Posted by PWalker
Fidel Castro was in the news today, responding to charges leveled against him in a speech by President Bush. Bush charged that Cuba is a “major destination for sex tourism” and further:
The regime in Havana, already one of the worst violators of human rights in the world, is adding to its crimes. The dictator welcomes sex tourism. Here’s how he bragged about the industry. This is his quote, “Cuba has the cleanest and most educated prostitutes in the world.” He said that because sex tourism is a vital source of hard currency to keep his corrupt government afloat. My administration is working toward a comprehensive solution of this problem: The rapid, peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba. We have put a strategy in place to hasten the day when no Cuban child is exploited to finance a failed revolution and every Cuban citizen will live in freedom.
Interestingly, a key quote was taken from a paper written by Charles Trumbull when he was an undergraduate at Dartmouth. As reported in the Los Angeles Times, Trumbull believes the quote “was probably a paraphrase of comments the Cuban leader made in 1992,” although he did not footnote it at the time, and does not know the source.
From the Los Angeles Times report:
“It shows that they didn’t read much of the article,” Trumbull said in a telephone interview.
According to Trumbull, who conducted field research in Cuba, prostitution boomed in the Caribbean nation after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, providing an important source of currency for the Cuban economy. Castro, who outlawed prostitution when he took power in 1959, initially had few resources to combat it. But beginning around 1996, Cuban authorities began to crack down on the practice.
Although prostitution still exists, Trumbull said, it is far less visible, and it would be inaccurate to say the government promotes it.
Even when Castro made the remarks, Trumbull said, he was not boasting about Cuba’s prostitutes as sex workers.
“Castro was merely trying to emphasize some of the successes of the revolution by saying ‘even our prostitutes our educated,’ ” Trumbull said. “Castro was trying to defend his revolution against negative publicity. He was in no way bragging about the opportunities for sex tourism on the island.”
[…]
Trumbull described himself as “annoyed” by the use the White House made of his project. “It is really disheartening to see bits of my research contorted, taken out of context, and used to support conclusions that are contrary to the truth,” he said.
The State Department located the original quote by Castro:
“There are hookers, but prostitution is not allowed in our country,” Castro told Cuba’s National Assembly in July 1992, according to a translation by the British Broadcasting Corp. “There are no women forced to sell themselves to a man, to a foreigner, to a tourist. Those who do so do it on their own, voluntarily…. We can say that they are highly educated hookers and quite healthy, because we are the country with the lowest number of AIDS cases.”
White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said that the speech “was vetted the same way all the president’s speeches are vetted.” I believe that.
It a sad day when you don’t know whether to trust the words of the President of the United States or a communist dictator.