Death of 12-year-old girl forces Cuba to confront sex tourism
SO SAD AND I CAN RELATE...
LAST TIME I VISITED CUBA I WAS AMAZED AT HOW PREVALENT PROSTITUTION OF MEN, BUT MOSTLY WOMEN, WAS- AND BY WOMEN, I MEAN YOUNG, BEAUTIFUL "GIRLS".
I BECAME THEIR TRUSTED INTERPRETER AT A DANCE CLUB NEAR THE RESORT WHERE I WAS STAYING. THEY KNEW I WAS GAY SO I WAS ABLE TO SOCIALIZE WITH THEM WITHOUT AN AGENDA. IRONICALLY, THEY OFFERED ME MEN/BOYS THEY KNEW FOR MY "NEEDS" BUT I PASSED, I JUST WANTED TO HANGOUT AND DANCE WITH THEM.
SO MANY GERMANS, CANADIANS AND PEOPLE FROM ALL OVER WERE THERE-NOT TO DANCE-WELL NOT VERTICALLY ANYWAY; OF COURSE, MOST OF THEM WERE FUGLY MIDDLE AGE MEN WHO PROBABLY COULDN'T GET LAID FOR FREE IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY. IT DISGUSTED ME!
I'M NOT NAIVE, IN THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES IT'S THE LAW OF THE LAND TO FIND CHEAP PROSTITUTES, BUT IT'S SAD WHEN THEY BECOME YOUR FRIENDS; REGARDLESS OF HOW BRIEF. I ALSO HAVE SISTERS, NIECES AND MANY WONDERFUL WOMEN IN MY LIFE THAT I TREASURE SO IT BROUGHT IT TOO CLOSE TO HOME .
THE YOUNG LADIES WOULD HAVE SEX ON THE BEACH AND OTHER CLANDESTINE PLACES IF THEY WERE REALLY IN A BIND OR THE CUSTOMER WAS TOO CHEAP FOR THE "PACKAGE" DEAL--REALLY???
HOWEVER, MOST OF THE HORNY TOURISTS ACQUIESCED TO THE PACKAGE DEAL: HOTEL, CAB & SEX FOR $35.00--EVERYONE INVOLVED GOT A CUT.
CAN YOU IMAGINE?
IT BROKE MY HEART.
MANY WERE DESPERATE TRYING TO RAISE KIDS, AS YOUNG MOTHERS, OR TRYING TO HELP THEIR PARENTS/FAMILIES.
SOME EVEN WROTE TO ME WHEN I GOT BACK. THEY ALL WANTED TO COME TO THE US FOR A BETTER LIFE, WHICH AT THE TIME, WAS NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE.
I THINK OF THEM OFTEN .
GOD BLESS ALL THE MEN AND WOMEN OVER THERE BUT ESPECIALLY THESE VICTIMS OF MURDER.
(FROM "THE MIAMI HERALD"NEWSPAPER)
"For the two Cuban girls, 12 and 13 years old, it was just another sex party with foreign tourists — videotaped, fueled with marijuana and alcohol and sometimes involving sex with both men and women.
But this time 12-year-old Lilian Ramírez Espinosa, an asthmatic, gasped and blacked out.
Her badly decomposed body was found five days later on the isolated outskirts of the eastern city of Bayamo.
The girls “had been prostituting themselves for six months, but one of them had to die before the authorities noticed,” said Havana lawyer Laritza Diversent, who is helping with the appeal by one of the defendants in the case.
Lilian’ death on May 14, 2010, is the best documented and most horrifying example of child prostitution to emerge from Cuba since sex tourism began to blossom there in the early 1990s.
Canadian, Spanish and other tourists are flying to the island for sex with minors, a joint investigation by The Toronto Star and El Nuevo Herald has shown, although the extent of the problem remains unknown.
Cuba’s government “resists discussion of issues that might suggest weaknesses in the governing and social system,” said one report on child sex trafficking, written by U.S. diplomats in Havana in 2010.
Diversent said she was not surprised that girls as young as the ones in Bayamo were having sex-for-pay in a country where kids generally start having sex at the age of 12 or 13 and families face shortages of everything from tomatoes to shoes.
“The only thing never rationed was sex,” she said.
What was surprising, Diversent added, was that three Italians and 10 Cubans were tried and convicted in Ramírez’ death..."
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