LavenderRed_Cubabook

1965 UMAP brigades:
What they were, what they were not
One of the most terrible slanders against the Cuban Revolution is that the workers’
state was a “penal colony,” interning gay men in “concentration camps” in 1965.
That charge, which refers to the 1965 mobilization of Units to Aid Military Production
(UMAP), still circulates today as good coin.
Therefore the formation and ending of the UMAP work brigades in the history of
the Cuban workers’ state is vitally important for today’s activists to study very carefully
and thoroughly. Those who are working hard to make a revolution in the heartland of
imperialism will pay the most careful attention, and bring the most genuine solidarity
and humility—teachability—to this important analysis.
For those worldwide who struggle against oppression based on sexuality, gender and
sex, the sharpening of this sexual/gender/sex contradiction in Cuba in 1965 offers this
critical lesson: The way sexuality and the sexes are socially organized, and gender is socially
assigned and allowed to be expressed, always has a history.
Since the overturning of matrilineal, cooperative societies, strict organization based on
race, sex, gender expression and sexuality has served the dictates of ruling-class economic
organization, and has been under the knuckles of state regulation and repression.
Pre-revolutionary Cuba was no exception.
Spain exports Inquisition
Without understanding Cuba’s historical process, it’s impossible to understand its
revolutionary process.
Researcher Ian Lumsden noted in his study on Cuba and homosexuality, “There is
much speculation about the incidence of homosexual activity between Cuba’s indigenous
people, as there is with respect to other parts of the New World. Whatever its true extent,
it was used as a pretext for Spain to enslave natives on the grounds that they were
not fully human.”
He explained that, “Condemnation of sodomy and subsequently of homosexuality,
along with repressive mystification of women’s sexuality, have long been at the core of
Spanish Catholic dogmas regarding sexuality.” Only crimes against the king and heresy
were higher crimes than “sodomy” in the Middle Ages.
1965 UMAP brigades: What they were, what they were not 19