First day of fieldwork

I met with Magda on Tuesday and we both spent awhile poring over the list of 130+ jobs that have been authorized by the state as forms of self-employment within the past 3 years. It’s very extensive, often comically bureaucratic, and ranges from “Purveyor of miniature animal (i.e., ponies and goats) rides to children” to “Electrician” to “Cleaner and repairer of wells” to “Seller of traditional herbs for medicinal and/or spiritual purposes (Only if these materials have been obtained licitly and if they fall outside of the goods regulated by resolution No 33 made in February 2001 by the Office of the Ministry of Culture).” On the list are also people like the habaneras and the dandys, who dress up in “traditional” clothing and ask for tips from tourists in exchange for dancing with them or having their picture taken. These folks are supervised by the Historian’s Office and have to pay a monthly tax to keep their cultural worker’s license. Looking over and talking about this list was mainly to give me an idea of just how new this relatively governmental hands-off approach to the economy is. Before, all of these were tasks handled by state-run agencies or departments, or were more often than not being performed illegally. Self-employment as a “legitimate” way to make a living is such an astoundingly new idea here.

Before I left for the afternoon, Magda gave me homework: to sit in Old Havana and see who comes up to talk to me and what we talk about, and also to walk around like I don’t know where I’m going and take note of the same. She said bring a tape recorder if you want, but treat this mostly as a preliminary investigation. I almost did this on Thursday but ended up doing something a little different and probably more productive instead. I met up with my friend Javier, the artist I wrote about last time, to talk about his analysis of tourism in Havana and to have him show me around Old Havana. I asked him because he said he’d be willing to help me in my project as much as he could, and because his performance piece is a critique of jineterismo as a commodification of the exotic Cuban male body, so I figured he’d have a lot to say. Turns out Javier was born and still lives on the same block that José Martí was born on, right in the middle of Old Havana and a tourist draw if I ever saw one. Because of this, Javier did have a lot to say, probably more than I had anticipated. I spent an hour interviewing him about his thoughts on tourism and the Cuban response to the presence of tourists in the country. He talked about being raised to not ask anything from foreigners while watching more and more of his neighbors and peers turn to different ways to make money from tourists. Something to keep in mind is that tourism didn’t become a cornerstone of Cuba’s economy till the 90s, right after the Soviet bloc, and therefore Cuba’s economy, collapsed. It was a time of great hunger and need in the country- Magda talks about having to bike 2 miles to work at the TV station everyday because there was no petrol, and only having a bread roll with butter and sugar to eat all day because there was no food and then having to sit in the dark for hours because the power was only turned on for four hours a day.

Javier remembers that around this time he started seeing some of his female neighbors leave the house in tight clothes and high boots at 10 at night and come back at 3 in the morning with just gallon jugs of juice and maybe a sandwich. Nowadays, he says, women can work for two hours a night and come back with $200 dollars easy. Keep in mind that the average income for Cubans is about $10 a month, so these ladies are making bank. We talked about other ways that he’s seen people make money off of tourists, everything from elaborate scams to basic rip-offs. He says some of his neighbors are still in that life, some are not, but that he would try to get interviews worked out with them if he could. He stressed that if I introduced myself as a Salvadoran student I’d have a better chance at talking to people. Duh, I thought, why the hell would they want to talk candidly to a North American lady about how they make money off of tourists? Then he asked if I wanted to take a walk and I said, sure! Javier seemed to think that walking up to his friends and neighbors hanging out on street corners and waiting by their bike taxis and introducing my project as “My friend here is doing a project about how Cubans make their money off of tourists in an informal economy” right off the bat would be met well, but it certainly was not. He tried maybe three or four people and got roughly the same response each time, “You’re my brother, I love you, but how we make our money is a game everyone knows about but no one talks about. Give me a thousand euros and maybe, but otherwise, we don’t talk about it.”

I mean, I don’t blame them. If it was just Javier alone perhaps the response would have been different, but being so direct in my presence just seemed to throw all these men off. It was good moment of self-reflection for me. I have so many off-putting things going for me when talking to Cuban men about how they make their living off of foreigners: I read as white, I read as North American, and I am a woman. There are so many things about those identities that they have no reason to trust or open up to. Even if I do explain that I’m Salvadoran and that I’m a student interested in their answer for academic and artistic reasons, what is in it for them to open up to me? This is still a question I need to ponder. I feel like offering everyone money for their time and honesty can lead to all sorts of sticky situations, so the answer I think needs to be more complex and probably situation-specific. Anyway, I think maybe Javier was asking the wrong question. Yes, I am interested in how people make their money, but mostly I am interested in how people think about how they make their money. Here is an untranslated list of guiding questions that I wrote up before getting here that I’d want to pose to people I interview:

¿Cuanto tiempo lleva trabajando en _______?

¿Cómo llegó a realizar este tipo de trabajo?

¿Qué es lo que le gusta de esta clase de trabajo? ¿Qué no le gusta?

¿Cómo son los turistas con los que usted interactúa (i.e., edades, de donde vienen, clase social, amables, bruscos, etc)? ¿Cuáles son las diferencias entre turistas dependiendo de donde vienen?

¿Cuales son las primeras cosas que quieren saber los turistas al llegar?

*¿Qué cosas no les dice?

*¿Por qué cree usted que la gente busca sus servicios?

¿Por qué cree usted que vienen los extranjeros a Cuba?

*¿Cómo ve usted la relación entre los cubanos y los turistas en la isla?

*¿Cómo ve usted la relación entre el país y el turismo? ¿Cómo describiría esa relación?

¿Qué le gustaría decir a las personas que visitan a la Habana del exterior?

I’m also feeling like maybe part of the problem is that we were talking to men. There are many things Cuban men won’t say in front of women, regardless of their nationality.

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around Old Havana scoping out different places for me to sit and observe and talk to people. Javier introduced me to his friend, who is a street performer who performs along with his troupe in Plaza Colón for tourists on the weekends, and he seemed pretty interested in being interviewed next week, which is really exciting. Mainly, though, I was just trying getting my bearings, so overall the day was a total success. Javier is such a godsend. Before we parted ways he said he’d talk to his jinetero neighbors and see if he could set up any interviews for me. He even offered to interview people for me and then pass along the footage if that seemed to be the more feasible option. I’m very grateful and awed at how promising this connection seems to be.

Today’s goal: sit in Old Havana for a few hours looking like a fool tourist, observe my surroundings, and also see who comes up and talks to me.