These articles mostly concerned [Castro]'s cracking down on terrorism and crime committed against tourists in Cuba. In reaction to incidents of hotel bombings, and in one case, the murder of an Italian tourist, Castro's government had passed a series of strict new laws to deter crimes that would further injure the country's leading source of foreign currency - tourism. One evening in Santago de Cuba, I was discussing the race issue with a few Cuban friends, among whom was a loyal Castro supporter who had fought for four years in Angola with the Cuban army. He argued that what was happening in his country wasn't so much a problem of racism as it was an honest attempt on Castro's part to protect the country's main source of revenue, tourism, upon which the U.S. embargo had made Cuba dependent. Although the once-again blatant debasing of my friend's civil rights incensed me, I did understand his point. Most of the tourists now coming to Cuba are from predominately white European countries, or they are upper-class whites from Latin America. Most of the tourists now coming to Cuba are from predominately white European countries, or they are upper-class whites from Latin America. Most of these white tourists come to Cuba with racism ingrained in them from their own cultures. In fact, it is unofficially acknowledged that a large percentage of the foreign currency in Cuba comes from sex tourism, which generally comprises white men drawn to Cuba by the lure of "exotic" mulatto women.
Tanya Quintero, a light-skinned mulatta and prominent independent journalist in Havana, said she was not aware of racial discrimination until she had a daughter with darker skin the than she. Suddenly, some of her friends referred to her child with a Spanish phrase that literally translates as "sour or dark stomach" but figuratively is slang for "a child who comes out darker than her mother," she said. Lighter-skinned children later made fun of her daughter for being a "marron," brown. Also the millions of dollars in "remittances" that Cubans in the United States and elsewhere send their relatives back on the island very year reach few "black" Cubans because more than 90 percent of the exiles are "white." As a result, the long-standing economic gap between darker and lighter Cubans widens. I use quotation marks around "black" and "white" because the terms don't mean the same as they do in the United States, with our traditional "one-drop rule." Race in Cuba, as in the rest of Latin America, is somewhat fluid: You are pretty much what you say you are, even within the same family.
