Che, homophobic?

[Aspiring Humanist]

I've been told by members of the right and left that Che Guevara was extremely homophobic and while Guevara was the commander of La Cabana prison he executed/detained homosexuals on the sole basis that they were homosexual. I refuse to believe the man who dedicated his life to fighting for the oppressed would do something so oppressive and inherently reactionary.
Does anyone know the source of this claim, or any facts that could dismiss it?

[Proukunin]

I certainly hope not. If he did than I'll lose any respect for him.

[Terminator X]

The only people I ever hear this coming from are right-wingers and Cuban exiles. I've yet to see a shred of concrete proof.

[Revolutionair]

I've heard Castro confess they treated homosexuals bad after revolution. He said he felt guilty over it and that they should have acted differently.

He didn't say anything about mass executions though. It was just basically if you were already guilty of something, being a homosexual would make things worse. So while it was not a charge on itself, you could get into major troubles for a small crime.

[Aspiring Humanist]

I highly doubt theres any truth to it, I just want to know the origins of the slander. I realize post-revolutionary Cuba wasn't very hospitable to gays, but for Che to do something like that would be to reject all his values and its very hard to see him doing it.
Maybe he was quoted out of context or something?

[Revolutionair]

I've NEVER heard anything about Che executing homosexuals though. It sounds like bullshit to me. Castro did treat homosexuals bad, but I've never heard anything about him executing homosexuals.

[Proukunin]

I just don't understand why Castro would want to treat them bad either. That's just as bad as racism or sexism in my opinion.

[Tablo]

Heard Che was homophobic, but I have never really heard of him acting against homosexuals in any significant way.

Not a big Che fan anyway. :p

[Bronco]

Wouldnt surprise me, post-revolution Cuba wasnt a nice place to be a homosexual, they were treated like absolute shit and regularly imprisoned

[SacRedMan]

How do they know that? It's like they speak like they were there on that moment! :glare:

[CesareBorgia]

Yeah, homosexuals were sent to labour camps in Castro's Cuba for the sole 'crime' of being gay, it went on for a long time and was state policy. It is a basic fact of Castro's regime, this being news to so many of you is surprising.

[Ismail]

I just don't understand why Castro would want to treat them bad either. That's just as bad as racism or sexism in my opinion.Ironically homosexuals were seen as sexist by many Western communists up until the 1960's. Jean-Paul Sartre in his article "What Is A Collaborator?" (written in 1945) basically says that homosexuality leads to pro-fascist sentiment due to a hatred of women or something. In Cuba and in Latin America in general there is a "machismo" culture which basically sees homosexuals as "unmanly" and thus worthy only of contempt. Engels once referred to a homosexual as an "ass-fucker," and Marx supposedly also had some homophobic views. When one French homosexual (I forgot his name) criticized Soviet culture as being "against humanity" or whatever circa 1935 the Communist Parties pretty much kept on insinuating he was a homosexual, ergo his opinions were worth nothing because he hated the working class.

In Eastern Europe homosexuality was strongly associated with pederasty. In Albania it was associated with tribalism and male chauvinism against women. In the USSR it was seen as a symptom of feudalism and/or capitalism that would gradually go away on its own. When that obviously failed to occur it was outlawed in the 1930's.

Evidently times have changed since then and the Western World knows far more about homosexuality and its causes than at that time. Still, if you were to talk to a Cuban Communist or a Russian Communist or a Malian Communist or something, there's a good chance they'll consider homosexuality to be abhorrent behavior.

[MaximMK]

Right wing propaganda trying to create suspicion in our idols who motivate us to keep going.

[Imposter Marxist]

I recommend getting a copy of "rainbow solidarity in defense of cuba" by Leslie Feinberg, it goes into details about the progression of Gay rights in Cuba.

[Joe Payne]

Cuban Anarchism: The History of a Movement, 1865-2001 by Frank Fernandez sheds some light Che's role in the prison system. It talks about how the Cuban State had anarchists imprisoned and executed, some under Che's watch for a time, so it isn't a stretch to say the same happened to homosexuals as well. I know in personal shooting the shit he was known to use the term maricone a lot (I prolly spelled that wrong, but I know that's a homophobic slur in spanish). However that was common anyways.

Che wasn't some flawless martyr. He did some reactionary, fucked up shit to revolutionary workers. His own ideology was also pretty anti-worker and vanguardist. But even if you support his ideology, you can't think he was the best on every question. The Left in general for a long time was absolutely horrible on the question on LGBTQ liberation, so we can't excise him from that general context as well.

[Andropov]

I just don't understand why Castro would want to treat them bad either. That's just as bad as racism or sexism in my opinion.
Marxists judging Revolutionaries devoid of their context is infantile.
In the context in which Castro lived Homophobia was rampant.
To think all Revolutionaries will be devoid of some of the baggage from their context is a simplistic and primitive perspective.
As a Marxist and as Castro's understanding grew the repression of homosexuals was reversed and on this he has publicly appologised and has learnt from the mistakes that was made.
Does that make the repression of homosexuals ok? No of course not but it merely shows us as Marxists that even progressive leftists like Castro are not completely immune to their respective contexts.

[Andropov]

It talks about how the Cuban State had anarchists imprisoned and executed, some under Che's watch for a time, so it isn't a stretch to say the same happened to homosexuals as well.
That is an absolutely ridiculous assertion.
Anarchists were seen as enemys of the Revolution, while Homosexuality was seen as a Bourgeois pursuit created by there decadence.
Two completely differing perspectives.

[FreeSpeechFTW]

"The episode upset us a little because the poor man, apart from being homosexual and a first-rate bore, had been very nice to us, giving us 10 soles each, bringing our total to 479 for me and 163 1/2 to Alberto."-
-Che Guevara

yeah. he was mad homophobic and also very racist as well.

[CommunityBeliever]

yeah. he was mad homophobic and also very racist as well. This is true, he was homophobic and a racist, the capitalist system breeds hatred in people.

However, when later his life he actually became a leftist his bigotry withered away.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

I heard he was indifferent to queers and payed little attention to them...varies on what time period you are referring to though.

[ijrjrnz]

I've been told by members of the right and left that Che Guevara was extremely homophobic and while Guevara was the commander of La Cabana prison he executed/detained homosexuals on the sole basis that they were homosexual. I refuse to believe the man who dedicated his life to fighting for the oppressed would do something so oppressive and inherently reactionary.
Does anyone know the source of this claim, or any facts that could dismiss it?
Che was most definitely not homophobic.

[Kornilios Sunshine]

No I assure you that whatever bad as far as ideology is concerned (e.g. he was a fascist,killer,homophobic) is bullshit propaganda of the actual fascists. They do whatever they can to grow the hate against Che. They can even say he killed millions of bears so he was a speciest.:rolleyes:

[Doflamingo]

I can't see Che being homophobic in the slightest. That's just most likely some capitalist/fascist propaganda.

[Franz Fanonipants]

so was engels

e: "anarchists" are hilarious

[Ismail]

Why wouldn't Che be homophobic? Castro certainly was, and I can't think of any Cuban revolutionaries who advocated anything progressive in-re gay rights. Homophobia was and largely still is the norm for Latin America, just as it is the norm in Africa, Arabia, and much of Asia and the Balkans. Just about every communist brought up and living outside of Western Europe had homophobic views. Marx and Engels themselves had homophobic views. But Marx also believed in phrenology, which demonstrates that times change and that just because someone was homophobic 50 years ago doesn't mean that it's some sort of big stain on their record unless they went out of their way to execute homosexuals or something.

[khad]

Why not? Khrushchev was called a faggot (maricón) on Cuban streets after failing to annihilate America in the missile crisis.

Different times, man. Even the Spanish anarchists put out anti-gay propaganda, because pretty much everybody at the time associated gays with male secret societies and fascist 5th columns.

Now, we know better, but if you're going to apply our contemporary standards on the past, you're going to lose respect for a lot of people.

[tachosomoza]

Oh, for fuck's sake. Right wingers love to trot out things like "Marx said the word nigger, he was a Nazi", or "Engels criticized Jews, he was anti-Semitic", to try to turn blacks and Jews off from leftist thought. These men, although progressive, were products of the 19th and 20th century. You can't paste our standards onto someone born in the 1800s or the 1920s. The criticisms of the order still stand, the opposition to exploitation still stands.

[eyeheartlenin]

The Cuban revolutionary government (which included Che) did institute policies, like the UMAP, explained below, that could certainly be called homophobic.

* * *

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Military Units to Aid Production or UMAP’s (Unidades Militares para la Ayuda de Producción) were allegedly established by the Cuban government in 1965 as a way to eliminate "bourgeois" and "counter-revolutionary" values in the Cuban population ... in particular, among those who neglected taking part in the military service (like conscientious objectors) or who had been rejected from it (most especially, members of the Cuban LGBT community)....

... Fidel Castro told the American journalist Lee Lockwood in 1965 that "we have never believed that an homosexual could personify the character and behavior required to regard him as a true revolutionary, a real communist. This type of deviation crashes with our concept of a communist partisan. But, above all, I don't believe that anybody could have a definite answer about the causes of homosexuality. I think we should treat this problem carefully. But I'll be sincere and tell you that homosexuals should not be allowed to occupy functions where they could influence the youth. ... In the present state of affairs, we must instill in our youth the spirit of discipline, of self-sacrifice and hard work. This attitude might not be the correct one, but it is our sincere opinion on the issue".[3]

Between 1965 and 1968 some prisoners considered to be counter-revolutionary were incarcerated in the UMAP forced labor camps in an attempt to reform them. Supplied with information from local Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs), Cuban police conducted investigations on various individuals.

The camps were closed in 1968 after Fidel Castro sent personnel incognito to experience the treatment. He sent several men from the Communist Youth whose identity was also kept secret. Shortly after these visits and reports, the camps closed, but there are other opinions regarding the closing like U-2 aerial photos taken of the UMAP's Concentration Hard Labor Agricultural Camps, primarily located in the Province of Camaguey and Oriente, complains from the Human Rights, negative world publicity and several democratic countries protests that made Fidel Castro's decision to close the unpopular concentration camps in Cuba.[4]

References ...

3 "LA POLITICA SEXUAL DE REINALDO ARENAS: Realidad, Ficción y el Archivo Real de la Revolución Cubana.", La Jiribilla.
4 http://www.cuba-solidarity.org.uk/faqdocs/Cuba-sexual-diversity.pdf

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Of course he was, he was a macho man who adopted 50s-era values. Castro himself apologized for instituting anti-gay policies. He would not have apologized for it if that had never happened! If Cuban Communism was broken because of homophobia though, then so is Anglo-Saxon Capitalism. At the same time that they were instituting such policies, the British government was driving Alan Turing to death trying to "treat" his homosexuality.

Homophobia is wrong today and was wrong then, but it's a pretty weak standard to use to judge communism or the Cuban revolution in general.

I think the problem with homosexuality goes back to Stalin. Lenin legalized it, but Stalin re-banned it for some reason. After that, other Communist regimes treated gays as counterrevolutionaries, at least until some 2 decades ago. The KPRF and other "communist" parties want to re-ban it, which is much worse IMO considering the serious advances made in psychological medicine which should have made these problems irrelevant.

[khad]

I think the problem with homosexuality goes back to Stalin. Lenin legalized it, but Stalin re-banned it for some reason.
That some reason was that it was the 1930s and leftists associated all that with fascism.

Even Durruti rationalized his hatred for churches by calling them "dens of sodomy." The CNT banned gays from membership.

The KPD and SPD regularly fagbaited Nazi leaders in their publications.

Looks like some people just have difficulty accepting history for what it is and would rather spend their time pointing fingers at boogeymen.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

It being the 30s is not a particularly compelling reason to associate homosexuality with fascism. It makes some sense historically, but it's still a stunning mistake for supposed materialists to have made. It's the kind of reasoning you expect from reactionaries, superstitious types, drunk people in the pub and angry people on the radio, not from people who claim to analyze social relations via objective analysis.

If Durruti was as much of a tyrant to homosexuals as Stalin was then that's something we should obviously be critical about too. But Castro's government was obviously more influenced by Stalin than Durruti because of its alignment with the Eastern Block, so I doubt his actions were as relevant to influencing the policies of the Cuban government.

[Yugo45]

Differen't times, so it wouldn't bother me THAT much if it's true. Unless they really treated them like shit, which is probably right-wing propaganda, but if he was only slightly homophobic, it's not a big deal. Now we know better, and Castro even apologized for the treatment of homosexuals.

Random fact: Raul Castro's daughter is fighting for LGBT rights in Cuba. She is the director of "Cuban National Center for Sex Education", which is state-funded. Same sex marriage isn't allowed yet, but it's put to vote I hear, so it might happen soon.

Also, if trans people want, they can get a free sex change operation and everything that goes with it. (payed by the government)

So yeah, different times.

[khad]

It being the 30s is not a particularly compelling reason to associate homosexuality with fascism. It makes some sense historically, but it's still a stunning mistake for supposed materialists to have made. It's the kind of reasoning you expect from reactionaries, superstitious types, drunk people in the pub and angry people on the radio.
Those superstitious types, drunks, and hooligans you're referring to were the KPD and the SPD.

[Ismail]

Oh, for fuck's sake. Right wingers love to trot out things like "Marx said the word nigger, he was a Nazi", or "Engels criticized Jews, he was anti-Semitic", to try to turn blacks and Jews off from leftist thought.Except Marx and Engels were neither racist nor anti-semitic. They were, however, homophobic.

Also the Soviet government did tolerate homosexuality in the 20's, but they still viewed it as an "illness" that would somehow go away under socialism. In the 1930's this view of homosexuality developed an ideological tinge and was indeed associated with fascism and capitalism in general.


It being the 30s is not a particularly compelling reason to associate homosexuality with fascism. It makes some sense historically, but it's still a stunning mistake for supposed materialists to have made. It's the kind of reasoning you expect from reactionaries, superstitious types, drunk people in the pub and angry people on the radio, not from people who claim to analyze social relations via objective analysis.Again, Marx was a believer in phrenology and practiced it on fellow socialists. See: http://www.believeallthings.com/248/karl-marx-and-phrenology/

It's worth noting that homosexuality was widely seen as being devoid of any basis amongst the proletariat during this period. The overwhelming majority of homosexuals who could afford to be semi-open about their activities came from the petty-bourgeois, bourgeois and royal ranks. There were no real studies about homosexuality until the 70's, and that was in the USA and Western Europe. The concept of a lesbian wasn't even fathomable to a good deal of people. Things that seem absurd to us now were commonly accepted back then, since sexuality was not seriously studied, medicine was largely pre-scientific, etc.

And again, if homosexuality wasn't associated with fascism then it was associated with patriarchal tribal society, as happened in Albania and in 1920's Central Asia where the Soviets tended to link homosexual relations with pederasty.

[tachosomoza]

Marx and Engels were products of the 19th century, and to say that they didn't have SOME prejudices against non European groups is folly. Men of the times...

[Ismail]

Marx and Engels were products of the 19th century, and to say that they didn't have SOME prejudices against non European groups is folly. Men of the times...Yeah, but they didn't actually believe that one "race" was superior to another or anything like that. This is important because there have been people who argue that Marx and Engels actually "advocated" genocide, with quotes taken out of context as "proof" (mainly Engels on the Magyars.)

[tachosomoza]

Yeah, but they didn't actually believe that one "race" was superior to another or anything like that. This is important because there have been people who argue that Marx and Engels actually "advocated" genocide, with quotes taken out of context as "proof" (mainly Engels on the Magyars.)

No, but if you go by the definition of "racist" in the year 2012 (believing that some people are biologically "less evolved" than others, or holding prejudiced generalizations about certain groups), Marx and Engels, along with the vast majority of 19th century Europeans, would probably fit.

And yes, saying that Marx and Engels advocated genocide is folly as well. I actually had one guy tell me that Hitler was a student of Marx and obtained many of his convoluted theories on humanity from him. Crazy world, comrade. Crazy world.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Again, Marx was a believer in phrenology and practiced it on fellow socialists. See: http://www.believeallthings.com/248/karl-marx-and-phrenology/

It's worth noting that homosexuality was widely seen as being devoid of any basis amongst the proletariat during this period. The overwhelming majority of homosexuals who could afford to be semi-open about their activities came from the petty-bourgeois, bourgeois and royal ranks. There were no real studies about homosexuality until the 70's, and that was in the USA and Western Europe. The concept of a lesbian wasn't even fathomable to a good deal of people. Things that seem absurd to us now were commonly accepted back then, since sexuality was not seriously studied, medicine was largely pre-scientific, etc.

And again, if homosexuality wasn't associated with fascism then it was associated with patriarchal tribal society, as happened in Albania and in 1920's Central Asia where the Soviets tended to link homosexual relations with pederasty.

I know about Marx buying into the racism of his time, however that is different-he was not supporting legal sanctions towards such people (he did support the Union in the civil war). We know that's wrong today, but it's also substantively different from actually passing laws which determine the outcome of people's lives.

Also, phrenology was a shitty pseudoscience, but at least it had the veneer of a respectable study at the time. There was no scientific research that indicated that homosexuality was caused by bourgeois culture however, and it shows that those socialists fell victim to the same kind of thought traps which their idealist opponents did. They decided that their own assumptions about the world were true without having to analyze any kind of empirical data to support it, and that the material causes behind a particular phenomenon, in this case homosexuality, were not in need of scientific analysis.

khad-yes and the point is that they were using rubbish reasoning.

[Registered User]

Some Marxists believe that homosexuality is capitalistic,and don't want to have anything to do with it;I'm guessing that Castro,and Che were like that.Good thing there's new gay rights legislation coming in Cuba.

[Ismail]

Speaking of leftists using the word "sodomy" (Durruti, etc.) I am reminded of Hoxha in his diary in 1975: "The Rumanians pose as being against the Soviets, the Chinese are against the Soviets. The Rumanians are friends of the Americans and intervened to bring about reconciliation between the Chinese and the Americans. Ceausescu and Bodnaras became the 'god-fathers' of the Sino-American friendship, which is similar to the Soviet-Rumanian, or Soviet-American relationships. They abuse one another for appearances' sake, but behind the wall they indulge in political, commercial and other sodomy." (Reflections on China Vol. II, p. 151.)

[NoMasters]

Honestly, who gives a f*ck....

He has saved more lives than any gay man or women ever. He is an inspiration, and I honestly think he might've been the best person to live in the past century.

He could hate gays all day but I promise you he wouldn't discriminate them unless of course they are destroying the collective good.

Long live Che!

[tachosomoza]

Hatred leads to discrimination.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

He has saved more lives than any gay man or women ever. He is an inspiration, and I honestly think he might've been the best person to live in the past century.

He could hate gays all day but I promise you he wouldn't discriminate them unless of course they are destroying the collective good.


There are plenty of gay men who changed history for the better. I don't think there is some objective way of telling who saved more lives however. It doesn't even matter though, discrimination is wrong regardless, and we should be able to criticize people when they have false beliefs, even if those people are ideologically similar.

The Cuban government did discriminate against them when they were not harming the collective good. Castro has since apologized for his, because he now recognizes that the policies were judgmental and bigoted and failed to uphold even basic materialist principles.

Remember that Communism isn't about hero-worship, it's about creating a more rational society.

[Tanya]

Sorry for my bad english.

Many people here wrong because apply modern parameters and to compare to the past, not considering the context or in what year, during that period even the World Health Organization ranked the homosexuality as a perversion or mental illness (such as pedophilia) It's likely that he had a wrong view of homosexuality, like 99% of the people of his time, virtually no one in those years was a'' favor'' of homosexuality as today, even many homosexuals were not in favor of himself, and almost no one openly declared homosexual in in the fifties or sixty, many of them deny it even to himself, in fact 99% ot the homosexual had a wife because many refuse to be and drown their dnature. Castro apologized especially for try to ''rehabilitation'' them in the seventy when homosexuality ''existence'' has become more open. But Che was already dead.
According all neutral sources, Che has not done anything to actively against homosexuals, and that's what counts.
Probably he, like all people born in 1928 and grew up without TV etc thought was a bad thing, almost everyone thought at the time and he did not live long enough to see the medicine and the public opinion to change their minds, and recognize that homosexuality is a good thing.
I'm sure that if he had the opportunity to explore the theme would be in favor of homosexuality because he was attracted by the minorities, discriminated people etc
The problem at that time was cultural, it was a topic of which was not discussed, and when it was spoke (subheading) was presented as aberration of the nature or mental illness, such as necrophilia or depofilia today. He, like almost anyone, it is obvious that it could not be in favor of a thing so described, homosexuality was misunderstood by everyone for so many time. NOW finally, people know what is really homosexuality.

[ijrjrnz]

Cuba is today a safe haven for homosexuals.

[Tavarisch_Mike]

Ok, this thread was started for about 9 months ago, but when i saw the title i thought that the accusations wuold be something like that Che had called anyone maricón and frome there commed to the conclusion of that hed must have hated any homosexual.

But here the accusation starts high as the stars! I mean executing people just for being gay?! C'om, when somebody claims that, they got the burden of proof, and its a heavy one in this case. Besides as ijrjrnz says above here, Todays Cuba is very oppen to HBTQ persons ive seen it myselfe. Still... there is homophobia in Cuba like in the rest of the world, even here in the pc west, where homophobia officially is condemd, its still exist.


EDIT: Oh, i forgot to menthion that, at least what i have heard, is that in Latin America, Cuba and Brazil is basicly the only countries where gay people can be oppen with theire sexuality (oppen as in simillar condiotions like larger communities in the west).

[RedAnarchist]

even here in the pc west, where homophobia officially is condemd, its still exist.

A lot of people will condemn homophobia simply to gain popularity. For example, David Cameron had a very homophobic voting record in Parliament, but now he is in power, he claims to be supportive of gay rights. I don't know Cameron personally, but I bet his personal views on gay rights don't match those he claims in public.

[Tavarisch_Mike]

A lot of people will condemn homophobia simply to gain popularity. For example, David Cameron had a very homophobic voting record in Parliament, but now he is in power, he claims to be supportive of gay rights. I don't know Cameron personally, but I bet his personal views on gay rights don't match those he claims in public.


Yeah, Unfortunatley many politicians probalby have made part of theire whole career by doing like Cameron.