Skip to main content. You're using an out-of-date version of Internet Explorer. Log In Sign Up. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. Mosfilm, , DVD. Mito y realidad Madrid: Identity, Culture, and Politics in Film, ed. Wall- flower Press, , 65—72, Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. During the first six years of the revo- lution, official discourse transitioned from viewing sex workers as victims to categorizing them as counterrevolutionaries.
Key to this analysis are the methods used to identify prostitutes prostitutas. Rather than seeking confirmation that women exchanged sex for money, reformers identified sex workers according to their attire, behavior, race, place of residence, and sexual partners.
I also demonstrate that the revolutionary campaign adopted a broad and flexible definition of prostituta, one that allowed government officials to target the behavior of all Cuban women, not merely that of those who identified as sex workers.
Revolutionary state formation was closely tied to the sexual practices of ordinary Cubans, and prostitutes were not alone in facing regulation. Transaction Publishers, , ; Noelle M. Daniel Sudran, Crime and Social Justice 12 University of Illinois Press, , n7. They judged as security risks the people and practices that did not fit into this developmental trajectory. The term jinetera refers to women who support themselves through relationships with foreigners, and it is specific to prostitutes who began practicing in and afterward.
Cubans used other terms, such as prostituta and puta, prior to this time. Rutgers Uni- versity Press, ], Rather unsuccessful reform efforts persisted throughout the US occupation of Cuba — and the republican era —58 , though prostitution was never criminalized.
