agent of State Security, a traitor to the cause, or you’re providing arguments to the “enemy” (the Regime) that later will be used to discredit the opposition.

Another strategy, in mode among certain opposition groups, is that in addition to “renting” a journalist, they enroll him in their cause. A huge mistake. Keeping a distance is the first rule of journalism.

If you are for democracy, that doesn’t mean you should march with the Ladies in White through Miramar. When that happens, the journalist misjudges the profession.

Sometimes the debates caused by a journalistic article are civilized. Other times they set up a “repudiation meeting” for you.

The Sunday of March 20, hours before Obama landed in Havana, I was with the Ladies in White in Gandhi Park, to write an article about the aggressions against the group of women on the part of the repressive bodies.

There I had to put up with the insolence of Ailer González, a member of Estado de Sats, asking me what I was doing there and refuting my assessments. I answered her briefly and told her that she didn’t have to read me.

This type of journalism by genuflection, habitual in Cuba, sometimes tries to pass itself off as freelance.

Everyone is free to have an opinion and reproduce it. Sometimes our commentaries or stories provoke controversy and irritate the local or exile dissidence. But at least I don’t write to please anyone.

If a handful of ungagged journalists have been able to defy an olive-green autocracy for 20 years, I don’t believe that the pride and intolerance of some dissidents should inhibit us.

Authentic journalism is always in search of the truth. Whatever it costs.

Photo: Elaine Díaz and Abraham Jiménez, directors of the digital media Periodismo de Barrio (Neighborhood Journalism) and El Estornudo (The Sneeze). Taken from Brotes de periodismo cubano (Outbreaks of Cuban Journalism), an article by Pablo de Llano, El País (The Country, a daily newspaper in Spain), March 22, 2016.

Translated by Regina Anavy

There are very few Cuban tourists. Even fewer black people. Past 2:00 in the afternoon, the Memories Flamenco hotel seems to be a plenary session in miniature of the United Nations: East and West Europeans, Mexicans, Hindus, Asians and Americans, who try not to call attention to their clandestine tourism at Cayo Coco.

“Traveling to Cuba isn’t a problem. You can justify it with any of the 12 categories authorized and, although it’s not permitted legally, no institution in the United States asks if we’re doing tourism when we travel to the island,” comments a North American of Peruvian origin on vacation with his wife and two kids.

The five-star hotel is located on the highway that connects Cayo Coco with Cayo Guillermo. It has 624 rooms; 12 are suites and 4 are adapted for the handicapped. At this moment, half of the rooms are empty. “We’re in the low season. And even though the number of visitors to Cuba continued growing in 2016, hotel occupancy isn’t more than 50 percent,” says a receptionist.

Like 70 percent of Cuban tourist installations, the Memories Flamenco hotel is administered by the Gaviota S.A. military emporium, a business that appeared in 1989 under the auspices of Fidel Castro, on the pretext of testing the profitability of the incipient tourist business.

“When the tourist boom began, since so much in Cuba is stolen, it wasn’t known for sure whether a hotel would generate profits. Gaviota reduced expenditures and raised productivity on the basis of low salaries and internal controls,” says an employee.

Another employee, driving an electric cart that transports the recent arrivals to their rooms, says with total frankness that “most of us workers don’t agree with the deal they give us. Gaviota contracts only with foreign businesses to administer their hotels. The salary is shit; I earn 500 pesos (almost 20 dollars) a month, and since it’s a hotel with ’everything included,’ tipping is scarce. The luggage handlers and the maids are the ones who get extra money. But it’s always better to work in a hotel than to be a policeman.”

Every day a maid cleans and prepares 12 rooms. Her base salary is 465 pesos/month and about 18 dollars as a stimulus. “When it’s not Juana, it’s her sister. The truth is that we never receive a salary that matches the number of tourists staying in the hotel. I get by, more or less, thanks to the guests who give me two or three CUCs as a tip, and leave me clothing and useful stuff when they go, although getting it out of the hotel is a problem,” confesses a maid.

According to a gardener, most of the Cubans who work in management changed their military uniforms for white or blue guayaberas and black shoes. “They arrive from military life thinking that a hotel is operated the same as a barracks. In addition to being rude to us, they’re arrogant. I don’t leave, because for better or for worse, working in a hotel is better than cutting cane.”

Most of the employees of the Memories Flamenco live in Morón, a town 50 minutes from Cayo Coco. “The work routine is very demanding. I work seven days and get three days off. The management is treated differently. In spite of the hotel’s good results, Gaviota doesn’t let our families enjoy the facilities. Even the food they give us workers is different. In general it’s very little, and poorly prepared,” confesses a bar worker.

In addition to Memories Flamenco, there are on Cayo Coco, among others, the hotels Memories Caribe Beach Resort, Meliá Cayo Coco, Meliá Jardines del Rey, Pullman Cayo Coco, Pestana Cayo Coco All Inclusive Beach Resort, Tryp Cayo Coco, Colonial Cayo Coco, Sol Cayo Coco, Playa Coco, Playa Coco Star, Iberostar Mojito, Iberostar Cayo Coco and NH Krystal Laguna Villas & Resort, with more than 6,700 rooms total.

The zone is designed to be an example of true tourist apartheid. At the entrance to the isle, a police official, guarded by several soldiers with red berets, checks the people and vehicles that enter and leave the Ciego de Avila key.

Almost all the hotels located on Cayo Coco are administered by Gaviota, which has plans to continue growing in the coming years. Several brigades are building three new hotels, which will increase room capacity even more.

Many tourists aren’t pleased with the strategy of being confined in installations far from towns and cities. “It’s annoying; it prevents you from interacting with people. When they put you in hotels in Havana you can chat with Cubans on the street, but it’s impossible in the rest of the tourist zones,” says Eusebio, an Andalusian who lives in Seville.

The same thing has happened with the construction of the Hotel Kempinski, in the heart of the capital. Gaviota’s management prefers to hire foreign chefs and directors before Cubans.

“It’s absurd to bring bricklayers from India or cooks from Spain. They pay them fair salaries, but not us. It seems that whoever directs Gaviota hates Cubans,” complains a kitchen assistant.

The dream of one of the tourist promoters is to hook up with a foreign woman and leave the country. “My goal is to work in Miami Beach, Cancun or Punta Cana,” he says, and he runs for cover from a drizzle that barely alleviates the leaden heat.

When night falls, the lobby bar fills up, and in an adjoining theater, the guests take their chairs to see the performance of Divan Sotelo, one of the Reggae musicians in style at the moment, who was born in Havana in 1996.

At this hour, one of the maids is waiting for the worker transport that will take her home. Today was a decent day. Four convertible pesos in tips and two half-filled bottles of shampoo that a couple of Japanese tourists gave her.

Now she is looking for a way to take them out of the hotel without calling attention to herself. Tomorrow, perhaps, she will have better luck.

Martí Noticias, August 19, 2016

Translated by Regina Anavy

In this tropical inferno, seated in an uncomfortable plastic chair, I chatted with José (name changed), the manager of the Habaguanex chain warehouse*. “Now everything is fucked up. They broke Habaguanex into pieces. Last weekend there was a meeting, and they removed Eusebio Leal as the head of the firm. You could see that coming. It was a methodical and studied escalation. At the end what they wanted was to control a business that earns hundreds of millions of dollars. Those soldiers are predators. They aren’t satisfied with what they have.”

Probably the best-informed person about the business of Eusebio Leal, the Historian of the City, who created an authentic empire with the intention of renovating buildings that are emblematic of Old Havana, is Juan Juan Almeida García, residing today in Miami.

This past June 13, he wrote a note on the website of Martí Noticias, “The Military Conquest of Eusebio Leal’s Empire,” where he detailed the strategies of the olive-green business group, GAESA, directed by Brigadier General Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, the ex-son-in-law of President Raúl Castro. [See Also: The Military’s Coup d’état…]

Juan Juan pointed out: “Continuing a very well-plotted plan that includes taking advantage of Dr. Eusebio Leal’s illness to strengthen, even more, the dominion in the chain of commercial and business supremacy in every corner of the island, next October 30, Habaguanex, the tourist company that once belonged to the Historic Center of Old Havana, will be completely in the hands of the greatest of the Cuban predators, the Business Administrative Group of the Armed Forces.”

Much has been leaked about the audit done by the General Comptroller and the Council of State of the business that bears the name of the first Havana cacique**. Even today, missing millionaires and presumptive cases of corruption in the central warehouses are being revealed.

“It’s common practice among corrupt officials to revise, write-off and sell outside Cuba the new equipment recently installed in hotels, hostels, properties, shops, restaurants and cafeterias of the business; but to make Habaguanex dependent on Gaviota is one of the most audacious and malicious measures that this military corporation, directed by Rodríguez López-Callejas, has taken,” according to a source of Almeida’s close to the publicized inspection.

Idania, an architect on Eusebio Leal’s project, visibly disgusted, considers the administrative transfer to be an error. “They told me in the Saturday meeting that Military Counter-intelligence applied security measures so that nothing would be leaked. They prohibited mobile phones, and those who aren’t discreet, in addition to being separated definitively from their work posts, can receive penal sanction. The soldiers are like an elephant in a toy store. I can tell you that it’s not going to work. The armed forces control a sector of tourism and ETECSA [Cuba’s tele-communications company], and that hasn’t brought a better performance. On the contrary.”

Many workers think that their salaries will be affected. “We have a special salary regulation designed by Eusebio himself. We earn higher salaries in our jobs than in the rest of the country. If now the guards start applying Resolution 17 [which stipulates that company profits be linked to wages], our salaries can be reduced by half. I was earning a monthly salary of 2,000 Cuban pesos and almost 100 convertible pesos. If this is lowered with the new administration, hundreds of workers will lose their leave,” says Osvaldo, a mason who works on the restoration of the Capitolio Nacional.

The offensive of the military entrepreneurs isn’t new. In September of last year, a scrapping brigade, in a little more than two hours, dismantled the aluminum pipes and awnings of three open-air bars on the Avenida del Puerto, where hundreds of habaneros and tourists were drinking beer or eating fried chicken among ambling musicians and prostitutes on the hunt for clients. In one blow, it put a halt to two dozen workers, and others had to relocate, causing important salary losses.

But the real interests are elsewhere. Let’s call him “Mario,” a bureaucrat of the Habaguanex corporation. He tells us that “the businesses adjacent to the port are already controlled by military companies, from the rent and liens on the old warehouse of San José, now converted into a crafts market, up to hostels, cafés, restaurants and shops. There’s a master plan to convert the port into a tourist plaza that offers recreation and services for cruise excursions.”

Nicolás, an accountant at Habaguanex, recognizes that “as in all the sectors of the country, corruption in business was brutal. There were warehouses where the entrance and exit of commodities didn’t comply with the loading cards. But the work of restoration of Old Havana and other historic sites is, perhaps, the one thing that works well in Cuba. No other State institution has been able to save or maintain the old buildings in the city.”

In the last months, there’s been a withdrawal of the Government to avoid facing new economic reforms. The most conservative sector of the Party is at the front of the country’s direction. Among the recent changes in the “furniture” are the replacements of the Minister of Culture and the czar of reforms, Marino Murillo, who was at the front of the economic portfolio.

According to what can be known, General Leonardo Andollo Valdés, the father of the swimmer and diving instructor, Deborah Andollo, will be the head of Habaguanex.

It’s not known what new functions Eusebio Leal Spengler will perform. Will he act exclusively as the Historian of Havana or will he pass to the “pajama plan” [i.e. forced retirement]? In an autocracy of command and control, anything is possible.

Translator’s notes:

*The Habaguanex Tourist Company, a Cuban corporation, belongs to the Office of the Historian of Havana City, directed by Eusebio Leal. It owns hotels, shopping and cultural services. Its sustainable development generates income that is used to restore the Historic Center and to improve living conditions for the local population. 
**Habaguanex was the chieftain who ruled the area where Havana is located today, before the arrival of Christopher Columbus.

Translated by Regina Anavy

The party can very well cost the equivalent of 200 dollars. Eduardo, a mid-level official in Foreign Commerce, sums up the expenses: “Forty-eight convertible pesos [CUC] for two boxes of beer, 40 CUC for five bottles of aged rum, 25 for four kilos of chicken and two tins of tuna for snorting, and 100 CUC for the drugs and whores.”

And what are they celebrating? “Nothing special. In Cuba you celebrate anything. A success is the same as a failure. We’re not going to resolve the economic crisis by struggling. When you have a little bit of money, that’s synonymous with a party, sex and pachanga music. There doesn’t have to be anything more,” comments Armando, the owner of a private auto repair business.

Now it’s common, at least in Havana, for a group of friends to rent a swimming pool or a house and bring in food, Reggaeton music and prostitutes to have fun. In the summer, hookers like Elisa take advantage of the prosperity to fatten their wallets.

In private bars, discos and central areas, the hookers prowl around without much discretion. They stand out: very short, skin-tight skirts and strong perfume.

“The clients are drawn to us like moths to a flame. There are nights when you can make up to 250 CUC. In the morning, an Italian; in the afternoon, a Spaniard; and at night, an old Cuban,” says Elisa.

And the economic crisis? The new stage of austerity? “That’s for those who work for the State. Those who have private businesses, who work in tourism or make money under the table continue enjoying life in style. They break open a can and a heap of hookers appear. There are more of us every time,” says Elisa.

And the prognosis points to continued growth. At least that’s what Carlos, a sociologist who lives south of the capital, thinks. “In periods of economic hardship, people opt for the easiest way to make money. During the Special Period, only between 1993 and 2000, prostitution in Cuba took off and expanded. They weren’t only in the tourist sector. They began to operate among that portion of Cubans who have businesses, and now you can see them in poor neighborhoods where entertainment consists of drinking alcohol and flirting with cheap hookers.”

The number of prostitutes in Cuba is unknown. The sociologist beleives that the figure “is greater than 20,000 women on the whole island. If we add the men who prostitute themselves, the level could reach 30,000 people. To that you have to add those who live off the business, like the pimps, corrupt policeman, tourism employees, owners of rental houses, taxi drivers and photographers, among others. We’re talking about an enterprise.”

The tourist boom on the island is a very tempting treat for many young girls whose families are a living hell. “Although most of those who prostitute themselves belong to dysfunctional families, cases of young people from decent families without economic problems are growing. They are dazzled by the good life, easy money or the possibility of getting a visa,” clarifies Laura, an ex-social worker.

It’s probable that, in 2017, the number of foreign visitors will surpass four million. And if the U.S. Congress authorizes tourism, the figure could round off at five million.

American tourists are very much sought-after in Cuba. They are known for being generous with tips and for paying by the hour to go to bed with a woman or a man.

Yaité, an ex-hooker, now married to a German, considers that “prices could go up. In the ’80s it was 100 CUC. Then, because there were so many hookers and because the tourists who came to Cuba weren’t very rich, the cost went down to 30 to 40 CUCs for a night. Now it can go up. And an American could pay up to 200 CUC for a young, pretty prostitute with a good body.

Elisa, a hooker, prays to her saints that this prophecy comes true.

Hispanost, August 1, 2016.

Translated by Regina Anavy