Universal Struggle
28th May 2010, 17:34
A great PDF on Cuba's LGBT rights.
http://www.cuba-solidarity.org.uk/faqdocs/Cuba-sexual-diversity.pdf
My position on this is to not give my full support to Cuba until LGBT rights are fully supported and all state repression from top to bottom is stopped.
Chauvanists will say, we must be critical but support them, yet if black people were treated the same way, like in the US, we condemn it, it is about time the left, fully supported the LGBT community.
PRE-REVOLUTIONARY CUBA
In common with other countries in the region, the history of the Cuban
gay and lesbian community has been an unhappy one.
The revolution of
1959 inherited legislation introduced in 1938 – the Public Ostentation Law -
(1) Comisión Ciudadana Contra los Crímenes de Odio por Homofobia: report
www.ilga.org/print.asp?LanguageID=2&FileCategory=21&FileID=512&ZoneI (http://www.ilga.org/print.asp?LanguageID=2&FileCategory=21&FileID=512&ZoneI)
which imposed a six-month prison sentence (or equivalent fine) on anyone
who “habitually engaged in homosexual acts”, who sexually propositioned
someone or who “created a public scandal” by openly “flaunting his
homosexuality in public”(2).
Intellectuals, writers and artists were
associated with homosexuality and therefore found themselves denigrated
by a society characterised by its machista values, cultural backwardness
and adherence to the Roman Catholic Church which viewed same-sex
relationships as a sexual aberration.
Socially the subject was considered
taboo.
To make matters worse, illicit gay sex was a component of the
prostitution industry that thrived in Cuba before the Revolution, Cuba being
viewed the biggest off-shore brothel in the Caribbean.
1959 – 1969
Official and public attitudes towards gays and lesbians did not
change with the arrival of the Revolution.
In addition to the traditional
machista culture and Catholic values, Cuba’s new ally, the USSR held
equally hostile policies towards gays and lesbians, seeing homosexuality
as a product of the decadent capitalist society prevailing in Cuba in the
1950s.
Furthermore, in a society which was the target of increasing
hostility by its close and powerful neighbour, the United States,
culminating in the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 and the Missile Crisis of
1962, the gay community was seen as a threat to the military order.
Accordingly, in the early years of that decade repression against the gay
community was intensified as military training and defence measures were
stepped up.
In 1965 the Cuban government sent members of the population who
refused to join or who were not considered appropriate for the armed
forces to camps (Military Units to Aid Production) to carry out agricultural
work, such as harvesting sugar cane. These included gays (people who
were openly gay could not join the armed forces) as well as Jehovah
Witnesses, hippies and conscientious objectors.
The camps would take
the place of the military obligations that all Cubans were expected to meet.
In addition it was believed that the work, together with the strict regimes
operating within the camps, would ‘rehabilitate’ the inmates.
Some of
these camps operated a highly repressive regime that became notorious
within and outside Cuba.
Understandably there were protests against the UMAP camps from all
quarters. In his article ‘Jon Hillson
describes how Fidel Castro visited one such camp incognito to experience
the treatment for himself. He was followed by 100 boys from the
Communist Youth whose identity was also kept secret. In 1968, shortly
after these visits, the camps closed.
In spite of the closure of the UMAP camps, homophobia in Cuba
persisted in the 1970s. In April 1971, following a discussion on
homosexuality at the Cuban Educational and Cultural Congress,
homosexuality was declared to be a deviation incompatible with the
Revolution and therefore was considered sufficient grounds for
discriminatory measures to be adopted against the gay community.
As a
result homophobia was institutionalised. Gay and lesbian artists, teachers
and actors lost their jobs; gays and lesbians were expelled from the
Communist Party, students were expelled from university and gays were
forbidden contact with children and young people and could not represent
their country.
This ruling was overturned in 1975 when the Supreme Court found in
favour of a group of marginalised gay artists who were claiming
compensation and reinstatement in their place of work.
The Court’s
decision constituted an initial change in official attitudes towards gays and
lesbians who began to see a softening in the treatment they experienced.
In the same year a new Ministry of Culture was formed led by Armando Hart
Dávalos and a more liberal cultural policy was instituted.
In addition a
commission was set up to investigate homosexuality, leading to the
decriminalisation of same-sex relationships in 1979.
1980 – 89
In the early 1980s many official attitudes remained hostile and gays
and lesbians continued to be subjected to police raids and round-ups (4).
The decade started with the Mariel boat lift in which some 125,000 people,
including many gays and lesbians, left for the United States. Some of
those who left had been pressurised to leave Cuba.
Nonetheless other official attitudes continued to relax. In 1981 the view
was stated in a publication entitled “In Defence of Love”, produced by the
Ministry of Culture, that homosexuality was a variant of human sexuality.
It
was argued that homophobic bigotry was an unacceptable attitude
inherited by the Revolution and that all sanctions against gays should be
opposed.
The same dichotomy in attitudes existed in the second half of the
decade. In 1986 all people with HIV or AIDS were compelled to live in
sanatoria where they received medical treatment but were isolated from the
rest of society.
Visits were strictly controlled. This policy provoked much
criticism both within Cuba and abroad.
However in the same year there was more evidence of a conscious
effort on the part of the state to counter homophobia.
Cuba was engaged
in a process of re-evaluation in which economic, social and ideological
policies were being critically examined.
These efforts to oppose homophobia continued to gather momentum.
In 1988 the government repealed the 1938 Public Ostentation Law and the
police received orders not to harass gays and lesbians.
In the same year,
in an interview for Galician television, Fidel Castro criticised the rigid
attitudes that had prevailed towards homosexuality.
1990 – 99
It was in the 1990s that a radical change of attitude towards gays and
lesbians became evident in Cuba.
At a congress run by the Union of Young Communists in 1992,
prejudicial views against homosexuality were challenged by Vilma Espín,
president of the Cuban Women’s Federation.
The following year saw a marked increase in measures to promote
respect for and a more just treatment of gays and lesbians.
First the government lifted the compulsory internment in sanatoria of
HIV and AIDS patients. Since then patients have been able to live at home,
work and receive treatment in outpatient clinics after receiving an initial
eight-week education and drug support programme at a sanatorium.
(In
this context it should be added that Cuba’s HIV infection rates at 0.1%
3,200 cases out of 11 million in 2004 - (5) are the lowest in the region. In
addition Cuba produces its own generic anti-retroviral treatment which is
supplied free to everyone who needs it.)
Secondly, in an interview with a former Nicaraguan government official,
Tomás Borge, Fidel Castro declared that he opposed policies against gays
and lesbians as he considered homosexuality to be a natural tendency that
should be respected.
The same year a series of sex education workshops
was run throughout the country carrying the message that homophobia
was a prejudice.
However it was the screening by the government-run film industry of
the film Strawberry and Chocolate by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, also in 1993,
that brought the subject of homosexuality into the public domain for the
first time.
The film criticises the narrow, doctrinaire ways of thinking in the
1970s and discusses the question of anti-gay prejudice and the unjust
treatment suffered by gays. It provoked a great deal of comment and
discussion among the public and the questions raised testified to the fact
that in Cuba in the 1990s the subject of homosexuality could be discussed
openly and that gays and lesbians could be more confident about revealing
their sexuality.
It was also during the mid-nineties that one of Cuba’s most
popular singers – Pablo Milanés – publicly dedicated a song he had written
about gay men to Cuban homosexuals.
In 1995 Cuban drag queens led the annual May Day procession, joined
by two gay delegations from the USA and every year since then gays and
lesbians have participated in the parade carrying the rainbow flag.
2000-
The first decade of the twenty-first century continues to show a desire
on the part of the government to integrate the gay and lesbian community
into Cuban society.
The ground covered by Cuba may be gauged more accurately if one
compares the changes that have come about in that country with the
contents of an article published by ILGA dated 25 August 2004 (15).
This
article describes how in Colombia and in many other countries of Latin
America, the human rights of people who are not heterosexual are
habitually violated in all aspects of their lives. Gays, lesbians and
transsexuals are the victims of murder, injustice, violence and humiliation
and find themselves excluded from all forms of human interaction, ranging
from the family, education, the workplace and health services to politics,
the legal system and the media.
The maltreatment and violence directed at
these communities is not discussed publicly and often is not considered a
problem, provoking no more than indifference on the part of the authorities
of the countries in question.
I would conclude that in the long term also, it is highly likely that the
improvements in the situation of gays, lesbians and transsexuals in Cuba
will gather momentum as the island continues to work towards achieving
justice and dignity for all its citizens.
http://www.cuba-solidarity.org.uk/faqdocs/Cuba-sexual-diversity.pdf
My position on this is to not give my full support to Cuba until LGBT rights are fully supported and all state repression from top to bottom is stopped.
Chauvanists will say, we must be critical but support them, yet if black people were treated the same way, like in the US, we condemn it, it is about time the left, fully supported the LGBT community.
PRE-REVOLUTIONARY CUBA
In common with other countries in the region, the history of the Cuban
gay and lesbian community has been an unhappy one.
The revolution of
1959 inherited legislation introduced in 1938 – the Public Ostentation Law -
(1) Comisión Ciudadana Contra los Crímenes de Odio por Homofobia: report
www.ilga.org/print.asp?LanguageID=2&FileCategory=21&FileID=512&ZoneI (http://www.ilga.org/print.asp?LanguageID=2&FileCategory=21&FileID=512&ZoneI)
which imposed a six-month prison sentence (or equivalent fine) on anyone
who “habitually engaged in homosexual acts”, who sexually propositioned
someone or who “created a public scandal” by openly “flaunting his
homosexuality in public”(2).
Intellectuals, writers and artists were
associated with homosexuality and therefore found themselves denigrated
by a society characterised by its machista values, cultural backwardness
and adherence to the Roman Catholic Church which viewed same-sex
relationships as a sexual aberration.
Socially the subject was considered
taboo.
To make matters worse, illicit gay sex was a component of the
prostitution industry that thrived in Cuba before the Revolution, Cuba being
viewed the biggest off-shore brothel in the Caribbean.
1959 – 1969
Official and public attitudes towards gays and lesbians did not
change with the arrival of the Revolution.
In addition to the traditional
machista culture and Catholic values, Cuba’s new ally, the USSR held
equally hostile policies towards gays and lesbians, seeing homosexuality
as a product of the decadent capitalist society prevailing in Cuba in the
1950s.
Furthermore, in a society which was the target of increasing
hostility by its close and powerful neighbour, the United States,
culminating in the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 and the Missile Crisis of
1962, the gay community was seen as a threat to the military order.
Accordingly, in the early years of that decade repression against the gay
community was intensified as military training and defence measures were
stepped up.
In 1965 the Cuban government sent members of the population who
refused to join or who were not considered appropriate for the armed
forces to camps (Military Units to Aid Production) to carry out agricultural
work, such as harvesting sugar cane. These included gays (people who
were openly gay could not join the armed forces) as well as Jehovah
Witnesses, hippies and conscientious objectors.
The camps would take
the place of the military obligations that all Cubans were expected to meet.
In addition it was believed that the work, together with the strict regimes
operating within the camps, would ‘rehabilitate’ the inmates.
Some of
these camps operated a highly repressive regime that became notorious
within and outside Cuba.
Understandably there were protests against the UMAP camps from all
quarters. In his article ‘Jon Hillson
describes how Fidel Castro visited one such camp incognito to experience
the treatment for himself. He was followed by 100 boys from the
Communist Youth whose identity was also kept secret. In 1968, shortly
after these visits, the camps closed.
In spite of the closure of the UMAP camps, homophobia in Cuba
persisted in the 1970s. In April 1971, following a discussion on
homosexuality at the Cuban Educational and Cultural Congress,
homosexuality was declared to be a deviation incompatible with the
Revolution and therefore was considered sufficient grounds for
discriminatory measures to be adopted against the gay community.
As a
result homophobia was institutionalised. Gay and lesbian artists, teachers
and actors lost their jobs; gays and lesbians were expelled from the
Communist Party, students were expelled from university and gays were
forbidden contact with children and young people and could not represent
their country.
This ruling was overturned in 1975 when the Supreme Court found in
favour of a group of marginalised gay artists who were claiming
compensation and reinstatement in their place of work.
The Court’s
decision constituted an initial change in official attitudes towards gays and
lesbians who began to see a softening in the treatment they experienced.
In the same year a new Ministry of Culture was formed led by Armando Hart
Dávalos and a more liberal cultural policy was instituted.
In addition a
commission was set up to investigate homosexuality, leading to the
decriminalisation of same-sex relationships in 1979.
1980 – 89
In the early 1980s many official attitudes remained hostile and gays
and lesbians continued to be subjected to police raids and round-ups (4).
The decade started with the Mariel boat lift in which some 125,000 people,
including many gays and lesbians, left for the United States. Some of
those who left had been pressurised to leave Cuba.
Nonetheless other official attitudes continued to relax. In 1981 the view
was stated in a publication entitled “In Defence of Love”, produced by the
Ministry of Culture, that homosexuality was a variant of human sexuality.
It
was argued that homophobic bigotry was an unacceptable attitude
inherited by the Revolution and that all sanctions against gays should be
opposed.
The same dichotomy in attitudes existed in the second half of the
decade. In 1986 all people with HIV or AIDS were compelled to live in
sanatoria where they received medical treatment but were isolated from the
rest of society.
Visits were strictly controlled. This policy provoked much
criticism both within Cuba and abroad.
However in the same year there was more evidence of a conscious
effort on the part of the state to counter homophobia.
Cuba was engaged
in a process of re-evaluation in which economic, social and ideological
policies were being critically examined.
These efforts to oppose homophobia continued to gather momentum.
In 1988 the government repealed the 1938 Public Ostentation Law and the
police received orders not to harass gays and lesbians.
In the same year,
in an interview for Galician television, Fidel Castro criticised the rigid
attitudes that had prevailed towards homosexuality.
1990 – 99
It was in the 1990s that a radical change of attitude towards gays and
lesbians became evident in Cuba.
At a congress run by the Union of Young Communists in 1992,
prejudicial views against homosexuality were challenged by Vilma Espín,
president of the Cuban Women’s Federation.
The following year saw a marked increase in measures to promote
respect for and a more just treatment of gays and lesbians.
First the government lifted the compulsory internment in sanatoria of
HIV and AIDS patients. Since then patients have been able to live at home,
work and receive treatment in outpatient clinics after receiving an initial
eight-week education and drug support programme at a sanatorium.
(In
this context it should be added that Cuba’s HIV infection rates at 0.1%
3,200 cases out of 11 million in 2004 - (5) are the lowest in the region. In
addition Cuba produces its own generic anti-retroviral treatment which is
supplied free to everyone who needs it.)
Secondly, in an interview with a former Nicaraguan government official,
Tomás Borge, Fidel Castro declared that he opposed policies against gays
and lesbians as he considered homosexuality to be a natural tendency that
should be respected.
The same year a series of sex education workshops
was run throughout the country carrying the message that homophobia
was a prejudice.
However it was the screening by the government-run film industry of
the film Strawberry and Chocolate by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, also in 1993,
that brought the subject of homosexuality into the public domain for the
first time.
The film criticises the narrow, doctrinaire ways of thinking in the
1970s and discusses the question of anti-gay prejudice and the unjust
treatment suffered by gays. It provoked a great deal of comment and
discussion among the public and the questions raised testified to the fact
that in Cuba in the 1990s the subject of homosexuality could be discussed
openly and that gays and lesbians could be more confident about revealing
their sexuality.
It was also during the mid-nineties that one of Cuba’s most
popular singers – Pablo Milanés – publicly dedicated a song he had written
about gay men to Cuban homosexuals.
In 1995 Cuban drag queens led the annual May Day procession, joined
by two gay delegations from the USA and every year since then gays and
lesbians have participated in the parade carrying the rainbow flag.
2000-
The first decade of the twenty-first century continues to show a desire
on the part of the government to integrate the gay and lesbian community
into Cuban society.
The ground covered by Cuba may be gauged more accurately if one
compares the changes that have come about in that country with the
contents of an article published by ILGA dated 25 August 2004 (15).
This
article describes how in Colombia and in many other countries of Latin
America, the human rights of people who are not heterosexual are
habitually violated in all aspects of their lives. Gays, lesbians and
transsexuals are the victims of murder, injustice, violence and humiliation
and find themselves excluded from all forms of human interaction, ranging
from the family, education, the workplace and health services to politics,
the legal system and the media.
The maltreatment and violence directed at
these communities is not discussed publicly and often is not considered a
problem, provoking no more than indifference on the part of the authorities
of the countries in question.
I would conclude that in the long term also, it is highly likely that the
improvements in the situation of gays, lesbians and transsexuals in Cuba
will gather momentum as the island continues to work towards achieving
justice and dignity for all its citizens.