A Long Way from Mariel
The first time the Cuban government detained Elio Poblador, he was 15 and accused of being close to someone involved in a clandestine sex party. The army drafted him two years later. He served a few months until the Castro regime jailed him for pederasty -- as it defined homosexual acts.
For two years, Poblador went from one prison to another, suffering humiliation and physical abuse. Eventually, the regime sent him to a special farm for ''queers,'' where he would be ''re-educated.'' He wasn't allowed to study at a university, so he did whatever jobs he could get in Cuba.
''To be gay was a crime in Cuba, because it was contrary to what Fidel
wanted to do with the New Man. We were a social burden,'' said Poblador, now 55 and living in Miami. ``Stigmatized like that, I wanted to kill myself. I wanted to go away forever.''
To escape the repressive regime, Poblador and thousands of other gay men and lesbians -- plus some heterosexuals who lied about their orientation in order to be expelled from the country -- left Cuba on the 1980 Mariel boatlift. Some would later perish of AIDS, a malady that had yet to be identified when they first reached a country where they felt free to be themselves. Many others made new lives for themselves, living openly as gay men and women.
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