3/20/06 - The Status of Gays in Cuba: Myth and Reality -

The Status of Gays in Cuba: Myth and Reality -

by Larry R. Oberg

The Status of Gays in Cuba: Myth and Reality

By Larry R. Oberg
University Librarian Emeritus
Willamette University
Salem, Oregon, USA

Based upon a memoir by the late self-exiled Cuban writer Reynaldo Arenas, the film Before Night Falls, released in 2000, chronicles the author's coming of age and repression as a homosexual and artist by Cuban authorities in the early days of the Cuban revolution. Arenas wrote his memoir in New York shortly before his death from AIDS in 1990, some ten years after leaving Cuba in the Mariel exodus. Apart from any artistic considerations, questions have arisen concerning the accuracy of Arenas's descriptions of the past persecution of Cuban gays and the usefulness of the memoir and film as guides to the current status of gays and lesbians on the island.

Between March 2000 and April 2002, I spent more than four months in Cuba on four separate occasions, working as a librarian on a range of research projects with my Cuban colleagues. Most of that time was spent in Havana, but also in numerous other cities, including Matanzas, Trinidad , and Santiago de Cuba. As a gay man, I was motivated to find out as much as I could about the status of Cuba's gay and lesbian population. What I experienced, read, and was told made me suspect that Arenas's portrayal of his personal life as a gay man in the early years of Cuba's revolution may have been exaggerated. For example, his fantastic claim, arrived at by "complicated mathematical calculations," to have bedded some 5,000 men by the age of 25 is hardly plausible and, if we are to believe him, every young stud on the island was constantly on the alert to jump his bones. Well, perhaps not.

Interestingly, Arenas' apparently insatiable sexual appetite does not come through in Julian Schnabel's sanitized film version of the memoirs, in which he is depicted as little more than an inveterate flirt. I cannot claim to know whether Arenas' description of the repression that he and other gays suffered during that particular moment in Cuban history is accurate. But, whatever the truth of the matter, I can attest to the fact that the condition and status of gay men and lesbians on the island today can only be described as much improved.

To prepare for my visits, I read Canadian Ian Lumsden's 1996 introduction to Cuban gay life, Machos, Maricones, and Gays , Cuba and Homosexuality. Lumsden, a lukewarm supporter of the Cuban revolution, provides us with a useful history of the treatment of gays during the early days of the revolution and surveys their status in contemporary Cuban society. I also watched Sonja de Vries's 1995 documentary, Gay Cuba, which consists of a series of interviews with gay men and lesbians who speak frankly of their lives and relationships with friends, family, and coworkers. (One of the producers of the film, an interviewee himself, now works as a tour guide and gave me useful background information on the film.) Gay Cuba was shown at the annual International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana to public and critical acclaim. Nonetheless, some of the Cuban gays with whom I spoke expressed reservations about the film, suggesting that, while it is generally accurate, it nonetheless presents an incomplete portrait of gay life on the island nation.

Gay Cuba is not, however, the only filmed account of gay life in Cuba. Several other documentaries are available. A particularly interesting one, released in 1996, is Mariposas en el andamio (Butterflies on the Scaffold). Mariposa, a metaphor for drag queen, is used here to refer to someone who transforms himself into something beautiful to be admired by all. The film documents the daily life and performances of drag artists in a Havana neighborhood called La Guinera. At my request, I was invited to La Guinera for a private show. Extremely poor before the revolution, La Guinera today is recognized by the United Nations for exemplary community development, but remains what might be called working class. Many of these drag shows are sponsored by the local CDRs (Committees for the Defense of the Revolution), and all play to large and enthusiastic audiences.

What I found during my time in Cuba was a gay community with many parallels to those of Europe and North America, as well as a number of differences. For one thing, all laws that discriminate against Cuban gays have been removed from the books. Earlier efforts to legislate behavior in Cuba gave rise to the Public Ostentation Law. Enacted in the 1930s, it was used effectively for decades to harass gay people who refused to remain closeted. Aimed at those who "flaunted" their homosexuality, the law defined public and even private homosexual acts that might be witnessed involuntarily by others as offenses punishable by fine and detention. The Public Ostentation Law was repealed by the revolutionary government in 1988. The legal situation of gays in Cuba today is usefully contrasted with, for example, that of the United States where many states retain outdated anti-sodomy laws and repressive legislation aimed at gays increasingly is enacted at the state level and proposed at the national level.

While in Cuba, I spoke with scores of gays, mostly men, and encountered none who said that their government was persecuting them, although many older gays did talk about the "bad old days." Most, however, reported incidents of private discrimination by individuals, and all resented the residual machista attitudes that remain stubbornly embedded in some levels of Cuban society. Nourished for centuries by Spanish colonialism, the Catholic Church, and a quasi-reverential attitude towards the traditional heterosexual family, these attitudes not only perpetuate prejudice against gays but also result in more highly polarized sex roles than generally exist in North American and European societies. No one with whom I spoke, however, reported active or systematic repression by the state.

One question that I asked many of my informants was, "Would you feel comfortable holdings hands with your boyfriend on the street?" Several responded with a qualified yes and a few stated that they do just that. Indeed, two men or two women holdings hands is not an altogether uncommon sight, at least not in Havana. But some also stated that they would stop holding hands at the approach of a police officer. Urban Cuban police forces recruit a high percentage of young macho males from the provinces, many with a chip on their shoulder against gays.

It is important to put Cuba's past record of mistreatment of gays into perspective. While context rarely excuses negative behavior, it is worth remembering that Cuba was scarcely alone in its anti-gay attitudes and actions. For example, in the Boise, Idaho, of the 1950s, scores of gay men were persecuted, driven from their homes, pursued when they fled to other states, and imprisoned in what came to be known as the Boys of Boise scandal, one of the most infamous anti-gay actions in United States history. Florida, home to so many Cuban expatriates, has a dreadful record of gay rights abuses, and in 1990, in Adrian, Michigan , the police staked out a public park for months on end before arresting nearly twenty men on charges of public indecency. Almost all were married and self-identified as heterosexuals. Many were arrested in their homes in front of wives, children, and in a couple of instances, grandchildren.

Cuba's past record on gay rights may be no better than that of most Western societies, but it can be argued that gay people in Cuba are better off today than those in any other Latin American society and even in parts of North America and Europe. It wasn't too long ago, for example, that death squads in Rio de Janeiro were sent out to cleanse the city of its "queers." In the United States, the problem is more likely to be private violence underpinned by a pervasive hatred of gay people, as in the murders of Matthew Shepard, Brandon Teena, Billy Jack Gaither, and countless others.

Like North American and European societies, Cuba is undergoing a profound review and reconceptualization of its attitudes towards gays and lesbians. The 1994 film Fresa y chocolate (Strawberry and Chocolate) is the first Cuban film to deal openly and directly with homosexuality. Directed by Tomas Guitérrez Alea , the film has been widely praised. What is less well known is that it was also wildly popular across the island, playing simultaneously at ten or twelve Havana theaters to lines several blocks long. Its popularity was, no doubt, a response to a repressed desire on the part of Cubans to talk more openly about this issue.

Another seminal incident along the road to acceptance for Cuban gays occurred in 1996. Pablo Milanes, a Cuban nova trova singer who has achieved quasi-sainthood among the island's population, wrote a song about love between two men entitled El pecado original (Original Sin). Pablito, as he is affectionately known, dedicated the song to all Cuban homosexuals. Introduced at his annual holiday concert held in the vast Carlos Marx Theater in the Miramar neighborhood of Havana, El pecado original took the audience and the country by storm and did much to advance the cause of gay acceptance. It is of interest to note that, in the 1960's, Milanes was briefly confined to one of the UMAP (Military Units for Aid to Production) work camps set up to rehabilitate prostitutes, gays, and others considered to be delinquents. Although short-lived, the UMAP camps represent the low point in revolutionary Cuba's treatment of its gay and lesbian citizens.

One of the most striking things about Cuba is the vitality of its cultural and intellectual life throughout the island, particularly in Havana. Gay themes are prevalent in the theatre, in lectures, and in concerts. In December, 2000, I attended a play entitled Muerte en el bosque (A Death in the Woods), produced by the Teatro Sotano in Havana 's Vedado neighborhood. Based upon the acclaimed novel Mascaras (Masks), by Leonardo Padura Fuentes, the play follows a police investigation into the murder of a Havana drag queen, a plot device that allows for an examination of Cuban attitudes and prejudices towards gays at every level of society.

On a lighter note, a group called La Danza Voluminosa, which features large dancers, produced an alternately amusing and touching ballet version of Racine's Phèdre. The director opted for gender-blind casting and, indeed, a man danced the title role. A one-man -- yes, one man -- stage version of Strawberry and Chocolate played to considerable success a few years ago. And, at the 22nd International Festival of New Latin American Cinema held in Havana in December 2000, perhaps half of the films shown had gay themes or subtexts. In 2001, Emilio Bejel published Gay Cuban Nation. The book is a fascinating scholarly study of the impact of homosexuality on Cuban politics, society, and culture, as seen through the writings of its gay artists, both past and present.

A striking contradiction in Cuban society today is the contrast between the rich cultural and intellectual life that is widely available and easily affordable, and salaries that make the purchase of a pair of shoes an event for which one must plan. Cubans purchase theatre tickets in pesos nacional (MN, i.e., moneda nacional; valued at approximately five U. S. cents). Tickets for the National Ballet cost Cubans five pesos nacional; theatrical plays, eight; musical extravaganzas and ballet festival performances, ten. Admission to first-run films costs two pesos nacional. Foreign tourists pay in pesos convertibles (CUC or tourist dollar; valued at approximately 1.8 U. S. dollars). Admission to the National Ballet costs tourists 20 pesos convertibles. For most other theatrical events tourists pay the same number of pesos as Cubans, but in pesos convertibles, not pesos nacional. Tourists are allowed, however, to pay at the cinemas in pesos nacional.

In Havana, gay-run and gay-clientele restaurants are not hard to find. Try, for example, the elegant French cuisine at Le Chansonnier or La Guarida, the latter located in the apartment in which Strawberry and Chocolate was filmed. Until its recent closing, the famous, indeed somewhat infamous, Fiat bar on the Malecon attracted hundreds of gay twenty-somethings who, on weekend nights, spilled across this emblematic Havana thoroughfare to line the sidewalk along the sea wall. Midnight mass on Christmas Eve at the Havana cathedral and any performance by the National Ballet at the Gran Teatro de la Habana attract scores of Cuban gays.

Gay culture in Cuba without doubt was repressed, sometimes severely, during the period described by Arenas in Before Night Falls. But where was it not in that pre-Stonewall era? This, however, is not the reality that I found in today's Cuba. Indeed, it is unlikely that the slick and trendy Out magazine would feature Havana as "The new gay hot spot … hot boys, drag-heavy bars, and a whole lot more" in its February 2001 issue, if Cuba were as repressive as its critics would have us believe.

It is ultimately unproductive to hold Cuba to an abstract standard that no other country in the world, certainly not my own, can claim to have reached. It is more useful to view this small island nation within the context of current reality. How well is Cuba doing compared to the rest of Latin America? How well is it doing relative to our own countries? How much progress has been made over the past forty years on a variety of fronts -- literacy, education, health care, housing, the status of women, and of course gay rights? When we respond honestly to these questions, we see a vision of Cuba that is sharply different from that propounded by Cuba's detractors.

This is a revised version of an article that first appeared in the November-December 2001 issue ( v.8, no.6) of The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide.

Québec , Qc 2006
Le 20 mars 2006




http://www.cubanlibrariessolidaritygroup.org.uk/articles.asp?ID=177