Steps Backwards

In 1970, three years after the murder of Che Guevara in Bolivia and the subsequent decline of the Latin American revolutionary movement, Cuba's central leadership was unable to fulfill its promise to mobilize the population sufficiently to harvest an ultimately utopian goal of 10 million tons of sugar. This setback for the revolutionary regime shifted the balance of political weight from forces led by Fidel Castro to those who favored deeper economic integration with Moscow. This decision, and all that politically and culturally came to accompany such a relationship, yielded unanticipated consequences. Soon thereafter, Cuba dropped its plan to become self-sufficient in food production in favor of membership in the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance, which federated the economic plans of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact nations.

This was the backdrop in 1971 to the first National Congress on Education and Culture -- and, not coincidentally, the arrest of Heberto Padilla. Outside Cuba, that act was protested by figures loyal to Cuba, including Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Jean-Paul Sartre. They distinguished themselves from other intellectuals and writers who used the injustice of the moment to break with the revolution.

In its most glaring resolution, the congress declared: "The social pathological character of homosexual deviations was recognized. It was resolved that all manifestations of homosexual deviations are to be firmly rejected and prevented from spreading." This proclamation gave impulse to deny employment to gays in any institutions that influenced youth. As well, the congress declared gays should not "represent Cuba" abroad.

This campaign stimulated protest in Cuba by artists, writers, and others, as well as by international partisans of Cuba with impeccable revolutionary credentials. Joseph Hansen, a veteran leader of the [U.S.] Socialist Workers Party who from the earliest day of the revolution assiduously reported on its developments and helped win it support, noted that "the pillorying of homosexuals" was a "bad indication" of deeper, but not insurmountable, problems (introduction to his 1978 compilation of essays, The Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution: A Marxist Appreciation).

Walking in Havana on a hot August day in 1980, I sought relief from the oppressive humidity by ducking into the air-conditioned public lobby of the Czech Embassy. When I entered, I was confronted by a display on "Ideological Diversionism" -- a chilling formulation produced by the Soviet bureaucracy's norm of amalgamating, stigmatizing, and outlawing its galaxy of enemies, both real and imagined. There, in a glass case, was state's evidence, provided by Cuba's Ministry of the Interior: a copy of Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed; a magazine of homosexual eroticism; and a Zionist tract. Despite the cool temperatures in the room, it was empty.

Outside, many Cubans worried about Moscow's repeated threats against the Polish Solidarity labor movement. "We are against intervention," many of them told me, concerned about U.S. retaliation for such a move.

Arenas' Trajectory

Reinaldo Arenas' second novel, despite being cited for merit by UNEAC, was rejected for publication unless references to homosexuality were expunged. Arenas refused, and began smuggling his books out of Cuba. In 1973, he was arrested for child molestation, a charge he denied.

This event is portrayed in the film as a frame-up of the chaste Arenas, with no basis in fact. In his memoir, however, Arenas writes of the occasion that he and a friend "had sex in the mangroves with some young guys." He is jailed, but slips out, and is on the run.

Arenas' increasingly anti-revolutionary proclamations and connections with foreign embassies for purposes of sending manuscripts abroad lead the Cuban government to declare him an agent of U.S. intelligence.

He is recaptured. His imprisonment is shown in the movie in a set imagined by Hieronymus Bosch. Arenas signs a debasing confession -- thanks to the persuasive powers of Johnny Depp -- and gets released. Next, the film fast-forwards over his life as a squatter with other disgruntled Cubans until the 1980 Mariel boatlift and departure of 125,000 citizens to the United States. The next ten years are condensed into a few moments in the film.

Arenas' arrival and his experiences in Miami -- briefly mentioned in the book -- are entirely absent from the film. This is, perhaps, because he believed the city was "a caricature of Cuba, the worst of Cuba," owing to its ultra-machiste swagger, he wrote. To the "hell" that was Cuba, he announced Miami was "purgatory," a proclamation that, along with his open homosexuality, did not endear him to organized Cuban ultra-rightists in southern Florida. Arenas used this friction to perpetuate the myth that he was neither of "left" nor "right," as if his sexual preference enabled him to transcend judgment based on the political content of his deeds.

Moving to New York City, Arenas became an organizer of actions against the Cuban revolution. These included his own speaking tours, collaboration with Nestor Almendros in the making of "Improper Conduct," and petition campaigns denouncing the "Castro dictatorship." All these projects, described con gusto in the memoir, are excised from the film.

In 1984 his novella, The Brightest Star, appeared in English. It is dedicated to his friend, Nelson Rodríguez Leyva, who in 1971 detonated a hand grenade in failed attempt to hijack a Cubana jetliner to the United States. Captured, he was tried and executed. Arenas hailed his armed act. "I often think of that moment when, grenade in hand, flying over the Island with its concentration camps and jails, Nelson, in the air, at last felt free, perhaps for the only time in his short life," Arenas wrote, explaining the dedication.

Tragic Finale

The author Arenas briefly surveys his last decade of life in the United States, a sad reenactment of his life in Cuba: nameless and numberless sexual liaisons, imagined encounters with "witches," monomaniacal diatribes against Fidel Castro, and ceaseless derision of international literary figures -- his more famous rivals -- who defend Cuba. Carlos Fuentes, he snipes, behaves "like a computer -- the extreme opposite of what I would consider to be a real writer." Eduardo Galeano is "a front man for Castro." Gabriel García Márquez is a "born opportunist. His work, although not without merit, is permeated with cheap populism."

Above all, Arenas became politically paranoid, seeing what he termed "Castrist agents" everywhere. The root of this phobia was not their presence, but the fact that Arenas often encountered defenders of Cuba when he spoke. In the face of such ripostes, he imagined receiving "death threats from the Cuban State Security" and alleged he was the target of assassination attempts, break-ins and black bag jobs.

None of this, with the exception of a quick reference to Arenas' sexual activity, finds its way into the film. The movie quickly dissolves into the lonely tragedy of his death, editorially enhanced for cinematic effect. He is evicted from one apartment. Weakened by AIDS, he is hospitalized, but lacking insurance, is released to return to his new, spare dwelling. To be sure, this is an indictment of the harshness of life in the United States (and serves to bolster the film's credibility and liberal credentials). These "sufferings of exile," Arenas wrote in his "farewell letter," along with "the diseases contracted--would probably never have happened if I had been able to enjoy freedom in my country."

Arenas killed himself. But director Schnabel, in an apparent pitch for an extra dose of sympathy, reconfigures the suicide into an act of euthanasia at hands of close friend Lazaro Gómez.

Arenas' 1990 deathbed prediction that Cuba "will be free" -- which echoed the intoxicated hopes of Cuban-American reactionaries everywhere of celebrating the first post-Soviet Navidad in Havana -- proved to be as empty as his tragic life became.

In 1975, the Cuban Supreme Court overturned Resolution Number 3 of the Council of Culture, predecessor of the Ministry of Culture. This rule had been used to implement the anti-gay declarations of the 1971 cultural congress, setting "parameters" limiting employment of homosexuals in the arts and education.

Also in 1975, after extensive popular debate and discussion, Cuba adopted its Family Code. Among other wide-ranging changes, it called for equal sharing of child-care and other domestic responsibilities by men and women, further institutionalizing female equality as a goal of the new society

In 1979, the new Cuban penal code decriminalized homosexuality.

In 1981, In Defense of Love, by Dr. Sigfried Schnabl, became a bestseller in Cuba, due to its frank and honest treatment of human sexuality. Homosexuality, Schnabl wrote, "is not a sickness, but a variant of human sexuality."

"No 'natural' moral norms or sentiments are inherent in humanity," she explained. "The sole natural inclination is sexual desire itself; the specific customs with which people satisfy their desire, and all that transpires between the sexes is the product of specific culture." Thus, anti-gay bigotry in the culture inherited by revolutionary Cuba should be rejected. "It would be wrong to disqualify a homosexual because of his or her sexual preference or to interpret homosexuality as a debility of character, something that many do, unfortunately, due to ignorance, lack of comprehension, and prejudice."

Soon afterwards, Cuba's Ministry of Culture republished Schnabl's popular Man and Woman in Intimacy, which devoted an entire chapter to homosexuality. The book first appeared in 1979. It enumerates and rejects a series of superstitious claims purporting to reveal the supposed cause of homosexuality. "All these 'theories' --that up until recently were supported by certain specialists," Schnabl wrote, "have not the slightest scientific foundation."

Against Anti-gay Discrimination

Gays do not "suffer from homosexuality," Schnabl explained, "but rather from the difficulties stemming from their condition in social life," that is, anti-gay prejudice. She explicitly opposed, in this government-published book, any and all sanctions against gays.

"What adult persons do in private, in mutual agreement, does not violate the moral standards of society and there is, therefore, no need to take action against it. Homosexuals, like all other citizens, are entitled to consideration and recognition for their objective achievements and conduct," Schnabl stated.

Citing these and other passages in Granma, the Cuban Communist Party newspaper, in a 1984 response to "Improper Conduct," Tomás Gutiérrez Alea noted that "this does not mean that the publication of a single book, regardless of how 'official' it is, will automatically mean that a social phenomenon deeply rooted in the centuries of our Catholic and Spanish past will automatically disappear. Yet such a book where, among other things, the latest scientific criteria on homosexuality appear, is unquestionably a valuable instrument of struggle that the Cuban state makes available to those willing to take up the cause of those who are discriminated against, marginalized and made to suffer prejudice and oppression of any kind."

Gutiérrez's remonstration of Almendros for willingly falsifying in his "documentary" the duration and character of the UMAP could readily be applied to Schnable. "Almendros knows full well that most infamous lies can be fabricated out of half-truths," Gutiérrez wrote. "He knows, for example, that the UMAP, the work camps where a large number of homosexuals went to do their military service, were a mistake and led to a scandal that fortunately ended with their disappearance and a policy of rectification." The Village Voice and the Militant reprinted the legendary Cuban director's article shortly after its appearance in Cuba.

Rectification

In 1986, led by Fidel Castro, the Cuban Communist Party undertook a sweeping process of criticism, debate, and discussion aimed at overhauling Cuba's Soviet-oriented economic policies and mode of labor organization. Cuba's revolutionary values had been so eroded by the bureaucratism, corruption, and inertia generated by such methods that revolution had begun to go "off course," Castro explained. The party itself, he told its central committee, had started "to go to pot."

This deep-going "rectification campaign of errors and negative tendencies" really became, as the Cuban leader stated, "a revolution in the revolution." Its aim was "not simply to rectify errors committed in the last 10 years," Castro reiterated, "or errors committed throughout the history of the revolution, but rectification is finding the way to that resolve errors that are hundreds of years old." (Two pivotal, early speeches heralding the rectification process remain available in the magazine New International, at 410 West St., N.Y., N.Y. 10014.)

The scope of this unprecedented project -- especially as Cuban revolutionary political activists took hold of it -- opened numerous subjects to debate, from the economic methods that sent the country off course to policies in culture, arts, and social relations.

One fruit of this was the realization that, notwithstanding the use by the United States of immigration as a weapon against economically embargoed Cuba, more recent departures like those at Mariel included thousands of citizens -- some gay -- who had been alienated or abused by wrongheaded practices carried out in the name of the revolution.

More than a decade ago, I interviewed a young Cuban worker, known by his factory mates as a homosexual, who had left Cuba at Mariel, "for the adventure," he said. Roberto rapidly came to realize what he had left behind. He went through experiences that brought him eventually to the Antonio Maceo Bridgade, a group of pro-revolution Cubans of newer generations in Miami and New Jersey. He returned to Cuba for a visit after the rectification process was in full swing, and visited the factory where he used to work to address an assembly of 700 coworkers. As he walked onto the stage, they rose in a standing ovation.

Disappearing Taboos

A byproduct of the economic calamity that shook Cuba when the USSR and its allied regimes collapsed (and with them 85 percent of the island's commerce) was the disappearance of the glue that adhered Soviet social and cultural influence to the body politic of the Cuban revolution -- canons of Soviet "orthodoxy" and "socialist realism" that had always been alien to the rebel spirit of the revolution and its central leadership team. Now, historical questions and debates; political and literary personalities deemed off-limits; or "theories" once considered sacrosanct or restricted by "self-censorship" became accessible and subject to inquiry, research, and criticism. This living process is hardly finished.

In 1987, a new police directive forbid harassment of people based on appearance or clothing, which had been carried out under statutes against "ostentatious" behavior.

In 1988, in an interview on Galician television in Spain, Fidel Castro noted that "a certain rigidity" had governed attitudes towards homosexuality. While "God needed seven days to make the world," he explained, "you must understand that to remake this world, to destroy a world like that which we had here and to make a new one, there wasn't much light, and at first there was a lot of darkness, and a lot of confusion about a series of problems. Our society, our party, our government [now] have ideas that are clearer, wiser, and more intelligent about many of these problems. Given that we can make mistakes, we obsessively follow the idea that what is just, right, and best for the people, and what is most human for our people and our society. However, the task is not easy -- I think that each time we get closer to the right criteria for making the world we want. Nonetheless, I think that we still have many faults, and that future generations will have to continue to perfect this new world."

In 1992, at the congress of the Union of Young Communists, Vilma Espín, president of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) and a senior veteran leader of the Communist Party challenged a psychologist who in a presentation put forward prejudicial views on homosexuality. Espín, according to Sonja de Vries in Cuba Update, explained that such ideas, not the sexual orientation of gays, were what needed to be changed. "The opinion of such a respected and longtime revolutionary is a significant representation of the changed ideas of the Cuban leadership," de Vries stated.

Castro Addresses the Issue

In 1992, Fidel Castro responded to several questions on sexual issues posed by former Sandinista Nicaraguan government official Tomás Borge in A Grain of Corn. The volume, which covers a range of topics, was published in Havana. Like many books in Cuba, this work enjoyed brief and brisk sales, then became unavailable. Castro's remarks are even less well known outside of Cuba. They are worth quoting at length.

"You speak about sexual discrimination," the Cuban leader responded to a question by Borge. "I told you that we have eliminated sexual discrimination. More precisely, I could say that we have done everything that a government can do, that a State can do, to eradicate sexual discrimination against women.

"We could refer to a long struggle, that has been successful, that has had many great results, in the area of discrimination against women. There is still a lot of machismo in our people, I believe it's at a level that is lower that anywhere in Latin America, but there is machismo. This has formed part of what is the idiosyncrasy of our people over centuries and it has many origins, going back to the Arab influence in Spain as well as the influences of the Spaniards, because we got our machismo from the Conquistadors, just as we received other bad habits.

"It was an historical inheritance. In some countries more than in others, but in none was there more struggle than in ours and I believe that in none have there been more tangible and practical successes. This is true, something we can see, that can still be seen, and above all, can be seen in the youth. But we cannot say that there has been a total and absolute elimination of sexual discrimination, nor can we drop our guard. We have to continue struggling in this sense, because it's a historical ancestral legacy against which there has been much struggle; there have been advances and there have been results, but we must continue to struggle.

"I'm not going to deny that, at a certain point, this machista thing, influenced the approach that was taken toward homosexuality. I personally -- you are asking me my personal opinion -- do not suffer from this type of phobia against homosexuals. Truly, in my mind, that's never been there and I have never been in favor nor have I promoted it, nor have I supported it, policies against homosexuals. This is due to, I would say, a certain period and it is very due to the legacy, that thing of machismo. I try to have a more human explanation, a more scientific explanation of the problem. On many occasions this has become a tragedy, because you have to see how the parents think, there are parents who have a homosexual child, and it becomes a tragedy to them, and you can't help but feel sorry that such a thing happens and that it becomes a tragedy for the individual.

"I don't see homosexuality as a phenomenon of degeneration, but rather I see it in another way. The approach has been of another sort: a more rational approach, considering the tendencies and natural things of the human being, who simply must be respected. This is the philosophy with which I view these problems. I think that there has to be consideration shown toward the family that suffers these situations. I would hope that the families would have another mentality, that they would have another approach when something of this sort happens. I am absolutely opposed to any form of repression, disdain, contempt or discrimination with respect to homosexuals. That's what I think."

Borge asks, "Can a homosexual be a militant in the Communist Party?"

"I can tell you," Castro responds, "that there have been many prejudices around this issue, that's true, that's the reality, I won't deny it; but there have been prejudices of other kinds against which we have focused our struggle.

"There was, for example, one standard for judging the personal conduct of a man and another for a woman. We had this situation for years in the party and I led fights and argued a lot about this. If there was infidelity in a marriage on behalf of the man, there was no problem, no worry, on the other hand it was a subject of discussion in the [party units] when there was infidelity on the part of the woman. There was one way of judging sexual relations of men and another of women. I had to fight hard, against deeply rooted tendencies that were not the product of any sermon or doctrine, or education, but the machista concepts and prejudices that exist at the heart of our society.

"Of course, I didn't answer your question about free love. I have absolutely no objection. I don't know what is meant by free love. Interpreting it to mean the freedom to love, I have no objection."

Castro's remarks register progress made and continuing challenges. These are increasingly faced and shouldered by the newest generations of Cuban revolutionists, many of who have been affected and educated by struggles for women's liberation, gay rights and against anti-gay violence throughout the world.

Films Reflect Advances

The critical spirit and impact of the process opened up by the rectification effort and the unraveling of Soviet influence after the events of 1989-1990 underlie the 1993 production of "Strawberry and Chocolate," directed by Tomás Gutiérrez. It mass popularity, and the discussion it sparked, made it a political phenomenon. More than a million Cubans saw the film, probably the island's most widely seen movie ever. It won numerous top Cuban and international film awards.

The movie is a critique of narrow, doctrinaire aspects of the Cuban Communist Party and the Union of Young Communists that had taken shape in the 1970s and early 1980s. It places the decision to leave the island not solely on pressure from the United States or individual weaknesses, but as a price paid by the revolution for deficiencies and errors that occurred under its banner. The rarely mentioned UMAP injustice is raised. Anti-gay prejudice is subject to a withering dissection. Such attitudes and actions, the film clearly implies, are contrary to the humanism of the revolution itself. (The movie is based on the 1992 play, "The Wolf, the Woods and the New Man," derived from a short story by Senel Paz.)

Gutiérrez, fondly known as Titon, explained in the 1995 interview with Cineaste that he chose to set the film in the year 1979 because it represented "the end of a historical period, because the Mariel boatlift occurred in 1980 and things began to change--The period before 1979 was also the time of greatest repression against homosexuals."

"In given periods" of the revolution, Titon explained, "homosexuals have been barred from certain types of employment. They have been barred from teaching, for example, since it represents contact with youngsters. Now there is greater flexibility in job opportunities for homosexuals. In the case of representing Cuba abroad, for example, the appointment of representatives used to be handled with kid gloves when homosexuals were involved. Many people were against appointing them because they were considered more vulnerable to scandal and blackmail -- but things are very different nowadays for homosexuals. Many Cuban homosexuals are now open about their sexual orientation. Others are not open about it -- just like anywhere else -- but there is a new level of awareness concerning homosexuality."

In Havana in 1994, a young revolutionary Cuban artist told me a story of a visit to his father, a farmer, "who was a very strong communist." Aramis said he had grown his hair to shoulder length since his last visit, which until the early 1990s was widely frowned upon and discouraged as a symbol of adapting to the corrupt values of Western consumer society. "He said to me, 'You're a faggot with that hair, get it cut or get out of my house.' I picked up my backpack and started to leave. I told him, 'You're supposed to be a communist, for freedom, for human beings. I'm your son, you should love me, whether or not I'm a homosexual. What kind of communist are you?' And I started to leave. He didn't say anything. I got to the door, and then he said, 'Wait. You're right. You can stay, you don't have to cut your hair. I've got to think about these things.' So we hugged, and I stayed."

One can imagine repeated scenes like that, reminiscent of the extended burst of filial "generation gap" skirmishes that took place in the 1960s in the United States -- which also expressed political conflict and disagreement -- occurring in thousands of Cuban families as the young generation confronted old taboos that coexisted uneasily with the revolutionary perspectives of their parents.

"Gay Cuba," the 1994 documentary by Sonja de Vries, deals with the history and achievements of the Cuban revolution as the prism to frankly explore the evolution of the treatment of homosexuality and homosexuals. It elaborates the changing attitudes and growing acceptance of gay men and lesbians in Cuban society and culture. Some interviews particularly evoke progress: debates between soldiers, remarks of Cuban youth, and the stance expressed by industrial workers, including a factory union local president who is gay. The Federation of Cuban Women screened the film in Havana.

The following year, the Cuban documentary "Mariposas en el Andamio" ("Butterflies on the Scaffold"), directed by Margaret Gilpin and Luis Felipe Bernaza, appeared. It narrates the story of working class Cuban transvestites who become integrated in the life of the Havana suburb of La Guinera, how they worked to build a coalition with female leaders of a local construction brigade, and their performance in the workers' dining room.

Contrast with U.S.