The girls are very friendly.
As unsettling as it is, many of Cuba's prostitutes began selling their bodies as young as 12 years old. As profiled in The New Republic (Paternostro)in June 2000, Yanet, a 20-year-old Cubana, is what most Cubans call a jintera, Spanish for "jockeys." A jintera is a prostitute who caters to foreign tourists, mostly Italian, Spanish, French, Swiss, and Canadian. (For more slang terms, see below table.)
Since Cuba began "rehabilitating" its prostitutes, Yanet has been fined twice and has two letters of warning. The night after Castro's speech before the National Assembly, Yanet was out on the town, dressed in a red Lycra unitard open down to the waist. Yanet was apprehended outside of the club, trying to entice men into bed with her. The next day she was sent to Villa Delicia, a rehabilitation camp run by Castro's government. She stayed there 10 days, working at various jobs - cleaning bathrooms, picking up trash, and plucking dead chickens, all in an effort to reform her. After her ten days were up, her mother - a member of the communist party and a pediatrician - came to pick her up. Yanet knows her mother was called in to embarrass her. Even after all this, Yanet continues to prostitute her body.
Another story involves a 19-year-old girl, as reported by the Ottawa Sun . Reporter Garry Marr writes about the life of Szuska Dieguez, a call girl since she was 13 years old. Dieguez says she does finds a lot of her "business" outside a local bar El Bosquecito, the Little Forest Bar in English. She and her young daughter live in a small apartment. The only way she can support her daughter, Dieguez says, is by making friends with foreigners.
american.edu
It's the Thailand of the Caribbean. |
