LavenderRed_Cubabook

Precious footage
The documentary also provides historic footage of Cuban nova trova singer Pablo
Milanés singing his song “Original Sin” at a 1994 public concert in Havana. (“El Pecado
Original” is available on Milanés’s CD “Orígines.”)
Milanés—a Cuban who harvested in the UMAP brigades in the mid-1960s, and who
is beloved in Cuba—told the concert audience, “I dedicate this song to homosexuals, to
gay people, and to all those who are marginalized and are suffering in the world.”
Milanés sang: “Two souls, two bodies, two men who love each other, are being expelled
from the paradise they live in. Neither of them is a warrior with victories to boast of. Neither
of them has riches, to calm the ire of their judges. Neither is a president, neither is a
censor of his own desires. We are not god. Let’s not make the same mistakes again.”
Larry Olberg noted, “Introduced at his annual holiday concert held in the vast Karl
Marx Theater in the Miramar neighborhood of Havana, ‘El Pecado Original’ took the audience
and the country by storm and did much to advance the cause of gay acceptance.”
“Gay Cuba” includes footage documenting crossed-dressed homosexual Cubans participating
in the annual, massive May Day march in 1995. Two lesbian and gay delegations
were also invited from the U.S. to take part the same year. There’s also footage
of a lesbian and gay Cuban contingent in the José Martí procession.
At the close of “Gay Cuba,” radio host Anna María Ramos concluded, “We have been
in 35 years of revolution, a revolution that by no means has been static; that has made
changes constantly. In every sense, we are prepared for change. The roots of homophobia
have not been driven so deep into the soil of Cuban earth. They can be pulled out.”
72 Rainbow Solidarity in Defense of Cuba