The issue of human rights is at a standstill in Cuba, with ongoing reports on the lack of improvement on the issue. In 2019, Human Rights Watch reported that political violence was occurring in Cuba through the government’s use of repressive tactics against the population, such as censorship, beatings and public shaming for dissidents, human rights defenders, independent journalists and those who showed disagreement with the political system.
1 Human Rights Watch, ‘World Report 2019: Cuba’, 2019; https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/cuba [accessed 9 November 2020]. In the same year, the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Cuban Prisoners Defenders reported that Cuba’s State security forces were threatening dissidents with prison or bodily harm if they did not leave the island and that they had harassed their families. In turn, the government accused these people of being mercenaries paid by the US to tarnish the government’s reputation.
2 Reuters in Madrid, ‘Cuba is Driving Dissidents off Island with Threats of Violence and Jail, Report Finds’, The Guardian, 19 June 2019; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/19/cuba-dissidents-exile-human-rights [accessed 9 November 2020].While the 21st century began with significant changes in domestic politics, none of them seems to have provided substantial improvement on the issue. On 31 July 2006, Fidel Castro transferred his responsibility as head of State to his brother Raúl Castro, who became president of the Councils of State and minister of the Republic of Cuba in February 2008. Raúl Castro expressed his intention to initiate a legal reform process in Cuba: ‘It is necessary to walk towards the future, with a firm and sure step, because we simply have no right to make mistakes’.
3Spanish original: ‘Es preciso caminar hacia el futuro, con paso firme y seguro, porque sencillamente no tenemos derecho a equivocarnos’; Raúl Castro, ‘No tenemos derecho a equivocarnos’, Cuba Debate, 20 December 2009; http://www.cubadebate.cu/opinion/2009/12/20/discurso-de-raul-castro-en-la-asamblea-nacional/ [accessed 9 November 2020]. Yet, all alternatives to the Marxist–Leninist system, including ‘representative democracy’, were presented as connected to the neoliberal model, which the government continued to distrust: ‘Where the majorities do not count either and when they manifest, […] they are brutally repressed and silenced with the complicity of the powerful, as well as transnationalised, press at their service’.
4 Spanish original: ‘[…] donde las mayorías tampoco cuentan y cuando se manifiestan, […] son brutalmente reprimidas y silenciadas con la complicidad de la gran prensa a su servicio, también transnacionalizada’; Raúl Castro, ‘Lo que nos corresponde es promover la mayor democracia en nuestra sociedad, empezando por dar el ejemplo dentro de las filas del partido’, Granma Internacional, 29 January 2012; http://www.granma.cu/discursos-raul/2012-01-29/lo-que-nos-corresponde-es-promover-la-mayor-democracia-en-nuestra-sociedad-empezando-por-dar-el-ejemplo-dentro-de-las-filas-del-partido [accessed 9 November 2020]. Marxism and Leninism constituted the main ideological foundation of the revolutionary process.
Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez took over Raúl Castro’s post in April 2018. A new Cuban Constitution was approved by 87% of the country’s voting public in February 2019, following public debate and consultation with councils and professional and educational organisations.
5 James A. Baer, ‘Cuban Constitution of 2019’, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, 11 April 2019; http://www.coha.org/cuban-constitution-of-2019/ [accessed 10 November 2020]. The new Constitution continues to define Cuba as a socialist State and to define the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) as a guide for society.
6 Details provided by the Constitute Project, ‘Cuba 1975 (rev. 2002)’, Oxford’s Constitutions of the World, 2002; https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Cuba_2002 [accessed 9 November 2020].Portela, who at that time already had a successful literary career abroad, expressed her disappointment with the political immobility in Cuba in her interview with Pardo Lazo: ‘Reformist positions, perestroika wave, yes, there are. […] But to demonstrate for the values of liberal democracy […], which ultimately are the only freedoms that exist, this is another question’.
7 Spanish original: ‘Posturas reformistas, onda perestroika, sí que las hay. […] Pero de ahí a manifestarse a favor de los valores de la democracia liberal […] y que son en definitiva las únicas libertades que existen, va un trecho’; Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, ‘Ena o UNEAC: pendiente la réplica de Ernesto Pérez’, Lunes de Post-Revolución, 11 April 2010; http://orlandoluispardolazo.blogspot.com/2010/04/ena-o-uneac-pendiente-la-replica-de.html [accessed 9 November 2020]. She thus indicated her desire for a change to the democracy on the island.
Years later, the lack of transparency on the issues of human rights and freedoms on the island continued. President Obama’s visit in 2016 was expected to accelerate the process of opening up the island. This was a symbolic move in the rapprochement between the two old enemies to reactivate North American investment in the island and to improve the living conditions of Cubans. In addition to the bilateral meeting with Raúl Castro, President Obama planned to meet with ‘members of civil society, businessmen and Cubans from all areas of society’.
8 The White House, ‘Statement by the Press Secretariat on the President’s Trip to Cuba and Argentina’, Office of the Press Secretary, 18 February 2016; https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/02/18/statement-press-secretary-presidents-travel-cuba-and-argentina [accessed 9 November 2020]. Washington was trying to revalidate its position as the maximum investor in Cuba and other countries in the area, which were annoyed by the economic embargo and other measures that had been imposed on Cuba since Fidel Castro had come to power in 1960.
Addressing the lack of transparency in human rights matters, freedom of expression and the population’s access to free information on the island were the main demands placed on the Cuban government by the White House. Deputy Adviser on National Security Ben Rhodes stated: ‘While we do not seek to impose change on Cuba, we strongly believe that Cuba will benefit when the Cuban people can exercise their universal rights’.
9 Ben Rhodes, ‘President Obama Is Going to Cuba. Here’s Why’, Medium, 18 February 2016; https://medium.com/@rhodes44/president-obama-is-going-to-cuba-here-s-why-41ecdc0586d8 [accessed 9 November 2020]. Rhodes was expressing Washington’s desire for the Cuban government to open up more opportunities for its people.
The Cuban-American dissidents welcomed the announcement of rapprochement between the administrations. In Cuba, people celebrated it with applause, crying and hugs.
10 William M. Leogrande, ‘Normalising Cuba–US Relations’, International Affairs, 91.3 (2015), 473–88, p. 474. However, the initial euphoria gave way to a tedious process in which any agreement was likely to be interpreted as a concession to the contrary. President Obama’s interest in accelerating the pace of Cuban liberalisation was understood in Cuba as a threat to the island’s interests. The arrival of President Trump to the White House in 2017 paralysed all progress on the project to normalise the diplomatic relations between Cuba and the US. This would have entailed the end of the embargo on Cuba, and this was a concession to the island, representative of the communist threat to the Republicans, which Trump was not willing to make.
During the writing of this chapter, the Democratic Party won the elections in the US. President Biden’s administration faces great challenges in US internal politics, mainly in regard to stopping the relentless advance of the Covid-19 pandemic in the country and the economic recession resulting from it. A priori, reinitiating the political reconciliation with Cuba is not a priority issue; at least, it was not during Biden’s election campaign. Diplomatic rapprochement between the US and Cuba would bring two crucial issues to the centre of the debate, as seen in Obama’s visit to Cuba in 2016: the end of the embargo on the island and the lack of commitment from the Cuban government to make public its criteria on human rights on the island.
The demands from the US administration on the defence of human rights and freedoms on the island bring us back to the institutional homophobia (as a form of political violence) that has operated in Cuba almost since the start of the revolutionary government.
Homosexuals became a central issue to the revolution as soon as the new government began promoting the notion of the ‘new man’ (i.e. the
guerrillero – the active patriot who lived for the revolutionary project) as a role model for Cubans. The ‘new man’ was for decades the banner of the patriarchal military discourse and its disciplinary mechanisms. What was considered the pathological character of homosexual deviation became the main issue of Fidel Castro’s closing speech to the First National Congress of Education and Culture (1971),
11 See Carlos Franqui, Family Portrait with Fidel, trans. by Alfred MacAdam (New York: Random House, 1984). in which he made it clear that being homosexual was seen as a destabilising element that undermined the ethos of the revolution. This was followed by an intensive repressive campaign against homosexuals.
The 1979 Penal Code criminalised homosexuals, who were forbidden from contacting young people or representing Cuba abroad. In Almendros and Jiménez-Leal’s documentary
Mauvaise conduite (
Conducta impropia) (1984), René Cifuentes provides details on how institutional homophobia operated at the time: ‘And telegrams began to arrive informing you that you were out of work. The State itself threw you out, so you couldn’t go to work anywhere because the State is the only employer’.
12 Mauvaise conduite (Conducta impropia), dir. by Néstor Almendros and Orlando Jiménez-Leal (Cinevista, 1984). The contempt for homosexuals was sustained by the idea that this community did not follow the precepts of the ‘good revolutionary’ and therefore was a threat to the system. Feeling isolated from the general sea change that was occurring in society, they opted to hide their ‘imperfection’ from public view. The hard line of the State over homosexuals shows one of the paradoxes accompanying the Cuban system: repressive measures gave prominence to dissidents in the views of those outside the island.
Portela contextualises
Cien botellas in the Special Period. During the 1990s, many homosexuals continued to be expelled from their jobs, and most disappeared from public view.
At the time, sexual activism had forced a change in the mentality that criminalised homosexuals in particular. In Cuba, the acceptance of homosexuals was made official with the creation of the National Centre for Sexual Education (CENESEX) in 1989. The director is Mariela Castro Espín – Raúl Castro and Vilma Espín’s daughter. Rights for homosexuals started to materialise in Cuba throughout the following two decades. In 2010, Fidel Castro assumed full responsibility for the persecution and incarceration of homosexuals during the first three decades of the revolutionary government.
13 See Carmen Lira Saade, ‘Soy el responsable de la persecución a homosexuales que hubo en Cuba: interview with Fidel Castro’, La Jornada, 31 August 2010; https://www.jornada.com.mx/2010/08/31/mundo/026e1mun [accessed 9 November 2020]. On 13 August 2011, the first Cuban wedding between two people of the same sex took place.
14 See Mauricio Vicent, ‘Serenata y “boda gay” en el cumpleaños 85º de Fidel Castro’, El País, 13 August 2011; https://elpais.com/internacional/2011/08/13/actualidad/1313186408_850215.html [accessed 9 November 2020]. Since then, reforms on the acceptance of homosexuals have been slow and gradual, and not absent of criticism, but they have added up over the years, transforming the social construction of homosexuals and increasing their access to rights.
Since 2008, Cuba has voted at the UN in favour of LGBT rights and has made statements against violations of rights on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Despite this general trend, in 2010, Cuba voted to dilute a condemnation of homophobia – a move that was vocally criticised by Cuban bloggers.
15 Emily J. Kirk, ‘Setting the Agenda for Cuban Sexuality: The Role of Cuba’s CENESEX’, Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 36.72 (2011), 143–63. In June 2016, the UN Human Rights Council issued a resolution affirming protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, supported by Cuba and other States.
16 United Nations Human Rights, ‘United Nations Resolutions – Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity’; https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Discrimination/Pages/LGBTUNResolutions.aspx [accessed 6 April 2021]. LGBT rights are in principle contained within existing laws on equality and non-discrimination for all. Yet, Cuban policy does not emphasise rights for specific vulnerable individuals or groups. Due to this approach, LGBT people are structurally invisible in the Cuban Constitution and other essential legal documents, only appearing in non-discrimination lists.
LGBT parenting is not currently discussed by the media or government. Yet, the absence of a specific policy or discourse has not greatly hindered lesbian and bisexual women. Their family lives are supported by Cuban policy in a way that allows some space for LGBT and queer parenting, more so than in societies focused on nuclear households. Lesbian and bisexual women are also supported by Cuba’s positive protections for mothers in terms of childcare, healthcare and schooling.
Cuba has been a regional leader for women’s rights since the 1970s, hosting the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean’s (ECLAC) first Regional Conference on Women in Latin America in 1977 and remaining a presiding officer country since then. Cuba was the first country to sign and the second to ratify the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1980. This shows Cuba’s agreement with international norms around gender equality. However, traditional gender norms remain strong in some areas of life.
Machismo is common on the island, with women being in charge of most of the household chores, while men take more responsibility for earning income.
17 Candace Johnson, ‘Framing for Change: Social Policy, the State, and the Federación de Mujeres Cubanas’, Cuban Studies, 42.1 (2012), 35–51. Women are highly sexualised and objectified and are judged on their appearance, with cat-calling (
piropos) being a daily occurrence. These traditionally gendered social issues conflict with the empowerment and formal gender equality that (some) women also experience. Yet, lesbian, bisexual, queer, trans and other women remain somewhat excluded from this progress on ‘women’s issues’.
The acceptance of homosexuality in Cuba at present shows evidence that totalitarian systems do not succeed in making those who do not fit in the system disappear. Before we look at the representation of State repression against those who did not fit in the system during the Special Period, let us pause for a moment on how censorship, which is another type of political violence, has affected Portela’s career.