Prostitution in Havana

Home , Gratuity, History of Havana, Radhika Coomaraswamy, Women in Cuba

chapter 16 Prostitution in Havana

Amalia L. Cabezas

The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

For more than 200 years, from 1566–1790 Havana, Cuba was central to the Span- ish flota, or fleet system, a convoy designed to avoid and repel attacks by other European pirates and privateers. By 1592, the Spanish crown granted Havana the title of “city” due to its large population. Its strategic importance as a ship- ping port and its location facilitated the conquest of new lands throughout the Americas. As historian Alejandro de la Fuente explains, “With the organization of the great viceroyalties of Mexico and, later, Peru, the crown’s emphasis shifted from Cuba’s settlements on the southern coast to the Cuban northwest, particularly the Bay of Havana.”1 Ships returning treasure and goods from the ports of Veracruz, Portobelo, and Cartagena congregated at Havana harbour in order to return together to Spain. For several weeks, sometimes months, Havana was a city filled with sailors, soldiers, merchants, adventurers, and travellers passing the time until the ships were ready to sail back to Spain. Scholar Antonio Benítez-Rojo notes, “In 1594 the people of Havana had to provide lodging, food, drink, and entertainment with song and dance for seven months to the 5,000 people who visited […] many of whom had sufficient means for the enjoyment of the pleasures that the city then offered.”2 The city of Havana is located approximately 170 kilometres from Key West, Florida at the junction of the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Its clos- est neighbours are the United States, Mexico, Jamaica and Haiti. Since its inception, Havana was a city with a multinational character, a feature that continued to distinguish the capital into the twentieth century. As the city grew, it became increasingly populated by large numbers of young single men traveling from France, Italy, Portugal, and Germany, as well as Jews and Moors escaping the clutches of religious persecution.3 These voyages also brought

1 Alejandro de la Fuente, Havana and the Atlantic in the Sixteenth Century (Chapel Hill, 2008), p. 4. 2 Antonio Benítez-Rojo, “Creolization in Havana: The Oldest Form of Globalization”, in Frank- lin W. Knight and Teresita Martínez-Verge (eds), Contemporary Caribbean Cultures and Soci- eties in a Global Context (Chapel Hill, 2005), pp. 75–96, 78. 3 de la Fuente, Havana and the Atlantic, p. 94.

Prostitution in Havana 415 what were known as mujeres de mal vivir, or women of ill repute, who were escaping the clutches of the Inquisition in Spain, women who were widowed or left behind by husbands traveling to the Americas, and impoverished women without dowries.4 Unaccompanied and unmarried women residing in Havana provided sexual and domestic services to sailors, soldiers, merchants, and adventurers. The governing institutions of the island profited from women’s labour. In 1584 the Cuban Governor wrote a letter to the King of Spain reproaching Havana’s military officer for “housing” several women. Later, in 1657, the clergy were accused of having disputes over prostitutes.5 These historical references suggest that the sale of sexual services was an activity that entangled the military and eccle- siastic power structures of the Spanish colony. Havana became dominated by a “service” economy that was characterized by music-making, gambling, and prostitution. Thus, idle travellers “fostered robbery and speculation, as well as the growth of social vices.”6 The procure- ment of sexual services was a vital part of the formation of the city and of conquest and colonialism. The sexual-service economy was important to the growth of Havana as a port city and as a crossroads for trade. Because the majority of women during the sixteenth century were illiterate, part of the wider pattern of limited or prohibited education and employment outside the home for women and girls, they often found a livelihood working in taverns and lodging houses offering domestic and sexual services to the soldiers and merchants who migrated to or were transient travellers in the city by the bay.7 Those who provided sexual services were often times destitute and enslaved. During the sixteenth century, besides working in taverns and boarding houses, women who sold sexual services were connected to the service economy in the delivery of domestic services. Enslaved women brought to Cuba from Africa were able to operate taverns out of their homes, hire themselves out for household work, and, given the high demand, provide sex. Some of these slaves were employed on small farms in the areas surrounding the city, and they also worked as itinerant street vendors, coming into contact with transient travellers such as sailors and using sexual commerce to supplement their earnings and, in some cases, to save and eventually buy their manumission. Freed women slaves working in the city also used sexual services as a way to survive and to complement their wages in other sectors of the economy.

4 Mayra Beers, “Murder in San Isidro: Crime and Culture during the Second Cuban Republic”, Cuban Studies, 34 (2003), pp. 97–129, 104. 5 Beers, “Murder in San Isidro”, p. 104. 6 Benítez-Rojo, “Creolization in Havana”, p. 78. 7 de la Fuente, Havana and the Atlantic, p. 205.

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416 Cabezas

For slave-owning entrepreneurs, Havana offered the perfect setting for cater- ing to the sexual desires of large numbers of men from the metropolis, young single men who arrived in Cuba either as immigrants or as itinerant travellers. These early procurers exploited slave women and took advantage of the shortage of white women to cater to the men staying in Havana. In 1658, Havana’s governor Juan de Salamanca sought to “require the owners of black women and mulattos to keep them within their houses and not give them permission to live outside nor to go to the mills and corrals […] because these slaves thus earn for their owners wages much greater than those that are [otherwise] earned.”8 Even after emancipation, many of the women continued to perform these same activities, as there were no other segments of the wage economy where they could earn a living. Selling sex to the military garrisons and transient travellers, such as sailors, was an important aspect of African women’s survival and processes of manumission in Havana. Slave-owning families of Havana greatly benefited from being able to hire out their women slaves as prostitutes but other groups also profited from human trafficking and sexual slavery. It was common, for instance, for soldiers and clergy to purchase one or two female slaves so they could rent them out to other men and thereby increase their revenues.9 The vibrant mercantile economy reproduced the gender-based, economic, and racial division of labour in the Iberian Peninsula, where women of subordinated status were over-represented in sexual markets. Thus, mulattas, slaves, and free women of colour worked in saloons, lodging houses, and households offering domestic and sexual services to soldiers, sailors, and the large itinerant population in the port city. As historian Alejandro de la Fuente states, “Some of Havana’s most humble residents, frequently black women, made a living cooking for them [men in the garrisons], laundering their clothing, and selling sexual services.”10 More or less from the inception of the city of Havana, sexual commerce was an income-generating activity for women and a source of social reproduction that maintained the power structures of the military and the colonial mercantilist economy. Even while being economically vital to the city and colonialism, women who sold sexual services were stigmatized. Although government decrees did not prohibit the sex trade, women of the elite classes were socially secluded in their homes. Therefore, early on a dichotomy and distinction between pri- vate and public, and good and bad women, existed and was enabled by the development of racial systems of categorization. During the seventeenth

8 Dick Cluster and Rafael Hernández, The History of Havana (New York, 2006), p. 13. 9 Ibid. 10 de la Fuente, Havana and the Atlantic, p. 78.

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Prostitution in Havana 417

century, policies enacted regulatory measures to control women’s sexuality, mobility, and behaviour, imposing standards of comportment that defined vir- tual womanhood according to patriarchal parameters. For centuries to come these strictures continued to influence the perception and treatment of mujeres públicas, or public women. Hospitals and prisons were some of the earliest institutions established to contain and punish wayward or public women. Unruly and disorderly women, including prostitutes, were originally housed in the city’s first hospital, San Francisco de Paula. Founded in 1664, it served both medical and penal func- tions. The mix of races in the hospital and the mingling of women from various backgrounds was cause for consternation, however, resulting in the establish- ment of a housing-penal institution called the Casa de Recogidas to confine and correct the behaviour of women considered to be rebellious.11 Inaugurated in 1746 with a focus only on wayward women, the institution was initially built as a home for poor and destitute young women.12 With the stated intent of protecting women’s virginity and segregating them by race and class, it housed women who did not obey social norms and who were marginal in the social order. Indigent and poor women, slaves, alcoholics, adulteresses, murderesses, thieves, the mentally ill, political prisoners, and mujeres públicas were also housed there. The Casa de Recogidas sought to reform women through work and religious instruction, and it was modelled after similar efforts in Spain with the Casa de Arrepentidas or Recogidas. In both Spain and the colonies, women were incarcerated to penalize and rehabilitate sexual transgressors. Sentenced by judicial authorities for defiant behaviour, incarcerated women could not leave the premises without the permission of a judge. Many were unable to escape. It was not until 1917 that the system of Casa de Recogidas was abolished but, as we will see, in the twentieth century similar efforts were made to restrict and rehabilitate “wayward” women.

The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Havana in the 1770s was the largest port in the Spanish-American colonies with an estimated population of 40,000.13 The sex industry continued to expand

11 Tiffany A. Sippial, Prostitution, Modernity, and the Making of the Cuban Republic, 1840–1920 (Chapel Hill, 2013), p. 27. 12 Rolando Alvarez Estévez, La “Reeducación” de la Mujer Cubana en la Colonia: La Casa de Recogidas (La Habana, 1976). 13 Benítez-Rojo, “Creolization in Havana”, p. 78.

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418 Cabezas together with the many social and political developments that dramatically transformed the population of the capital city. During this time, women became central to debates encompassing public health, race, nation-building, and morality. The wars fought to win independence from Spain—the Ten Years’ War (1868–1878), the Little War (1879–1880), and the Spanish-American war (1895– 1898)—led the population of the island to flee to Havana, as it offered more possibilities for survival than the countryside. This internal displacement resulted in an economic and social crisis which caused many families to lose their homes, jobs, and titles to their land. Impoverished rural workers migrated to cities to find work. Women who were excluded from paid employment in most sectors of the economy made a livelihood selling sex and domestic services, while men laboured or became beggars, vagrants, and petty thieves.14 Havana sustained its place as one of the busiest ports in the Americas. The internally displaced population could find opportunities for survival in what was a thriving and cosmopolitan city. As Cuba became the largest producer of sugar in the world, merchant ships were at the port of Havana during the sugar harvest for weeks and months at a time, and crews numbering in the tens of thousands spent their time ashore in pursuit of diversion and entertainment. Steamship lines linked Havana to New Orleans, and over 150 ships from the city of Philadelphia visited the port yearly.15 In addition, there were also travellers passing through Cuba on their way to the California Gold Rush. As in its inception, the city offered gambling, dancing, merry-making, and sex. Against a backdrop of economic and political uncertainty, during the nineteenth century a more intimate relationship developed between the United States and Cuba and this greatly influenced and transformed the sex industry. By the mid-nineteenth century, as North American tourists began to visit Havana regularly for work, business, and pleasure, a tourist industry grew to accommodate northern travellers. As historian Louis A. Pérez emphasizes, “Bars, brothels, and bistros, operated by North Americans principally for North Americans, expanded along both coasts. They became familiar features of the bay streets of the port cities; around these streets there developed a nether world into which North Americans of almost every social type descended.”16 Women from the us travelled to work in the brothels, “many hired directly from the United States, others stranded in Cuba without resources or a job,

14 Louis A. Pérez, Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution (New York, 1988), p. 133. 15 Benítez-Rojo, “Creolization in Havana”, p. 78. 16 Louis A. Pérez, On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture (Chapel Hill, 1999), p. 23.

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Prostitution in Havana 419 some newly widowed, others recently unemployed.”17 Such was the case of a nanny from Connecticut who was fired at a sugar estate in the interior. She migrated to a brothel in Havana to eke out a living. Another occurrence was a penniless North American actress who turned to prostitution in Havana after being abandoned by her lover.18 us labourers also travelled to Havana. In the 1880s an estimated 32,000 us seamen visited Havana annually. Migrant us railroad and construction workers, merchant seamen, and women selling sexual services crowded the city.19 It was the transient nature of the travellers, their tenuous social location, and loose connections to the social networks of the city that further expanded prostitution in the capital. Another force shaping the sex trade of Havana was the slave trade. In the city of Havana, city residents owned on average 3.1 domestic slaves each. As in earlier periods, women of African descent were sexually enslaved to their owners and rented out to clients. The connection between domestic and sexual services was exacerbated by the shortage of women and easy access to slaves.20 As the sex trade grew at a rapid pace, displays of sexual commerce increasingly offended influential members of society; the sale of sex was too public and too close to the centre of the city where wealthy families lived. To better implement state surveillance and address complaints, the colonial authorities moved women who were selling sex to a geographically circumscribed area. Concerned with the dual purpose of controlling health and morality, the colonial administrators sought to contain and isolate the sale of sexual services within a designated tolerance zone on the outskirts of the capital. Regulations were also implemented to prevent the spread of venereal diseases. Syphilis in particular was said to be responsible for the death of many of the Spanish military troops that arrived in Havana to fight the wars of independence, and it killed “from 14,000 in 1868 to well over 97,000 by 1877.”21 For Spain, it was intolerable that the majority of imperial soldiers were dying of disease and not in combat. The category of prostitute had not received explicit juridical or disciplinary consideration. The police generally responded to common “delinquent” behaviour and not prostitution per se, particularly when the offending person was

17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 20 Camillia Cowling, Conceiving Freedom: Women of Color, Gender and the Abolition of Slav- ery in Havana and Rio de Janeiro (Chapel Hill, 2013). 21 Ibid., p. 49.

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420 Cabezas located in a central area of the city where influential families lived. In response to complaints about “public women”—implying delinquent and scandalous female behaviour such as drinking in public, using offensive language, and generally offending bourgeoisie sensibilities and norms—they were removed from affluent neighbourhoods and sent to the fringes of the city. Beginning with the “Edict of Governance and Police for the Island of Cuba” enacted in 1842, legislation targeting prostitution began to be implemented. The law specifically outlawed brothels, and it stated that “houses of prostitution are prohibited and will be prosecuted according to the law.”22 By 1853, policy shifted from outright prohibition to sanctioning prostitution within the aforementioned officially authorized zones of tolerance. These zones replaced total prohibition and marked the beginning of a new era of legal regulation and control. But the overwhelming concern in the creation of zones of tolerance was more about moving public soliciting to marginal parts of the city and not so much with controlling activities within brothels. It was illegal to establish brothels outside of the geographical areas zoned for prostitution. Within the segregated district, they were further regulated by the police. Prostitutes resisted by devising various schemes and techniques to evade their stigmati- zation, forced relocation, and curtailed mobility. For the most part, however, there wasn’t enough funding to implement the laws and the police were rather lax in enforcing the regulation. Starting in 1860, the city’s chief of police called for a padrón, or master list of prostitutes that counted all prostitutes according to race, to be drawn up. How- ever, it was not until 1869 that the list was created, and it appears to have been the first and only such record to have survived. It took ten years to complete, and the methodologies used to create it are unclear. For instance, how was the information gathered? How were the racial categories determined? Was the identity of prostitutes imposed on the women or supplied voluntarily? His- torian Tiffany Sippial maintains that police officers relied on their knowledge of known or reputed prostitutes. Women who only performed sexual services on an “as-needed” basis, clandestine prostitutes, and those living in the centre of the city away from the zones of tolerance were excluded from the padrón. According to these unreliable statistics, the 1869 census of brothels and prostitutes included 498 prostitutes in total, with most of the women living close to the centre of the city.23 Although madams did not have an assigned racial category, the majority of the prostitutes were classified as white (85 per cent)

22 Ibid., p. 31. 23 Alberto J. Gullón Abao, “La Prostitución en la Habana en los primeros años del siglo xx”, Trocadero, 14–15 (2003), pp. 93–105, 26.

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Prostitution in Havana 421 and 6 per cent were determined to be of mixed race and 9 per cent black.24 These figures remained fairly stable in various other estimates of that period of Havana’s history. For instance, Historian Gullón Abao claims that there were 500 prostitutes in Havana in 1878 and that the number of prostitutes did not increase until 1899 when it rose to 774 as a result of the war that broke out.25 The most notorious sex district was known as Colón, an area between Ha- bana Vieja and Centro Habana. Another district was on Zanja Street. But because the tolerance zone was vaguely defined—no one was sure where the hodgepodge of nonadjacent spaces was exactly located—the loosely defined policy was difficult to enforce and easy to evade. Ultimately, the method of geographically segregating prostitutes proved inadequate for the metropolitan government. It was abandoned in 1868 as colonial officials turned to medical- scientific regimes of regulation that were becoming increasingly popular in Paris. It was during this time that the loose and indistinct category of “public women”, or the demimonde, was replaced by that of “prostitutes”, a term that focused exclusively on sexual commerce. For the colonial government, the census revealed that the policy of tolerance was not meeting their expectations. Creole elites and the colonial regime focused on marking and controlling prostitutes and prostitution with increased efficiency. Influenced by the debates and practices taking place with the rise of science, medicine, public health regimes, and in particular the work of French physician Alexandre Parent-Duchâtelet, a system of mandatory registration for prostitutes within tolerance zones together with medical examinations and the issuance of identity cards was implemented. Similar efforts were made in London with the British Contagious Diseases Acts and they spread throughout the western European colonies in more or less the same form.26 Similar measures were enacted in German Africa, Argentina, Brazil, India, Guatemala, Japan, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Russia.27 In this way, the colonial policies and systems regarding prostitution that were established in Cuba were comparable to those developed to protect imperial soldiers in other areas of the world. In 1873 a statutory law called the Special Public Hygiene Regulation (Regla- mento de Higiene Públicas) was implemented and it stipulated that a hospital would be established with the aim of examining and treating sex workers

24 Sippial, Prostitution, Modernity, and the Cuban Republic, p. 51. 25 Gullón Abao, “La Prostitución en la Habana en los primeros años del siglo xx”, p. 26. 26 Laura Briggs, Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and us Imperialism in Puerto Rico (Berkeley, 2002). 27 Ibid., p. 29.

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422 Cabezas who had contracted venereal diseases and an asylum was to be set up to house homeless women and girls who were infected. The Special Public Hygiene Regulation brought into being a regulatory scheme of surveillance through the registration of brothels, madams, and prostitutes.28 The law called for all registered women to carry at all times a cartilla sanitaria, an identity card identifying them as prostitutes, and they were to be examined twice weekly, “once for a general exam and once internally by use of a speculum.”29 Those infected with venereal or other contagious diseases were remanded to the new hospital for treatment or sent to the Casa de Recogidas. No efforts were made to regulate male access to sexual services as this was deemed to be a natural part of manhood. By instituting a skeletal administrative and medical staff, the regulation sought to register madams and remand women to the hospital where they were examined and treated by medical personnel. The process of documenta- tion involved the creation of a public record of prostitutes, medical check-ups every two weeks, and mandated hospitalization in cases of venereal infections. A letter was also issued to inform clients and the police when a prostitute was determined to be free of venereal diseases. All the costs were borne by the registered brothel madams. The fees paid by brothel workers were also used to pay a special police force that was tasked with carrying out the legal obligations outlined by the Reglamento. In essence, all of the costs related to the implementation of this policy were paid for by the fees collected from the sex industry. The regulation thus created a system in which those who could not afford to pay for the regulations were criminalized. Every year after the implementation of the law new requirements were added to the legislation to closely circumscribe the public comportment of prostitutes. Women employed in brothels were not allowed to stand near windows, look outside, be drunk, or follow people on the streets. The system also included detailed rules that stipulated how often prostitutes needed to change bed linens and when they could receive visitors and for how long.30 Brothel owners were also forced to cover their windows to prevent people from looking inside. The legislation also curtailed public behaviour in terms of soliciting customers, “gathering in open doorways, occupying balconies in theaters, or riding through public streets in open carriages.”31 Under the new directives,

28 Beatriz Calvo Peña, “Prensa, política y prostitución en La Habana finisecular: El caso de La Cebolla y la ‘polemica de las meretrices’”, Cuban Studies 36 (2005), pp. 23–49. 29 Beers, “Murder in San Isidro”, p. 104. 30 Calvo Peña, “Prensa, política y prostitución en La Habana finisecular”, p. 25. 31 Sippial, Prostitution, Modernity, and the Cuban Republic, p. 57.

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Prostitution in Havana 423 prostitutes were also not allowed to sing or use profane or provocative words in public. Women evaded the forms of surveillance created by the system of regulation any way they could. They used pseudonyms when stopped by the police and avoided the imposition of fees, and they also moved frequently to evade detection. Before being subjected to medical examinations they used powders, creams, and astringent solutions to hide signs of venereal diseases and others simply refused to undergo the examinations. Clandestine prostitutes refused to register or carry the cartilla sanitaria, and it did not help that the police were lax in collecting fees. By 1876, the new regulatory system was under consider- able pressure, and the first chief officer of the Special Hygiene Section was fired for living in a brothel.32 Nevertheless, these challenges proved surmount- able. A renewed effort was made with new legislation and leadership to ex- ecute the policy. In 1877, the General Regulation of Public Hygiene promoted a more rigorous surveillance process that called for higher fees, increased police supervision, intensified administrative accountability, and more staff to man- age and control the system of regulation.33 A maximum penalty was enforced for madams and prostitutes who violated the laws repeatedly and they were subject to three months of imprisonment and the closure of their brothels. Stiffer state regulatory measures resulted in higher revenues for the state from fines. It also solidified the formation of a class system that differentiated between types of prostitutes.

La Cebolla: The Onion

From evasion to outright confrontation, prostitutes challenged and instigated numerous forms of resistance against unjust regulations and policies. Perhaps the most creative form was the creation of a newspaper detailing their complaints and calling for the formation of a political party run by prostitutes. Financed by wealthy prostitutes and supported by the collaboration of an anarchist who served as the editor, the newspaper run by Havana’s sex workers was a means by which they voiced their complaints against unjust laws and corrupt government officials.34 For the first time in the history of Havana and perhaps of Latin America, a publication emerged which openly advocated for the rights of prostitutes. In 1888, La Cebolla: Periódico Ilustrado. Órgano Oficial

32 Beers, “Murder in San Isidro”, pp. 97–129. 33 Sippial, Prostitution, Modernity, and the Cuban Republic, p. 65. 34 Beers, “Murder in San Isidro”, p. 105.

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424 Cabezas del Partido de su Nombre (The Onion: Illustrated Newspaper, Official Organ of the Party with the Same Name) appeared in the capital city.35 La Cebolla, which was “published by and for prostitutes”, was in direct opposition to the Regla- mento de Higiene Pública and directly opposed the system of regulation. The articles in the newspaper ridiculed and complained about the high regulatory fees and the medical check-ups. One unsigned letter stated:

The Mayor, who is so old and cranky that not even a fly dares to land on him, has decreed that we cannot exhibit ourselves in the doorways of our own establishments. […] Is this fair? What country prohibits a business- man from showing the public his merchandise? The “horizontals” of this city pay more contributions to the state than necessary. Yet, even though we contribute more than any other sector to bolster the revenues of the state with the sweat of our […] brows, we are treated as if we were slaves, as if we were outlaws. In other words, we are considered citizens so as to meet our obligations but not to enjoy the rights of citizenship.36

La Cebolla protested against the control of prostitutes’ lives by challenging an exploitative administrative system that was paid for with all the regulations enacted over their bodies. One of the articles appearing in La Cebolla declared “!Basta Ya! (Enough is enough!)” and objected to the fact that a child was used to take down the names of prostitutes who were found to be looking out windows and standing in doorways.37 Another article advocated for the formation of a prostitute’s professional guild so they could back their demands. The newspaper carried full-length pictorials of the women, who used nicknames to conceal their identities, and it was produced four times during the month of September in 1888 and was widely distributed throughout Havana and the provinces. Scholars dispute the authenticity of the writings and the legitimacy of the newspaper. Beatriz Calvo Peña’s argument is that Victorino Reineri Jimeno, a progressive journalist, penned all the articles. However, historian María del Carmen Barcia Zequeira speculates that literate and wealthy sex workers financed the paper and wrote some of the articles. Barcia Zequeira argues that a number of factors, including the rise of civil society, helped to solidify

35 María del Carmen Barcia Zequeira, “Entre el poder y la crisis: Las prostitutas se defienden”, in Luisa Campuzano (ed.), Mujeres latinoamericanas: Historia y cultura: Siglos xvi al xix (La Habana, 1997), pp. 263–273. 36 Beers, “Murder in San Isidro”, p. 105. 37 Calvo Peña, “Prensa, política y prostitución en La Habana finisecular”, p. 26.

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Prostitution in Havana 425 a context in which prostitutes could become organized and voice their con- cerns. Sippial’ s textual analysis of the writings further supports this conten- tion. Instead of arguing that Reineri, the anarchist who was the editor, wrote all the articles, she points out how a multi-vocal and gendered writing style differentiated the prose, concluding that prostitutes contributed articles to the newspaper that were different in style from Reineri’s prose. She ascertains that an alliance between the anarchist and a specific group of prostitutes made the publication possible. Irrespective of its exact origins, the newspaper challenged the social order of late nineteenth-century Havana by affirming the demands of women who sold sexual services. But it also highlighted that, unlike in previous historical periods, so-called public women were no longer uneducated and illiterate. For instance, in 1853, Luisa Bonetti, who was born in Germany and was 26 years of age, was detained and subsequently deported for creating a public scandal and being intoxicated in public numerous times. Before being deported, she fought back against numerous arrests and contested her criminalization to the local authorities. As historian Maria del Carmen Barcia illustrates, Bonetti was the literate mother of a six-year-old daughter who refuted the charges against herself by writing many letters to the governor and Captain General of Cuba contesting her case.38 Bonetti’s case further confirms the findings of a study showing that 32 per cent of the Cuban-born women treated at the hygiene hospital between 1889 and 1902 were literate.39 La Cebolla was an act of defiance against a colonial administration that was under constant attack. The newspaper was quickly banned and its editor was fined and incarcerated. Nevertheless, the exploitation of sex workers was pub- lically discussed and inspired the creation of a new identity for prostitutes as labouring women.

Class and Racial Differences

La Cebolla brought to light the economic and educational hierarchies that had solidified with the system of regulation, a framework establishing socio- economic classes, and geographical demarcations. Race figured significantly in the stratified sex trade. There is evidence to suggest that women and men

38 Barcia Zequeira, “Entre el poder y la crisis: Las prostitutas se defienden”, Contrastes, 7 (1991–1993), pp. 7–18, 10. 39 Sippial, Prostitution, Modernity, and the Cuban Republic, p. 96.

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426 Cabezas of African descent had to deal with the harshest working conditions and the lowest pay. In the brothels and zone of tolerance pimps and madams were at the centre of a process of social differentiation and organization. In the pimp hierarchy, those at the top lived solely off the earnings of several women, and they wore fine clothes and ostentatious jewels. Such was the case of Alberto Yarini y Ponce de León (1882–1910). In the world of the Havana demimonde, he was commonly referred to as Yarini; he was the popular son of an aristocratic family and a leader in the conservative party who was well-known and respected in the tolerance zones as a chulo, or pimp. In the end, Yaniri was killed during a quarrel with French pimps.40 Indeed, long-running feuds between French pimps, known as apaches, and guayabitos—specifying Cubans—were common. Yaniri’s funeral was attended by as many as 10,000 people from all ranks of society and received coverage in us newspapers. Yaniri was the pinnacle of the sex industry’s upper-level rank. Beneath him were working-class pimps who did not enjoy the same social admiration. Pimps known as café con leche chulos (“coffee with milk pimps”) were such pimps, and they had few women working for them, wore cheap watches and shabby outfits, sold drugs, and had other occupations to supplement their earnings. They came up with various recruitment and money-making schemes so they could make a living off new arrivals from the countryside, underage girls, and young women seeking work at employment agencies.41 Some used newspaper advertisements or theatrical agencies to recruit women,42 or they served as intermediaries between madams and clients, utilizing photographic albums of available women.43 Others joined a host of businessmen and property owners who charged exorbitant prices for products and living arrangements sold to sex workers. White matrons who owned brothels were able to make a decent living in the sex industry as well. Many of these business owners had previously worked in brothels in Europe, the Canary Islands, Mexico, Panama, Venezuela, and the us, and they had earned large sums of money in their youth.44 They in- vested their savings in the launching of entertainment venues that offered

40 Cañizares, Dulcira, San Isidro 1910: Alberto Yarini y su época, (La Habana, 2000). 41 Alberto J. Gullón Abao, “Un acercamiento a la prostitución cubana de fines del siglo xix”, in Consuelo Naranjo Orovio and Miguel Puig-Samper (eds), La Nación Soñada: Cuba Puer- to Rico y Filipinas ante el 98 (Madrid, 1996), pp. 497–507, 503. 42 Gullón Abao, “Un acercamiento a la prostitución cubana”, p. 503. 43 Tomás Fernández Robaina, Recuerdos secretos de dos mujeres públicas, (La Habana, 1983). 44 Barcia Zequeira, “Entre el poder y la crisis”, p. 11.

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Prostitution in Havana 427

prostitution, gambling, and dancing. In Havana it was well-known that they treated their “pupils”, as their workers were known, harshly, keeping them under tight control to deter them from “escaping” and stealing.45 As intermediaries in the sex trade, matrons had influential relationships with the medical and administrative officials and this made it possible for them to carry out their business by paying out bribes. Lower-ranking prostitutes were those who could not afford the high fees associated with working in the brothels. Those at the bottom strata were women of African descent who worked as fleteras, (women for hire or for rent), and they were unregistered clandestine streetwalkers. More visible and hence more vulnerable, fleteras found clients on the streets and dark alleys, as well as by the docks and warehouses next to the bay. Often they were the most exposed to violence, and they received the lowest remunerations. Fleteras were usually women in ill health, the older prostitutes who were generally from vulnerable segments of society, and in their trade they faced greater stigma and denigration.46 As illegal sex workers they were easy prey for the police who regularly rounded them up, beating and sending them to the local prison.47 In contrast, registered brothel workers, while subject to the reach of the hygiene law, had more protection from police violence and exploitation. Never- theless, they were subordinated by the madams who curtailed their mobility and extracted as much money from them as possible. Registered brothel workers earned more money but they had to deal with the matrons’ absolute power over them, as the matrons charged them for supposed debts for clothing and furnishings that were never incurred. Between fleteras and registered brothel workers, and between high society and low-class pimps, there was a fuzzy economy of people who dabbled temporarily in the sex trade. Because they were not poor, black, or working class, their activities were invisible and not necessarily marked as sex work. These included white women who provided occasional sexual exchanges in houses not registered as brothels. Women who worked out of restaurants, bars, cafés, and hotels were morally suspect but not readily identified as sex workers. Women who did not lead marginal lives were able to negotiate sex for jewellery, theatre tickets, and fine garments in a discreet manner without marking their identity as sex workers. The general lack of employment for women, exclusionary practices in the labour market, and the low wages in most sectors of the gendered

45 Gullón Abao, “Un acercamiento a la prostitución cubana”, p. 503. 46 Ibid., p. 497. 47 Beers, “Murder in San Isidro”, p. 106.

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428 Cabezas economy led women to provisionally engage in short term sexual arrangements so they could secure a livelihood.

Migration and Prostitution

During this epoch of massive European migration to the Americas, Havana attracted many settlers. For example, between the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries more than half a million Spaniards immigrated to Cuba. In 1850, Spain initiated large-scale trans-Atlantic migration which brought many Gallegos (people from the Galician region of Spain) and Canary Islanders to Cuba.48 Young, single men went there in search of better opportunities. Women from Spain and the Canary Islands also migrated there. Some went there with the express intent to work in the sex industry or ended up there because they had no other options for employment. They joined trans-Caribbean migrant women arriving from countries such as Mexi- co, Puerto Rico, New Orleans, Jamaica, and Haiti.49 Journalist and travel writer Basil Woon cautioned visitors about meeting up with such women:

It may be as well to warn you here that few of these “beautiful young things”—and they are both beautiful and young—are Cuban. Most of them are from Panama or Chile or Ecuador. But they all speak Spanish and only a few know any English.50

Historian Rosalie Schwartz states that “more than a few North American la- dies of the evening traveled to Havana to compete with the locals.”51 For the most part these women made their voyages voluntarily, even though Cuban immigration officials sought to deter the organized “white slave” trade. Some of the women established their pseudonyms based on their foreign identities. For instance, the women writing for the newspaper La Cebolla assumed names such as La Madrileña, La Catalana, La Isleña, and La Charo, emphasizing a

48 Alejandro Vázquez González, “Algunos aspectos do transporte do emigración galega a América 1850–1930” in Jesús de Juana and Xavier Castro (eds), Galicia y América: El papel de la emigración (Ourense, 1990), pp. 117–134. 49 Gullón Abao, “La prostitución en la Habana en los primeros años”, p. 26; Beers, “Murder in San Isidro”, pp. 97–129; Basil Woon, When It’s Cocktail Time in Cuba (New York, 1928), p. 268. 50 Ibid., p. 276. 51 Rosalie Schwartz, Pleasure Island: Tourism and Temptation in Cuba (Lincoln, 1997), p. 86.

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Prostitution in Havana 429 foreign place of origin. However, xenophobic anxieties, particularly aimed at racial “others”, became a regular part of calls to ban the sale of sex. The racial attitudes of the petite bourgeoisie disparaged immigrants and non-whites and blamed them for the multitude of problems that challenged an over-crowded city filled with new immigrants. The influx of migrants further cemented class hierarchies in Havana. For the elites of society, the issue of prostitution was thought of either as a problem of immoral immigrants or part of the practices of “depraved” racial groups such as Afro-Cubans and Chinese labourers. As Sippial argues, the origins of sexual vice on the island were thus externalized.52 Prominent feminists, doctors, and influential leaders decried the existence of “undesirable” immigration, accus- ing immigrants and Afro-Cubans of fomenting the sex trade. Large groups of indentured Chinese labourers began arriving in Cuba in 1847, and an additional 5,000 Chinese emigrated from the United States to avoid the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.53 These migrants, principally single men, made a perilous and arduous journey to work in the agriculture sector for eight years and then made their way back to Havana from the countryside where they established a Chinese community. In 1872, it was estimated that there were 58,000 men and thirty-two women of Chinese descent in Cuba.54 As researchers point out, slavery-like conditions existed in the migration of Chinese people, particularly women: “One such advertisement indicated the sale of a ‘Chinese woman of twenty one years’ and another announced the sale of ‘a Chinese girl.’”55 Another example, this time from an advertisement in a Havana-based newspaper, read: “For sale: A Chinese girl with two daughters, one of 12–13 years [of age] and the other of 5–6, useful for whatever you may desire. Also one mule.”56 The traffic in Chinese girls emerged in various periods but was not recorded in the official records. Sippial found an interesting case of two Chinese “criminal” females who had been remanded to the San Francisco de Paula hospital in 1856.57 We know very little about the racial and national backgrounds of those who worked in the sex industry in Havana. There are few reports from the era, as many documents were destroyed after the us–Spanish War. Nevertheless, we

52 Sippial, Prostitution, Modernity, and the Cuban Republic, p. 117. 53 Lisa Yun, The Coolie Speaks: Chinese Indentured Laborers and African Slaves in Cuba, (Philadelphia, 2008). 54 Juan Pérez de la Riva, Demografía de los culíes chinos, 1853–1874 (La Habana, 1996), p. 23. 55 Yun, The Coolie Speaks, p. 63. 56 Ibid., p. 64. 57 Sippial, Prostitution, Modernity, and the Cuban Republic, p. 27.

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430 Cabezas can make an approximation. For instance, of the 461 women that were treated in the Hygiene Hospital between 1873 and 1876, 151 were from Spain, 116 were from the Canary Islands, 145 were “almost all” Cubans of colour, and 49 were foreigners.58 The note that 145 Cuban women were “casi todas de color” (almost all of colour) suggests a racial imperative that would serve to hide the number of white women in the sex trade. Indeed, in his report as secretary of the Commission of Hygiene, Ramón Mariá Alfonso indicated that 77 per cent of the prostitutes were white and he argued that other reports lacked objectivity.59 By the end of the 1880s, a report indicated that 77 per cent of registered prostitutes were Cuban and mainly white.60 Again, we know little about how these racial classifications were arrived at or what constituted cer- tain categories such as “foreigners.” Historians have pointed out that the wars of independence in Cuba drew large numbers of displaced internal migrants to the capital city as they were looking for employment.61 Some were newly freed slaves who were quite vulnerable, and exclusionary practices could be temporarily circumvented by selling sex. By the end of the nineteenth century, as in the centuries before, the sex industry offered a livelihood for foreigners and Cubans alike.

The Twentieth Century

In the beginning of the twentieth century, the tumultuous nature of the nineteenth century continued unabated. Havana served as the entry point and destination for many internal migrants who were fleeing displacement resulting from more than thirty years of wars of independence. Emancipated slaves, unemployed rural workers, and international immigrants sought to make the city their home. The us had used the sinking of a boat off the Havana Bay as an excuse to enter the war of independence against Spain and occupy the island of Cuba. Havana therefore was in a transitional period of transforma- tion as Cubans adjusted to their newfound independence from Spain and us occupation. The occupying regime installed a provisional government and embarked on a process of making the Cuban nation receptive to its capitalist goals. While there were many efforts to “Americanize” the country in this period, the us

58 Barcia Zequeira, “Entre el poder y la crisis”, p. 11. 59 Ibid., p. 12. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid., p. 11.

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Prostitution in Havana 431 did not radically change or alter existing laws concerning prostitution. As one commentator expressed in a Cuban newspaper, “The Americans here abolished cockfighting, bullfighting and the lottery. Why did they leave prostitution in the Republic? It does not exist in the United States […] nor in other civilized nations.”62 As historian Laura Briggs points out, “During a brief period during us occupation in Cuba the us military government briefly repealed (1898), then reinstated (1899) prostitution regulation.”63 The policies that were re-established were basically the same; the only difference was that alcohol sales were now prohibited in brothels. us soldiers certainly took advantage of the restored policy. One 17-year-old patient in the Special Hygiene Section told medical personnel that she had sexually serviced forty-one us soldiers in a single day. Many Cubans felt that us policy was a mere extension of Spanish colonial exploitation. With the endorsement of the occupying government, a regulation ratified in 1902 raised the legal age for registration from 15 to 18 years of age in an attempt to curtail prostitution carried out by young girls. The regulation also clearly defined the geographic parameters of the tolerance zone and hence it decreased the ambiguity of the previous policy. But because no new zones were added and the sex trade persisted in the same space as it had been since 1850, it resulted in over-crowding in the zone, thus increasing rents. Sippial contends that, “Fully aware that their tenants were bound to the tolerance zone, land- lords split rental properties into ever-smaller units, for which they charged astronomical prices.”64 Years later, an informant told researcher Fernández Robaina, “We had to rush those who were making love in the rooms to be able to service our clients. In houses of six or more rooms, there were as many as fifteen whores.”65 The informant added, “That is to say, in the amount of time that before we were with one client, now we had to service two or three.”66 Sexual commerce took on an assembly-line approach as women had to work faster to pay the exorbitant rents. The dense population of Havana was further augmented by us-based tourism. A new law outlawing the sale of alcohol in the us, the Volstead Act of 1919, served to expand the steady flow of North American tourists to Cuba.67 With

62 Diario de la marina, (Havana, November 22, 1910) as quoted in Fernández Robaina, Recu- erdos secretos de dos mujeres públicas, p. 42. 63 Briggs, Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and us Imperialism, p. 32. 64 Sippial, Prostitution, Modernity, and the Making of the Cuban Republic, p. 145. 65 Tomás Fernández Robaina, Historias de Mujeres Públicas (La Habana, 1998), p. 45. 66 Fernández Robaina, Historias de Mujeres Públicas, p. 46. 67 Pérez, On Becoming Cuban, p. 167.

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432 Cabezas their proximity to Havana—us travellers seeking to escape the long arm of us morality could flee to Cuba for a weekend of partying and indulging in outlawed behaviour. Havana became known as a place where Americans went to do what they were not allowed to do in their own country. In this way, Havana became known solely as a city of depravity. From 1915 to 1930, Havana had the largest number of foreign visitors in the Caribbean. Mass-marketing campaigns stimulated pleasure-seeking visitors to come to a place that was “so near, yet so foreign”, as one travel poster proclaimed—in essence, a place that was exotic but not too exotic. During a period in which the us outlawed “pleasure” activities such as drinking and prostitution, Havana provided an outlet to satisfy demand. Visitor arrivals steadily grew in the twentieth century. In the heyday of North American tourism, visitor arrivals increased from 180,000 in 1940 to a high of 350,000 in 1957.68 Gambling, prostitution, and pornographic theatres propagated an outlaw culture that entertained tourists. Havana became known as the “Brothel of the Caribbean”. As one us men’s publication proclaimed,

Havana is indeed geared to the tourist trade as are few other capital cities in the world. It’s a huckstering holiday town with one main pitch: Come on, you thousands of Americans, throw off your inhibitions and play in an old Spanish city which never heard of the bourgeois squeamish- ness of American play lands! There’s something for every taste and every pocketbook!69

Even tourist guidebooks promoted sex tourism, as the following guide book from 1928 indicates:

For your benefit then, you gay old dog, we’ll append a few brief and easily learned phrases: “Will you come for a ride?”—“Quierespasaearconmigo?” (Keeayryspasayarconmeego?) “Give me a kiss?”—“Dame un beso, chica?” (Darmyoonbaysimcheeka?) “Will you sup with me?”—“Quierescenarconmigo?” (keeayryssaynarconmeego?) “I love you very much.”—“Tequiero mucho.” (Taykeeayromoocho.) “How much?”—“Cuanto es?” (Kwantoays?)70

68 Evaristo Villalba Garrido, Cuba y el turismo (La Habana, 1993), p. 54. 69 Robert Fortune, “Sin—With A Rhumba Beat!” Stag, 1 (1950), pp. 22–23, 58. 70 Basil Woon, When It’s Cocktail Time in Cuba (New York, 1928), p. 277.

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Prostitution in Havana 433

Guidebooks even remarked on the class stratification of the sexual economy, referring to hidden places with better reputations and this offered not only anonymity from the sex industry, but also refined accommodations located in affluent areas of Havana where embassies were located and privileged sectors of society resided. For instance, the exclusive stratum of casas de cita charged higher prices and catered to a clientele consisting of politicians, businessmen, and professionals. Mafia-owned casinos frequented by affluent Cubans and us tourists were well-known as places where sex workers could be contacted. Even the lowest echelons of sexual exchange, the waterfront in Old Havana where sex could be purchased more cheaply, were mentioned in the guidebooks. The districto de tolerancia, or tolerance zone, had been closed down by the time Basil Woon, a British journalist and author, wrote When it’s Cocktail Time in Cuba. In his travelogue, Woon remarks how by the 1920s prostitution was no longer segregated into vice areas but had spread throughout the city.71 He details strip shows where “few of the girls wear any clothes to speak of. This is the ‘naughtiest’ public show in Havana, although downtown there is a theatre which is not allowed to admit women and children, so risqué are its shows.”72 His guidebook also mentions “French” motion-picture shows, alluding to pornographic film theatres that were increasing in number in the city. The sex industry was emerging in new sectors and providing employment for a multitude of people. The heterogeneity of the sex businesses in Havana resulted in many different outcomes for women. A sex worker by the name of Consuelo la Charmé who was interviewed by Fernández Robaina stated that she liked her occupation and was proud of her skills.73 She considered it to be a professional endeavour, and she worked into old age by receiving regular clients at her home. Another woman stated that she had never worked at a brothel or on the streets. Instead, she found clients in a bar where she worked selling over-priced, watered-down drinks. She paid the bar owner 50 per cent of the money she made from the drinks she sold but was able to lie about her proceeds so she could keep more of her earnings. Sex workers employed as waitresses in bars benefited from anonymity and independence from procurers. The testimonies collected by Fernández Robaina indicate that prostitutes were careful and discriminating in what types of sexual activities they performed. One of the sex workers, for example, refused to service over-weight men. Therefore, while there is little information about the different categories of workers or types of experiences,

71 Woon, When It’s Cocktail Time in Cuba, p. 160. 72 Ibid., p. 164. 73 Fernández Robaina, Recuerdos secretos.

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434 Cabezas the diversity of arrangements made it possible for many women not only to make a living through prostitution but to exercise some agency in their work. Nevertheless, the testimonies of former sex workers also confirmed the types of oppressive culture in which poor women in particular struggled. The narratives collected by researcher Tomás Fernández Robaina tell the story of two former prostitutes who grew up in poverty.74 While we are not given many details or exact dates, the women speak of being forced to pay exorbitant prices for rooms, paying madams 40 to 50 per cent of their wages, and dealing with police harassment and extortion. They weren’t arrested for prostitution per se but they were incarcerated as the result of periodic sweeps carried against people for “offending” public morals or committing “scandals” in public. Even when brothel owners paid their required registration dues, sex workers were subject to police extortion, or what they called the “legalized mafia”; they had to regularly give bribes such as cigarettes or half a peso to the police watch- men. Police harassment was less severe at other places where women sold sex such as cabarets and bars. In the social hierarchy of prostitution, streetwalkers were consistently the most vulnerable and suffered the greatest abuse. Some of them conducted business fully exposed between parked trucks by the railroad yard, and as such they were unprotected from all kinds of police extortion, violence, and abuse. The police were not the only ones to exploit sex workers. One of the women interviewed by Fernández Robaina described how pimp violence was a means of manipulating prostitutes. In the twentieth century, procurers also became entangled in the sale of illicit drugs such as cocaine and marijuana. In particular, lower-class pimps were often involved in illegal activities, including bur- glaries and petty thefts. With the exception of Yarini and references to French pimps, we know little about the identities and social characteristics of the men who worked as intermediaries or procurers in the sex districts of Havana. In the turbulent political climate of the twentieth century, a young lawyer from a privileged white family launched his political career by using the imag- ery of sex and sin tourism to call for radical social change and armed revolt on the island. On the way to Colombia in 1948, young Fidel Castro was shocked by the “endless succession of brothels, nightclubs, and other lurid amusements” near the us naval base there. Oddly, he compared these to Havana and not to the us occupation of the Guantanamo military base where Cuban prostitutes servicing us soldiers was also rampant. Castro commented, “The famous Panama Canal Zone was the final destination of women from humble families turned into prostitutes by the Cuban bourgeoisie and its system of corruption,

74 Ibid.

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Prostitution in Havana 435 unemployment, hunger, and despair.”75 He reasoned that this was the only reason why Cuba was so well-known and liked in the world. In his political speeches the suffering prostitute emerged as a symbol of political corruption and us imperialism.76 Castro and his followers promised to reform Cuba’s political and moral economy. Indeed, as historian Skwiot claims, the political movement led by Fidel Castro, M-26, prohibited its members from patronizing nightclubs, and “Gambling, whoring, and ‘lavish living’ were strictly against the rules.”77 In the 1950s, as Time magazine called Havana “one of the world’s fabled fleshpots”,78 the sex districts were not only proliferating but also diversifying. Pornographic theatres and sex clubs were expanding in various parts of the city, no longer contained to sex districts.79 On an entire city block neighbour- ing the Plaza del Vapor at the end of Galiano Street, prostitutes were exchanged like any other commodity. Havana embodied the essential characteristics of a playground atmosphere where “anything goes”. In his autobiography, Frank Ragano, an attorney who worked for the mafia in the 1950s, recalled a conversa- tion with mafia boss Santo Trafficante about Havana:

Frank, you’ve got to remember, over here there’s something for every- body. You want opera, they have opera. You want baseball, they have baseball. You want ballroom dancing, they have ballroom dancing. And if you want sex shows, they have live sex shows. That’s what makes this place so great.80

The number of brothels and the sex trade in general continued to increase in the early 1950s. Commercial sex included everything from live sex shows to pornography, but it also integrated other businesses as well. Connections to hotels and gambling casinos facilitated the sale of sex as well. A North Ameri- can magazine advised its readers, “If you brush past the airport and dockside pimps on entering the picturesque old city, you merely dodge the first sinful invitation of the community. Desk clerks in a good half of the town’s hostelries

75 Christine Skwiot, The Purposes of Paradise: us Tourism and Empire in Cuba and Hawai’i (Philadelphia, 2010), p. 157. 76 Ibid., p. 169. 77 Ibid., p. 191. 78 Ibid., p. 155. 79 Peréz, On Becoming Cuban, p. 23. 80 Ragano and Raab in John Jenkins, Travelers’ Tales of Old Cuba (Melbourne, 2002) as quoted in Amalia Cabezas, Economies of Desire (Philadelphia, 2009).

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436 Cabezas are likely to ask if you would like to meet a young lady tonight. Or would to- morrow be soon enough?”81 By the late 1950s there were about 270 brothels operating in Havana, with more than 11,500 women working as prostitutes.82 But by the end of the de- cade, the abolition of brothels and prostitution became a regular part of dis- courses that justified revolutionary social change.

Revolutionary Cuba

I cannot believe that there are no madams; that there are no brothels and cabarets where women have to be on the lookout for customers to have money for a bite to eat; the police are not like before, feared by all. I seem to be living in a dream […]83

The Cuban Revolution of 1959—which evolved into a Marxist-Leninist regime—did not make false promises about eliminating the sex industry. The new revolutionary government sought to eliminate gambling and prostitution, condemning them as vices connected to us imperialism and to the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. The new regime abolished street prostitution, brothels, pornographic theatres, and casas de cita; in short, all businesses related to sexualized entertainment were banned. This was followed by a government programme that sought to “rehabilitate” sex workers through alterna- tive forms of employment and education. Women were trained and given jobs at various kinds of factories, laboratories, and offices.84 Pimping was punished by heavy fines. Many men and women, however, refused to be placed in the rehabilitation centres and some fled the country. The reforms, nevertheless, were successful in the eradication of visible commercial sex. Only a small number of prostitutes were said to be practicing in Havana by the time of the economic collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The alliance between Cuba and the former communist regimes in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union facilitated the growth and development of the island. As during earlier periods, Havana continued to be prioritized as the capital and cultural centre of Cuba. In the post-Soviet period, Havana continued to

81 Fortune, “Sin—With a Rhumba Beat!”, p. 58. 82 Peréz, On Becoming Cuban, p. 193. 83 Fernández Robaina, Recuerdos secretos, p. 85. 84 Rosa del Olmo, “The Cuban Revolution and the Struggle against Prostitution”, Crime and Social Justice, 12 (1979), pp. 34–40.

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Prostitution in Havana 437 provide more economic and social prospects than other parts of the country. As the government moved to attract western capitalism by entering into joint ventures with transnational tourism corporations, Havana was prioritized for development because of its existing touristic infrastructure and its easy access to air and marine transportation. A mass exodus of people occurred from the countryside and the eastern part of the island as people sought to make a living by becoming involved in the tourist economy as it rapidly developed in the city. The cessation of Soviet subsidies sent the economy into a rapid downward spiral, and female workers, including professionals such as doctors, econo- mists, and lawyers, became involved with tourism in the capital, the only dy- namic sector of the economy. Hotel workers and freelancers working in areas near tourist areas facilitated contact with foreign tourists. Their relationships with foreigners involved the selling of goods such as rum and cigars as well as tour guide services and sex. Initially understood to be hustling or a necessary intervention for survival, sex was not the main feature that defined Cuban- foreigner relationships. The changing interpretations of these relationships became evident in the jargon used to describe them. Instead of prostitute, a pejorative term associated with pre-Revolutionary Cuba and stigmatized identities, a new term came into existence, jinetear. Jinetear involved relationships that involved the sale of goods, service activities, companionship, and sex. By the end of the twentieth century, the term jinetear became a pejorative and racialized term that stigmatized Afro-Cubans as prostitutes and made white Cubans invisible in the sex trade. A new term emerged, luchadora, and it has been used to de-emphasize the sexual aspect of tourist-related relationships to encompass many forms of illicit activities and to de-stigmatize relationships involving tourists. What the new jargon initially emphasized was a form of agency (jinete means a “jockey”), a lack of social disapproval, and a shared understanding of the struggles that people faced. The difficulties of survival and creating other ways of getting by were understood by the women I interviewed as a means of calling upon affective and sexual exchanges without reinforcing an entrenched sex worker identity. What I term “tactical sex” captures the sporadic use of sex and affect to fulfil economic necessity. Without an established sex industry and with high levels of human capital formation, identities remain flexible and it is difficult to distinguish between market and non-market transactions. Tactical sex, therefore, makes it possible for relationships to evolve over time into more legitimate arrangements. In the late twentieth century, state responses to prostitution, which had increased and become more visible, were contradictory. From ignoring the

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438 Cabezas problem to curtailing it, the state responded by identifying women as prostitutes and ignoring males, either as clients or as sex workers. In the 1990s, the government began to regulate and penalize many activities connected to foreigners, although the sale of sex is not directly prohibited. Under Cuban law, a person deemed to have a proclivity to commit an offense in contradiction with the norms of socialist principles may be arrested under quite variable circumstances and conditions. Since prostitution is not illegal, the state uses a law in which it defines a “state of dangerousness” to incarcerate women. As in the early sixties, rehabilitation centres were established with the assistance of the Federation of Cuban Women (fmc), Cuba’s state-sponsored women’s organization. Judicial authorities placed so-called “dangerous women” in rehabilitation camps for up to four years. The length of stay at the rehabilitation centre depended on the degree of risk to society that the women supposedly posed and the likelihood they would be rehabilitated. Once a woman was incarcerated, she had to prove by her attitude and behaviour that she had been rehabilitated. Radhika Coomaraswamy, the United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women and the first un human rights official to be invited by the Cuban government to visit the island, questioned the arbitrariness of leaving a sentence open until officials determined that the person no longer poses a social threat.85 In her report Coomaraswamy noted, “Anti-social behav- ior and causing disturbances to the community are considered manifestations of such dangerousness.”86 When someone is determined to be dangerous in accordance with this provision, the penal code permits the imposition of pre- criminal measures resulting in re-education. Coomaraswamy emphasized that this leaves room for abuse and subjective treatment and is inconsistent with fair judicial procedures.87 Women found hanging out with tourists or engaging in any other form of behaviour that is deemed to be anti-social can be arrested and the government can issue a carta de advertencia, or a letter of warning. If a woman receives three such warnings she is then incarcerated in a rehabilitation centre for up to four years. The state’s crusade targets rural migrants, working class women, and mulatas, subjecting them to gynaecological exams, surveillance, arrest, incarceration, and forced labour. Reminiscent of earlier efforts such as the Casa de Recogidas and the legal regulation of women selling sex, state policies continue to target women, stigmatizing and subjecting them to rehabilitation.

85 Commission on Human Rights, Fifty-sixth Session, Item 12(a) of the Provisional Agenda E/CN.4/2000/68 Add.2, 8 February. Report, United Nations (New York, 2000), p. 13. 86 Ibid. 87 Ibid., p. 14.

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Prostitution in Havana 439

Men hustling in tourist spaces, particularly black men, are also harassed and routinely stopped for identity checks; they are often fined and incarcerated for minor violations. Generally, however, men as clients or sex workers are not taken up in rehabilitation efforts. The goal of the fmc in instituting the rehabilitation camps was to redirect women away from selling sex to foreigners by providing them with training in other more “appropriate” work such as hairstyling. As in many cases of social hysteria, once the panic subsided, so did interest in maintaining the camps. One communist party official whom I interviewed said that they were too ex- pensive to run and that they never did contain the problem. Repressive policies have continued with periodic police sweeps of the city streets. They have also instigated a move for male control of the sex trade, facilitating new brokers who arrange encounters between male tourists and Cuban women. A young doctor/choreographer whom I interviewed is a case in point. During the day he worked as a medical doctor, but in the evening he served as director and choreographer for a nightclub dance revue at a hotel cabaret. His business scheme called for dancers to pose for a photo album that he presented to prospective clients—men he met at the nightclub. He coordinated the rendezvous and often took a gratuity from the men and a cut of the dancers’ earnings. Although he claimed to have received invitations to travel to Europe to work as a choreographer, he was content to make money by providing foreigners with access to the women of his dance troupe. Another new form of commercial sex has arisen through the use of the internet and the spread of cybercafés all around the city as they have facilitated sexual interactions between Cubans and foreigners. Since 2003, these new opportunities have made it easier to develop friendships, find marriage partners overseas, and sell sex. Many women and men visit chat rooms or post pho- tographs on Internet websites looking for romance, travel, and friendships. Others use the services of intermediaries. Compared to previous periods in Cuban history, there is more indeterminacy and ambiguity in these relationships. The exchange of money for sex is veiled and does not necessarily con- firm a sex-worker identity. The internet also provides some protection from police harassment and extortion. Unlike in previous historical periods in Havana, there is no longer a vice district. Gambling, pornography, and drugs are strictly prohibited. The sale of sex, while unstructured, takes place on the streets, in parks, and through tourism companies. In contrast to other times, women in Cuba have high levels of education and high levels of participation in the workforce. Since education in Cuba is universal and free, lack of literacy skills or advanced training is not an impediment for earning a livelihood. Rather, it is due to the lack of well-paid

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440 Cabezas jobs, racial discrimination, and lack of social mobility. Sex work not only pays better, it also offers more opportunities for leisure and travel than other forms of labour.

Conclusion

The city of Havana, traditionally the largest city of the Caribbean, remains the most populous and economically developed urban space in Cuba, and as the capital of the nation, it has always held a privileged place in Cuban society. The city has been home to conquerors, pirates, immigrants, slaves, and internal migrants. Among these were the freed slave women who made their way from plantations to Havana to survive. Havana offered many advantages, the most important of which was that it was a place of economic growth and urbanity, in contrast to other parts of the island that to this day remain underdeveloped. New technologies have regularly reshaped sexual commerce, but there are more continuities in the last five hundred years of prostitution in Havana than there are disruptions in the structure of the sex trade. From mujeres de mal vivir to mujeres públicas, prostitutas, jineteras, and luchadoras, the lexicon has denoted women and aspects of sexual exchange. Sexual commerce created possibilities for independence, agency, and progress even while it entangled some women in dangerous exploitative relationships. Whether as a provisional approach to earning a livelihood or the elaboration of a worker identity as we saw with La Cebolla, the sale of sex has been an economic recourse in the history of the city. The role of the state has seldom been kind in this regard. Persecution, violence, extortion, incarceration, regulation, prohibition, rehabilitation, stigma, and shame are some of the approaches that have been used by the authorities. In different historical periods a combina- tion of these approaches have been tried with the aim of deterring the sex trade, but none have worked for very long. From its very inception, Havana has had structures in place that offer sexual services to those who reach its shores. There was a short period of time in its five-hundred-year history when prostitution was prohibited, but for the most part it has been part of the landscape of the city by the bay. Even though sex work has existed at the margins of society, its divergent historical potentiali- ties have benefitted society and culture at large. Sexual services have made it possible for many people to make a living, not just sex workers, and it has facilitated sexualized entertainment for many others as it has been a way to find care, love, and sexual pleasure for over five hundred centuries.

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