LavenderRed_Cubabook

United States become more guarded when abroad, fearful of how homosexual issues are
utilized in the war against the Cuban revolution.
“But many still take the opportunity to visit lesbian and gay bars and bath houses in
New York or San Francisco,” Arguelles and Rich pointed out in the mid-1980s. “Ironically,
their own adjustment to a greater social integration in Cuba causes them increasingly
to feel out of place in these sites, viewing their sexual consumerism as bizarre.”
Jorge, a Cuban artist, concluded that “there is more true sexuality for gays in Cuba.”
(Arguelles and Rich)
Arguelles and Rich returned to the island after their research had been published in
Spanish in the Mexican newspaper La Jornada. The response they got from lesbian and
gay Cubans was that “Overwhelmingly, they felt that progress was more marked than
we suggested and that conditions of daily life had significantly improved during this
decade.”
A gay Cuban named Roberto who said he had left from Mariel “for the adventure”
went back to Cuba to visit. Roberto’s experiences in the U.S. drew him to the Antonio
Maceo Brigade—pro-revolutionary Cubans in Miami and New Jersey. (Hillson)
When Roberto returned to the island, he visited the factory in which he used to work.
His co-workers had known he was homosexual. As Roberto got up to speak to an assembly
of 700 of his former factory co-workers, they all rose to give him a standing ovation.
Lift the blockade!
Cubans who are homosexual, transgender and transsexual did not need imperialism to
“liberate” them from their own people, their own revolution. They needed and deserved
support from the revolutionary and progressive movements in the U.S.—the citadel of
anti-Cuban finance capital—and around the world to help defeat imperialism.
Cubans of all sexualities, genders and sexes were suffering, and are still suffering, under
the economic warfare of the U.S. blockade.
In addition, the blockade impacted on sexual and gender expression on the island. For
example, it put enormous strain on housing, which in turn determines literally how much
room and privacy people have to explore their sexual curiosity and desire.
The constant state of military alert demanded a mass mobilization of Cuban women,
as well as men, in a collective effort for national defense. Revolutionary military preparedness
values courage and strength, dignity and discipline. For half a millennium, colonialism
and imperialism had extolled these virtues as birth traits of masculine males.
Colonial ideology, backed up by the ruling church and state, enforced masculine gender
expression in males. The Spanish military and church introduced anti-homosexual
epithets that seared like branding irons, as its state cruelly punished same-sex love and
gender variance.
38 Rainbow Solidarity in Defense of Cuba