Free Adventure Divas by Holly Morris

women begin to fall out of line, and pull their sweats over their shorts. The men put on their shirts and the rehearsal is over.
    We head downstairs for mojitos in the Casa Grande’s lobby. As in so many developing countries, catering to First World tourists is a growing component of the economy in Cuba. Tourism brings hard currency as well as painful new developments. Hotel lobbies are filled with young Cuban women and men looking for foreigner dates. They are called
jiniteras
or
jiniteros;
the colloquial, all-purpose word is usually translated as “hustler,” but literally means “jockey”—that is to say, a paid mount.
    In the pre-revolutionary era, prostitution and domestic servitude were the only options for poor women. After Batista and the U.S. interests—including the Mafia—were gone, Cuba largely did away with prostitution. But with the rise in (and government encouragement of) tourism, and its attendant much-needed hard currency, the world’s oldest profession is on the rise again. This hustling isn’t
exactly
prostitution, but there is a clear quid pro quo at work. Hustling here is not about paying rent or scoring drugs, neither of which are huge factors in Cuba, but about procuring a big meal or a pair of shoes—things that require dollars, not pesos. The “tricking” may not be institutionalized in the way it is in, say, Asia and the United States, where women are peddled by pimps and/or traffickers. Here, children aren’t for sale and the women are free agents, answering to and providing kickbacks to no one. Nonetheless, these are teenagers selling their bodies in part because of a disastrous economic climate; and these are grown-up, wealthy First World men happily taking advantage of the situation. The guys in this bar are on the same make as the “sportsmen” I first saw when we were en route to Cuba. Perhaps this is a negative aspect of Cuba’s booty-owning sexiness. Foreigners come here and, with their pocketbooks and hypersexual voyeuristic lens, engage in the worst sort of objectification.
    In addition to the
jinitera
scene (and sometimes integral to it), there are a dozen Hemingway look-alike wannabes. Pooch-bellied, gray-haired, mojito-swilling men sprinkle the bar.
    We order a round, and try to film the
jinitera
activity. With each round of mojitos, Cheryl and I get bolder with our shooting; I shoot her doing a cartwheel or speaking to the camera and surreptitiously shift ten degrees right to capture a fifty-year-old German guy with his fourteen-year-old Afro-Cuban date. The girl is amused by our antics; the man, no doubt, hopes our “home video” does not show up in his hometown. “Does our insurance cover an angry john, busted?” I say to Jeannie facetiously, while changing tapes.
    Yerba Buena and Havana Club go down like pure potential, and the carefree tune of “Guantanamera” dissolves all worries in the roomful of disturbing sexual politics. The evening devolves into a mojito fest, and the wee hours find us in a dance club, trying to salsa, digging deep for the booty liberation we first saw in Instinto, giving nary a thought to our cameras stacked in the corner like dead, forgotten fish.
    Dawn brings
a pounding head, my period, and a dissipated crew. We hail Mary and head for the dock where Captain Cecelia Gomez keeps her boat. We don’t have an appointment but I am hoping we can just show up and find her. When we arrive at the harbor, the crew begins tinkering with their equipment and Jeannie and Catherine go to look for
café cubano.
    I shuffle off, heavy with post-party shame, to ask, ask, ask in hangover Spanish. A couple of grizzled boatmen are playing chess on the edge of the dock.
    “¿Conocen a la Capitana Cecelia Gomez?”
I ask. A fellow with a green cap points over his shoulder, out over the roiling Caribbean Sea, and says in Spanish, “Sorry honey, she’s out for at least a week.”
    “Gracias,”
I say, deflated, and walk over to sit on a cement seawall. I