Cuba and homosexuals I
While Michael Schembri's historical assessment of Cuba's gay history (Write On, GLW #575) is correct and he is right about the 1990s closure of gay venues (one or two bars now serve the gay community, but are not openly identified as “gay” — just have principally gay patrons) as well as the “voluntary” suppression of gay/lesbian groups such as GALES, I think it is unfair to harp on the “right to organise” issue.
Has it occurred to anyone that it is precisely because life as a gay/lesbian in Cuba is not particularly difficult that there is no great energy by the gay community toward organising? This is not to say that the need does not exist. It's just that people live their lives here with little or no prejudice to deal with — at least from an official standpoint.
The occasional injustice will draw the ire of the community (a rabid article in the Tribuna de la Habana a couple of years ago attacking transvestites, for instance) but as there is no policy of oppression there is no ongoing resistance.
I agree with what Mariela Castro Espin has to say in the GLW {#573} article that drew this new correspondence on gay issues in Cuba: “I think gays and lesbians should try a strategy of greater integration into social spaces rather than organise, because if they `organise', this could bring about a period of self-segregation, of isolation, and not greater social inclusion and a naturalisation of their sexual orientation in Cuban society.”
I enjoy living with Cubans and integrating into every aspect of their culture. Many of my closest friends, for instance, are strong heterosexual-identifying rappers who — by befriending people such as myself — have opened up to the gay community in a manner that is totally incongruous with many rappers elsewhere in the world (at least, if their lyrics are anything to go by).
Cuba (with Australia and most of the world) has a long way to go in the matter of gay/lesbian rights, but let us not destroy what has been gained by attempting to radicalise, ghettoise and telling the gay community here what is good for it. Leave it to the Cubans to sort out their own future at their own speed. They've been pretty good at it in the past.
Simon Wollers
Havana, Cuba
http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2004/576/576p8.htm