The lights and shadows of the repression of homosexuality in revolutionary Cuba
EDITORIAL GAYLES.TV.- It matters little that a regime is totalitarian or democratic, republican or monarchical, arising from the polls, a revolutionary uprising or a coup d'état, all, absolutely all have chiaroscuro and especially in regard to the question of the treatment of homosexuality. So now, that the ashes of Fidel Castro rest in the cemetery of Santiago de Cuba after 9 days of mourning and honors to the revolutionary leader, perhaps it is the moment to try to recapitulate on the situation of the homosexuality in the Castro regime.
When the so-called "bearded", Fidel and his brother Raúl Castro, Che Guevara, Camilo Cienfuegos, Huber Matos and Juan Almeida among others, take power in Cuba causing the fall of the dictator Fulgencio Batista, they find themselves with a social and economic situation that makes some historians describe the pre-revolutionary Cuba as "The brothel of the USA". Casinos, weapons, drugs and prostitution, of all kinds, also that of many young Cubans who, regardless of their orientation, offer sexual favors in exchange for a few dollars. In this context, Castro considers homosexual individuals as a burden, one more of the vices inherited from Batista's Cuba, if not as agents of imperialism. In the paranoia of the revolutionary outbreak, bars of environment and zones of encounter of homosexuals happen to be considered centers of revolutionary anti-activities that must be eradicated. Fidel himself at 1965 declares: "We can not believe that a homosexual could meet the conditions and the requirements of conduct that would allow us to consider him a true revolutionary, a true communist militant"These words opened the ban on what would be a brutal persecution of homosexuals and transsexuals by the Cuban government for decades.
The maximum exponent of this repression is the forced labor camps that were installed in the province of Camaguey. Its objective was to isolate and control elements susceptible to suppose any type of dissidence with the Castro regime, intellectuals, hippies, members of religious sects and how not a huge number of homosexuals. It was about the calls Military Units of Support to Production (UMAP), created in principle to reform those who had refused to do military service or who, for various reasons, had been rejected in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba. Officially they were rewarded with a salary of 7 pesos and they had some Sunday free. The documentary "Conduct impropia" by Néstor Almendros and Orlando Jiménez Leal it shows us another reality. The truth is that philosophy was far from being reformist, rather it was about controlling and repressing dissidence of any kind. After receiving false citations for medical checks, those selected were sent to the various camps of Camagüey where they received everything but military training. According to the historian Joseph Tahbaz, the prisoners there spent long days in full sun working basically in the sugarcane, then came the talks of "awareness" and in the case of homosexuals the "cures" and attempts to eradicate their sexual behavior. According to the story of the homosexual playwright Héctor Santiago that he was an intern at a UMAP center, "Sometimes they left you without water and without food for three days while they showed you pictures of naked men and then they gave you food and showed you pictures of women." Santiago himself tells us about electric shocks and other "treatments." The result was 500 inmates admitted to psychiatric centers, 70 shot or killed for receiving torture and more than 180 suicide. The numbers speak for themselves.
Of course the situation on the island evolved over time. Fidel Castro himself in the year 2010 in an interview to The day declares in relation to the homosexual question: "If I have to take responsibility I assume mine. I will not blame others (...). They were times of great injustice, a great injustice! I've made it whoever it is. If we did it, we would. " Those words put an end to a 5-decade persecution and marked the beginning of an opening that, although it does not reach the approval of legal unions between people of the same sex, does prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation in 2013. A paradoxical legal situation in matters that affect LGTBI people. To mention an example, since 2008 transsexual people have free access to sex reassignment surgery, but they continue to have access to higher education and very serious problems to find employment, which means that they often survive regardless of society resorting to prostitution.
There would be much more to say about the peculiar process of the rights of homosexuals in the Caribbean island, on personages like the activist, sexólogo and deputy Mariela Castro, Raúl's daughter and Fidel's niece who from the CENESEX (National Center for Sex Education), has become a standard bearer of LGBT rights in Cuba. And how about the fundamental role that Cuban cinema has played in this struggle, something that gives of itself as to be addressed in another article.
It is not a question of condemning the Cuban revolution, much less, its achievements in areas such as education or health were notorious, but as we pointed out at the beginning all governments have chiaroscuro in this and other issues and Fidel's Cuba was not even better nor worse in that aspect than the Spain of Franco or the Italy of Mussolini.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCUP4Ai1CaQ]
Sources: Magnet.Xataca.com, Publico.es, La Jornada
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