Cuba— Tattoo scenes & cities

In Cuba, tattooing long carried the image of prison. A Havana Times columnist writes that a marked skin was almost a verdict of guilt; people spoke of "prison marks" or "gang stuff". In the 1960s, the IPS agency recalled in 1997, tattoos, long hair and earrings were regarded as serious "ideological deviations".

The same article noted that official policy had shown greater tolerance since the 1980s. More recently, according to Havana Times, the internet and social media have taken tattooing out of the margins; it speaks of emigration that splits families or of the names of loved ones who are gone. Studios work in a legal grey zone, sometimes under a beauty-salon or small private business licence.