Prostitution in Cuba: Denied at Home, Enabled from Abroad

Prostitution in Cuba: Denied at Home, Enabled from Abroad
March 30, 2013
Graham Sowa

HAVANA TIMES — In Cuba the denial of prostitution is a lie of omission:
the government doesn't really talk about it. At the same time American
politicians promote a travel ban that seriously damages United States
efforts to identify and prosecute child sex tourism.

Few people in Cuba want to talk about prostitution. I've been here for
three years and I have yet to see any type of campaign against
prostitution or sex tourism. Denial that prostitution is rampant in the
tourist sector is an outright lie. Anyone who disagrees is invited to
walk down Obispo Street with me (this is a serious offer). You will
think the only services offered to tourists in Havana Vieja are taxis
and blowjobs.

Police are often witness to the solicitation. I've never seen them
intervene. I'm left to wonder if they are paid in-kind or in cash for
their see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil approach to their job.

I know right now those readers who defend Cuba out of reactionary habit
are preparing their anecdotal story about how sex crimes with minors are
prosecuted in Cuba. And those stories are probably true. But they don't
originate from the official news here.

Not the crime, not the societal problem, not the obvious police
corruption and not even the successful prosecution (of what I am left to
imagine are a very small percentage of cases) are addressed at any level
higher than street gossip among neighbors.

Child sex tourism (or child rape tourism as it should be known as) not
only exists, but is literally killing Cuban children. I refer here to a
good piece of journalism from the Miami Herald about a 12 year old girl
who was statutorily raped to death by European and Cuban tourists.

The Cuban authorities acted appropriately and tried and jailed the
rapists. Of course we read nothing in the local newspapers about the
crime or punishment.

In a problem this grave both Cuba and the United States share blame. And
while I would like to see both countries take a much more hard-line
approach to child rape tourism that involves civil society; as a United
States citizen I'm going to appeal to my homeland.

In the United States the story ran one day in the Miami-Herald and I
could not find any syndication in other newspapers, not even the
European ones. So I can't say my society is very interested in making
this problem known either.

The same day the Toronto Star ran an article about child rape tourism in
Cuba originating from Canada after a lengthy Canadian Government
investigation of the sick enterprise.

But the Cuban problem in Cuba is only one half of the picture. As far
as the United States is concerned the extreme right Miami-Cuban
community continues to support a travel ban that has made it all but
impossible to track and prosecute child rapists for their pedophilic
visits to Cuba.

The octagenarian anti-Fidelistas will sometimes harp on prostitution as
a reason why the Revolution has failed. (Even though I have no idea how
they would ban it if they somehow took power again. I can only imagine
it would get worse with floods of Cuban-Americans returning to the island.)

But the Cuban-Americans never take the discussion about sex tourism
further than superficial criticism because that would mean either
stiffening the travel ban to unconstitutional proportions or ending it
outright. They don't have the courage or political capital to do the
former and completely lack the intelligent foresight to do the latter.

An apt example is the Junior United States Senator from Florida (who
knows just as much about Cuba as anyone else who has never been there)
Marco Rubio. Senator Rubio recently spoon fed some tired rhetoric to a
lobby group about how American travelers to Cuba treat the country as a
"zoo".

Obviously aside from knowing nothing about Cuba outside of Miami hearsay
and gossip, Senator Rubio also knows nothing about American tourists. So
let me tell Senator Rubio what most of us Americans know about
ourselves: we, as Americans, pretty much treat everywhere we travel to
like a zoo. (I encourage any doubters to watch the movie National
Lampoon's European Vacation.)

We even treat local tourism, within the United States, like a zoo. Look
at Senator Rubio's beloved Miami; whose tourist fueled party culture,
fleeting decadence, silicon beauties, and millions of people stuck in a
sad cultural limbo are as worthy as comparison to an animal prison as
any Communist Caribbean island.

Few people in Cuba want to talk about prostitution. I've been here for
three years and I have yet to see any type of campaign against
prostitution or sex tourism. Denial that prostitution is rampant in the
tourist sector is an outright lie. Anyone who disagrees is invited to
walk down Obispo Street with me (this is a serious offer).

Instead of making predictable observations about American travel
attitudes I think Senator Rubio would have been better off having a
discussion on how the United States could do something to prevent child
rape tourism to Cuba. Because as it stands we are probably facilitating
more than we are prosecuting.

Illegal travel to Cuba under the current United States travel ban
usually involves passing through Mexico first, followed by the final leg
to Cuba. Upon arrival in Cuba the Cuban Passport Control does not stamp
United States passports. Instead they stamp a piece of paper inside of
the passport.

Without a passport stamp the traveler is left with plausible deniability
that they never traveled to Cuba. And with Cuban-American relations kept
dismal by petty disputes perpetuated by feuding octogenarian neighbors
there is no reason to expect Cuban cooperation in a United States
investigation into crimes committed by a U.S. Citizen in Cuba.

So the situation, made possible by both Cuban and United States
policies, is that a pedophile can travel to Cuba from the United States
knowing that their home country will not be able to prosecute the crime.

In a problem this grave both Cuba and the United States share blame. And
while I would like to see both countries take a much more hard-line
approach to child rape tourism that involves civil society; as a United
States citizen I'm going to appeal to my homeland.

As a country we need to decide if we are going to continue letting our
differences with the Cuban government set the limits to the actions we
will take to do what is right. If we know that people can use the travel
ban to fly under the radar and rape children with little to no fear of
getting caught shouldn't we talk about ways to prevent that, regardless
of what the Cubans are doing?

I think that legalizing all travel to Cuba, with the understanding that
Cubans would stamp all United States passports and cooperate with United
States law surrounding sex tourism, would help make child rape tourism
to Cuba feasibly prosecutable as a federal crime under the PROTECT Act
of April 2003. I hope other people will offer their thoughts, opinions
or original ideas.

http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=90370