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02/07/13 - Irish Times - Sexual revolution alive and well on streets of Havana 

Sexual revolution alive and well on streets of Havana as Cubans cope with
Castro's austerity

Elgy Gillespie

Cuba Letter: Cubans joke that the one thing their government cannot not
ration is sex

Cuba is sexy. Poor thing, it can't help it. Humidity kisses your skin like
moist suede; cuba libres caress your tongue; and tropical rhythms set hips
swivelling. Sensual art and music, cigars, mojitos and Comrade Che are
all-pervading.

Along the Malecon, Havana's seafront promenade, girls in five-inch heels
hug their boys nightly against wave-splashed walls. Men hiss "piropos",
flirty come-ons. jineterismo - sex tourism - is alive in Cuba, judging by
touts hissing "Quieres chicos - want guys?"

The "casas particulares", where rooms can be rented by the hour, survive
discreetly. This society is pre-tech but not post-sex. What you gonna do?

"Yes, it's nuestra fama, our reputation - our stigma, if you will. But it's
why we're still here, why we're happy. It continues the human race," says
the lovely Mariela Castro.

The daughter of President Raúl Castro, she heads the Cuban Centre for Sex
Education (Cenesex) in Havana. She laughs, radiating benign tolerance.

"We promote a lot of causes: women's rights, gay rights, LGBT rights.
Diversity is natural. The one cause we'll never promote is abstinence."

Transsexuals 

A mother of three in a T-shirt and cotton skirt, she wears no make-up. Her
concession to fashion is a pair of cute boots. Outside her offices in the
city's Vedado district, several transsexuals await medical or psychiatric
counselling. One, Vanessa, bears a resemblance to her idol Amy Winehouse.

In 1959, following the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power,
Mariela's mother ,Vilma Espin, brought in women's rights, reproductive
rights and equal pay. Contraceptives are part of sex education in school.

Mariela is a former psychiatrist with LGBT patients she grew to love. She
has introduced transgender surgery (free), anti-homophobia policies and gay
pride days, and publishes the quarterly Sexology.

"I think we're the only country with these policies," she says.

She goes on to complain about imported condoms restricted under the US
embargo. (At least they're cheap at three for a peso.)

Havana was once America's brothel. Sex has since been the one thing never
scarce under Fidel Castro, though things got so bad in the 1990s, after the
Soviet collapse, thanks to underpaying state jobs, that in 1998 Castro
declared a crackdown on jineterismo, saying there were thousands of Cuban
prostitutes - the healthiest and best-educated in the world, he told Time.

But the former "tropical buffet of sin", as Christopher Baker put it in Mi
Moto Fidel, remains. Every Cuban male yearns for a mulatta, or mixed Afro
or Chino-Cuban girl, while girls in turn yearn for a sugar daddy. Sex on
first date? A given, Baker says.

Eros amply gratified 

In his book Cuba: a Journey, Jacobo Timerman writes disapprovingly: "Eros
is amply gratified in Cuba and needs no stimulation. A joyous eroticism
pervades Cuban men and women alike . . . Seduction is a national pastime
pursued . . . and the fresh expression of a high-spirited people confined
in an authoritarian world. After all, Cubans joke, sex is the only thing
Castro can't ration."

While I was writing this, the Caribbean glittered in front of me in
Cienfuegos as Cuba's oldest band, Los Naranjos, played a rumba, and Simon,
an 80-year-old "rumbero" asked me to dance. So my hips said yes.

I ask Gustavo, nearest Cuban sexpert, how many salsas and rumbas are about
"vaccination" (his word for sex) and he replies promptly: "Around 90 per
cent."

What are the other 10 per cent about? "Food."

The culinary terms, like others, are mostly metaphors. Compay Segundo's
song Chan Chan is about "sifting sand" on the beach (nudge) with his
sweetie. Tula's bedroom is "on fire" yet again (nudge, nudge).

If Cuban songs are metaphors, paintings draw on Afro-Cuban roots.
Santeria, the religion imported by slaves, has been absorbed into Cuban
identity and is in everything from dance to painting.

Roosters prevail, a nod to Changó, god of virility (no wonder the Hemingway
cult remains strong). Oshun is the flirtatious goddess of love.  Eleggua is
the naughty boy who makes mischief and his sign is a hooked stick and three
shells. Once you know, you see signs everywhere.

"It's a huge part of what we Cubans are," says Natalia Bolivar, respected
author and expert on Cuban religion.

Back in Miami, the tired Cuban immigration officer asks if I have any rum.
"No, I drank it all over there," I say.

He looks sad. "Where?" Everywhere! Including the Hemingway bar at Cojimar,
I say. Where was he from? Havana, he replied.

What does he you miss?

"I miss my girlfriends," he says with a sigh.

Spoken like a true Cuban.

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Original Source / Fuente Original:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2013/0207/1224329744261.html