¡Bienvenido a Cuba!: Advertising Cuba to Capitalists in the Special Period (1991-2000)
Abstract:
In the 1990s, Cuba experienced a massive economic crisis referred to as the “Special Period” after the collapse of Cuba’s most vital international benefactor, the Soviet Union. Cuba’s ability to recover from the Special Period can be attributed in large part to the Castro regime’s commitment to revitalizing the nation’s international tourism industry. To achieve this great growth in the country’s tourism industry, Cuba’s Ministry of Tourism (MINTUR) had to employ advertising tactics that relied on colonial-era stereotypes of Cubans and diminished the influence of communism on the country in order to attract wary Western travelers back. Cuba’s hospitality industry saw the most success in the Canadian and European markets, but by the end of the decade, they also saw a rise in visitors coming from the United States. In the last few years of the Nineties, President Bill Clinton eased restrictions on American travel to Cuba under his lax “people-to-people” approach to travel policy, making Cuba the most accessible to Americans that it had been since the 1960s. Cuba’s newfound friendliness towards capitalist nations and MINTUR’s usage of stereotypical imagery in its advertising played a part in encouraging the United States to open up to Cuba under Clinton’s people-to-people travel policy.