LavenderRed_Cubabook

Homosexuality and Cuba
1970s: Decade
of cultural progress
Those who today are working to seize state power and defend and build a workers’
state in their own countries may be sobered as well as heartened by the enormous
cultural labor that the Cuban Revolution had to accomplish in the 1970s, particularly
regarding liberation of women, sexuality and gendered social roles.
Arguelles and Rich concluded in their 1984 study of Cuba that three events “marked
the gradual but continual improvement of life conditions of gay men and lesbians in
Cuba during the seventies: the First National Congress on Education and Culture, the
prom ulgation of the Family Code, and the creation of a national group on sexual education.”
Arguelles and Rich explain that at the 1971 Congress on Education and Culture, “On
the one hand, homosexuality was not referred to as a product of decadence and homosexuality
was no longer seen by the revolutionary leadership as a fundamental problem in
Cuban society, but, rather, viewed as a form of sexual behavior requiring study.
“On the other hand, declarations from the same congress called for the removal of
homosexuals from the field of education, thus continuing the view of homosexuality as a
contamination of the body politic.”
The 1971 congress declaration demoralized some activists worldwide who had hoped
that the seizure of state power in Cuba would usher in an immediate and thorough-going
theoretical, social and economic transformation.
Some activists succumbed to fear that prejudice is a hard-wired human trait that can’t
ever be eradicated from any human society, even a socialist one.
Anti-communists have also tried to use the 1971 congress document in attempts to
discredit the revolutionary process altogether.
Both are ample reason to look more closely.
Roots of prejudice
Studying Cuba’s specific historical economic and social conditions opens up greater
understanding about what generates prejudice against same-sex love and gender variance,
as well as racism, and opens up clarity about what kind of material changes are necessary
to eventually uproot all forms of bigotry.
Prejudice—ideology that pits groups within the vast laboring and oppressed class
worldwide against each other—is not the same as superstition. Superstitions are explanations
concerning the material world that the scientific process later proves are untrue.
1970s: Decade of cultural progress 29