Cuba: Gay Pride march banned
The march was organised by the Foundation LGTB Reinaldo Arenas in Memoriam and supported by the Unity Coalition a Latino/Hispanic gay rights group in Florida.
Cuba’s LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transsexual) community had been encouraged to think that things were changing in Cuba, a country where homophobia and police repression of the LGBT community is still commonplace. The reaction to the attempted march shows that change is still a long way off.
Hope for change centred around the actions of Mariela Castro who heads the islands National Centre for Sex Education. Mariela Castro has recently made a series of statements against homophobia in Cuba and, as she is the daughter of Cuba’s new President Raul Castro, she is assumed to have the support of Communist Party leaders.
In May she organised a one-day conference in Havana as part of an International Day Against Homophobia. It was the largest open gathering of the Cuban LGBT community and some government figures were in attendance. But the limits of the new policy were quickly made clear when some at the conference spoke of “streaming into the streets” for a spontaneous gay-pride parade. Party supporters spoke against any such actions arguing that Cuban society was “not ready” for such public demonstrations of gay-pride
While Havana has a gay scene with its own clubs and discos it is still subject to police repression with clubs sometimes raided and closed and the organisers fined. Prejudice against Gays and Lesbians is still widespread both at work and within the Cuban Communist Party. Only this year has it become possible for transsexuals to have sex change operations within Cuba’s health care system, while a proposal to allow legal recognition of same-sex unions appears stalled in the legislative system.
Like the other Stalinist states, the Cuban state has a record of severe repression of homosexuals. Homosexuals were treated as “deviants” and in the 1960s, shortly after the revolution, a wave of repression closed down gay magazines and bars and sent many openly gay Cubans to labour camps for “re-education”. Fidel Castro regularly referred to gays in the mid 60s as “maricones” (faggots) and “agents of imperialism”. By the late seventies, with the emergence of an established Gay and Lesbian rights movements around the world, this repression became awkward for “progressive” Cuba and restrictions and repression were eased. In 1979 homosexuality was formally decriminalised, though discrimination and homophobia remained rife.
Despite the easing of restrictions on the LGBT community in Cuba in the 1990s, any attempts at self-organisation by this community was still greeted with state repression. A gay and Lesbian civil rights organisation that was formed in 1994 was shut down in 1997 with its members taken into custody.
The Cuban Stalinists continue to fear any expression of independent organisation and are clearly determined to keep any moves to challenge homophobia under state control, within organisations such as Mariela Castro’s Sex Education Centre. The fact that the recent attempt to organise a gay pride march was linked to demanding an apology from the state and Cuban CP for its past oppression of the lesbian and gay community no doubt contributed to the arrests of its organisers and banning of the march.
All supporters of LGBT rights, democrats and socialists should unite in protesting the continued repression of independent LGBT organisations in Cuba and demand the immediate release of all those arrested.
Thu 10, July 2008 @ 21:21
discussion of this article
Louis Proyect said…
Sun 13, July 2008 @ 01:30
twp77 said…
Sun 13, July 2008 @ 02:42
Wladek Flakin said…
Sun 13, July 2008 @ 13:50
Dan said…
Mon 14, July 2008 @ 15:48
twp77 said…
Wed 16, July 2008 @ 10:28
Wladek said…
Wed 16, July 2008 @ 15:49
Marcel Hatch said…
Sat 26, July 2008 @ 04:39