ABSTRACT
One of the first mentions of sex tourism in the Caribbean was by Frantz Fanon in the early 1960s, when he observed that the region was becoming “the brothel of Europe” due to the neocolonial relationships that were embedded in global tourism industry and the emergence of prostitution in the industry. Since then, sex tourism, or tourist-oriented prostitution, as it is sometimes named, has become an increasingly important topic of research and discussion due to the growing reliance of national governments on income generated by tourism and tourism-related activities. Tourism today constitutes one of the largest global economic sectors, and for some Caribbean countries, it accounts for up to 70 percent of the national income. It was promoted in the 1960s by the United Nations as a strategy to participate in the global economy and was embraced by Caribbean governments as a way to diversify the local economies, to overcome postcolonial economic crises that threatened to cripple the small nation-states, and to acquire foreign exchange. The largest tourism markets for the Caribbean are North America and Western Europe-with the United States, Canada, France, Britain, and Germany in the lead. The most popular tourist destinations in the region are the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Cuba, and St. Maarten, with Guyana and Suriname receiving the smallest number of tourists.2 The industry accounts for approximately 25 percent of all
formal employment in the region and is generally seen to be one of the fastest-growing sectors and one of the few ways in which the small nations can compete in the global economy. With the estimate that for every person in formal employment in tourism there is at least one other engaged in informal activities in the industry, predictions are that tourism in the Caribbean will continue to be an important source of livelihood for its working peoples.3 Indeed, it has been argued that “there is probably no other region in the world in which tourism as a source of income, employment, hard currency, earnings, and economic growth has greater importance than for the Caribbean.”4 The centrality of tourism to social, political, and economic life in the region cannot be underestimated.
