TransCuba: A revolution within the Revolution

After his victory in 1959, Fidel Castro promised the Cuban Revolution would be for the working class, the poor and humblest Cubans… as long as they were straight. Cuban officials saw homosexuality as a sign of counterrevolutionary, bourgeois decadence. The new regime sent homosexuals, political dissenters and religious minorities to labor camps known as UMAPs, and kept in place public decency laws that prohibited any form of transgender or gender nonconforming behavior. Homosexual Cubans like poet Reinaldo Arenas were among the thousands of Cubans who went into exile on the Mariel Boatlift in 1980. Fast forward to 2015. From her post as director of the Cuban National Center for Sexual Education (CENESEX), sexologist Mariela Castro, Fidel’s niece and Raul Castro’s daughter, has spearheaded lesbian, gay, bisexual and especially, trans rights. Cuba now stands out as a somewhat liberal haven in the Caribbean, compared to neighboring Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, where homosexuality is still illegal. LGBT political dissidents have called Mariela’s work “a benevolent face the world can see calling for tolerance while the regime’s usual brand of everyday totalitarianism continues.” That LGBT activism is not possible outside of the Cuban government’s oversight and despite the official protection, lesbian, gay, bisexual and especially trans Cubans still face the challenges and discrimination of a historically machista culture. Maria Hinojosa talked to photographer and trans rights activist Mariette Pathy Allen about her work documenting the lives of transgender women for her book TransCuba: https://daylightbooks.org/store/mariette-pathy-allen-transcuba (Daylight Books https://daylightbooks.org/ , 2014)