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Some of the younger pingueros admit that "for me, being a pinguero is a business. A business in which I get what I need to dress, eat, help my family and enjoy myself.

Cuba, Part II: Gay-rilla

I don't do it because I like it, I do it just for the money. Pinguerismo killed bugarronismo because it was far better suited for the new capitalist relations. The dollar initiated the explosion in sex work not only by encouraging tourism but also by providing a medium of exchange so that the workers could gain more than a gift or a meal from their clients. This in turn allowed the beginning of a standardization of pricing and it irrevocably unmasked an increasingly material interest in the sex relation, despite the continued effort of many of the workers to construct the work as relational.

Secondly, to be efficient in a market exchange, the workers had to have a category which was identifiable, marketable, and distinct.

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The new sex tourist workers in El Vedado needed a gender category which would both reproduce Cuban tradition but also conform to the demands of the clients for an insertive but "gay" worker—an odd configuration for a macho Cuban man. The new sex workers had to distinguish themselves from the female sex workers, "jineteras," now re-emerging with vigor since the legalization of the dollar. They could not simply masculinize "jinetera," since that would suggest that they, too, are penetrated by tourists. There is indeed a group of young men in El Vedado who call themselves "jineteros," but these are sellers of black-market cigars, tour guides, promoters of private restaurants and small-time con artists.

They are a specifically nonsexual category and are adamant about that point, since if they were seen as sex workers, they might be imagined to be passive partners, like their female counterparts. Those young men who are sex workers, then, had to radically distinguish themselves not only from the con-artist jineteros despised by Habaneros because they threaten tourism , and from the invaded bodies of the jineteras; they had to announce to the world that their work was precisely the opposite: So, to the slang term for "dick" "pinga" was added the suffix "ero," meaning, a man whose activity, or profession, has to do with his pinga.

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Thus, soon after the legalization of the dollar, the word "pinguero" was born. With such a name there is absolutely no confusion as to the role that the workers have in a sexual encounter. This saves the men's images as "hombres hombres," or manly men, but it also is a marketing tool that announces to the sex tourists—who in Havana and elsewhere are usually in search of an insertive partner—who they are and what they are about.

And the category "pinguero" is also an accommodation to the Cuban nationalist sensibility. Pingueros could walk the street "openly," he said. This difference makes sense when sex work is viewed in the context of the nationalist project. Cuban women are used in the same way—and by the same men—who are invading the island economically. The state has been forced by economic exigency to admit capitalist incursion and relinquish some of its economic and ideological autonomy.

Jineteras demonstrate this in their very bodies, and so they are an intolerable reminder of the growing power of external capital in internal affairs. This, "Fidel" cannot abide. But pingueros, at least representationally if not also practically, are quite the opposite: They represent the strength of the powerful Cuban phallus conquering the bodies of foreigners.

No autonomy has been lost, and symbolically at least, no Cuban body has been defiled. In fact, in a pinguero-tourist sex act, the Cuban has invaded the tourist, "screwed" him, as it were. The renowned Cuban phallus, well-known in the gay world and about which writers such as Pau-Llosa, Stavans and Arenas have commented, is perhaps the one entirely Cuban resource that Cuba has left. Not only is the Cuban pinga powerful, capable of killing in a single thrust, as in Arenas' account, but it is a limitless resource.

A university professor in Cuba explained that in the popular imagery, women sex workers are denigrated and their bodies are seen as dirty. But men's bodies are not ruined with frequent use. In pinguerismo, he told me: It's not the same with a woman. When women prostitute themselves 'they are filthy, like a piece of rag. A lot of men say 'If I use it a lot prostituting myself, it doesn't get spent. The Cuban just gives his dick, and giving the dick doesn't mean a thing.

So there is less political and cultural censure of male sex work than of its female counterpart. The boys simply prove the power of their phalluses to each other and to themselves, while using the desire of the foreigners to relieve them of their dollars.

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Pingueros attract sex-tourism dollars to the state hotels and airline, and they multiply tourists' discretionary dollars by spending them in state stores—all the while, symbolically conquering the bodies of the foreign invaders, like any good Revolutionary Cuban man. It is little wonder then that for years the state seems to have left the pingueros alone while actively prosecuting both jineteras and "chulos" pimps.

Jineteros are also aggressively persecuted because they threaten tourism, since they are known for pulling scams on foreigners, though they also provide some legitimate services to them. Although I am assured that this is not law, police procedure is to harass and arrest any non-pinguero Cuban who is hanging around a tourist.

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When I demanded that an officer inform me why he was arresting my Cuban friend who had been walking with me, I was told that it was to protect me from an inevitable robbery. Police demand their identity cards and interrogate any Cuban whose familial residence is not listed as Havana Province. To discourage internal migration in the Special Period, it is illegal for Cubans to reside in a province other than that of their family home.

Police will use this law to detain a pinguero sometimes overnight, especially if suspected of being a jinetero. This harassment is constant, but it seems to be more a performance of individual officers' macho power than the result of an official policy. There seems to be no real concerted effort to rid El Vedado of the pingueros, and in fact police stand and watch when their business is negotiated, so long as it remains in the strict confines of the two spaces just mentioned.

Yet when I returned in the summer of there was a noticeable increase in the level of police activity at both Yara and Fiat.

And although tourists are generally untouchable, even I was approached at Yara and asked for my identification card. When I asked some of the workers why they thought the harassment had increased, I received two answers. Since November there have been double the police Every afternoon from about three until seven, the street in front of the studio and along 23rd past the Yara was closed to allow Fidel's motorcade to pass. At three police would sweep the area of pingueros and keep them away until the motorcade had passed.

One pinguero told me that this was so that Fidel could not see what was really going on with the "chicos de la calle.

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Colonization of the Cuban Body: The Growth of Male Sex Work in Havana.

This young man wanted to free Fidel the man from responsibility by believing that he had no knowledge of how bad the situation was on the street. The man who in told me "Fidel knows everything," had quite the opposite agenda: It is no coincidence that this pinguero who so hated Fidel also proudly displayed a U. Materialism, especially adoration of U.

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Many of the pingueros blame either socialism or "Fidel" for their poverty, and they express their anti-"Fidel" sentiments with an adoration of U. Tommy Hilfiger clothing gives the illusion of the kind of prosperity which capitalism is imagined to bring.

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If socialism has brought poverty, capitalism must mean wealth. Tommy Hilfiger is a symbol of that coming economic prosperity which some believe will accompany the death of Fidel and of the socialist experiment. Of course, these pingueros do not understand that the wealth which Tommy Hilfiger represents—with its advertisements of young men yachting off the coast of Nantucket—is well beyond what will ever be possible for the huge majority of capitalist citizens.

Even more adored than Tommy is Nike. New shoes, for young Habaneros, are rare and coveted jewels, and the wealthiest tourists don Nikes. The craving for shoes causes honest pingueros to do whatever they have to do, to steal from whomever they can, to get a pair of Nikes. The Nike obsession is beyond what we might call idolatry; one pinguero has a Nike swoosh made of pure gold embedded in his upper right incisor. Every time he smiles, he promotes the values of consumption.

He has willingly sacrificed his tooth to the proclamation of the pending capital onslaught.

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Both his gold Nike swoosh and his commodified body proclaim the triumph of capitalism. A second consequence of the introduction of capitalism to the island has been what we might call the commodification of desire: Pingueros' ability to experience and explore their desires has been interrupted by their need to conform these desires to opportunities to make money, that is, to the needs of the market.

A number of pingueros explained to me that they are unable to have sex—even with a young man or woman to whom they are physically attracted—unless there is a financial element. The "Father of the Pingueros" told me: So if you don't pay me, I would rather jerk off with a magazine alone at home, because having sex for money is my profession I would like to, but I can't have sex without money My heart won't let me. Not only the bodies but even the desire of the pingueros has been configured to turn them into sex machines, functionaries of a sex tourist industry, and indirectly, of the foreign capitalists whose investments in hotels are reaping rapidly expropriated and exported profits.

This commodification reaches not only the bodies and desires of the pingueros, but also their sexual and gender identities, and this is a third consequence of capitalist incursion. For sex workers, identity functions like a packaging label on a product: It informs potential consumers of what they can expect if they purchase that product. This is one of the functions which the label "pinguero" serves. Already widely disseminated among privileged white capitalist males who can afford to travel, the category pinguero allows the workers to be marketed externally, letting the traveler know what to ask for, where to get it, and what to expect.

Though Cuban men are not accustomed to having to declare themselves members of a category other than "hombre," despite adolescent homoerotic experimentation, the needs of the market insist that they concretize themselves as sex workers for male tourists. So capitalism, through the logic of market relations, has claimed these young men from a world of relatively nebulous and permissive sexual experimentation and forced them into a concrete category which announces to themselves, to each other and to their clients that their sexual being and their bodies are inextricably linked to their economic function.

The transformation of sex, body and desire into a marketable product is precisely what I mean by "commodification of desire," and the construction of an economic category—the pinguero—to contain that product is what I mean by "commodification of identity. So instead he took to leading a double life, pretending to his family that he was still going to school. Bermudez became involved because he had to support his disabled mother and his school-age brother.

After the Revolution, the new Communist authorities made every effort to eradicate prostitution.