LavenderRed_Cubabook

The crime syndicates and wealthy Cubans with ties to the Batista dictatorship gave
“preferential hiring” to Cuban homosexuals, many of them feminine and/or cross-dressing
males, to serve the demand of the dollar, and those whose wallets were filled with
cash.
“Other buyers of homosexual desire,” Arguelles and Rich elaborated, “were the fathers
and sons of the Cuban bourgeoisie, who felt free to partake of homoerotic practices
without being considered homosexual as long as they did not take the passive, so-called
female role in sexual relations. Yet another common practice for Cuban heterosexual men
was the procurement of a lesbian prostitute’s favors for a night.”
Poverty drew many heterosexual Cuban men “into this underworld or alternatively
into a homosexual underground dominated by the Cuban homosexual bourgeoisie,” the
two researchers added. The bourgeois Cuban male homosexual of this era sought out
masculine men from the laboring class.
“Thus,” Arguelles and Rich observed, “in many ways, pre-revolutionary homosexual
liaisons in themselves fostered sexual colonialism and exploitation.”
Overall, the pre-revolutionary state regulated this sex-for-profit industry, rather than
repress it.
Fidel: ‘We were forced to mobilize’
Shutting down the exploitative economic industries in Havana after seizure of state
power was just one revolutionary task. Building a planned, productive economy that
could meet the needs of 9 million urban and rural workers was a whole other job—and
a difficult one, at that.
“Let me tell you about the problems we had,” Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro
recalled. “In those first years we were forced to mobilize the whole nation because of the
risks we were facing, which included that of an attack by the United States: the dirty war,
the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Missile Crisis.” (Ramonet)
Fidel Castro talked extensively about the UMAP in two interviews. The first was in
a conversation with Tomás Borge, published in “Face to Face with Fidel Castro” (Ocean
Press: 1992). The second was in conversations between 2003 and 2005 with Ignacio
Ramonet, published by the Cuban Council of State in April 2006.
Recalling the period of 1965, Castro outlined three obstacles in organizing this islandwide
emergency mobilization to defend the revolution and to build the economy. The
first two: The CIA was beaming messages to entice skilled workers and technicians to
emigrate. And members of Catholic, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Seventh-Day Adventist
religious organizations would not take up arms in defense of the island. (Ramonet)
“[A]t the triumph of the Revolution,” President Castro explained, “the stage we are
speaking of, the [male chauvinist] element was very much present, together with widespread
opposition to having homosexuals in military units.” (Ramonet)
The Cuban leader said that as a result, “Homosexuals were not drafted at first, but
then all that became a sort of irritation factor, an argument some people used to lash out
at homosexuals even more.
1965 UMAP brigades: What they were, what they were not 21