[LINK] "Finding gay Havana"

[rfmcdonald]

Jeffrey Round's Xtra! travelogue recounting his visit to Havana makes the point that, in a totalitarian country with a bad record on human rights generally never mind gay rights more specifically, even the now pro-gay pronouncements of the dictator emeritus aren't enough to wreak change. (It's worth noting that Latin American democracies, most notably Argentina and Uruguay with their same-sex marriage laws but others, have progressed far past Castro's Cuba.)

By the late 1950s, when Fidel Castro and his guerrilleros came to power, homosexuality was viewed as a form of capitalist decadence at best and counter-revolutionary deviance at worst. Simply put, gays weren’t welcome to join in the revolution. Little wonder, for it was a revolution spawned by machismo and which soon came to be marked by a close alliance with the USSR, another regime fostering openly hostile attitudes and policies toward gay people.

In the 1960s, the climate only worsened. Reinaldo Arenas, a Cuban author whose most famous book is the memoir Before Night Falls, wrote about the perils of being a gay Cubano in Pentagonia, his “secret history of Cuba,” before escaping to New York, where he died of AIDS in 1990. In a 1965 interview, Castro remarked that a homosexual could never be “a true Communist militant.” In his understanding, it was a matter of nature clashing with politics.

[. . .]

Times changed. By the 1990s, Castro began to soften his stance on queer rights, to the point that he recently declared that the persecution of homosexuals in Cuba was “a great injustice” for which he accepted personal responsibility. His niece, Mariela Castro, has taken up the rights of transgender people with gusto. Sex reassignment surgery is now free to eligible citizens. But ordinary Cubans, it seems, are not ready to listen just yet.

Today, there is only one “official” gay bar in all of Cuba, and it’s not in Havana. It’s in Santa Clara, scene of a historic battle that handed Castro control of the country more than half a century ago. The city is now a tourist destination, and the bar in question is famous for its transvestite shows. Think Disney World presents Stonewall à la Copacabana. It’s for them, not us.

[. . .]

Despite Castro’s declaration of support for the queer community, there are no official gay-rights groups active inside Cuba. It’s hard to band together in a country where the internet is strictly regulated, with fines and imprisonment for unauthorized hookups. The Cuban Association of Gays was formed in 1994, during a thaw in relations between gays and the state, but disbanded in 1997 after its members were arrested. Pride marches and gay publications have also been banned, lending a very ambivalent tone to what it means to be “state sanctioned.”

[. . .]

There is also a well-known gay-themed party, 10 Pesos (named for the cost of entry), which takes place in or around Havana every Saturday, if you know where to find it. That’s not always easy, as it changes location to avoid becoming a target for the police. Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar was arrested at one such party. So was designer Jean Paul Gaultier. Foreigners found on the premises were reportedly released with the admonition not to “flaunt” their homosexuality or risk further arrest. Some of the locals were beaten.