Archive for the 'global' Category

Regarding the blurry boundary between Free Love and Transactional Sex in Cuba

Published
by
Isaac
on November 25, 2007
in cuba, global, poverty and stuff in my life
. 6 Comments

the malecon

the malecón photo by Isaac Holeman.

 

The other day I passed part of the afternoon walking alone along the malecón, the seawall pictured above. Built in 1901 by the U.S. during one of their occupations of Cuba, it covers most of Havana’s sea shore and is a hub of people watching and sea sprayed dallying for locals and tourists alike. On one particularly popular stretch I walked past a fairly attractive young woman wearing a modest tank top and long skirt. She was sitting with one hip and a hand on the broad seawall, and I happened to look over right as a gust of wind blew her skirt almost up to her waist. She saw my embarrassed smile and called me back, “hey amigo”.

She was friendly and more forthcoming than most Cuban women I’ve met, particularly after she discovered I’m from the US. Before long she asked me if I had a girlfriend (American women are always asked by Cuban men “do you have a boyfriend?” If yes, “do you have a Cuban boyfriend?” The question is slightly less common from women). No I said, and she smiled and said she was single too, so we could start dating if I liked. She knew I only had 3 weeks left in Cuba, but said we could pasar un buen tiempo (have a good time). I was more than a little stymied, fearing to respond in case I had misunderstood, though I was certain I hadn’t. It got worse when she said, as if to clarify, “quieres quedar conmigo?” The word quedar has various meanings, some of them specific to Cuba, so she might have been asking if I wanted to stop and sit on the seawall with her, if I wanted to start dating her, or if I wanted to sleep with her. After consulting Cuban friends, the last interpretation wouldn’t have been literally accurate but possible as an innuendo, and the second was the most likely, but I had no idea at the time. She then told me about a nice bed and breakfast (casa particular) by the national hotel that would rent a room for $20, did I have 20 dollars? she asked. This is significantly more money than non-famous Cubans my age have for leisure spending in a month, or even a year. As I drifted away, feeling rather odd, I tried to stammer something about not knowing her very well - it almost came out in English.

Here’s a list of my general perceptions about the conversation, including the nonverbal cues.

  • She was interested in having sex with me, pronto.
  • This would have been part of engaging in a relationship, not just a one night stand (one afternoon, in this case).
  • My nationality and her associated expectation of my relative wealthiness played a significant role in her interest.
  • If I had pursued this relationship, she would have expected me to spend money, take her places, and buy her things that were not otherwise available to her.
  • If I had agreed to the relationship but later refused to spend money on her, she would very likely have ended the relationship, but wouldn’t have argued that I had incurred a debt that needed to be paid.
  • She did not consider the proposal a transaction or a purchase.

Again, this is the way it looked from my perspective, they are not indisputable truths about the situation. I am quite confident that she was not a jinetera (prostitute), but I definitely got a bad vibe that felt more sinister than promiscuous and forward behavior alone. This experience left me with more questions than answers. Here are some of the questions.

  • If there were a spectrum of behavior with transactional sex on one end and free love on the other, where the heck would this encounter register?
  • Could I have ethically pursued a romantic relationship with her (not necesarily including sex), knowing that she was probably as interested in my economic status as in me?
  • In this specific instance, would it have felt empowering to her that she could use her attractiveness to satisfy her physical desires AND have material benefits, or would she have felt that this use of her body was an unfortunate only option? Basically, was she going against her morals?
  • Was my impulse to get away from her rooted in an unfair gender bias - an expectation that Cuban women should act more prudently than Cuban men?
  • Did my response to this situation result from an unfair bias regarding her nationality and my assumptions about her economic status?

The second to last question needs more explanation. Young Cuban men are constantly intimating to my female American friends that they would like to have a sex with them. This can be frustrating but it’s “normal” here. My female friends are really put off by this dynamic (I would be too), but it doesn’t cause them to reject every person outright; if they did they wouldn’t have any friends. They just deal with it and remember that they need to be careful about initiating relationships on their own terms.

If this woman had been a man and I a woman, her actions would have been relatively very forward, but not to the extent that they would merit immediately viewing her as much less appealing than any other random stranger. While she definitely did say some things that made it clear she was in the market for a sugar daddy, it’s hard for me to dissect how her nonconformity with the typical gender role might have cauesed me to (in the spur of the moment) focus on the financially motivated comments (creepy) more than any genuine interest in casual sex (not my thing, but not as repulsive as sex for money). It’s probably pertinent that she must have been more aware of Cuba’s gender biases than I, and her words were probably intended to honestly convey all of the things she was interested in. Nonetheless, I don’t like the idea of applying this gender bias when I make decisions. This is one of the dilemmas of being in an environment where I feel like the only norms I can use to interpret the social significance of various interactions are those of a culture that I can’t participate in fully enough to challenge.

As for the last question. There are a lot of gold diggers in the states too. I’m definitely not a fan of them, but I tend to think of it as shallow rather than borderline transactional sex. I don’t think this girl was looking to me to help her meet basic material necessities. At the same time, if she is like most Cubans she probably has almost zero material pleasures beyond those necessities, and very little chance of improving her situation through her own labor (there just aren’t economic opportunities in Cuba). While intertwining sex and material gain may not exactly be driven by desperation in this case, it likewise doesn’t seem quite the same as a person in the US who has access to economic opportunities and is choosing not to pursue them because it’s easier to seduce a rich person.

Overall, it was a pretty strange experience, one that I wouldn’t have been capable of understanding (linguistically or culturally) a few months ago. It’s nice to feel that my Spanish and understanding of Cuban society have improved that much, but at the same time I feel like gaining some insight has left me with more unanswered questions than I had before. Please post a comment if you have ideas about any of my questions.

Important note: Although I have read that sex tourism is often less formal in Cuba than in other places, I have not thoroughly researched the topic. This post is meant to describe some individual responses to economic and social differences. Please do not think I am claiming that everyone who comes from or visits Cuba responds the same way.

Cuba and the US: A Historical Relationship

Published
by
Isaac
on October 19, 2007
in cuba, global, politics and stuff in my life
. 0 Comments

Sugar cane has played a prominent historical role in US - Cuba relations

Sugar cane has played a prominent historical role in US - Cuba relations photo by Isaac Holeman.

 

If you’ve read my recent posts on Cuba, some of you might think I’ve been “going easy” on Cuba, that I always give this politically, ideologically charged nation the benefit of the doubt. I do not. I am, however, very intent that social critique be productive. It’s worse than useless to harangue Cuba (or anything) without a specific attention to the underlying structures and trajectories that have shaped its characteristics and will determine whether, when, and how these characteristics change.

Many Cubans are quite close minded politically. Censorship happens. No one is being disappeared like in Guatemala, but the press sucks and ideological advertisements are ubiquitous. I want to write a few posts about this, but it is so important to first examine Cuba’s troubled relationship with the U.S.

The Castro led revolution that began in the 1950’s is the third of Cuba’s revolutions that the US has worked to undermine in order to protects its own economic-ideological interests. The first two times we were successful in exercising ownership over the “unruly” Cuban people. This time has been more complicated.

“U.S. [economic] sanctions challenged Cuba precisely on the grounds that the leadership was best prepared to defend: the ideal of nation, free and soverign - a formulation with antecedents early in the nineteenth century and the defense of which the Cuban leadership claimed the historical mandate to uphold. U.S. policy challenged the Cuban revolution at its most credible point and the most defensible position. Sanctions were perceived as one more maneuver to exact Cuban acquiescence to U.S. hegemony, another attempt to remove a government in Cuba dedicated to the defense of patria (homeland & heritage), one more way to punish the people of Cuba for having dared to aspire to national sovereignty…

Sanctions also contributed to reduce space for dialogue and debate inside Cuba. If indeed the survival of the nation was at stake, what mattered most was unanimity of purpose and an unyielding course of action, neither of which admitted easily internal discord and disagreement…

U.S. pressure could not but have acted to impede the process of political change inside Cuba. The Cuban willingness to pursue reforms - and the signals were mixed - could not have easily occurred in an environment in which the central preoccupation of national leadership was framed in terms of national security (remind anyone of executive abuses of civil liberties in the name of the war on terror?). On the other hand, it is possible to contemplate that these developments too were a desired outcome, for the U.S. did not seek a government reformed but a government removed.”

Perhaps the human rights advocate Miriam Leiva put it best “The irony of the situation is this: extremism in Miami (epicenter of the anti- Cuban Socialism lobby) and extremism in the White House ultimately serve to fuel extremism in Havana.” All quotes from Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution, 3rd edition, pages 316, 317, and 329.

Bear Necessities: Little girls have fun and make do

Published
by
Isaac
on October 11, 2007
in cuba, global, health care, poverty and stuff in my life
. 0 Comments

Two Girls and their Water Balloons? by Isaac Holeman.

 

I recently read a short passage about Cuban culture that included the statement “la necesidad ha sido nuestra maestra, el orgullo nacional nuestro consejero / necessity has been our teacher, national pride our advisor.” Though perhaps surprising in a country so marked by political rhetoric and ideology, pragmatism abounds here. Pragmatism and poverty go hand in hand. I once heard someone say that the inhumanity of poverty isn’t about not being able to choose to do this or purchase that, it’s in the impossible choices that you are forced to make. Deciding which of 3 children will get the 2 bed nets that can prevent malaria, or whether to give the small serving of food to the man who works or the daughter who deserves it too. I’m reminded of that often in Cuba.

In Cuba, the impossible decisions tend to be made on a societal level (via the state), like it or not. Some areas have been fortified by the government to support tourists - they are absolutely lavish but they bring a huge amount of wealth to the country. Areas that are not for tourists are poor. The government is unwilling release it’s hold on the economy and bring in more international wealth in the form of investment because they fear that if they loose the economy they will loose their political independence as well (a very reasonable suspicion given the state of business as usual in the rest of Latin America).

If the state isn’t helping provide it, most Cubans can’t afford it, but the government does invest in its people where it can. At least the investments are mainly structured according to a persuasion that the people themselves - all of them - are the greatest asset of the society (unlike the US, arguably). For example, food is important for individuals (more than subsidized coal energy, or flying to Mars), and so every person gets a ration of 3 weeks worth of food each month to supplement what they earn at work (which is probably almost nothing). There are also huge strategic investments in areas like education (everyone goes, it’s free through university but with mandatory work-study), and health care, which relies on low costs achieved by excellent preventative care. A good example of smart preventative care is promoting condom use as a second line of defense after abstinence. Rather than ignoring the research and letting condom provision and education be a victim of the political pendulum, the sole regime in Cuba is a strong supporter of condom use.

This brings me to the two cute girls in the picture. I watched them play with water balloons from the corner of my eye while I read my book in a park in Old Habana. They were filling them up, giggling, throwing them up and catching them, tossing them to one another, and sometimes double-bagging them so that they wouldn’t break. They were having so much fun; I was too. It was a lot like in the US, except that these were relatively normal looking Cuban girls, so they probably didn’t have money to spend on an unnecessary commodity like water balloons. Their water balloons were condoms. They probably got them from an older sibling, who can get them for free at school. Laughter is occasionally the very best medicine. Also, innocence is sometimes the best pragmatism.

Ice Creams, Che Creams: Understanding Money and a dual economy

Published
by
Isaac
on October 3, 2007
in cuba, global and stuff in my life
. 0 Comments

Yay for Ice Cream (or a reenactment of fighting pirates in Santiago) by Isaac Holeman.

 

We use big numbers all the time. In the US we’re all about big, but in reality human brains are pretty crappy at comprehending really big numbers. It’s easy to go without noticing this because brains are very clever, and they figure out ways to get by - often by making concrete or social approximations. For example, it’s really hard to understand what that sleazy financial manager is talking about when he says your initial investment of just $980.00 will double 10 times in the next forty years, but it’s easy when he finishes the idea - this means over one million dollars by the time you retire. We can understand one million dollars really well because we know what millionaires are like - their class, style of living, and many other social assumptions. Likewise, saying that Bill Gates makes a jillion dollars a month or that the Occupation of Iraq costs us hundreds of billions a year is isn’t nearly as interesting as hearing that Bill Gates shouldn’t pause to pick up $100 bills because he earns money faster when he is working, or that Occupying Iraq has thus far cost us (or our children) about 1,800% of Bill Gate’s total net worth (1,104 billion for Iraq includes 650 in future spending on existing health problems of soldiers, see wikipedia article Financial Cost of 2003 Iraq War).

Most people conceptualize money in terms of an item that they use money to purchase (or think about purchasing) in their daily lives. I’ve long been fascinated by which objects specific individuals choose to use to understand numbers. Mine used to be hamburgers, but since starting college I get hamburgers in the cafeteria and I’ve stopped buying them regularly. I now count in either bottles of beer (not in our cafeteria) or cups of coffee (don’t trust the cafeteria coffee). When I was thinking about buying the computer I am using to type this message, I figured out that this computer would cost me about one cup of coffee each day in between then and my graduation (three years more or less). My Dad drinks about this much coffee, one cup a day plus an occasional second or third. I decided I was willing to forgo that much coffee while in college, so I bought the computer.

Here in Cuba, there are two currencies. One is pegged to the Euro and is worth about one dollar. The second is worth 1/24th that much, it’s only used by residents of Cuba. This is a very small number (~ 4 cents), reconciling two currencies is confusing, and many other price dynamics make the Cuban economy difficult to understand. One astute friend, Alex, quickly discovered that you can get a soft serve ice cream cone on the street for one peso (~ 4 cents). At that price we knew these treats would be a major facet of our lives here and we almost immediately began referring to this currency as “ice creams.” Imagine how thrilled we were when we found a stand where you could buy an ice cream for about 4/5 of an ice cream! There is a coin with Che Guevarra on it that is worth three ice creams. When we discovered a cool street stand that sells hard ice cream for three ice creams (or one Che coin), we quickly began to refer to the hard ice cream, as well as the three ice cream coin, as Che creams.