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Memoirs of a Cuban Soldier Who Wore Civilian Clothes

A look inside the GAESA military conglomerate

By Jenny Mirabal Gomez (El Toque)

HAVANA TIMES – The first time I entered an all-inclusive hotel, I did so neither as a guest nor as an employee. I was 17 and slipped in disguised with my cousin, who was a lifeguard and got me an ID from a friend of his. “He’s our new lifeguard trainee,” my cousin told the guard at the entrance, who, without asking many more questions, let us through.

That reality was so far removed from those of us of my generation that being there was, in fact, little short of a dream. It was 2003, and only two hotels had been built in Cayo Santa Maria, both managed by the Spanish Sol Melia Hotels chain, with Gaviota S.A. as the Cuban counterpart. Around them, however, the beginnings of construction on several other tourist complexes could already be seen.

Until then, I had only heard about the cays, nothing more. People in the area always talked about the natural paradise of the cays off northern Villa Clara, but few had seen them with their own eyes. Construction of the Caibarien-Cayo Santa Maria causeway had been trumpeted in the media as a national feat, but to me it all sounded very, very far away, even though geographically it wasn’t.

Walking through the hotel door that morning, even though it was only the employees’ entrance, was like stepping through a portal into a parallel universe, a reality that for Cuban families was, until those years, as inaccessible as international airport terminals. When I left that afternoon, I thanked my cousin and put the whole matter aside so it wouldn’t become an obsession, never suspecting that a few years later that hotel would become my first workplace and would forever shape the course of my life.

In the summer of 2008, by chance, I began my professional internship at that hotel as a second-year Foreign Languages student at the Central University of Las Villas. Having lived with so many shortages, it didn’t take me long to understand that this was the best path I could choose for my future. Entering as a student rather than as a direct employee of Gaviota — a company belonging to the military conglomerate GAESA, which managed all the hotels on the cays — gave me certain freedoms. When, a year later, I was offered the opportunity to work full-time as a hotel entertainer, despite the conflicts the issue caused within my family and within myself, I didn’t think about it for long and accepted. I was leaving behind a nearly completed university degree and everything that entailed.

Working in the hotels on the cays was the only possible way to have something of my own. I could have finished my degree and then tried to get a job in tourism, but the road would have been much longer. At the time, being an entertainer in exclusively international tourism was a highly coveted opportunity. Although the usual route into the system was through courses organized by Gaviota S.A., a shortcut opened up for me, and I managed to get in through the Turarte S.A. Artistic Entertainment Agency, which, together with the Provincial Music Center, were the only companies outside the hotel sector authorized to hire entertainment staff for hotels.

I had skipped several steps and, on top of that, I wasn’t a direct GAESA employee. I didn’t understand what that meant until I was working at the hotel full-time. A few months were enough for me to understand the machinery of power behind the country’s most powerful tourism structure. And behind it all, like an all-powerful entity stood, the Army.

In 2008, ordinary Cubans still did not have access to the cays. Only privileged people and workers could pass through the checkpoint guarded by uniformed police officers. From the checkpoint to the northeastern tip of the cays, everything was a monopoly managed by GAESA: the military construction company responsible for building hotels and facilities; TransGaviota, the company that handled tourist transportation; Gaviota Tours, the travel agency; Gaviota S.A., which managed the hotels and the Cuban employees; Cupet-Cimex, responsible for fuel and hotel shops; and others I can’t remember now.

Right next to the room where we entertainers practically lived during the week was the office of the CIM (Military Counterintelligence), the body responsible for monitoring not only any suspicious tourist who visited the hotel but, above all, making sure that employees did nothing outside the rules. Relations between employees and tourists were strictly monitored by the many eyes of the CIM,........

© Havana Times