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By Andrew Cawthorne
HAVANA, Jan 19
(Reuters) - Leaning back provocatively against a poster of Pope John Paul, Julia
openly plies her trade on a lazy, sun-bathed afternoon in Havana's old quarter.
She and five others, all squeezed into tight jeans and skimpy tops, have few
qualms about selling sex in the shadow of Havana cathedral -- just a week before
the Pope will worship there with members of the Cuban Roman Catholic Church.
"Why can't a girl go with a man, or 20 men in one night if she wants
to?'' said Julia, who describes herself as "a little bit'' Catholic and
plans to attend a papal mass in Havana's Revolution Square. "No-one is
going to tell me what I can or can't do with my body, not the Pope nor the
government.''
Two days before the Pontiff arrives in this Caribbean island, Julia and
hundreds of other prostitutes are defying efforts by Cuban President Fidel
Castro's communist administration to clear them off the streets.
Police, say the prostitutes and residents, have stepped up round-ups in
recent weeks and also heightened their presence on Havana's streets, noticeably
thinning out the numbers of hookers at work. But the tactics have so far failed
to clear the streets, and plenty of women were still working the traditional
areas over the weekend.
"There are so many of us that we just keep coming back. They can't get
rid of us all,'' said Leticia, 17, who has been working the streets for a year
but hopes one day to earn her living as a singer.
Typically, the prostitutes say, a police bus will roll up around midnight at
a known pick-up point, sending the women running for cover into nearby alleys
and houses. Those caught are taken to police stations to be lectured, fined,
held in custody or, in the case of prostitutes from the provinces, put on a bus
back home.
Julia was jailed a couple of months ago, but did not appear too worried
about the risk of being rounded up again in the pre-papal clean-up.
"When they put me away last time, they didn't give me anything to eat
for two days, but at least they let me go quickly,'' she said. "This time,
if they take me away again, I suppose I won't be let out until the Pope is
safely back in Italy. But I can survive that.''
With more than 3,000 foreign journalists in Cuba transmittingaround the
world, authorities are keen to project the right image.
The government is irritated by the problem, and by the attention it gets
from foreign media. It points out that prostitution is far from unique to Cuba.
"We just can't allow prostitutes to be all over the place when the Pope
is here,'' said one policeman on Havana's lively La Rampa strip, who asked not
to be named. "But there'll always be some, of course. It's not a problem
you can just make disappear.''
Known as the "bordello of the Caribbean'' prior to Castro's 959
revolution, the island was a playboy's paradise whose beaches, women, casinos
and swinging night-life attracted a stream of foreign visitors and celebrities.
According to some estimates, there were 100,000 prostitutes among a population
of six million.
But all that ended abruptly with the toppling of dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Prostitution was prohibited and largely wiped out in the years after the
revolution.
The problem reemerged in the 1990s as Cuba opened up once more to foreign
tourists and its superpower ally, the Soviet Union collapsed, leaving the
islanders increasingly desperate for ways to make money.
Authorities officially acknowledged the problem around 1995, formally
outlawed it in 1997 legislation, and are determined not to allow Cuba to become
another sex tourism destination. But so far they have not been able to get the
problem under control.
While there are probably far fewer prostitutes now than in the Batista era,
it is still difficult for a male foreign visitor to wander around Havana's main
tourist areas without being insistently propositioned.
The word "prostitute'' is seldom used in Cuba and they are known
euphemistically here as "jineteras'' -- literally horsewomen.
While a minority of hard-core "jineteras'' ask an average of around
$40, the majority will have sex in exchange for much smaller amounts or simply
for a free meal, drink or a gift in the dollar-only establishments to which they
otherwise would have no access.
"What should I do? Earn a few pesos like my parents, or do this, get
some dollars, and have a better life?'' asked another young prostitute, Renata,
on Havana's famous Malecon sea-front, a favorite rendezvous point.
With the average Cuban worker earning the peso equivalent of perhaps $20 per
month, such an attitude is perhaps not surprising.
"Whatever the Pope might say, I don't believe God will punish me for
this. Rather, he should punish them for forcing me to do it with the (economic)
blockade,'' added Renata, gesturing to the United States some 90 miles (145 km)
across the water. REUTERS
15:08 01-19-98 |