In late 1990, the Cuban government’s call for a ‘Special Period’ was a way of introducing
a series of austerity measures and other initiatives to overcome the country’s deepening
economic crisis. In an assessment of this emergency period following the dismantling
of the Soviet Union and its trade with Cuba, Susan Eckstein (2003) showed that
Fidel Castro looked not only to socialist strategies but also to capitalist and indeed
pre-capitalist ones in order to rescue the economy. For example, to maintain the
food programme, socialist principles of collectivist development remained in place, but
agromercados (free markets) were also permitted, and urban subsistence gardens were
encouraged as a sort of pre-capitalist alternative for surviving the economic crisis. As
necessity became a virtue, it was desirable to save energy and to forage for needed
resources. Cuban lives were dramatically affected during gasoline and cooking oil
shortages, and while the state pursued a policy of self-sufficient food production. The
socialist programme of agricultural diversification and reduced energy consumption
was coupled with a ‘pre-capitalist’ reliance on bicycles and horse-drawn carriages
for transport as well as production of homemade soaps, herbal medicines and other
goods. And, at the same time, new capitalist relations of globalisation were introduced
to ‘save the revolution’, as Castro courted foreign investment and encouraged the
development of internationally competitive manufacturing and marketing (Ch ávez,
2005: 1).
Just as Eckstein noted the multiple strategies for confronting the Cuban economic
crisis, I have found such diverse approaches in the area of tourism development.
Visitors remark on the contradictions of tourism on the island, on the one hand
offering the pleasures of high-end beach resorts and nightlife, luxury hotels in the
capital city and rich architectural history, and on the other hand promising to show
travellers a model of long-lasting revolutionary politics and culture. Nostalgia for
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both the idealised revolutionary past (before the Special Period) and the hedonistic
capitalist pre-revolutionary past in Cuba are evident on the tourist circuit. The peculiar
amalgamation of tourist attractions is precisely what accounts for Cuba’s global appeal
and its economic advantage. Travellers who pay homage to Che Guevara at the
Museum of the Revolution, later flock to the famed ‘Hemingway bars’ in Old Havana,
the Floridita and the Bodeguita del Medio, followed by an evening out at the Tropicana
nightclub to watch racy and extravagant shows that were downplayed during the early
years of the revolution (see Berger, 2006, on related tourism in Mexico).
As tourism has been re-established as a mainstay of the economy and a key component
of the strategy to make gains in the global market, it has also become a window on the
ironies and contradictions in Cuba today. Thus, we are struck by the inconsistencies
with socialist goals, such as the evident sex tourism and the socio-economic inequalities
in the form of tourism ‘apartheid’ whereby most Cubans do not have access to tourist
venues and revenues unless they work in the industry (Padilla and McElroy, 2007: 654).
With the transition of leadership from Fidel Castro to his brother Ra úl there has been
an official easing of restrictions on places Cubans can patronise, but the majority of
Cubans still do not have the resources to visit tourist hotels and restaurants. Although
the government has sought to showcase its enduring nationalist ideology to visitors,
sharp distinctions remain within the Cuban population.
Analysts generally agree that Cuba has accomplished much in education, health care,
social welfare, sports and the arts, yet they point to the differential consequences of
the Special Period for Cubans depending on their gender, race and socio-economic level
(Safa, 1995: 166; Holgado Fern ández, 2000). The Cuban government has suggested that
tourism development per se has not entailed a compromise of revolutionary principles,
and that any problems that have arisen are as a result of ‘antisocial’ elements in the
society. Hustlers and sex workers ( jineteros) are said to be seeking personal gains at the
expense of the revolution, rather than responding to a difficult economic climate (Berg,
2004). Like some other analysts, I note the various aspects of tourism that seem to both
undermine and support this socialist state (Sanchez and Adams, 2008). However, in my
view the resulting tensions are part of the powerful attraction of tourism to what one
visitor described to me as ‘the last Marxist resort’.
Tourism’s Return in a Transnational Era
Tourism in Cuba has a long history, from the late nineteenth century and extending
through its mid-twentieth century heyday, when the United States supplied the majority
of visitors to the country (Schwartz, 1997; Pérez, 1999). However, with the revolution in
1959 and the US embargo on trade and travel to Cuba in 1961, the Cuban government
halted tourism development as a vestige of the bourgeois past, when Havana was the
playground of US mobsters, media celebrities, and middle-class Americans. Hotels were
nationalised, clubs were closed and prostitutes were ‘re-educated’ to become morally
correct citizens of the new society. Ordinary Cubans were offered the chance to enjoy
the pleasures of the island that were formerly the exclusive province of the elite and
foreign visitors (Cabezas, 2009).
Following the revolution, travellers to the country were often activists coming in
brigades to cut sugar cane in solidarity with society in transformation. It took the
Special Period to bring mainstream tourism back, and its level has now surpassed
the earlier heyday. When I made my first trip to Cuba in 1993, the country was
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experiencing severe effects of the economic crisis, while tourists were treated to the best
of what the island had to offer, including luxury accommodation and lavish culinary
displays.
As the economy began its recovery and cultivated foreign investment, new hotels
were built and old ones were renovated. Old Havana received a makeover, so that the
historic colonial district – designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982 – would
attract more international visitors (Scarpaci, 2005). With the US embargo on trade
and travel to Cuba, the majority of tourists have come from Canada, Europe and
Latin America. The economy’s diversification is paralleled by tourism, which targets a
number of specialised niches: eco-tourism, sun and sand tourism, academic and edu-
cational tourism, heritage tourism, architectural and cultural tourism, health tourism,
and so on. Many international travellers are attracted to see one of the ‘last bastions
of Communism’ – if only because its ideological stance has protected the island against
over-development – even as they enjoy beaches, nightclubs and the music scene.
Prospective tourists embrace a yearning for the ‘other’, a nostalgia for a place they
have heard about but have yet to discover. An appreciation of things Cuban stems in
part from what Ruth Behar has called the ‘Buena Vista Socialisation’ of Cuba (Behar,
2002), referring to the global impact of Wim Wenders’s (1999) documentary tribute to
the lives and music of a group of son musicians in Havana, Buena Vista Social Club.
My research revealed that while some older travellers are more apt to be attracted by a
desire to see the ‘authentic’ Cuba or to express solidarity with the revolution, younger
generations are often drawn by the perceived romance and adventure of Cuba.
Tourism’s Ambivalent Mix
In the Hotel Habana Libre, built a year before the revolutionary victory as the Havana
Hilton, desks in the lobby are staffed to sell tour packages. Employees of the state-
run tourism companies Havanatur, Cubatur and Gaviota offer tours to the same
destinations, with nearly identical itineraries and rates. A day at Varadero Beach will
cost approximately USD50 for transportation and use of facilities at an all-inclusive
resort, and a three-hour bus tour of Havana will cost a more modest USD15. I found no
single tour of revolutionary monuments and history, but these locales are incorporated
in the popular city tour – and one state tourism office, Amistur, organises international
solidarity group travel to various sites of historical importance to the Cuban revolution.
In conversations with tour operators and those connected to the industry, few men-
tioned the appeal of the Cuban revolution when I asked what sort of tourism they are
promoting. Yet a frequently visited site in Havana is the Museum of the Revolution,
and outside it the glass-encased Granma, the vessel made famous when Fidel Castro
and Che Guevara, along with other rebels, sailed from Mexico to Cuba in 1956. Other
monuments to the revolution, including the vast Revolution Square with a museum
honouring Jose Martí and Che’s portrait in neon silhouette, are also leading attractions.
Tour buses line up so that visitors may pay homage, stopping at least briefly to take
pictures.
Mirroring Cuba’s hybrid dependence on pre-capitalist, capitalist and socialist eco-
nomic forms, tourism at once highlights the vibrant natural environment, recognises
colonial history and architecture, memorialises pre-revolutionary extravagance, and
honours the revolution; tourists also become aware of enduring cultural forms such
as Afro-Cuban Santería and contemporary forms such as Cuban hip hop, cinema and
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conceptual art. These cultural attractions are often closely intertwined, though they may
appear to be in conflict with one another. Any Cuban travel guide will direct visitors to
historic Old Havana, with its museum-like quality since restoration began in a serious
way a decade ago, and many will direct travellers to the monuments to the revolution
that are found in abundance in the capital city and elsewhere.
A starting point for many is the Museum of the Revolution, whose extensive,
triumphalist displays trace the early history of Cuba and the War of Independence
through the Batista dictatorship, the post-1959 revolution, the building of socialism
and, finally, the Special Period; in the museum shop, one finds T-shirts featuring Che’s
ubiquitous portrait and other revolutionary themes, as well as images of Havana Club
rum and classic American cars. Some travellers make their way to the Comandancia Che
Guevara, a small museum located at the historic Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Caba ˜na,
the Literacy Museum, which features the gains made by literacy brigades during the
revolutionary era, or the José Martí monument and museum in Revolution Square.
Those venturing into the provinces may see the José Martí monument in Cienfuegos
or Che’s mausoleum in Santa Clara, where they may also visit the site at which rebels
derailed Batista’s train in 1958.
Even while seeking out such colonial and revolutionary heritage sites, one con-
tinually comes across another current strain of Cuban tourism, that of the alluring
pre-revolutionary period featuring old American cars, Hemingway haunts, music asso-
ciated with the Buena Vista Social Club, Afro-Cuban culture, and the sexually edgy
nightclubs and street scene. The American cars are everywhere, many serving as
ramshackle taxis for Cubans paying in pesos, while tourists pay more to ride in the
newer cars built in the Soviet Bloc. For still higher fares, tourists can ride in one of the
rare old American cars that has been kept in mint condition; a state-owned company,
Gran Car, offers vintage rentals accompanied by drivers. The most popular souvenir
selected by tourists may be the ubiquitous painting of a looming American car parked
outside the Bodeguita del Medio, one of the famed Hemingway bars. As the author of a
‘car-centered history of life on the island’ comments, ‘A photo of a 1957 Chevrolet Bel
Air in front of an arched colonnade means Havana and Cuba all over the world, much as
does Che’s image on scores of products from T-shirts to postcards’ (Schweid, 2004: 6).
The Bodeguita is one of a number of places now celebrated in Havana for having
housed or been frequented by the renowned American writer, who lived in Cuba for
almost twenty years. Tourists fill the Bodeguita where he enjoyed mojitos, as well as
another bar, the Floridita, where he drank daiquiris. The latter boasts a life-size figure
of Hemingway seated at the bar, a photo opportunity for patrons, and his commodified
image is available in a number of items for sale. The room where he lived and wrote in
the Hotel Ambos Mundos has been kept as he left it, with typewriter and manuscript
pages, and can be visited for a modest fee. His country home, Finca Vigía, is now a
museum site and those who are curious can peer through its windows accompanied by
a tour guide for the price of a ticket. Tourists make pilgrimages to the fishing village
Cojímar, the setting for The Old Man and the Sea, and to the local restaurant he
favoured, which now attracts tour buses. Cubans themselves share fond memories of
the writer they admired, and as Schwartz (1997: 208) writes, ‘Hemingway’s and Cuba’s
years-long mutual affection anchors part of Castro’s tourist effort’.
To these iconic (and American) pre-revolutionary tourist attractions, we must add
the return of the sexualised culture of the 1950s, a time that is remembered for its
great licentiousness and excess. The Tropicana nightclub has been in operation since
1939 and offers patrons an extravagant evening of show-girls (generally dark-skinned
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and fine-featured mulatas) in lavish costumes on an outdoor stage. For others there
are less expensive venues or, if desired, direct purchase of sexual services. Much has
been written about sex and romance tourism, and the continuum from prostitution to
intimate relationships that go beyond the one-night stand to the duration of a vacation
or longer (Davidson, 1996; Fusco, 1998; Fernandez, 1999; Elizalde, 2002; Cabezas,
2009). For the Cubans involved, the hope is to receive gifts and cash remittances into
the future, or even marriage and a ticket to leave Cuba.
While the Cuban government has made weak attempts to curtail jineterismo, or
hustling, it is thriving on the streets of Havana, particularly in areas of Old Havana,
Vedado and Miramar, an upscale neighbourhood with large hotels and convention
centres. Berg (2004: 49) captures the government’s dilemma when she writes that
‘jineterismo is seen as a visible symptom of a moral crisis of the nation’. Yet the
government appeared complicit in the commodification of Cuban women’s bodies
when Playboy gained entry to photograph women of the forbidden paradise who were
making tourism ‘the best hope for the island’s economic future’ (Cohen, 1991: 73).
The pictorial article may have encouraged more men to come in search of the beautiful
‘flowers of the revolution’ who were reportedly eager to meet foreign men (Codrescu,
1998). Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez has written and sung songs of the
Special Period, reflecting on the disillusionment that has come with the introduction of
capitalist-oriented foreign investment and tourism. His song ‘Flowers’ is a lament for the
‘disposable flowers’ that wither when they pass through forbidden doors. And his song
‘The Fifties Club’ recalls the sad yearning for the time when anything could be bought
for a price and ‘even desire becomes an object of consumption’ (Rodríguez, 2003:
599–603).
Un Mal Necesario
The ambivalent aspects of Cuban tourism described here, revolutionary heritage tourism
on the one side and tourism that is nostalgic for pre-revolutionary extravagance on
the other, mirror the two faces of Havana as Antillean metropolis (Scarpaci et al.,
2002; Sanchez and Adams, 2008). These two faces of tourism are not always separable,
however, as many tourists pass unselfconsciously from the world of revolutionary
monuments honouring Che or Martí to the world of the Tropicana nightclub in the
course of a day discovering Havana. The improbable yearning for both socialist and
capitalist (pre-revolutionary) Cuba has been evident for some time. Historically, the
same revolutionaries who toppled the US-supported Batista regime also adored their
American cars; Schweid (2004: 5) remembers his disconcerted reaction upon seeing the
National Capitol in Havana, built in 1929 as a replica of the US Capitol, with long
lines of pre-1959 American cars parked outside.
Visitors to Cuba’s Varadero Beach may find it surprising that this tropical paradise
outside Havana flaunts billboards praising the revolution (Gropas, 2007). Bold signage
proclaiming ‘Varadero: Revoluci ón es para construir’ or Che’s image with the well-
known slogan ‘Hasta la victoria siempre’ may appear quaint to those Canadian and
European tourists who come directly to all-inclusive resorts and see little more of Cuba.
At a baseball game in Havana, I noted the neon sign above the stands exhorting all
Cubans to become involved in sport; ‘El deporte es para todos’, it proclaimed. Thus,
Cuba’s love affair with American cars, beaches and baseball presents opportunities for
prominent displays of socialist propaganda, taken for granted by Cubans but, for at
least some visitors, adding to the cachet of tourism in a ‘Communist land’. Some visitors
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worry, however, about the impact of tourism; as one British visitor noted to me, ‘I
understand the ethic, but can’t help but feel that tourism will upset the balance of a
Communist state’.
Many Cubans would agree with Fidel Castro’s pronouncement that allowances
to a globalising capitalist market economy – tourism, private enterprise and creeping
inequalities – are un mal necesario (necessary evil). Since the Special Period, Cubans
have been ingenious as they ‘invent’ ways of getting by, getting access to tourist dollars
through the legal practice of renting rooms and setting up small restaurants ( paladares)
or trading on the black market. Indeed, two expressions that one hears frequently are
‘inventar’ (the act of inventing, or coping) and ‘no es f ácil’ (it’s not easy) (Barbassa,
2005). Ironically, as I argue here, it may be just this mix of revolutionary and capitalist
culture – accompanied of course by lovely beaches, splendid cities and rich history – that
lures increasing numbers of tourists to its shores. To illustrate the seduction of Cuban
tourism as it responds to both sorts of yearnings, I turn now to an afternoon tour I took
with a group of tourists in Havana.