|
MARIO J. TORRES
Other reasons to sell your body
From the years after the creation
of the young Cuban republic at the beginning of the 20th century to the
unfortunate change in 1959 when the Caribbean country stopped living in its
normal time in order to escape as in a failing time machine to float in the
vacuum of the nothingness, the presence of the oldest job in the world
became typical in the society of the island as well as it did in many other
countries, reflected in practice in houses of prostitutes where lonely and
single men, having the need of satisfying their sexual or affective desires
or simply in quest of adventure or of a new style of caress paid to go to
bed with a woman, who, in turn, lived on selling her body as a way to
support herself or her family as if it were any other ordinary job although
way less respected but very commonly found in the capitalist society of the
time.
Those women were said to lead a "happy life" and they had a peculiar and
special profile for that sort of activity, by no means similar to other
women's way of behaving, of course. This kind of work was in an overwhelming
number of cases, totally voluntary, which means that, to a great extent and
only with some dramatic exceptions, women loved it, felt pleasure in doing
it, had absolutely no intentions in running away from that routine and
perhaps did not have skills to do anything else so this "profession" was not
directly proportional to any government policy and the prevailing system of
the time did not provoke it as a direct consequence.
As soon as Castro took the power, he banned this kind of practice claiming
that it was degrading for the Cuban woman and the leader included this
measure as one more commercial in his record of achievements for the dignity
of the Cuban nationality and also as a very popular and accepted law in the
beginning of his long reign, always under the guidance, support and
sponsorship of the Eastern European communist countries.
With the passing of the years and when his godparents, friends and neighbors
let him down or disappeared, the word dignity as well as many others were
thrown into the trash can of history, with the purpose only of keeping his
rule on the island for life and the real principles of this dirty system
began to come afloat whereas Castro thought of ways on how to keep the
power, the Cuban people also set forth to devise ways to keep themselves
alive and among the many resources of defense for this survival, which
deserved several volumes to be described, a new face of prostitution which
was weird, sad, controvert, embarrassing and even wider, more complex, more
degrading and with more branches than before began to appear and grew strong
in society but this time forced by circumstances and as a key to the
difference, directly derived from the opprobrious, infamous and ignominious
system as a need to survive and with a worse essence than the original sin.
These new prostitutes called "riders", young women with no "professional "
experience in the practice of any "happy life" having other jobs or
professions far from being related to this kind of activity and sometimes
even men, have been forced to sell not only their bodies but their souls not
with the objective of having fun, being happy, pleased or at ease in society
nor working for a salary at a prostitute house but to be able to escape from
the system or to avoid dying from starvation and scarcity, doing more
diverse and complex activities such as:
a- Persecute foreigners or tourists who visit the country, and who are
carriers of the saving dollars, all along hotels and beaches throughout the
whole country, to give them sexual favors in order to get from them in
exchange dollars, gifts, clothes or other first need articles which are
absent in the island and in this way help themselves and their families not
to perish of necessity
b- Lead a double life as professionals from any branch in order to unfold
themselves as "riders" and become busybodies in the adequate and appropriate
moment and place and so be able to support their families.
c- Offer their houses and any other type of service or business to tourists
in change of economical help
d- Shamefully advertise themselves in internet classifieds in full hunt of
foreigners who may grow interested in them and may get them out of misery or
respond to offers from men from other countries who know well about the
situation in the island and who are looking for unconditional women or
younger than them.
e- Look for long lasting and stable relationships with foreigners,
preferably older than them, which may allow them to have a steady source of
income or an exit from the country if they manage to marry them.
f- Men who are willing to yield their wives without hesitation or who are
even unscrupulously ready to become gay for the sake of improving their
standard of living or of migrating, thus fleeing from hell.
As can be clearly seen, this is not pleasure nor happy life and it has more
painful and deeper reasons than the regular prostitution that has always
been known to us and this one has returned with a new name because in fact
it is not that old one but a difficult and special resource for salvation,
even more generalized, put on the way of many as their only way out, not for
pleasure, nor for a salary and even less for a whim, but for survival as one
more shame for the crushed, grieved and distressed homeland and as one more
charge of high treason to it for the final judgement of its torturer and
executioner.
MARIO J TORRES JUNE 2004
Back
|
|
INFOCUBA
