Of spectacular phantasmal desire: tourism and the Cuban state's complicity in the commodification of its citizens
Tourism is a multibillion dollar industry worldwide that has transformed apparently marginalised locations into hotspots of consumerism. Governments seeking low investment, high‐yield industries have turned to this service industry to facilitate the generation of income for state coffers. In doing so, states have become integral players in the selling of their own citizenry. This article uses the emergence of the Cuban tourism industry to explore how Cuba's socialist state, ideologically existing for the emancipation of its people, works to commodify and, through that commodification, control its populace. This article makes use of a decade's worth of ethnographic fieldwork to illustrate how Cubans engage and negotiate these processes with foreigners, adapting and adopting the state's attempts to commodify their bodies, for their own advantage rather than the state's. The production of these illusionary desires ultimately results in the creation of Cuban phantasms that undermine the state's own selling of the Revolution and ultimately, its control over its citizenry.