In the 1970s, the Italian gay movement shouted, unheard, "Cuba is castrating us." This effectively summarized how in that country, then an untouchable myth for the entire Italian left, our Cuban brothers and sisters were imprisoned or exiled by an undemocratic regime. We gays, therefore, reaffirm that human rights and freedoms cannot be subordinated to social achievements, and I spoke about this on Saturday, at the Festa dell'Unità, during a meeting with other speakers on Cuba.
There are over eighty countries in the world that contain repressive provisions against homosexual citizens in their penal codes, including China, Burma, Islamic countries, and Cuba.
Of course, the Taliban were shocking when they condemned gay men to death by crushing, but what about "moderate" Egypt, which recently handed down forced labor sentences to young men "suspected of sodomy.".
Since the revolution, Cuba has seen periods of fierce repression alternate with periods of relative tolerance. In recent years, legislation has been relaxed. Homosexuality is no longer officially repressed, but laws against prostitution (i.e., public outrage and explicit sexual advances are prohibited) are used to give the police free rein, through raids on gay clubs, which are always accompanied by all manner of abuse.
In the early 1990s, a sort of Gay Pride parade was held in Cuba, but in 1997, the association that had organized the event was dissolved by the regime. In Cuba, one of Fini's proposals is already law: openly gay teachers cannot teach. Having the courage to say these things, however, means cultivating strong consistency, that is, always rigorously remembering all governments that trample on civil rights, that respond to violence with the death penalty or with increasingly stifling restrictions on individual freedoms. It's worth mentioning here, as a guiding example, that the American LGBT movement, some time ago, decisively opposed the death sentence handed down to two young men for murdering a young gay man, because it seemed right to do so.
For these reasons, Cuba, for us, does not represent an island of evil, but a society that also challenges the Italian left regarding its historical delays in promoting freedom. Cuba is, first and foremost, a people suffering from a despicable economic embargo. At the same time, Castroism used the embargo to conceal the disasters it wrought, which became evident after the lack of economic and political support from the defunct Eastern system. The answers for change must come from within Cuban society. But international cooperation, as it is already doing, can help Cubans both economically and culturally. As the Italian LGBT movement, for example, we are interested and ready to work with new organizations that would address sexual discrimination. This will also be a measure of the true desire to usher in a new era in Cuba.
Aurelio Mancuso
National Secretary of Arcigay
