ABSTRACT
My research topic first came to me while reading the fiftieth anniversary of the Cuban Revolution issue of the Journal of Latin American Studies. I now study the tourist-oriented sexual economy in post-Soviet Cuba – part of the broader network of black – and grey – market activities known locally as jineterismo – and how this economy and the state’s reaction to it have served to condition the lives and subjectivities of young Cuban women of colour, bringing thinly-disguised prejudices of race and gender to the fore. While there was a certain amount of literature on this topic, most notably by Cabezas (1998, 2004, 2009), virtually none of it dealt with the political ramifications of the phenomenon, and nothing I could find engaged with the practicalities and challenges of carrying out fieldwork in Cuba.
