The article seeks to analyze the contradictions involved with the commoditization in Cuba’s revitalized tourism industry during the post-Soviet Special Period vis-a-vis the revolution’s Marxist— Leninist ideology. The paper provides an agent-based interpretation of cultural commodification by using ethnographic data to argue that the Cuban hosts to tourism empower themselves amidst the industry’s commodifying nature by manipulating and performing images of ‘Cuba’ to fit the international imagination based in prior epochs. The current article contributes to discussions about authenticity and the commodification of culture in tourism by considering the gendered, sexualized, racial, and nationalist dynamics promoted by (re)constructions of Cuban identity for tourist consumption.
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