A few nights ago, Francisco, his son, and I went for a walk along the Malecon, Havana’s famed waterfront that is so iconic it appears in every Cuban movie I’ve ever seen. Afterwards, we ended up at a bar in Habana Vieja that was just about to close... the music was dying down, there were no clean glasses for drinks, and the only choices one had even if there had been glasses were a daquiri or a Cuba Libre. We decided to stay anyway... we were in the middle of telling each other important stories and we didn't want to go back home just yet.

I am white; my husband and his son are black. We were all well-dressed and if you were to look carefully, the particular ties that bind the three of us together would probably be evident. Despite the difference in their years and the fact that Brayan was nine months old when Francisco left, the two look and act so much alike that even I would be hard-pressed to distinguish them from a distance. Francisco and I wear matching wedding bands that are larger than average, and the three of us were clearly engaged in the type of conversation that only people who know each other well could have. We sat at a table and Francisco and his son lit their cigars and started nursing a beer while I waited for a glass to be cleaned. Five minutes later, the daquiri had still not been delivered to the table, and Francisco went to the bar to inquire about the drink. "Oye, mono,"-- "Listen, monkey,"-- the bartender said, "ya," dismissing Francisco with the suggestion that the drink would be ready in a minute. Delivering the drink and the check a few minutes later, he added--assuming that I didn't speak Spanish fluently--"I've doubled the price for your turista, jinetero."

The economic conditions that have burdened average Cubans have provoked many to create some sort of hustle for themselves. In the span of a few days, I’ve met (and gotten a lift from) a DHL deliveryman who uses the company truck as an ad hoc taxi at night. I’ve talked with a hotel restaurant worker who obtains some day passes for the pool and sells them to friends. I’ve befriended an electrician at the Gran Teatro who sells the National Ballet tickets that he gets for free and ushers friends in the backdoor. But some people who have no such connections or benefits turn to the oldest profession in the world to make an extra dollar. Sex tourism in Cuba is a booming business. I know because I’ve been on more than one flight to Cuba with boozed up Canadians—mostly white men looking to indulge fantasies of the exotic other—and I’ve sat at a table at the pizza shop between the Habana Libre and the Yara theatre long enough to know that the lobster-pink men in shorts and tennis shoes who are buying pizza and refrescos for young, brown-skinned men are not doing so out of the kindness of their heart, but rather as a compulsory kind of foreplay before they satisfy the anticipation pulsing in their pants.

Jinetero is the name given to Cuban men who pimp out everything from sex to cigars to tourists who have come to the “forbidden” island to indulge any manner of fantasy. The insult from the bartender at La Casa de Escabeche was twofold. First, he himself was Black, and he was referring to Francisco—and, in some unconscious way, himself—as a monkey. Second, he assumed that I was a tourist and Francisco was pimping out “The Cuban Experience” to me, served up just as I imagined it. When Francisco set the record straight, the bartender was obviously embarrassed, but none of us felt vindicated. Two days later, I returned to the bar and asked to speak with the manager. I was told—this time, by a different bartender—that the manager wasn’t in. I asked for the manager’s name and phone number. Flustered, the bartender admitted that the manager was in. I was ushered into the office, where I sat down with four men, one white and three black, and recounted what had happened. “I’m fully aware of the problem of jineterismo,” I explained, tackling the issue head on, “but for your bartender to assume—and worse, to act on the assumption—that that was the nature of our relationship was unprofessional and rude. And his racist remarks are very anti-revolutionary.”

The four men stared back at me, open-mouthed yet speechless. Almost fifty years after the triumph of the Revolution, which was intended—among other goals—to eliminate (or, at the very least, control) racism, sexism, and classism, none of these isms has been wiped out, though they may be less obvious and less pervasive than in other countries. Despite the persistent and aggressive work of the Revolution to create an egalitarian society, the goal remains elusive.