Fidel Castro on Cuba’s Anti-Gay Persecutions
Posted by Mike E on August 31, 2010
From Mexico’s La Jornada as part of a longer interview:
Carmen Lira Saade: Hace cinco décadas, y a causa de la homofobia, se marginó a los homosexuales en Cuba y a muchos se les envió a campos de trabajo militar-agrícola, acusándolos de contrarrevolucionarios
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Fidel Castro: Sí –recuerda–, fueron momentos de una gran injusticia, ¡una gran injusticia! –repite enfático–, la haya hecho quien sea. Si la hicimos nosotros, nosotros… Estoy tratando de delimitar mi responsabilidad en todo eso porque, desde luego, personalmente, yo no tengo ese tipo de prejuicios.
The following is a translation from Blabbeando, thanks to Walter Lippmann.
[NOTE: The reporter writes in the first person and uses dashes for some citations and quotation marks for others, making the interview difficult to follow at parts. Nevertheless I have tried to retain the punctuation used in the original Spanish-language article from La Jornada].
Even though there is nothing that shows he feels any discomfort, I do not think Fidel is going to like what I am about to say.
- Comandante, despite the enchantments of the Cuban Revolution, the acknowledgment of and solidarity with a great part of the intellectual universe, the great achievements of the people against the blockade, in short, everything – everything – went down the pipes as a result of the persecution against homosexuals in Cuba.
Fidel doesn’t shy away from the topic. He doesn’t deny nor reject the claim. He only asks for time to remember – he says – how and when prejudice took over the revolutionary ranks.
Five decades ago, based on homophobia, homosexuals were marginalized in Cuba and many were sent to agricultural-military labor camps accusing them of being “counterrevolutionaries.”
- Yes, he remembers, it was a time of great injustice – A great injustice! – he repeats emphatically – no matter who did it. If it was us who did it, us… I am trying to define my responsibility in all that because, of course, I don’t hold that type of prejudice.
It is known that among his oldest of friends, there are homosexuals.
- But then, how was that hatred against the ‘different’ established?
He believes all was the result of a spontaneous reaction in the revolutionary ranks, which came from tradition. In earlier Cuba blacks were not the only ones discriminated against; women were also discriminated and, of course, homosexuals…
- Yes, yes. But not in the Cuba of the ‘new’ morality, the pride of those revolutionaries on the inside and on the outside…
- Who, then, was directly or indirectly responsible for not putting a stop to what was happening in Cuban society? The Party? Because the Communist Party of Cuba still does not ‘explicitly’ ban discrimination based on sexual orientation.
- No – says Fidel – If someone is responsible, it’s me…
“It is true that at the time I could not take care of that issue… I found myself immersed, primarily, in the October Crisis [as the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 is known in the island], in war, on political matters…”
- But this became a serious and grave political problem, Comandante.
- Understood, understood … We didn’t know how to give it value … systematic sabotages, armed attacks were happening all the time; we had so many problems, some terrible, problems of life or death – you know? – at we did not give it enough attention.
- After all that, it became very difficult to defend the Revolution abroad… The image had forever been damaged in some places, particularly in Europe.
- Understood, understood – he repeats -; it was just…
- The persecution of homosexuals could happen with be lesser or greater protest, anywhere. Not in revolutionary Cuba – I tell him.
- Understood; It’s like when a saint sins, right?… It’s not the same thing as when a sinner sins, no?
Fidel gives a faint smile, then get serious again:
- Look: Imagine how our days were in those first few months of the Revolution; the war with the Yankees, the how you think were the days of ours in those early months of the Revolution: the war with the Yankees, the issue of the armaments, and, almost simultaneously, the planned attempts on my own life…
Fidel reveals how they all had “tremendous” influence on him and how his life was changed by the life-threats and actual attacks he suffered:
“I could not go anywhere, I didn’t even have were to live…” Betrayals were the order of the day and I had to go a salto de mata [an expression that means 'to live day to day']…
“To escape the CIA, which used to buy so many traitors, sometimes among my own people, was not an easy thing; but whatever, anyway, if responsibility has to be taken, I take my own. I will not blame others…”, says the revolutionary leader.
He only regrets not having corrected it back then…
The article goes on to mention the work of Mariela Castro. Fidel’s niece, in pushing for LGBT rights in the island and recent advances which include public health policies that allow transgender people to undergo gender-reassignment surgery free of charge.
Walter Lippmann said
I hope to have a full translation of Fidel’s interview published today in LA JORNADA in a day or two. For the moment, a partial translation:
http://blabbeando.blogspot.com/2010/08/fidel-castro-on-persecution-against.html The editor is very hostile to Cuba, but the words of Fidel Castro speak for themselves.
Wendy Iriepa (photo below, at link), a transsexual who has undergone a sex change operation, speaks to Reuters in an interview in Havana May 12, 2010. Today this 36-year-old tall, blond, exuberant Cuban is the symbol of a revolutionary program of free surgery sex change in Cuba promoted by Mariela Castro, daughter of President Raul Castro. Picture taken May 12. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/photo/2010-05/16/c_13297069.htm
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/photo/2010-05/16/c_13297069_2.htm
Cuba’s historical experience with LGBT people can be traced in a few interesting books, such as Ian Lumsden’s MACHOS, MARICONES AND GAYS among others. Movies such as STRAWBERRY AND CHOCOLATE, and FAMILY VIDEO, starring two of Cuba’s best-known actors: Enrique Molina and Veronica Lynn should be seen by all interested in these themes. Mariela Castro’s work as director of the island’s National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX) is playing a key role in trying to educate the Cuban public about the need to understand and accept sexual diversity. A recent documentary (I haven’t seen it yet) tells of the life of a Cuban transsexual.
Here’s the chapter on Lesbianism in a recently-published mass market paperback, ENIGMAS OF FEMALE SEXUALITY by Aloyma Ravelo:
http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs2885.html
The United Nations World Anti-Homophobia Day has been celebrated by government-organized events in Cuba.
For several years I’ve been collecting materials on this, going back as far as 1965. These include extensive comments by Fidel Castro going back to 1965, and many Cuban documents with original translations to English:
http://www.walterlippmann.com/lgbt-cuba.html
And I’ve been tracking these developments via the CubaNews list, now in its second decade of service:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
Walter Lippmann said
For several years I’ve been collecting materials on this, going back as far as 1965. These include extensive comments by Fidel Castro going back to 1965, and many Cuban documents with original translations to English:
http://www.walterlippmann.com/lgbt-cuba.html
Mike E said
Thanks for these materials, Walter.
Walter writes:
Perhaps if you would break down your “read” on what Castro said.
It is progress of course for him to clearly condemn the past policies in this way. There is no detailed acknowledgment of what was done (jailing and public demonization of gay people, quarantining of people with AIDS, what else?) But even without any characterization of what was done, it is good to condemn it, especially if gay sex is now formally decriminalized and if (as CNN reports) there are attempts to move to accept same-sex unions.
But I’m curious to hear what people think of the actual language of his statement (its analysis of the source of the problem, and also its description of what his own error and responsibility were.)
Doesn’t the fine print of his statement raises questions when Castro says he has personally never been against gay people, (“several of his best friends were….”) but that he was too busy in the 1970s defending the nation (and his own life) to pay attention to what was happening to gays?
He takes personal responsibility (in that context — i.e. presumably for not being involved enough, rather than for actually being involved in any anti-gay policies.
The interviewer asks Castro about the damage it caused — and that too is a question to lay out. What was the cost to the people targeted? Doesn’t one need an accounting? People falsely jailed, driven from jobs, etc.? Shouldn’t numbers be given, apologies made, restitution provided? Shouldn’t the names of involved officials be named, and each given a chance to do a serious accounting before the public?
And what is the reason for the change now? Is it tied to the needs of Cuba’s tourist industry? Or and attempt to “set things straight” — how clear does the taking of responsibilities need to be in order to start to set things straight?
CWM said
An interesting dissertation came out on this topic a few years ago. I haven’t been able to get my hands on it, but here’s the abstract:
= = =
Revolutionary Desires: Sexuality and late-socialism in Cuba
by Stout, Noelle Monet, Ph.D., Harvard University, 2008, 256 pages; AAT 3312532
Abstract (Summary)
In the late 1980s, Cuban socialist leaders began to soften official rhetoric toward homosexuality for the first time since the Cuban Revolution. After decades of promoting a rigidly homophobic nationalism, state agencies allowed for a notable rise of queer visibility. Homosexual protagonists debuted in state-funded films and television serials and appeared in literary and theatrical productions. State-run public health organizations advocated for the legal rights of same-sex couples, offered support groups for transgender Cubans, and reformed HIV/AIDS quarantine policies. Yet as artistic and health industries promoted new forms of sexual tolerance, police intensified crackdowns on same-sex enclaves that eventually resulted in the eradication of queer public gatherings in Havana by January 2007.
My dissertation examines this paradox to argue that the repression of same- sex enclaves was not the result of a homophobic backlash, but rather reflected new ideas about the fragility of socialist values following the dissolution of the Socialist Bloc.
As Cuban leaders incorporated sexual difference into nationalist projects, the influx of foreign tourists and the subsequent rise of same-sex prostitution linked queer enclaves to impending capitalist invasions.
My argument draws on the experiences and perspectives of gay Cubans, foreign tourists, sex workers, and representatives from Cuban state agencies, which I gathered during nineteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Havana from 2001 to 2007.
My argument that queer citizenship in Cuba is inextricably linked to post-Soviet economic and social transformations extends anthropological studies that explore gender and sexuality from a transnational perspective. I demonstrate how “globalization” was not a universal, modernizing process that affected local Cuban sexualities, but rather a discourse that defined ideas about “the local” and “the global” in ways that both challenged and naturalized hierarchies of difference.
Furthermore, my findings challenge scholars of Cuban Studies that posit an opening toward Cuban homosexuality in the 1990s by illustrating the contradictions that characterized the rise of queer visibility during the island’s precarious transition to late-socialism.
saoirse said
CWM that paper looks very interesting. I do wonder about framing the issue as one of queer citizenship, queer enclaves and queer identity. In the paper it seems that queer is being used as an umbrella term to encompass the LGBTQ communities. Queer, at least in the US, has been a contested and evolving term. In the 70s Lesbian separatism emerged in part out of the misogyny of the gay rights movement. Lesbians would to a express the particularism. Similarly in the 80s and 80s Bisexuals, Transsexuals (still later changed to Transgender or Transgendered) mirrored the same practice. Meanwhile a more perhaps radical approach sought to redefine the whole project as one of queer and queerness against a mainstream gay identity. This frequently included BDSM activist, some trans sub communities, sex workers, the poly amours, etc. Post Clinton, L word, etc, the LGBT community has had many advances since then while outside of many gay meccas like NYC or SF ask a gay woman what a queer is and they would likely recoil at what they perceive is an insult. Curious what the histories of the LGBTQ communities are in Cuba. Look forward to reading more…
another brother said
Close friends of mine relayed stories of how awful it was for homosexuals in Cuba in the bad days. Equation of treason with gayness, sadistic use of public humiliation. And then, in the 90s, the rise of jineteros and sex work with tourists for the basics of life during the special period. This apology is commendable.
My own travel to Cuba in the late 90s was surprising at how open the gay scene was already, in Vedado and up to the Malecon. Drag queens and trans folk, a little time with an anarcho-queer theater troupe and liberal attitudes generally. A close friend’s cousin was a gay sex worker in Havana, who left with the Balseros, only to find out he was HIV positive and couldn’t afford medical care in South America, and later to be detained in Texas trying to reach the US.
The hypocrisy of the Cuban regime on these matters definitely turned people away from talk of the revolution, where a pack of old gallegos run the Cuban government since before they were born and lecture people about “justice” and “dignity” and “patria” while degrading the actual people. That this has changed speaks well, but it begs the question of why after fifty years, it is still the Castros speaking in the name of the revolution and the cuban people.
Walter Lippmann said
One of the advantages, as well as one of the DISadvantages of being the world’s most documented political leader is that your comments, for better or for worse, are available to be studied by anyone interested.
Mike raises many, many questions which will take some time to address, but one of the most controversial is that of Cuba’s policy of quarantining those with HIV-AIDS during the early stages of the disease. While I don’t have the time here to go into it in detail, there are others with more expertise than I have, and I’ll suggest that they contribute materials.
Here’s an early essay on Cuba, AIDS and quarantine from Karen Lee Wald, a long-time Cuba solidarity activist who has also lived and worked in Cuba for many years. This was written in 1995:
Karen Lee Wald: Cuba’s AIDS patient #1 dies
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43b/011.html
Keeping AIDS at Bay in Cuba (2009)
http://www.poz.com/articles/Cuba_HIV_Rate_2363_17096.shtml
My Yahoo news group tracks these and many other aspects of Cuban life, politics, cultura and the Cuban diaspora for those interested.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
Spirit of Zwickau said
“why after fifty years, it is still the Castros speaking in the name of the revolution and the cuban people.”
This point is worth emphasizing.
Miles Ahead said
For what it’s worth—am not sure worth all that much since this was a personal experience and “investigation”that happened 10 years ago—
When I first went to Cuba, tried to glean both the positives and also be realistic about the negatives since the revolution. One of the gnawing negatives was the very real stigmatization, jailing, etc. and general “attitudes” and pogroms promulgated by the Cuban government toward homosexuals and homosexuality.
There was of course probably the most famous gay Cuban writer and poet, Reynaldo Arenas, by way of negative (and tragic) example. (Ironically, in Cuba’s university, Federico Garcia Lorca, is upheld as one of the heroes of the Spanish Civil War.) But I wanted to hear from as many among Cuba’s LGBTs as possible as to their own experiences.
In one of my first jaunts to Marina Hemingway, met an entire enclave of mostly older or middle-aged gay men. After our initial discussion, we ended up having more. They were extremely open, very much overall supportive of the Cuban revolution, even though most of them had suffered greatly under unrestrained homophobia, which was mainly (according to them) promoted by the Cuban government, and not so much among the Cuban people.
All felt it important to say that things had very much turned around over a ten year period; no longer were they communing clandestinely, speaking in whispers, HIV/AIDS awareness organizations developed, etc. What wasn’t clear is why this change in “policies” had occurred. It didn’t appear that there was some conscious or organized movement in the Cuban gay community during that period.
I am not at all trying to make excuses for Fidel, or the Cuban revolutionaries, some of whom are still in the government. IMO the positives that have been born out of the Cuban revolution outweigh a lot of the negatives. However (!) certainly revolutionaries should>/i> know better, and make every attempt to wipe out all oppression and exploitation, within every sector of society, “solving” contradictions in lieu of fostering them. And if we are to take this interview with Fidel, at least at face value, I think his rationales are unacceptable.
But IMO there is something else going on. In Latin America, the Caribbean and Central America, there are some very archaic established traditions’ chains and “values.” The view toward women and homosexuality, while now more progressive overall, still has a long way to go, with many more radical and fundamental ruptures with those old traditions/values desperately needed.
Needless to say, the more than archaic Catholic church, which still holds some entrenched sway, hasn’t helped—especially seeing as procreation among heterosexuals is a mainstay of the Catholic church, in order to increase its membership. And while there are very few reports of gay bashing, or violence against the LGBT community (in Latin America, etc.), many of the stigmas are still in place.
In Mexico, over the last 10 or so years, the gay community has become much more of a force to be reckoned with. 15 years ago, most of Mexican society was in complete “denial” about HIV/AIDS. The lack of awareness and lacklustre was shocking when I first moved there in 1995. Ironically, in 2010, same sex marriage became legal in Mexico.
From a report on the 2008 gay pride parade in Mexico City:
“It was the 30th anniversary of the first gay march in Mexico City, which happened in 1978, at a time when gay activists were spied upon and even killed for their work, as La Jornada reminds us.
“The city has come a long, long way since. …”
Except on Saturday, August 28th, I was more than sadly reminded about how much further the stuggle needs to go. On that day, a very dear mexicano friend (30 years old), died of AIDS related disease. He had been ill for over a year, but was MISdiagnosed with allergies, etc.; none of the medical professionals wanting to even consider AIDS, even though he had many of the symptoms.
A month ago, his life-partner, who is a gringo, insisted he take an HIV/AIDS test, and he tested positive. And even though he was openly gay, surrounded by a very religious but supportive family, he lived in dread of being stigmatized socially had he tested positive, or that he “would let his family and friends down,” and even had some fear that his life-partner might think less of him. Had he been diagnosed properly a year ago, his disease would more than likely have been manageable, and he would still be alive today.
But Mexico is a far cry from Cuba, and if nothing else, Cuba’s “former line” on homosexuality is a huge (and devastating) blot on some of its more revolutionary history.
Walter Lippmann said
Here is a complete English translation of Fidel’s LA JORNADA interview:
LA JORNADA
August 31, 2010
Fidel Castro admits responsibility for the
persecution of homosexuals in Cuba years ago
http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs3080.html
Green Red said
Great doing it after all these years.
… Did Stalin, Brezhnev, Mao or Chou Enlai ever admit they did such big mistakes?
Walter Lippmann said
GRANMA INTERNATIONAL, the newspaper which publishes editions in several languages has posted a translation of Fidel’s LA JORNADA interview taking responsibility for Cuba’s previous mistreatment of gays:
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/cuba-i/3septiembre-36F-entrev2.html
It was pleasing to me that they posted an English translation. We’ll see if they send it out in the print edition. I hope that they do. I subscribe to the print edition of the English version, so we’ll see in time.
Fidel has taken responsibility for at least one very big mistake in the past: the failure to meet the projected ten million ton sugar harvest in 1970.
Green Red said
Such wisdom, tolerance and honesty is why CIA has spent more on killing him that ANY other person in history.
Still i wish he had accepted early Che’s suggestion on further diversity of agriculture to be independent from the world, including the eastern block.
PatrickSMcNally said
I don’t know how people may fit this in, but according to Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic he just a conversation with Fidel Castro which he recounts as follows:
—–
I asked him if he believed the Cuban model was still something worth exporting.
“The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore,” he said.
This struck me as the mother of all Emily Litella moments. Did the leader of the Revolution just say, in essence, “Never mind”?
I asked Julia to interpret this stunning statement for me. She said, “He wasn’t rejecting the ideas of the Revolution. I took it to be an acknowledgment that under ‘the Cuban model’ the state has much too big a role in the economic life of the country.”
Julia pointed out that one effect of such a sentiment might be to create space for his brother, Raul, who is now president, to enact the necessary reforms in the face of what will surely be push-back from orthodox communists within the Party and the bureaucracy. Raul Castro is already loosening the state’s hold on the economy. He recently announced, in fact, that small businesses can now operate and that foreign investors could now buy Cuban real estate. (The joke of this new announcement, of course, is that Americans are not allowed to invest in Cuba, not because of Cuban policy, but because of American policy. In other words, Cuba is beginning to adopt the sort of economic ideas that America has long-demanded it adopt, but Americans are not allowed to participate in this free-market experiment because of our government’s hypocritical and stupidly self-defeating embargo policy. We’ll regret this, of course, when Cubans partner with Europeans and Brazilians to buy up all the best hotels).
—–
It does seem likely that some form of Cuban perestroika will be in the works.