Approaching Difference, Inequality, and Intimacy in Tourism: A View from Cuba

Abstract

Based on ethnography of touristic encounters in Cuba, the article reflects on competing approaches to difference, inequality, and intimacy in tourism and in anthropology. Comparing the understandings of tourists and Cubans involved in these informal engagements, of the Cuban authorities, and of scholars and commentators, three idealized scenarios and modes of interpretation are teased out. Rather than assessing their degree of accuracy or suggesting the primacy of one over the other, the article reflects on their co-presence and competing rationales, focusing on the conditions of their emergence and assessing their epistemological, moral, and political implications. In so doing, it foregrounds how the expectations, desires, and moral underpinnings that inform our findings and interpretative horizons resonate with those of the people we study, opening up different possibilities for estrangement and familiarization, and highlighting what is at stake in these processes both for anthropology and for those with whom we work.

Foreword

“…As I elaborate elsewhere (Simoni 2018a(Simoni , 2018b, their aspirations resonated with what Ferguson (2006) has conceptualized as claims for "membership" of a "global society," something from which many of my research participants felt excluded. Repeatedly, I heard them criticize Cuba's exceptionalism, pointing to enduring crisis and isolation, and complaining of how social relationships on the island were increasingly mediated by economic necessities and interests, with material considerations determining the choice of a friend or a partner, and "true love" becoming ever more elusive (see Daigle 2015;Fosado 2005;Lundgren 2011;Stout 2014;Simoni 2018aSimoni , 2018b. In contrast to the bleak prospects projected on life in Cuba, life "abroad" appeared as having some measure of "normality": a normal life, a normal job, a normal family, a normal friendship, and love.…”

“…People gave me advice-everything from avoiding official tourist circuits to keeping at bay ubiquitous hustlers, recognizing signs of revolutionary achievements, and even reaching beyond gov-ernmental propaganda. My own goals were to understand and uncover the moral and epistemological underpinnings and consequences of such narratives, which flourished in the tourism realms I frequented (Simoni 2018a). Later, and in my repeated stays on the island (eighteen months up to February 2019), I became acquainted with a heterogeneous mix of foreign tourists and Cuban men and women actively trying to engage visitors, giving life to what I termed "informal touristic encounters" (Simoni 2016a).…”

“…Most of my research partners did not favor transient and mercenary relations with tourists, preferring longer term connections. They spoke of love and friendship and of developing intimate bonds that could enable them to partake and get deeply involved in the life of tourists (see also Cabezas 2009;Daigle 2015;De Sousa e Santos 2009;Simoni 2018a). This way, they also resisted the authorities' profiling of their intentions as ineluctably strategic, cunning, and deceptive, a view that reduced their motives to illegitimate economic predation, a desire for tourist "high life," and a lust for capitalist consumption (see Berg 2004;Daigle 2015;Garcia 2010).…”

Tourism, Migration, and Back in Cuba

“…People gave me advice—everything from avoiding official tourist circuits to keeping at bay ubiquitous hustlers, recognizing signs of revolutionary achievements, and even reaching beyond governmental propaganda. My own goals were to understand and uncover the moral and epistemological underpinnings and consequences of such narratives, which flourished in the tourism realms I frequented (Simoni ). Later, and in my repeated stays on the island (eighteen months up to February 2019), I became acquainted with a heterogeneous mix of foreign tourists and Cuban men and women actively trying to engage visitors, giving life to what I termed “informal touristic encounters” (Simoni ).…”

“…Most of my research partners did not favor transient and mercenary relations with tourists, preferring longer term connections. They spoke of love and friendship and of developing intimate bonds that could enable them to partake and get deeply involved in the life of tourists (see also Cabezas ; Daigle ; De Sousa e Santos ; Simoni ). This way, they also resisted the authorities’ profiling of their intentions as ineluctably strategic, cunning, and deceptive, a view that reduced their motives to illegitimate economic predation, a desire for tourist “high life,” and a lust for capitalist consumption (see Berg ; Daigle ; Garcia ).…”