Submitted by admin on Sat, 2007-04-28 08:00. ::
ISLE OF YOUTH, Cuba - Grease dribbling through his fingers, the Italian gobbles up two fried lobsters while the girl, young enough to be his granddaughter, picks at some rice and waits.
Facing them, I picture his chubby hands on this pretty 20-year-old mulatta and think about the thin wall between their bedroom and the one I've just rented in this Cuban family home.
I know this goes on everywhere from Brazil to Thailand, but I still feel like telling this leathery old man, with his big gold chain, vest and shorts, that he's a creep, and finding a hotel.
I bite my tongue though, and while the girl watches a Brazilian soap opera, I pour some rum. On the terrace, the man tells me he's a retired Sicilian executive who spends half the year here enjoying the young women.
Foreigners have come to Cuba for years seeking escorts for nights out and sex in exchange for gifts or cash to help the family. Cubans dub them ‘yumas', a term adopted for Americans after a 1957 western set in the town of Yuma on the US border with Mexico.
Traveling here a decade ago, when Cubans were going hungry from the loss of Soviet aid, I saw countless beer-bellied foreign men smooching young women, and mid-forties women with hot young Cuban guys.
Cuban leader Fidel Castro hates sex tourism. After the 1959 revolution, he razed the brothels that had flourished under strongman Fulgencio Batista and he outlawed underage sex and pornography.
But tourists are still like walking bank vaults in the two-tiered economy of Cuban and convertible pesos. The dollars I brought for a three-week stay equate to eight years' of state peso wages -- hence the torrent of romantic propositions.
On the sleepy Isle of Youth off Cuba's south coast, the Italian calls his girlfriend. She flounces out, a cinnamon-hued goddess in a tight ‘Italia' T-shirt and tiny pink shorts, and flashes me a smile.
Draped in gold jewelry, she is halfway through a law degree, but her yuma has brought her family more wealth in a few visits than several years on a Cuban lawyer's wage would.
Neighbors share the leftovers from our dinner. One asks the Italian for some coins. Like a Godfather, he's driving a mini-economy and loving it.
While the lovebirds head for bed my hostess shows me photographs of her daughter's ‘quinceanera', or 15th birthday, which marks a coming of age for girls in many Spanish-speaking countries.
This is cache, read story here
