Peter Tatchell reveals that while Castro’s anti-gay witch-hunts have eased, homophobic discrimination remains rife in Cuba’s “socialist paradise”.
1989 is the thirtieth anniversary of the Cuban revolution. In 1959, Fidel Castro led the overthrow of one of the world’s most corrupt and dictatorial regimes.
Since then, his socialist government has given Cubans the highest standards of health, education and housing of any Latin American country (including a literacy rate higher than the United States’).
Sadly, despite this remarkable social progress, regressive anti-gay persecution has been integral to the Cuban revolution from its outset.
While Castro has readily challenged almost every other form of prejudice, he has wholeheartedly embraced the most homophobic aspects; of Latin machismo and right-wing Catholicism and elevated them into fundamental tenets of Cuba’s “new socialist morality.”
According to Peter Marshall, the author of Cuba Libre, prior to Castro’s victory in 1959, many gay intellectuals supported the revolution. They saw it as part of the overall movement for cultural and sexual freedom, promoting Castro’s aims, together with their own support for homosexual emancipation, through the left-wing journal, Lunes de Revolucion, which had a circulation of over 200,000.
Shortly after Castro came to power, however, the journal was closed down and many gay writers faced disgrace.
In the mid-1960s, there were official public campaigns against homosexuals and allegations of homosexuality were used to discredit “decadent” western influences. Marshall reports, for example, that in a bid to counter the attraction of western pop music, the Cuban authorities circulated the rumour that the Beatles were homosexuals.
Coinciding with these public propaganda campaigns against homosexuality, many gay men were rounded up in night-time raids and sentenced, without charge or trial, to forced labour.
In the last decade, official state repression has eased somewhat. Imprisonment is less usual and the sentences are shorter. Discreet open-air cruising in public squares and parks is now semi-tolerated in some of the bigger cities.
This slight softening of official attitudes towards lesbians and gay men can be put down to three influences:
First, the international campaigns in the early 1970s against Cuba’s homophobic repression. Some of these were organised by progressive intellectuals such as Jean Paul Sartre; and others by the newly-emergent gay liberation movements.
In 1971, for example, I was involved in the Gay Liberation Front’s letter-writing and phone-in campaign to the Cuban Embassy in London’ and in 1973 the Cubans were greatly embarrassed and considerably discredited when I exposed their persecution of lesbians and gay men at the World Youth Festival in East Berlin. These campaign helped to forestall any repeat of the mass round-ups and contributed to a dramatic drop in the length of sentences.
Second, the advent of Aids has forced the Cuban authorities to show greater tolerance towards the homosexual community in a bid to win their confidence and support for safer sex.
And third, Cuba’s links with the East European socialist countries, especially East Germany, are providing a conduit for more enlightened thinking about homosexuality amongst doctors, psychiatrists, social workers and health educators.
The influence of East German sexology, with its view of homosexuality as a natural minority condition, seems to be gradually gaining greater currency among senior Cuban officials. Progress is, alas, slow.
Despite the partial relaxation of repression, 30 years after the revolution homosexuals can still face prosecution for “crimes against morality”. They are still forbidden to join the ruling Communist Party (homosexuality is deemed to be contrary to communist ethics). Lesbian and gay organisations are still illegal and there is still no evidence of any government attempt to challenge homophobia and protect lesbians and gay men against discrimination.
Now seems an appropriate time, therefore, to start renewing pressure on Cuba. The value of international pressure is demonstrated by the recent successful challenge to the anti-gay policies of the African National Congress (ANC). In 1987, in the pages of Capital Gay, I wrote about the homophobia of two leading members of that organisation. That article was subsequently reproduced in the lesbian and gay press and straight media in many different countries. It led to protests to ANC officials all over the world.
As a result, and in response to a personal letter I wrote to the ANC leadership in Lusaka, for the first time ever, the ANC declared its opposition to discrimination against lesbians and gay men and its support for homosexuals, such as Tseko Simon Nkoli, involved in the anti-apartheid struggle.
The ANC experience shows that the lesbian and gay movement in this country can help to change attitudes, even in countries on the other side of the world.
In the case of Cuba, three decades after the revolution, lesbian and gay rights are long overdue. The government is sensitive to pressure, as the 1970s campaign against Cuban homophobia demonstrated.
Though they don’t like to hear it, the Cubans’ persecution of lesbians and gay men is comparable to what happens in fascist dictatorships such as Chile and Turkey. We should tell them so.
Published as “The time is right to challenge Cuba”, Capital Gay, 10 March 1989