It is undeniable that the Cuban Revolution of 1959 was radically nationalistic from the very beginning and aspired to cleanse the country of everything its leaders and many of the Cubans themselves had seen as national ills: exclusive reliance on sugar cane as a cash crop, economic and cultural dependence on the United States, inequality of the social classes, and governmental as well as behavioral immorality.  The Revolution proposed to resolve these injustices, and accordingly social justice for some excluded groups was central to its project.  There was also at this time a real sense that it was necessary and urgent to recover the national dignity that had been lost during Fulgencio Batista's regime (1952-1958), during which all manner of corruption was fostered and supported.[1]

The Cuban revolutionaries adopted extreme postures in many arenas, not just with regards to military and economic matters, but also in terms of behavior and even in matters concerning sexuality.[2]  In order to protect the country from everything "corrupted" one had to be ever more nationalistic, and to become more nationalistic it was necessary to revive some of the country's best and worst traditions, including homophobia.  In terms of homophobia, Cuba's worst moments were not the first years of the Revolution.  In fact, this initial period was one of national euphoria, and the Revolution seemed directed towards becoming a fairly tolerant system concerning matters not strictly related to the survival of the new political and social order.  But by the mid 1960s the revolutionaries had added an aggressive homophobia to their political and social plans, leaving homosexuals in a very helpless position.  It is only fair to insist on the fact that the homophobic construction of Cuban nationalism is an indisputable reality, and not all of the homophobic excesses of the Revolution can be attributed to the personal prejudices of its leaders.  It should therefore be said that what was truly extraordinary about the situation at that time was not the homophobic positions themselves, but their convergence, their extremism and their institutionalization.[3] 

The relationship between the representations of nationalism and homosexuality in Cuba reaches its most homophobic moment in the period extending from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s.  During this decade various social and discursive forces that had been present for many years, in addition to new ones, converged.  Radical nationalism's homophobia, as well as that of international socialism, united in Cuba with all sorts of positions inherited from religion, the Enlightenment, and positivism, giving rise to a veritable persecution of Cuban gays and lesbians.  In this introduction to the relationship between the representation of homosexuality during the revolutionary years, I will start by dealing with two events that seem of great importance in better understanding the situation in the period from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s.  I am referring to the UMAPs (Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción) [Military Units to Aid Production] from 1965 to 1968, and the Primer Congreso Nacional de Educación y Cultura [First National Congress of Education and Culture] of 1971.[4]  The year 1961 was crucial as a precursor of these two events: after the Marxist-Leninist character of the Revolution and its subsequent direct confrontation with the United States was set, there could be seen certain homophobic tendencies that later (beginning in 1965) would become radicalized and institutionalized in the UMAPs and other forms of social repression.

It was in 1961 that a massive raid was conducted in the Colón neighborhood of Havana in search of "pederasts, prostitutes and pimps," hence the name "Night of the Three P's."[5]  Yet at the time this event seemed to some observers more like a temporary eradication of the corruption of the Cuban capital.  It did not seem directly related at all to a systematic repression aimed specifically at homosexuals, nor did it appear to be an institutionalization of their abjection in the concept of the Cuban nation.  Nevertheless, as Carlos Franqui (who at one time was the editor of the newspaper Revolución) has noted, this was the "first massive roundup" of the Revolution.[6]  According to Franqui, this sort of activity, coming in the midst of such a tense political situation, and under the threat of the most powerful country in the world a mere ninety miles away, lent itself perfectly to abuses of power by machistas who were obsessed with power and control.[7]  This entire initial period was characterized by a "purging of vices," and to this end the government started programs aimed at reforming prostitutes through job training, giving them instruction in such skills as tailoring.  Prostitution, drug addiction, and homosexuality were strongly associated with each other in their representation of such unsavory associations in the Cuban cultural imagination, and several revolutionary leaders seized the situation for their own political objectives. 

Also in 1961, the gay writer Virgilio Piñera (the country's most distinguished playwright at the time)[8] was arrested.[9]  His detention, which lasted around twenty-four hours, concerned many Cuban artists and writers, since by then they had begun to worry about freedom of speech and artistic expression.  Piñera was a prestigious writer who had been a supporter of the Revolution from the first days of its victory.[10]  The true reasons for his arrest cannot be known with absolute certainty; we have only theories ranging from the personal prejudices of police officers to complex political motivations.  In his book Mea Cuba, Guillermo Cabrera Infante alleges that on the particular day Piñera was arrested he left his house on Guanabo Beach dressed "scandalously":  wearing shorts, a multi-colored shirt and sandals (in Cuba it was very unusual for a man to go out in public dressed in this fashion.)  It has also been argued that the president of the local Committee for the Defense of the Revolution wanted to take personal possession of Piñera's house by implicating him in a public and moral scandal. [11] 

In reality, Piñera had written very little with an obvious homosexual theme, but his physical appearance alone betrayed him as an "effeminate man," and that was enough to place him in a very disadvantageous position.[12]  As he himself dramatically stated in his brief autobiographical account La vida tal cual [Life as such] (edited and published posthumously):  "Having only just achieved the age at which thought becomes something more than spitting out your drool and waving your little arms, I realized three things so filthy that I was never able to wash myself clean of them.  I learned that I was poor, that I was a homosexual, and that I liked art."[13]   In this account, Piñera considers poverty, homosexuality and artistic vocation to be “divine misfortunes.”[14]

As might be expected, Piñera's life changed greatly on January first of 1959 with the triumph of Fidel Castro's Revolution.  By then Piñera was well known, above all as a playwright, since his most important play, Electra Garrigó, had been staged on more than one occasion.[15]  In reality, Piñera had never been an ideologically committed writer and his ideas varied quite a bit from those of the leftist writers of the period.  Also, by the beginning of the Revolutionary Period in Cuba, Piñera had become known in his private life as gay.  But with the arrival of the Revolution, he integrated himself with enthusiasm, one could even say with frenzy, into the political process then underway in Cuba.  During the first days of the Revolution he published and participated in the well-known magazine Lunes de Revolución, the semi-official Party organ, and he published and participated in political activities with intensity and apparent optimism towards what he perceived as the dawn of a wonderful new era for Cuban society and culture.[16]  His enthusiasm was abruptly brought down to earth with his arrest in 1961.  He never completely recovered from this incident, and although he continued publishing and participating in the country's cultural and political activities for a few more years, his alienation from the Revolutionary process continued to worsen.  By the beginning of the 1970s he had become almost completely cut off from Cuban cultural life.[17]  Only recently, many years after his death, has the figure of Virgilio Piñera begun to experience a sort of rehabilitation in socialist Cuba, a sort of mea culpa (always from the position of power, from the position of a system that attempts to control even its own remorse) for the abuses Piñera suffered.[18]     

Piñera was victimized by the "virilization" of the "new man" of the Revolution.  During this stage of the Revolution, the idea of forming a new subjectivity and a "new man" in this "new" Cuban society began to take shape.[19]  It was thought that this revolutionary Cuban subject ought to be free of the impurities of the bourgeois past, willing to sacrifice for his country, ready to renounce utilitarian values, and eager to possess a great disposition and aptitude for the struggle (a physical struggle if need be) for nationalist and socialist ideals.  The "new man" ought to be virile and highly macho.  The representation of the homosexual had only a negative place in this construct, and was therefore one of the targets in the attack on the "bad habits" of the past which the new regime undertook throughout the entire country.

It seems that the key year in studying the beginning of the institutionalization of homophobia during the Cuban Revolution is 1965 (according to Carlos Franqui it began in 1964.)[20]  All the Cuban negative ideas about homosexuals converged in that year, and some of communism's prejudices were added to them, resulting in a truly systematic homophobic repression of gays.  The idea that homosexuality was closely related to crime, drug addiction, venereal disease and gender inversion became widespread (the genders were considered, of course, to be a natural phenomenon, not socially imposed roles.)   Some of international socialism's negative concepts stemmed from the Soviet Union, which had declared homosexuality illegal in 1934 despite the fact that in the beginning the Bolshevik revolution had instituted radical reforms in favor of homosexual rights.[21]

How could the "new man" (and also the "new woman," as was implied) be made free of the scars of capitalism?  That was the key question for the revolutionary leaders of the day, principal among them Che Guevara, due to his insistent and repeated stating of the theory of the "new man."  He was one of the main proponents of the idea of the "new man," and was also one of the staunchest homophobic leaders of the revolutionary period.[22] But Che Guevara was not the only leader to openly flaunt his homophobia in the Cuba of the mid-1960s.  Other officials and even Cuban intellectuals of the day launched pointed attacks against homosexuality.  The leftist writer Samuel Feijóo led a campaign against homosexuals from the pages of the newspaper El Mundo and, after an extended trip to the Soviet Union, returned to Cuba proclaiming that homosexuality no longer existed in the USSR, since socialism was able to cure social ills and deviant behavior of that sort.[23]  

It was in the midst of this charged atmosphere that, in 1965, the forced labor camps called UMAPs were formed.  These camps were designed primarily to "rehabilitate" those persons (almost all of them young men who had reached the age of military service) who were thought to be "antisocial."  Among the detainees were those who refused to study or work, Jehova's Witnesses who resisted military service for religious reasons, young delinquents, and finally the "immoral" among whom were included homosexuals.  The UMAP camps were placed around the Camagüey province and served to aid in the production and harvest of fruits and other crops.  Although precise documentation is not easy to obtain, it is known that initially some recruits were treated so inhumanely that some of the officials responsible were later executed.  The reality was that the working environment in these camps was very harsh, even cruel and at times criminal.  The idea was that in this work environment the "antisocial" would be forced to perform agricultural labor alongside the local rural inhabitants and would thereby be cured of their bad habits and customs.  Within this ideology the countryside is thought to possess some redeeming qualities that serve to cleanse the evils of the city.[24]

However, the UMAPs were the focus of outrage and protest, both nationally and internationally.  In Cuba, the UNEAC (Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba) [Cuban Writers and Artists Union] protested against the internment and harsh treatment of intellectuals in the UMAPs.  It is also said that Raquel Revuelta, a Cuban artist affiliated with the communist party since before the Revolution, mounted an energetic protest since several dancers and artists from her Teatro Estudio had been interned in the UMAPs.  European leftist intellectuals such as Graham Greene, Gian Giacomo Getrinelli and Jean-Paul Sartre also protested.  And it was in 1965 that American writer and gay activist Allen Ginsberg visited Cuba.  In spite of his sympathy for socialism and the Cuban Revolution, Ginsberg had several disagreeable encounters with the Cuban officialdom of the period and expressed his rejection of the authoritarianism that was dominating Cuban politics at the cultural level.  With his characteristically iconoclastic behavior, Ginsberg brought the gay topic up with some of the Cuban leaders, and the reply he received was often quite negative. He was finally expelled from Cuba.[25]  In the face of these protests from home and abroad, the Cuban government finally decided to close the UMAPs.  The exact date of their closure is not easy to pinpoint, but it seems to have been in 1967 or 1968, a little more than two years after their opening.  Once the government had decided to close them, it was determined that the local economy in Camagüey province would be temporarily affected by the sudden drop in workforce.  Due to this consideration the final closing of the camps was postponed by several months.

But the institutionalization of Cuban homophobia during the second half of the 1960s was not based solely on rationalizations of social hygiene nor even just on revolutionary fervor, anti-Americanism or the typical positions of Stalinist communism.  As is often the case in situations of discrimination against social groups, attacks were articulated so that several discourses were joined and juxtaposed in order to increase the effectiveness of the rejection and condemnation.  Thus a complex discursive network is formed based on the combination of a variety of social prejudices difficult to separate from each other.  The Cuban situation was not exceptional in this regard.  Among the arguments which served as the foundation for the homophobia of the UMAPs, I have noted the following:  that homosexuality was a corrupt and immoral practice; that homosexuals must be forced to do hard agricultural labor so that the redeeming qualities of the rural atmosphere could cure their ills; that homosexuals, being weak and therefore different from the base of macho Cuban culture, were perfect targets for recruitment by the enemy (American capitalism mainly); that homosexuals were a threat to the nation because they corrupted children and young men and thus impeded the formation of the "new man";  that homosexuality constituted an inversion of the "natural" gender roles and therefore broke the basic laws of nature;  and finally, that homosexuality was the result of the distortions of capitalism, from which it may be concluded that socialism could now eradicate this ill just as it could eradicate prostitution, drug addiction and other ills and vices. 

In addition to these conceptions, by the mid-1960s ideas on homosexuality were being articulated in Cuba by doctors and educators which added additional layers of reasoning on top of the previous ones, among them Freudian explanations that insisted on the question of the sexual formation of children from a very young age and the need for a strong male presence in their lives.  Among certain groups in Cuban culture at that time, citing Freud was a way of calling on written authority to resolve any argument on a sexual matter.  The psychoanalytic theory expounded by Cuban educators and doctors emphasized the idea of the stages of sexual development and that homosexuality is an early identification of the boy with his mother and an alienation from his father (these educators and doctors rarely if ever refer to the lesbian girl.)   Nevertheless, this programmatically adopted Freudianism, in spite of the contradictions with the ideology of a purely Cuban-socialist nationalism, falls very well within the objectives and inclinations of the Cuban Revolution and its project of forming "new men."  In 1965 a report by the Ministry of Health concluded that there were no known biological causes for homosexuality, and that there was, therefore, no convincing proof of hormonal, genetic or somatic causes, and that no biological treatment could be effective in curing homosexuality.  This clearly implied that the "causes" were social; it was a matter of the family environment where the mother spoiled the boy excessively, had too much contact with him from birth until late in his youth, and where the father was either absent or weak.  Thus the son lacked a role model or identified with an insufficiently masculine father figure.  Were all this true, the conclusion would be that strict measures could and should be taken in the sexual education of boys from a very young age.[26] 

In this project of virilization, "effeminate boys" ought to go to special schools for "problem children," where psychiatrists, psychologists and educators would give them proper and intense guidance.  These boys were indoctrinated and even made to play rough games with toy pistols and swords on a regular basis.  Of course, they were also constantly made to practice baseball, the "ideal sport" for the "virilization" of boys and young men.  Among the many objectives of this educational project was that if the causes of homosexuality were now seen as more social than biological (although, in spite of everything, Cuban doctors and educators never completely abandoned their biological theories), the method of arriving at a determination of homosexuality was frequently centered on external factors:  the boy's mannerisms.  As one of American researcher Marvin Leiner's gay informants explains:  "My parents would not believe it if I told them that those macho-looking friends of mine are all gay!"[27] 

Besides these "virilization treatments," in the mid-1960s the Cuban regime undertook a systematic homophobic campaign at all levels (including the legal) to expel homosexuals from the armed forces, the universities, and the communist party, as well as from positions charged with the education of boys and young men and highly influential government posts.  The Consejo de Cultura's [Council of Culture] "Resolution Number Three" was implemented to systematically eliminate homosexuals from any position in which they could conceivably "corrupt minors" or have a negative influence on the formation of the new man.[28]  The homosexual had traditionally been constructed in Cuban society as someone excluded and rejected, and now the Revolution institutionalized this exclusion and rejection at every level.  But precisely due to this institutional rejection of the homosexual in relation to the dominant national discourse, the category of homosexuality became more obviously  a constitutive part of the very concept of the Cuban nation.  In spite of so many efforts to expel homosexuality from the concept of the revolutionary "new man," it was precisely at this time of such homophobic furor in Cuba that there began to appear signs of the specter of homosexuality in ways never before seen:  works and personal postures by writers and artists in which homosexuality occupied a central role.  In fact, the very close attention paid to the "homosexual problem" in the discussions and resolutions of the First National Congress of Education and Culture in 1971 are a very telling sign of the discursive need that homosexuality met, by opposition, in the concept of the Cuban nation.[29] 

During this extremely repressive atmosphere from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, there were an endless series of persecutions and censorship of those persons who seemed to promote homosexuality.  But rather than a decline in the face of this systematic opposition, Cuba underwent a considerable emergence of gay-theme works and gay and lesbian people rebelling against the system, both publicly and semipublicly.  One of the most widely-discussed cases, nationally and internationally, was the "scandal" caused by the publication of the novel Paradiso (1966) by José Lezama Lima.  In this work there are not only several very daring scenes of homosexual encounters between young men, but some theories of homosexuality and its possible causes and meanings are also thoroughly discussed in a fashion at times very different from the direction given to such discussions by the Cuban Revolution.  For a brief time the novel was removed from circulation, but due to Lezama Lima's fame and the influence of several revolutionary intellectuals who favored its publication, along with the highly baroque style of its narration that made it less accessible to the general public and therefore less politically dangerous to the Cuban state, it returned to bookstores.  (I discuss this novel and the meaning of José Lezama Lima's work in chapter six.)  Moreover, very early in the 1960s Severo Sarduy (a writer who later distinguished himself with a work that could well be called queer in the meaning given to that term today in U.S. academia) left Cuba en route to Paris in connection with an official program and never returned.  (I discuss Sarduy's political and literary positions in chapter seven.)   In 1969, the Cuban gay writer Calvert Casey committed suicide, leaving some unpublished texts revealing his homosexuality and his tremendous fear of being discovered as a gay man in Cuban society.[30]

I have already referred to the ostracism suffered by Virgilio Piñera starting in 1961.  Furthermore, stories and novels by Reinaldo Arenas began to appear towards the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, and they would soon become the center of a political conflict with Cuban authorities due to, among other things, the homosexual scenes represented in some of his texts.  (I study Arenas’ autobiography in chapter eight.)  With few exceptions, most of his works were published outside Cuba, since he sent his manuscripts abroad to be published, something Cuban officialdom considered an act of treason at the time.  Arenas distinguished himself early in his career as a rebel who showed no respect for Cuban laws and guidelines, defying everything he considered restrictive and oppressive regarding the publication of his work and his activities and personal life style.[31] 

In addition to the UMAPs, one of the most institutionally homophobic events that took place in Cuba on the national level was the First National Congress of Education and Culture in 1971.  This Congress officially designated homosexuality as an intrinsically "antisocial" and "socio-pathological" behavior, and accordingly the Congress decided that all signs of homosexual deviation should be strictly rebuffed and prevented in order to contain any spreading of homosexual practices.  It was established that homosexuals should be denied employment in institutions where they might have an influence over young people.  It was also established that homosexuals could not be permitted to represent Cuba through cultural activities abroad.  The Congress concluded that there should be severe legal sanctions against any homosexual responsible for the corruption of minors as well as for those who displayed incorrigible antisocial behavior.[32]  All these resolutions were not simply the opinions of an important congress of educators and politicians, but in a system such as that in Socialist Cuba where there was little or no separation between the state and civilian society they quickly became national policy adhered by all governmental agencies.

Finally, by the middle of the 1970s homosexual persecution in Cuba had begun to diminish.  Gone were the massive purges of writers and intellectuals, and Resolution Number Three (which had had so much to do with the legalization of homophobia) was abolished by order of the Supreme Court in 1975.  In 1976 the Ministry of Culture was created and Armando Hart was named its minister.  He had distinguished himself among the revolutionaries for his more "liberal" position on homosexuality and other cultural questions.  The creation of the National Work Group on Sexual Education in 1977 served as a conduit for somewhat more flexible and actualized positions on human sexuality.  As gay activist and scholar Ian Lumsden has noted, from that point on "conditions began to improve for homosexuals in the arts."  He adds: "Oppression of homosexuals would become more and more similar to what had occurred informally in most other Latin American countries, including liberal democratic ones such as Costa Rica."[33]  Regulations against homosexuals became somewhat more informal and less systematic and official. 

Legally speaking by that time in Cuba homosexuality per se was not a crime, but the improvement that began in the mid-1970s should be qualified.  The Penal Code of 1979 did not eliminate certain discriminations against homosexuals.  Public displays of homosexual behavior remained illegal, although private homosexual behavior was not.  Of course, any homosexual act with a minor (someone under the age of sixteen) was still penalized severely, much more so in fact that an equivalent heterosexual relationship.  Also, this Penal Code included the Ley de peligrosidad [Law of Dangerousness], a vague statute that left much to the discretion of the (often homophobic) judges.  Under this law almost any behavior considered antisocial that expressed "socially disapproved vices" could carry a penalty of one to four years of "therapy" or "reeducation."[34] 

One of the most important aspects of this slow, difficult and uneven change was that by the end of the 1970s the Cuban Communist Party no longer considered homosexual behavior to be in fundamental contradiction with the revolutionary process.  Homosexuality went from being a crime even in private to being principally a psychological or medical problem.  As Leiner says:  "Although this change in itself did not end the suffering of gay people who were victims of prejudice, it was a significant move toward more liberal attitudes that allowed a challenge to homophobia to take root."[35]  By the mid-1970s a discussion had begun at the national level on what was called the Family Code, which gave a certain legitimacy to the voices calling for change in the roles of men and women and in society in general.  This allowed for a certain degree of questioning of homophobia.

Even the influence of the Soviet Block was not as extremely homophobic as it had been.  In 1979 the Cuban National Work Group on Sexual Education published the Spanish translation of El hombre y la mujer en la intimidad [Man and Woman in Their Intimacy] by East German sexologist Siegfried Schnabl.[36]  His opinions on male and female sexuality were novel in comparison with prevailing views in both East Germany and Cuba, and the book caused a sensation.  The greatest surprise was the book's final chapter, titled "Homosexuality in men and women."  It spite of its brevity (only ten pages in length) this chapter caused true commotion in Cuban educational and intellectual circles of the day.  Schnabl's chapter proposed a very different vision of homosexuality than that which had been previously proposed by the Revolution.  Schnabl condemned East German society itself for practicing a homophobia which was emotionally destructive to homosexuals and which increased their suffering and even their suicide rate.  Schnabl stated that homosexuality was not a disease, but simply a variant of human sexuality.  Homosexuals, he explained, do not suffer from homosexuality but rather from society's discrimination and abuse.  Apart from their sexual orientation, homosexuals were no different from people considered normal.  These ideas caused a veritable explosion of interest in Cuban society.  Although printed in an edition of only 15,000 copies (which in Cuba was quite small for a work of this kind), Schnabl's book became a sort of best-seller, being passed from one reader to the next.  Everyone wanted to read this famous treatise, and since it came from another socialist country, it was seen as less dangerous and less suspect of "foreign influence" (a term which frequently meant direct interference from the United States.)[37] 

All these changes took place in the second half of the 1970s, but in the summer of 1980 an important event occurred that interrupted this situation: the exodus of some 125,000 Cubans from the port of Mariel.  As it is well known, among the "undesirable," the "antisocial" and the "scum" expelled by the Cuban government through Mariel were a large number of homosexuals.[38]  One of the "antisocials" who had managed to find his way through Mariel was Reinaldo Arenas, who had become famous as a gay dissident writer both within and beyond Cuba.  Homophobia returned with a vengeance to Cuba, and homosexuals were once again labeled as escoria [scum] since the Cuban government was trying to portray those who were leaving as undesirable persons, as the dregs of society who wished to leave because they couldn't live in a "healthy" country like Cuba.  The official Cuban government newspaper Granma stated that "Even though in our country homosexuals are not persecuted or harassed,... there were quite a few of them in the Peruvian embassy, in addition to all those involved in gambling and drugs who find it difficult to satisfy their vices here."[39]  In spite of the statement that “in our country homosexuals are not persecuted or harassed,” it is undeniable that the discourse of Cuban officialdom at that time tried to associate gays (and other "undesirable" groups) with the corruption and negative attitudes that the Cuban people supposedly rejected.  The Cuban government even published a documentary on the events of Mariel and the Peruvian embassy titled Escoria [Scum], the principal slogan of which was “get rid of them.”[40]  Within Cuba the government organized acts of repudiation against those who were leaving or who appeared to want to leave.  These acts of repudiation were essentially acts of public rejection by Cubans who favored the government and who verbally and at times physically abused those who were leaving or who showed signs of wanting to leave.  The point was to show the existence of two very distinct groups: those who were leaving because they were anti-social and those who were staying because they were good citizens.

With the events that took place in the Summer 1980, Cuba's image abroad worsened considerably.  This decline in Cuba's image was hastened by the documentary Conducta impropia [Improper Conduct], produced outside Cuba by Néstor Almendros and Orlando Jiménez Leal, two directors who were avowedly opposed to the ruling system on the island, which they attacked by various means, including by exposing the Cuban government’s homophobia.[41]  The documentary relives some images of the UMAPs, based on the statements of people who had been in the camps at the end of the 1960s, on the homophobic policies of the First National Congress on Education and Culture of 1971, and on circumstances related to the Mariel boat-lift.  Several people interviewed in the documentary give highly negative opinions of the Cuban regime in general.  Some of them were already world-renowned, such as Reinaldo Arenas, Heberto Padilla, Guillermo Cabrera Infante and Carlos Franqui, among others.  But the rest of those interviewed were unknown Cubans whose stories were included in the documentary in order to emphasize a very negative vision of Cuba.  Nevertheless, the documentary insisted on an opinion (at least in some of the interviews) in which Cuban homophobia had not changed at all: as if the time of the UMAPs and the second half of the 1970s were identical. 

Conducta impropia ends with the words of René Ariza, a Cuban writer and playwright who by that time was in exile in southern Florida, and who had served a five-year jail term in Cuba for reasons not exactly clear from his statements, but which imply that it was due to him being "different" and displaying improper conduct.  As he says: 

The most untrue thing about it isn't exactly what happens but why it happens.  Being different, being queer, engaging in inappropriate conduct, is something not only prohibited [in Cuba] but also completely repressed which can even land you in prison.  I think that's something that's been in the Cuban character for a long time, that isn't exclusive to Castro; there are many Castros and everyone has to watch out for the Castro they have inside.  It's an attitude we carry around.  For a long time we've borne a series of designs, of molds, and we're very conditioned by it all.  It's a vicious circle, and we've fallen completely into paranoia, a paranoia we all maintain, both the persecutors as well as the persecuted, since the persecuted seem to be the persecutors.  Everyone suspects everyone.[42] 

The documentary Conducta impropia was filmed at the beginning of the 1980s, but since then there have been obvious changes towards a bettering of the relationship between Cuban officialdom and the treatment of homosexuals.  As Ian Lumsden says:  "although Cuba and its government remain homophobic, there is little evidence to support the contention that the persecution of homosexuals remains a matter of state policy.  On the contrary, there is considerable evidence to suggest that the government is now seeking to devise a much less repressive way of regulating homosexuality."[43]  In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that beginning in the 1980s the situation of homosexuals in Cuba in relation to government policy was improving progressively.  By the end of the 1980s, not only had official persecution of homosexuals decreased substantially, but works on very daring homoerotic themes were allowed to be published and sometimes encouraged and even were awarded prizes in local and national literary contests.  This change, especially starting in 1988, has brought about a wave of works and essays in which new and open representations of homosexuality in Cuba are central.  What is even more important is that these representations are made in terms that could be called positive, at least in the sense that this would be true in the gay literature of western European countries or the present-day United States.  Several of these texts are written by what can be called “friendly participants” in contrast to “hostile nonparticipants” as previous texts were.

I should make the proviso that the Gay and Lesbian Association of Cuba (GLAC), which tried to organize on July 28, 1994, has not been able to do so successfully.  Some members of this association attempted to regroup again on January 24, 1995 under the name of Acción por la Libertad de Expresión de la Elección Sexual [Action for the Freedom of Expression of Sexual Choice] (GALEES), but were unable to acquire any form of official recognition.  Ian Lumsden says the following regarding this group: “Members of GLAC were not subject to any specific repression, although they, like many other Cubans, lived tense moments that include more street redadas [raids] in the weeks that followed the refugee exodus in the late summer of 1994.”[44]  It is instructive to read Lumsden’s interview on March 7, 1995, with Andrix Gudin Williams, the principal organizer of the Cuban Gay and Lesbian Association.  Here Williams, in answer to a report in The Advocate of January 24, 1995, says that it was not true that the “[Cuban] government security forces launched a crackdown so brutal that leaders of the group [GLAC][had] to shut it down.”[45]  Of course, we don’t know how free was Williams to express this opinion.

At least it may be stated that the previous representations of homosexuality are being radically questioned, including their relationship with the concept of citizenship.  Among the most notable examples in this regard, the critical and popular acclaim of the Cuban film Fresa y chocolate [Strawberry and Chocolate] stands out.[46]  This film deals explicitly with the discrimination against homosexuality that has existed in Cuba as well as the need to integrate homosexuality into the very concept of nationhood. (I study this film in detail in chapter nine.)  Other examples include the documentary Mariposas en el andamio [Butterflies on the Scaffold], which, although almost unknown in Cuba, is at least proof that a documentary dealing with and defending transvestites in a town near Havana called La Güinera was allowed to be made.[47]  (I study this documentary in chapter eleven.)  There are also popular songs such as "Pecado original" [Original Sin] by Pablo Milanés and "El tiene delirio de amar varones" [He's Boy Crazy] by Pedro Luis Ferrer, in which the right to loving relations between people of the same sex is defended.  And also there are numerous poems, short stories, and a few novels that deal more openly with gay and lesbian relations in comparison to what had been permitted in Cuba previously (I expand on this issue in chapter ten.) 

Among the authors who have now written and/or published texts of this sort (including essays on the theme) are:  Abilio Estévez, Miguel Mejides [whose story has been recreated by Francisco López Sacha], Pedro de Jesús López Acosta, Marilyn Boves, Leonardo Padura Fuentes, Roberto Urías, Norge Espinosa, Ena Lucía Portela Alzola, Jacqueline Herrand Brooks, Alberto Acosta Pérez, Mirta Yáñez, Fátima Paterson, Manelic R. Ferret, Mercedes Santos Moray, Alejandro Aragón L'Oria, Senel Paz, Alexis Pimienta, Juan Carlos Valls, Francisco Morán Lull, Salvador Redonet, Odette Alonso, Damaris Calderón and Francisco García González.  Many of these writers live in Cuba, although some have moved abroad.  Several of their works began to appear in 1988, and one can frequently see in them the expression of a machista world that has discriminated and abused homosexuals and tried at the same time to suppress everything that could be interpreted as homosexual.[48]  Nevertheless, I believe that the simple fact of dealing so openly with this issue from a homosexual, gay, lesbian or queer perspective, in addition to the great abundance of these texts in a little over a decade, is a clear indication that there has been some sort of transformation in the Cuban culture regarding homosexuality.   

To all this must be added the 1997 "Premio de Literatura Hispana en los Estados Unidos" [Prize for Hispanic Literature in the United States] of the Cuban Casa de las Américas which was awarded to Sonia Rivera-Valdés for her collection of short stories Las historias prohibidas de Marta Veneranda [The Forbidden Stories of Marta Veneranda] (1998).[49]  The majority of Rivera-Valdés’ "forbidden stories" make reference to lesbian women and on two occasions to gay men.  The feminists and queer positions implicit in these stories are perhaps the most noteworthy characteristic of the collection.  The success of Las historias prohibidas within Cuba has been remarkable.  I should add here that Cuban researcher and critic Víctor Fowler has dedicated himself in recent years to the study and publication of works on the representation of homosexuality in his country.  His writings have been published by several Cuban magazines and his book on the topic was published in Havana in 1998.[50] Thus, if we take into consideration all the information available to us today, in spite of its recent history of institutionalized homophobia, we can say that Cuba has become a country in which the representation of homosexuality is more open, permitted and public than ever before.[51] 

 

 

[1] See Pérez-Stable, The Cuban Revolution. 

[2] See Lumsden, Machos, Maricones, and Gays, especially pages 55-80.

[3] See Ian Daniels, “Interview with Ana María Simo,” Torch (New York) (December 15, 1984 / January 14, 1985).  See also Lourdes Argüelles and Ruby Rich, “Homosexuality, Homophobia and Revolution: Notes Toward an Understanding of the Cuban Lesbian and Gay experience,” Part I, Signs 9:4 (Summer 1984): 683-699; and Part II, Signs 11: 1 (1985): 120-136.

[4] See Allen Young, “Commentary: ‘The Cuban Gulag.’ Homophobia and the American Left,” The Advocate 388 (July 10, 1984): 35; “Cuba: Gay as the Sun,” in Karla & Allen Young, editors, Out of the Closet: Voices of Gay Liberation (New York: New York University Press, 1992): 206-250; and Gays under the Cuban Revolution (San Francisco: Grey Fox Press, 1981).

[5] See Carlos Franqui, Family Portrait with Fidel (New York:  Random House, 1984):  138-141; and Guillermo Cabrera Infante, in Néstor Almendros and Orlando Jiménez-Leal, Conducta impropia (Madrid: Editorial Playor, 1984): 134-135.   

[6] See Carlos Franqui, Family Portrait with Fidel, 139. 

[7] Ibid., 141.

[8] For an account of Virgilio Piñera's troubles with the Cuban government in the 1960s, see Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Mea Cuba (New York:  Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1992):  331-360.  See also the insightful articles by José Quiroga, “Fleshing Out Virgilio Piñera from the Cuban Closet,” in Bergmann and Smith, editors, ¿Entiendes?, 168-180; and “Virgilio Piñera: On the Weight of the Insular Flesh,” in Molloy and Irwin, editors, Hispanisms and Homosexualities, 269-285. 

[9] See Lumsden, Machos, Maricones, and Gays, 59-60. 

[10] For a detailed account, year by year, of Piñera's life and work, see Teresa Cristófani Barreto, A Libélula, a pitonisa.  Revolucão, homosexualismo e literatura em Virgilio Piñera (São Paulo:  Editora Iluminuras, 1996), especially pages 109-171.

[11] Cabrera Infante, Mea Cuba (New York: Farar, Strauss and Giroux, 1992): 317-348. 

[12] Ibid.

[13] Virgilio Piñera, "La vida tal cual," Unión, 3:10 (April-June 1990): 23.  Spanish original: “No bien tuve la edad exigida para que el pensameinto se traduzca en algo más que soltar la baba y agitar los bracitos, me enteré de tres cosas lo bastante sucias como para no poderme lavar de las mismas.  Aprendí que era pobre, que era homosexual y que me gustaba el Arte.”

[14] Ibid.

[15] See Cristófani Barreto, A Libélula, a pitonisa, 110-171. 

[16] Ibid.

[17] Cabrera Infante, Mea Cuba, 317-348. 

[18] For a thoughtful opinion about the issue of how the Cuban state attempts to control even its own “rectification” about homosexuality, see Quiroga, “Homosexualities in the Tropic of Revolution,” in Daniel Balderston and Donna J. Guy, editors, Sex and Sexuality in Latin America (New York: New York University Press, 1997): 133-151.

[19] See Goytisolo, En los reinos de Taifa, 175.

[20] See Carlos Franqui, Family Portrait with Fidel (New York: Random House, 1984).

[21] See Brad Epps, "Proper Conduct:  Reinaldo Arenas, Fidel Castro and the Politics of Homosexuality,"  Journal of the History of Sexuality, volume 6, 2 (1995):  231-283, especially pages 237-239. 

[22] For an article on Che Guevara's homophobia directed against Virgilio Piñera, see José Quiroga, "Fleshing Out Virgilio Piñera from the Cuban Closet," in Bergmann and Smith, editors, Entiendes?, 168-180. 

[23] See Samuel Feijóo, El mundo (April 15, 1965). 

[24] See José Yglesias, In the Fist of the Revolution: Life in a Cuban Country Town (New York: Pantheon Books, 1968): 275. 

[25] See Allen Young, interview with Allen Ginsberg in Gay Sunshine Interview (1974):  25-27.  Reprinted in Allen Young, Gays under the Cuban Revolution, 20. 

[26] See Marvin Leiner, Sexual Politics in Cuba: Machismo, Homosexuality, and AIDS (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994): 38-42.

[27] Quoted by Leiner, Sexual Politics in Cuba, 34.  Leiner does not give the Spanish original of this quote. 

[28] For an extensive account of the relationship between homosexuality and education in Cuba during the revolutionary period of the 1960s and 1970s, see Leiner, Sexual Politics in Cuba, 21-59. 

[29] See “Declaración del Primer Congreso Nacional de Educación y Cultura,” La Gaceta de Cuba 90-91 (March-April 1971): 2-13.  See also Memorias del primer congreso de educación y cultura (Havana: Instituto Cubano del Libro, 1971).

[30] For an account of Casey’s life and work, see Fowler, La maldición, 128-140.

[31] The bibliography on Reinaldo Arenas’ political stance and his relationship with the Cuban government is copious, see, among others, Juan Abreu, “Presencia de Arenas,” in Reinaldo Sánchez, editor, Reinaldo Arenas.  Recuerdo y presencia (Miami: Ediciones Universal, 1994): 13-20; Armando Álvarez Bravo, “Reinaldo Arenas: ‘Escribir es un acto de irreverencia’,” El Nuevo Herald (April 21, 1990): 1D, 5D; Ottmar Ette, editor, La escritura de la memoria.  Reinaldo Arenas: textos, estudios y documentación (Frankfurt: Vervuert Verlag, 1992); Vincent Canby, “ ‘Improper Conduct,’ Exiles Indict Castro Regime,” The New York Times  (April 11, 1984): C19; Edwin Ellis, “Reinaldo Arenas and His ‘Act of Fury,’ A Writer in Exile Documents Repression in ‘El Central’, ” The Advocate 388 (July 10, 1984): 38, 40; Robert Richmond Ellis, “The Gay Lifewriting of Reinaldo Arenas: Antes que anochezca,” A/B: Auto/Biographies Studies 10:1 (Spring 1995): 126-144; Brad Epps, “Proper Conduct: Reinaldo Arenas, Fidel Castro, and the Politics of Homosexuality,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 6:21 (1995): 231-283; and Emilio Bejel, “Before Night Falls: Autobiography of a Gay Cuban Dissident,” in Susana Chávez Silverman and Librada Hernández, editors, Reading and Writing the Ambiente: Queer Sexualities in Latino, Latin American, and Spanish Culture (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, forthcoming).

[32] See comments by Lumsden, Machos, Maricones, and Gays, 73-75. 

[33] Ibid., 80.

[34] For an account of the relationship between homosexuality and the law in Cuba, see Lumsden, Machos, Maricones, and Gays, 81-95. 

[35] Leiner, Sexual Politics in Cuba, 43-44. 

[36] Siegfried Schnabl, El hombre y la mujer en la intimidad (Havana: Editorial Científico-Técnica, 1979).

[37] See Leiner, Sexual Politics in Cuba, 44.

[38] Lumsden, Machos, Maricones, and Gays, 78-80. See also Henk van de Boogaard and Kathelijne van Kammen, “Cuba: We Cannot Jump over Our Own Shadow,” in IGA Pink Book, 1985: A Global View of Lesbian and Gay Oppression and Liberation (Amsterdam: COC, 1985); and the editorials of Granma April 7, 1980, April 10, 1980, and May 2, 1980.

[39] Granma (April 7, 1980).

[40] Spanish original:  "que se vayan."

[41] Néstor Almendros and Orlando Jiménez-Leal, Improper Conduct.  The script of this documentary is found in Almendros and Jiménez-Leal, Conducta impropia (Madrid:  Editorial Playor, 1984). 

[42] Spanish original:  "Lo más infundioso de la cosa no está exactamente en qué sucede sino en por qué sucede.  Ser distinto, ser extraño, tener una conducta impropia, es algo no sólo prohibido [en Cuba] sino completamente reprimido y puede costarte la prisión.  Eso yo creo que está dentro del carácter del cubano de [desde?] hace mucho tiempo, que no es privativo de Castro, y que hay muchos Castros, y que hay que vigilarse el Castro que cada uno tiene dentro.  Es una actitud que arrastramos.  Arrastramos una serie de diseños, de moldes de hace mucho tiempo, y estamos muy condicionados por todo.  Es un círculo vicioso, y se ha caído completamente en una paranoia, una paranoia que la sustentan todos, la sustentan tanto los que persiguen como los perseguidos, puesto que los perseguidos parecen ser los que persiguen.  Todo el mundo sospecha de todos."  Ibid.

[43] Lumsden, Machos, Maricones, and Gays, 80.  See also the informative and perceptive article by Paul Julian Smith, “Cuban Homosexualities: On the Beach with Néstor Almendros and Reinaldo Arenas,” in Molloy and Irwin, editors, Hispanisms and Homosexualities, 248-268. 

[44] Lumsden, Machos, Maricones, and Gays, 80.

[45] Ibid.

[46] The film Strawberry and Chocolate (1993) was directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío, and based on Senel Paz's short story El lobo, el bosque y el hombre nuevo.  

[47] The documentary Butterflies on the Scaffold was directed by Margaret Gilpin and Luis Felipe Bernaza, and produced by Kangaroo Productions (1996). 

[48] See Alfredo Alonso Estenoz, “Tema homosexual en la literatura cubana delos 80 y los 90: ¿renovación o retroceso?” (unpublished), and Jesús Jambrina, “Sujetos queer en la literatura cubana: hacia una (posible) genealogía homoerótica” (unpublished).  Both Alfredo Alonso Estenoz and Jesús Jambrina read their works at the 2000 Latin American Studies Association Annual Conference.  I have obtained a copy of their presentations through the generosity of these two critics.

[49] Sonia Rivera-Valdés, Las historias prohibidas de Marta Veneranda (Havana:  Ministerio de Cultura, Colombia / Casa de Las Americas, Cuba, 1997). 

[50] Fowler, La maldición.   Recently, other Cuban critics who have dedicated most of their recent research efforts to the study of the representation of homosexuality in Cuban literature are Alfredo Alonso Estenoz and Jesús Jambrina.

[51] I have not included in this introduction the extremely important issue of AIDS and how Cuban AIDS patients are treated because this would mean a new research that I prefer to leave for another occasion.  For an extensive discussion of AIDS in Cuba, see Lumsden, Machos, Maricones, and Gays, 160-177.