Part One Of A Two-Part Editorial Event!

Cuba’s Gay Politics Mired In Past


Cuba’s been going through a bit of a political puberty as of late. Last February, after 49-years in power, long-time leader Fidel Castro stepped aside and handed the presidency to his brother, Raul. Though still all in the family, many see Raul’s ascension as a positive move for the island, a sign that the communist government could evolve.

A little over a month later, Mariela Castro, the president’s daughter and leader of the government-backed Center for Sexual Diversity (CENESEX), took a progressive step when she called on the government to rewrite the 70s-era Family Code and pave the way for civil unions.

The “revolutionary redefinition” of family, says CENESEX spokesperson Alberto Roque Guerra, goes straight to epicenter of Cuba’s gay problem: “Family is the core of society. Homophobia and transphobia are first seen within the family. The fight against homophobia awareness is focused on the family as the main goal.” However true that may be, Guerra’s declaration purposefully ignores decades of state-sanctioned homophobia. What’s more, CENESEX’s push for equality eschews the true goal: assimilation.

The government’s modest progress – as well as its dubious explanations – has as much with political survival and public relations as it does with cultural evolution. Sifting through the various truths, one finds a debate shaded by political ideology, Cold War-inspired misconception and not a small amount of spin.


[Fidel, Raul and Che Guevara’s legacies loom large in 21st century Cuba.]
Fidel Castro, in a 1965 interview, decried the gay threat, telling American journalist Lee Lockwood, “Young people should not be in the hands of homosexuals.” Though the gays could pledge revolutionary allegiance, they were not entirely trust worthy:

Nothing prevents a homosexual from professing revolutionary ideology and, consequently, exhibiting a correct political position… And yet we would never come to believe that a homosexual could embody the conditions and requirements of conduct that would enable us to consider him a true Revolutionary, a true Communist militant. A deviation of that nature clashes with the concept of what a militant Communist must be.

Thus, in their revolutionary zest, Castro’s regime erected reeducation camps, where dissidents, religious leaders and gays were to be cleansed of their “anti-social behavior” and trained to serve the revolution. In 2006, while discussing the controversial camps, Castro acknowledged their existence, but refused to align them with the “supposed persecution of homosexuals.” The “Military Units to Support Production,” he said, “were not internment units, nor were their punishment units. On the contrary, it was about morale, to give them a chance to work and help the country in those difficult circumstances.” Though the camps have since been abolished, the Revolution’s quest for integration remains the same, albeit with some timely adjustments.

To say the Revolution single-handedly created homophobia on the island would be unfair. There were other force at play, of course, including Catholicism and, perhaps more importantly, machismo. An idolization of masculinity, machismo celebrates the strong, virile man. This man flexed his social muscle, while more effeminate men were made to lurk in the shadows – or face the consequences. Like the island’s fifties-era cars, machismo still rules Cuba’s roads, says Leonardo Chacon, a Cuban AIDS activist who moved to Miami last year: “Being gay is a signal of weakness. In our tradition, someone who is gay, we call ‘no man.’” And that “no man” has never been as politically valuable as communism’s so-called “New Man.”


[Cuban soldiers are the picture of the New Man’s so-called perfect.]

Inspired, selfless and, most importantly, obedient, the “new man” lives the revolution. He’s the picture of ideological uniformity. Needless to say, sexual deviants posed a serious risk to social and political cohesion, as Cuba’s 1971 Education Congress declared, “The social pathological character of homosexual deviations was recognized It was resolved that all manifestations of homosexual deviations are to be firmly rejected and prevented from spreading”. The government had to maintain unity at all costs, and, in addition to the internment camps, they for years launched repeated raids on queer Cubans, including arrests, assaults, massive deportations in the 1980s and quarantining HIV-infected nationals.

Violent and repressive history aside, the Cuban government has made some relatively modest moves in the decades since the revolution, including striking down sodomy laws in 1979. (Although, like so many of the island’s other legal movements, however, this one fell short: public displays of homosexuality – and effeminacy – could still garner prison time). CENESEX’s 1989 founding brought trans rights to the national stage and the government soon began backing sex-change operations. Then, in 1992, 21-years after the decriminalization of sodomy, the government normalized age of consent laws, a symbolic equalization of gay and straight sex. Two years later Castro would describe homosexuality as “natural,” and this summer the government supported the International Day Against Homophobia.

Perhaps one of the most culturally influential moments came in 2006, when Cuba’s state-run television began airing The Dark Side of the Moon, a soap opera about a married man who began dabbling in gay sex. Though a bonafide hit – or is it “spectacle”? – the Cuban public has been slow to accept their same-sex loving comrades, and many queer Cubans still find themselves the target of repressive abuse.


[First daughter Mariela Castro provides a public face for the gay rights fight.]
According to a 2007 U.S. State Department report on human rights in Cuba, “Societal discrimination against homosexuals persisted, as police occasionally conducted sweeps in areas where homosexuals congregated, particularly along sections of Havana’s waterfront.” The United States may not be the most unbiased source, yes, but the gays are hardly high on the Department’s list of concerns.

Boris Dittrich, a former Netherlands MP and current Human Rights Watch LGBT Advocacy director, also confirmed arrest rumors:

We have heard that there are some gay rights activists who have been detained. It’s very complicated to get the facts straight, to get to know they have been detained just simply because they are homosexual, or because they were charged with other offenses. It’s difficult to discern.

A bigger understatement we have not heard.

CENESEX’s Guerra denies the “gay detainee” allegations, saying, “There is not any reason to arrest a man for being gay. It is not considered a crime in our penal code.” That may be – perhaps the government doesn’t arrest men for “being gay,” but that doesn’t seem to stop police from detaining activists for other reasons, a clever way of cracking down on potential adversaries while also maintaining a relatively progressive facade. The government’s recent “acceptance,” some say, amounts to nothing more than political manipulation. And they’re right.

Find out what we mean in tomorrow’s conclusion – same gay channel, same gay time!

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