How does the Cuban economy stay afloat?
On the backs of young women. How does one of the few remaining communist dictatorships keep it’s economy afloat? It turns to it’s young women and puts them on their backs. Like many prostitutes who ply their trade in the darkened bars and discos near tourist hotels here, Maria says she does not go out every night. But whenever money gets tight and her 12-year-old son is hungry, she puts on a red miniskirt, puts rouge on her lips and heads for the El Conejito bar, a thinly disguised rendezvous point. “Most of the tourists come to look for girls, tobacco, you know, the things they cannot get in their country,” she said. “They say the Cuban girls are very hot.” These tourists, of course, are coming from Europe, an area of the globe fully familiar with dictators and bureaucratic control of government. All too often, they are not looking for a 36-year old woman such as Maria, but teenagers – the jiniteras. Cuba is in desperate need of hard currency, and one way to acquire it is through
