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/ Lamasiel Gutierrez Romero
The Curita park located in the municipality of Centro Habana is a tolerance zone, where you can daily see, up until late night hours, prostitutes hunting for Cubans or foreign tourists who would buy their sexual services.
The girls, aged between 11 and 17, are perpetual victims of pimps, who, apart from keeping an eye on them and beating them when they don't earn enough money, exploit them.
The Police also benefit and profit from the activity by blackmailing the pimps and demanding sexual services from the girls in exchange for a permission to practice prostitution.
The park is full of pickpockets, drug dealers and other crooks, who are just another exploiters of the girls.
During the day, the park is used as a platform by Communist Party ideologues appealing to the young generation to stand up against the United States as well as speakers reading leaflets against the the U.S. policy and celebrating Fidel Castro, the Revolution and socialism.
Young people eagerly come to listen to them, attracted by free rum and beer offered at the end of individual performances.
Several times a week, campaigners against AIDS come to the park to distribute brochures and condoms and hold discussions about how to practice safe sex.
Yadira, a 15-year-old girl, confessed that she had been forced to practice prostitution by her own parents, who told her they needed money to buy her clothes and food, but spent it on alcohol instead.
Many teachers charge 10 CUC (convertible pesos) a day from students who skip classes to be able to practice prostitution; hotel porters, in turn, charge a commission for letting minors up to hotel rooms.
As a result of living in an environment characterized by poverty, marginalization and hopelessness, Cuban children – or rather the young generation in general, has become the most vulnerable stratum of the society.
There's no guarantee whatsoever that students who graduate at a college find a vocation or a profession they had studied for; on the contrary, low wages paid to professionals regardless of the area of their expertise as well as the popularity and admiration that many young prostitutes earn among their friends can be deemed factors attracting new candidates to prostitution, who can see it as one of the means of living.
Some taxi drivers driving foreigners have albums with photos of boys and girls of any age or colour; the price is negotiable and subject to change and bargaining between potential clients and pimps or children traffickers.
The impunity with which these criminals operate in the child prostitution market can be only ascribed to the tacit consent of the Cuban government.
Many paedophiles from around the world purchase travel packages promoted by the Cuban government as part of its initiative to encourage friendship between nations, and take advantage of the communist government's tolerant attitude to child prostitution in Cuba.
Cuba has already seen dozens of strange cases of abuse and violence ascribed to prostitution; in addition, due to the increase in prostitution, moral values have vanished and aggression and gender abuse have flourished in many Cuban homes.
In mid 2010 in the Havana municipality of Regla, an incident of child prostitution occurred that shocked local residents.
Assisted by a local neighbour, a mother sold pornographic videos of her daughter shot since she was 12 years old.
According to Cuban independent journalist Aini Martin Valero, the locals living in the Regla municipality are outraged at the low sentences of 10 and 8 years of imprisonment imposed on the two criminals.
As far as the little girl is concerned, some neighbours have reasoned that she will have to keep on practising prostitution due to lack of economic means and psychological support from the government or municipal institutions.
Another violent incident occurred a year ago in the province of Granma in the east of the island.
A 12-year-old girl was found dead and savaged by wild dogs in a forest area near the place where she had been killed.
The evidence presented by the Police to the municipal attorney showed that the girl had died of a cocaine overdose.
Local residents testified that the girl was last seen in the company of two notorious local pimps and a foreigner.
These facts or any other information related to child prostitution in Cuba have never been mentioned by the official press.
In its 2010 annual report, the U.S. State Department refers to Cuba as a country where human trafficking is carried out, especially with children, who are commercially exploited in the country.
Besides, the Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women urged the Cuban government to make in-depth investigation of the causes and consequences of prostitution and adopt preventative measures against it while providing rehabilitation and protection to the victims of the evil .
The report states that countries like Venezuela, North Korea, Iran and Cuba don't expend enough efforts to eliminate the iniquity.
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