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Love in the Time of Diaspora. Global Markets, and Local Meanings in Prostitution, Marriage and Womanhood in Cuba


Abstract:

Interrelations between the circulation of images concerning race and gender in the context of global hierarchies and new local forms and meanings of partnership and prostitution in Cuba have not been adequately understood until now. This is due to the image of a “sudden” revival of prostitution, after it had allegedly been eradicated in socialist Cuba.

Exploring prostitution, marriage and womanhood in Havana from a historical perspective and examining jineterismo as part of the local ‘informal’ economy, this article demonstrates how these institutions were modified in a global context long before the 1990s.

In the transcultural relations between foreigners and locals, models of womanhood, partnership and love were not merely ‘given’ by the social structure in the context of a globalized modernity. Instead they were to a large extent influenced by ideas concerning gender, race and morality, created and negotiated by agents as they interacted, Cuban women having resorted to these ideas and related institutions as arenas of empowerment.

Keywords: Anthropology; Prostitution; Marriage; Cuba; 20th century.

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I have pointed to the possibilities that Cuban women have and to the initiatives they have taken in these fields in spite of their underprivileged position in a global context.

Worldwide differences in earnings and the technology of transport have produced ideal conditions for sex tourism, in Cuba as well as in other countries. Macroeconomic forces alone, however, do not explain the changing modalities of institutions like marriage and prostitution.

In the course of time, a kaleidoscope of different meanings has been ascribed to them with reference to gender and race as well as to ideas about partnership and love.

Matrifocal family organization, patterns of women’s work, ‘informal’ economy structures as well as ideas about womanhood and partnership often diverged from dominant structures and values in an important way.

Cuban women have resorted to these institutions and ideas as arenas of empowerment, sometimes challenging dominant values – at other times they were not able to.

In still other cases they did not even consider challenging them, reinforcing dominant ideologies. In the long run, however, they certainly decisively shaped prostitution, marriage and womanhood - to a larger extent than most others are willing to believe.

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Besonders lustig finde ich folgenden Bezug zum Gegenrassismus der Kubaner:

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Even relatively poor tourists were made to feel like rich nabobs. Foreigners became an important social
category comparable to the pre-revolutionary upper-class whites. Cubans often considered the term extranjero to refer exclusively to a white person from a capitalist country.

At the same time, extranjeros were viewed stereotypically and with racist connotations such as naive, physically unattractive, and above all not talented at dancing. Consequently,they were considered by women to be sexually fairly unattractive. The government was aware of the new form of prostitution, jineterismo, at the end of the 1980s, even if it did not admit it.2

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