LavenderRed_Cubabook

“Havana’s gay male underground—some 200,000—was a purgatory of prostitution
to American tourists, domestic servitude, and constant threats of violence and blackmail.”
(Hatch)
Arguelles and Rich explained: “It was just a profitable commodification of sexual fantasy.
For the vast majority, homosexuality made life a shameful and guilt-ridden experience.
Such was gay Havana in the fabled ‘avant la guerre’ period.”
Reactionaries prey on dislocation
For male homosexuals in Havana, particularly those who were feminine and/or crossdressing,
social outlets for congregating were limited once this large-scale illegal economy
was shut down after the revolution.
As a result, Arguelles and Rich explained, this “prolonged the relationship between
the declining underworld and more progressive homosexuals, locking the two groups
together for sheer companionship and sexual pleasure.”
That was truer for Cuban males than females.
The two researchers also noted, “Homosexual perspectives on the revolution could
shift according to class interests.”
Middle-class homosexuals whose privileges were threatened by agrarian and urban
reforms banded, they said, with “the remaining veterans of the underworld” to oppose
the revolution.
“Some veterans of the old underworld enclave joined counter-revolutionary activities
or were pushed into them by the CIA,” Arguelles and Rich reported. “Not a few of the
progressive homosexuals became implicated by default in counter-revolutionary activities
and were even jailed.
“Young homosexuals seeking contact with ‘the community’ in the bars and famous
cruising areas of La Rampa were thus introduced to counter-revolutionary ideology and
practice. One example of such a dynamic is the case of Rolando Cubela, a homosexual
student leader who fought in the revolutionary army but was later enlisted by the CIA
to assassinate Fidel Castro.”
The two researchers concluded, “Homosexual bars and La Rampa cruising areas were
perceived, in some cases correctly, as centers of counter-revolutionary activities and began
to be systematically treated as such.”
Cuban women organize for gains
The overall situation for Cuban women who loved women had its own characteristics.
Under the triple weight of the patriarchies of colonialism, capitalism and imperialism,
a dynamic women’s movement emerged in Cuba as early as the 1920s and Cuban women
won the right to vote and be elected to public office in 1934. (thegully.com)
After the 1959 seizure of state power, it was Cuban women as a whole who became
the driving force to break the chokehold of centuries-old patriarchal economic and social
organization, and the attitudes about women and femininity it engendered.
16 Rainbow Solidarity in Defense of Cuba