Why Have the Number of Italian clients in Nigeria gone down?

Today I had the opportunity of attending a series of presentation put together by the Tourism Studies Working Group at Berkeley. The series sponsored a speaker, Florence Babb, “Love for Sale: Sex, Sentiment, and Tourism in Contemporary Cuba.” Incredibly insightful, Babb provided an anthropologist's perspective of sex tourism that may also be defined as romantic love. The sex tourist industry developed in the 1990s during Cuba's economic crisis. The question of the day from my own positioning was that there was a notable decrease in Italian tourists, male tourists, in recent years. Historically, throughout the 1990s Italians were primary tourists/sex tourists. The question brought to the table is why? It is evident in this case what Kamala Kempadoo called "push-down, pop-up" where, the government is cracking down on prostitution which leads to it pushing down in some areas and popping up else where, as a theory does not work. Although prostitution is illegal in Cuba, the Cuban government is not cracking down on prostitution. In part, as delineated in the series lecture, it is the government's focus on tourism as a point of increasing the Cuban economy, which includes sex tourism. Thus, the question continues to be, why the decline? My response is that there is a need to utilize a transnational feminist lens, in which we need to look towards Italy to understand this decline.

In order to understand this decline, we must look towards Italy. With the easing of borders, 500,000 women and children are trafficked yearly through European countries, with 50,000 to 70,000 ending up in Italy. In 2004, BBC featured a series on Albanians being trafficked through Italy to western Europe and many eventually ending up in the UK. Most are girls ages 14-18 years old, mainly from Romania, West Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America. This suggests that Italians no longer need to leave in order to seek services or if you want to call it "companionship." In May of 2006, Italian police dismantled prostitution rings that brought women from Uruguay under the operation, "Montevideo" reinforces the notion that the Latina may now be found in Italy. The women/girls, 50 of them rescued, were brought through Milan over the past three years. However, the extocization of the Latina is not merely any Latina, but also inclusive of the Afro-Cuban. In Italy there is an increasing demand for Black bodies, where 60 percent of women trafficked in Italy are from Algeria. However, these women are treated differently under dire conditions in contrast to their European counterparts: they earn 40-50% less for sexual services -- this is not suggesting that they get any of their "earnings."

Nonetheless, while all is interesting, one note of comparison that I find useful to share: A significant portion of the talk was dedicated to the notion that the women/girls were not considered prostitutes, and that there is a difference: these girls were looking for love, for possibility of leaving Cuba. However, I would like us to remember, so were many of the women who worked in Korean hostess bars in Korea: they too, were searching for a way out of Korea to "America." While many of them only found another version of the America Town in Korea, only in the U.S., why is it then that the Koreans were prostitutes and the Cubans, women/men in search of love?

The answer to this is multiple, but I hope it will allow us to think about the way differing bodies are racialized in the industry and also to consider how communities themselves endorse through rhetoric/denial. In this space of condoning in Cuba reinscribes a society of also condoning violence in essence, through silences and by calling it "romance".

Sex Slaves: Inside the World of Human Trafficking

Sex Slaves: Inside the World of Human Trafficking

Jan 25, 2007
5PM Omni San Francisco 500 California Street
Ric Bienstock
Award-Winning Filmmaker

Ric Bienstock is a writer, producer, and director of
documentary films that explore the human spirit through first
hand accounts. She will preview her acclaimed documentary, Sex
Slaves, which provides an informative and chilling look at the
trafficking of women from the former Soviet bloc into the
global sex trade. Written, directed and produced by Bienstock,
the film aired recently on PBS to record ratings and won
several awards including Best of Festival at the U.N.
Documentary Film Festival. Karen Musalo, Director, Center for
Gender and Refugee Studies will moderate.

Reserve tickets online by January 24, 2007

Event will be held at the Omni San Francisco Hotel, 500
California Street, San Francisco
5 p.m. - Registration and Reception
6 p.m. - Program

Tickets: $25 per person, $20 Museum members, $15 Students

Parking: Hotel valet parking; Shorenstein Garage, 555
California St.;343 Sansome Parking Garage

Near Montgomery Bart/Muni Stations

The Speaker Series program is designed to bring together
notable women from around the world to discuss current global
issues and how they are creating social, political and economic
change in the lives of women worldwide.

For more information, visit www.imow.org or call 415.487.6447

Screening Born Into Brothels at UC Berkeley

Narika at Berkeley, a new student group whose goal is to increase awareness, education and dialogue surrounding issues of violences that impact our community is hosting a film screening of Born Into Brothels. Join us in a dialogue over food and good company in engaging with issues of sexuality, prostitution, human trafficking, filmic representation, racism, and sexism, and any other issue that may arise in our conversations.

Film Screening: Born Into Brothels

4:30PM, February 1, 2007

at the Gender Equity Resource Center, 202 Cesar Chavez Student Center

Thank you to our Sponsoring Groups: Narika, Ala Meda County, Gender Equity, and ASAPA.

If you or someone you know is a South Asian survivor of human trafficking or domestic abuse/violences please visit: http://www.narika.org or call 1-800-215-7308
to receive language specific services (Staff and volunteers speak Bangla, Hindi, Gujarati, Kannada, Konkani, Malayalam, Marathi, Marwadi, Punjabi, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu)

or

In general, if you or someone you know is a survivor of human trafficking, Call the Asian Anti-Trafficking Coalition: 1 800-567-6211