Identidades in English No 3, September 2014 | Page 30

Cuban Homosexuals:
Antecedents, Present and Challenges

class and gender in Cuba and the world

Moisés Leonardo Rodríguez
Professor and cívil activist
Artemisa, Cuba

30

O

ne hears it less and less among machista
Cuban fathers. It ‘s something I heard so
many times during my childhood and
youth: “I’ll kill him if he ends up being gay.” This
phrase was repeated often, but from what I know,
there is not one single case of a homosexual man
or woman being killed by their parents, even
though that doesn’t absolve the expression of its
discrimination and ire against different sexual
preferences.
The ‘coming out of the closet’ of a family member, whether by a man or woman, on occasion
provokes an initial rejection on the part of blood
relatives. Other times, it brings about expulsion
from the family’s bosom. Yet, these cases are
fewer and fewer.
Simple, everyday observation and talking to some
of them reveals a growing tendency for tolerance—either sincere or very reluctant—on the
part of those closest. Even so, in some population
groups, especially in rural areas, there are still
people and groups with old ideas, and discriminatory and even aggressive behaviors against homosexuals (homophobia).
From the beginning of the Revolution
Even if official rhetoric announced the racial
problem to be over, homosexuality was a reason
for being condemned and harassed, from the very
first years of the “revolution’s” triumph. The
strategy for the solution was to break or eliminate

those who did not adjust to the tough type that the
‘new man’—modeled on the very macho Comandante Che Guevara—should be.
It was essential for the group in power to show
their monolithic and uniform unity; it was on this
they would maintain their permanent tenure without going through the elections that had been
promised before 1959. It became possible by nullifying all diversity: it was absorbed by the revolutionary ranks or demonized by classifying those
who displayed or practiced it as counterrevolutionaries or bearers of the past’s backwardness.
The racial prejudices and disadvantages accumulated by blacks and mestizos did not fly in the face
of the unifying, totalitarian project. That’s why
they swept them under the rug. Yet, the same did
not happen with homosexuality. “Revolutionary”
work was not for the weak, which is the image
there was of homosexuals at that time.
This last point was pivotal. Instead of trying to integrate them, this perceived weakness caused
them to be persecuted, publicly denigrated, harassed and, in many cases taken to the sadly famous UMAPs (Military Units to Aid Production),
a Caribbean version of the Nazi concentration
camps that had been dismantled only two decades
earlier in Europe.
Criminals, religious men and homosexuals were
sent to these places, to these “military units” under the generic category of an underclass. The religious men and homosexuals had committed no