‘You are a witch with no feelings’: Sex Tourism, Gender and the Representation of Women in Timba Songs

Around the mid-1990s, the popularity of timba and of its challenging attitudes began to worry the Cuban authorities. Preoccupations emerged with growing frequency in the local press, where journalists started criticizing MB by accusing it of being vulgar and offensive to women. One target of the accusations, in particular, was a song by NG called ‘La bruja’ (‘The witch’), which raised the issue of sex tourism and prostitution, a taboo topic that would be addressed by the authorities only at a later stage and, at least initially, with much recalcitrance.