2004 Bridges Summer Research Report Siri Colom Sociology "Tourist Scenarios in a Changing Cuba"

Initially I traveled to Cuba the previous summer to research the impact of a government sponsored community organization on community life and culture. During this earlier time I had witnessed a number of religious events staged for the benefit of foreigners. I decided to investigate the experience of tourism in this urban barrio. From this prior experience I expected to find that tourism, the new mainstay of the Cuban economy, would have a deleterious effect and that community residents would be highly critical of it. The community had a rich religious heritage with deep roots in both secular and sacred music. These were being tapped for their touristic value. I desired to understand what the community members’ perception of those visiting might be. I also wanted to investigate the nature of cultural change as it related to the production of culture, in the form of tourism, and how this fed back into the community.

Musicians readying drums for a religious ceremony.

In Cuba, the one thing you can count on is that there is very little you can count on. The previous summer, among the many mishaps and hardships I encountered — including being asked to leave the country for a few days — I was able to get a sense (though, of course, only a sense) of what life was like for Cubans living in Cuba. I chose to repeat the same “mistake” of inserting myself into the community without official ties to the island and without official recognition of my presence. I was able to accomplish this by actually moving into the community at the suggestion of a key informant whose family lived next to the building where an apartment was available for rent. The people I met and interviewed over the summer were not the head bureaucrats, directors or intellectuals of Havana — the people that most often greet and meet visitors to the island. I spoke with a variety of local citizens, including cultural workers many of whom practiced one or more of the Afro-Cuban religions. Most of them were not well-known, some had been forgotten many years before, others considered themselves purely religious practitioners of the music, some worked almost exclusively for tourist in the cabarets but as supporting artists.

My original intent was to inquire into practices epitomizing cultural change. I expected to encounter cynical attitudes toward tourism and predatory ones toward tourists. Instead, what I heard was the general appreciation and enthusiasm towards foreigners on a number of levels: they were generally viewed as interested in Cuban culture, they loved the music and loved Cubans, and those that took up studying either dance or music were quick learners. Any ambivalence or disdain was reserved for managers and promoters in Cuba. Generally these were people who arranged an artist’s career, organizers of tourist events or any bureaucrat who seemed to be hoping for advancement on the shoulders of the artists. The cultural workers often felt directors and promoters used them for their own ends, charging them with either using them for self-advancement in the system or of actually embezzling money for themselves. These pronouncements were often quietly spoken or in some cases angrily exposed. There is a disconnect between the way the Fidel Castro hoped the people would direct their frustration and to where community members actually did. For Castro, there was a constant push to direct all anger externally at the U.S., for the people, much anger was instead being pointed internally at the middle managers in the communities (in this case the leaders of the community development organization) who were closest to the people.

Cuban women resting in the home of a local Santera.

I conducted 15 open-ended interviews ranging between one and two and a half hours and as well as carried out ethnographic work while living in the community. These interviews highlighted a change in the growing disparity in Cuba. Previously, differences where mainly due to one’s connections outside the island. One was fortunate if one had a relative in the U.S. or elsewhere who was making enough to send money back to the island. In general, this played out along racial lines given that the majority of those who fled the island at the revolution were wealthy white Cubans. Now, there was a growing disparity between those who had access to tourist dollars, through a job or a connection or hustling, and those who did not.

Given that the average Cuban salary is between $10-$15 a month even a small sum from a tourist who paid $100 a night for a hotel would be substantial. Jealousies and anger flared up around this, and it was apparent in the small community where I stayed. And though given my location in Havana I could not compare this to the countryside, it was clear that people who lived in Havana had a greater likelihood of meeting foreigners than someone in the rural areas. This disparity had both negative and positive aspects for both the urban and rural settings.

German tourists looking through a door at a performance.

In my final paper I will also explore the problematics of race within this system. Though consciousness of racism in the society is suppressed and hidden, the issue of race did come up from with many interviewees. The way in which the commodification of culture — and specifically the Afro-Cuban culture — and race intersect might have repercussions in Cuba. Important to note is the way in which the Cuban government fails to address the racism in the country, evident in hiring in the hotels and other tourist venues, which are all state run. This continues to exacerbate the divide mentioned above between those who have access to dollars and those who don’t.

The contradictions of state-capitalism are numerous, especially in Cuba where the central commodity is tourism. These contradictions are felt in many intersecting and subtle ways by Cuban people. For the final part of my project, I will address the larger ramifications of capitalist transformation within a socialist society.
This work will be the foundation of my master’s thesis and may perhaps provide a critical base for continued dissertation work in Cuba. It has greatly advanced my own understanding of social change as well as allowed me to combine theory with practice on the ground.