For Cuba's gay community, Castro apology opens old wounds

[naaman fletcher]

HAVANA — Fidel Castro's recent admission that his government discriminated against gays during the 1960s and 1970s has opened old wounds among Cuba's gay community, and sparked a long-stifled discussion about homophobia here.

In an interview with Mexico's La Jornada newspaper earlier this month, the 84-year-old former president confessed that Cuba's revolution -- synonymous in his thinking with progressive views on race and class -- oppressed homosexuals as deviants.

Cubans who suffered societal homophobia and government oppression said it did not take much for a gay man to be locked up for months at a time.

"I served six months in prison just for having plucked my eyebrows," said Francisco Garcia, 45, who goes by the name "Sisi."

"In those days, if they figured out you were gay, out of their own ignorance they viewed it as an aberration, and they committed barbarous acts," he said.

Some of the worst oppression was carried out at Cuba's now-defunct Military Units to Aid Production or UMAPs, established in 1965 to stamp out "counterrevolutionary" values.

The forced labor camps for re-education and rehabilitation run by UMAP, were shut down in 1968 when Castro became aware of some of the cruelty going on there.

But even after the camps closed, oppression against gays continued, instigated by members of the local Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs), block monitors who often turned in their gay neighbors.

Discrimination against homosexuals in the 1970s was particularly hard on gay artists and writers, who often were disgraced and marginalized, or in some cases even driven into exile.

The plight of Cuba's gay community was the subject of the 1993 film "Fresa y Chocolate" -- "Strawberry and Chocolate."

That hit movie, one of the most celebrated Latin American films of the 1990's, is set in Havana during the late 1970's, and deals with the budding friendship between a bigoted, heterosexual university student and an older, decadent homosexual artist.

Another film that opened Cuban eyes to the plight of gays 17 years ago was the documentary titled, "En el Cuerpo Equivocado" (In the Wrong Body) -- about a man who makes the difficult transition to a female identity, despite society's opprobrium.

Not only gays, but Catholics too were the targets of discrimination and oppression. Alberto Gonzalez, 67, recalled that the mere fact of having been baptized made him a social outcast.

He was taken away from his family and made to do hard labor at a camp run by UMAP.

"It was a sad, painful time and frustrating time," Gonzalez said.

"My father was a member of the communist party and he even justified it."

Since that time, the situation has greatly improved for gays and lesbians in Cuba. Fidel Castro's niece Mariela -- the daughter of President Raul Castro -- heads the National Sex Education Center and has been campaigning for years for greater rights for gays and transsexuals.

Charlimar, 23, works as a street performer in a transvestite show that has been known to draw up to 2,000 people -- something impossible in an earlier era.

Gender reassignment surgery also can be had more easily in Cuba today, but same-sex marriage is not legal. Mariela Castro in January said that even now there is more than a little reticence towards homosexuality in the Communist Party.

One gay Cuban, a successful professional dancer who did not want to be named, said Castro's apology was not enough to heal all wounds, but was nevertheless an important start.

"It's a belated gesture, but a brave and necesary one if we're ever going to make progress," he said.

Alberto Gonzalez, who now is a pastor, also has been heartened by Castro's belated apology. There is always time to acknowledge one's mistakes," he said.

"Fidel made a brave, historic effort to make amends," he added.

But for many in the gay community, Fidel Castro's apology can not wipe away decades of pain and humiliation.

"Who can make up for all the suffering?" asked Aliomar Janjaker, 33, who carries in his pocket a copy of a 1965 interview in which Fidel Castro calls homosexuality "a deviation that clashes" with being "a true revolutionary" and a "militant communist."

And another homosexual man said he cares less about the former president's regrets about the past than the quality of life for gays in today's Cuba.

Fidel's apology means nothing," said Mario Delgado "as long as the police don't leave us alone."




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Glad to see he's come around. The Castros treated gay people terribly for many years.