LavenderRed_Cubabook

Early Cuban Revolution
paved road to sexual liberation
The first revolutionary step toward the liberation of sexuality, gender expression
and oppressed sexes in Cuba was the dismantling of the sex-for-profit industry
and interconnected gambling dens and drug-distribution networks. This concrete,
material first act by the Cuban Revolution unshackled human bodies, desire and
gender expression from capitalist commodification, commercialization and exploitation.
For almost half a millennium the island had been manacled by colonialism, capitalism
and imperialism. The holds of their ships brought enslaved peoples from Africa. Their
advanced weaponry was cocked and trained on the enslaved laborers. The ideological lash
of the Roman Catholic Church sliced to the bone. White supremacist, racist ideology, patriarchal
oppression of women and state-enforced repression against same-sex love ruled
the economic and social order.
Just as colonialism and imperialism left the island’s fertile soil cultivated as a singlecrop
plantation, class enslavement tilled the fields of culture.
When the revolutionary process began, it had to start from there.
Before the 1959 revolution, the burgeoning sector of the Cuban economy was Havana’s
prostitution industry, booming with Cold War consumption—the largest in the
Caribbean—and the gambling, drugs and tourism connected to it. U.S. crime syndicate
bosses and wealthy Cubans with connections to Batista’s regime owned the profitable
operations.
Arguelles and Rich noted that this illegal economy “employed more than two hundred
thousand workers as petty traders, casino operators, entertainers, servants and prostitutes.”
(Arguelles)
Many were homosexual—male and female—and many of the males were feminine.
Crime bosses also exploited tens of thousands of heterosexual women and men in the
prostitution industry. All performed to the sexual whims of the fathers and sons of the
U.S. and Cuban ruling classes.
Cuban citizen, translator and interpreter Leonardo Hechavarría, and Cuban defender,
typographer and gay rights activist Marcel Hatch, summed up that era: “Before the 1959
Revolution, life for lesbians and gays was one of extreme isolation and repression, enforced
by civil law, augmented by Catholic dogma. Patriarchal attitudes made lesbians invisible.
If discovered, they’d often suffer sexual abuse, disgrace in the community, and job loss.
Early Cuban Revolution paved road to sexual liberation 15