Homosexuals in Cuba: "Okay, but at a distance..." Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - walterlx@earthlink.net, Cubanews list CUBAN REVIEW No.75, August 2001 The everyday scene HOMOSEXUALS IN CUBA: "OKAY, BUT AT A DISTANCE..." From a distance, it looked like a normal wedding. Young women in white gowns and veils; young men in suits and red tie. A wedding cake, music, guests and photos: a proper marriage. Close up, the picture changed. Four homosexual young men were acting out false nuptials (homosexual marriages are not legal in Cuba) in San Miguel del Padron, one of Havana's poor outlying neighborhoods. "I've lost a son, but I've gained a daughter," said the mother of one of the boys. "What can I do?" she added. Homosexuality has been gaining ground in Cuba in recent years, passing from total rejection to a relative level of tolerance, in a far-from-easy transit that has to contend with 500 years of time-honored machismo inherited from Spain. Young transvestites and homosexuals in general walk along 5th Avenue in Miramar each night, stroll in the area of the popular Coppelia ice cream palace, or occupy the corner of 51 and 100 streets in Marianao, among other places in Havana. Some of them speak openly about "my spouse." Others make up the bulk of the carriers of HIV and AIDS. The level of tolerance existing on the island in the 42nd year of the socialist revolution was not always thus. In the decade of the '60s, homosexuals were seen as weak creatures, both physically and ideologically, and some functionaries proposed hard labor as the best method of rehabilitation. It was thus that the Military Units of Help to Production (UMAPs) were created -- an error that was rapidly corrected but left deep scars. In those units, the concentrated homosexuals did agricultural chores, mainly in sugarcane cultivation. Later, they became gradually more accepted and began to move beyond the few occupations and professions that had been reserved for them: hairdressers, artists, modistes, gastronomic workers, etc. The Cuban film "Fresa y Chocolate" (Strawberry and Chocolate) opened a space favorable to tolerance, although new outbursts of discrimination or open rejection -- such as an article published recently in the weekly "Tribuna de La Habana" -- appear every now and again. How do young heterosexuals see homosexuals? Analysts of the Centro de Estudios de la Juventud, an entity responding to the Union de Juvenes Comunistas, carried out a study on the subject during the 1990s. The first problem revealed by the study was the lack of information about homosexuals among heterosexuals and the few sources available for obtaining information. Sixty-three percent said they had learned about them through friends; 60% through films, 56% through television, 49% through magazines, 46% through books, 36% through their teachers, and 30% through homosexuals themselves. "Although the young people and the population in general are prejudiced against homosexuality, it must be recognized that this rejection has gradually diminished, although not in the measure needed," the study affirmed. The analysis identified ten types of social attitude rejected in some degree by the majority of the young Cubans interviewed. Arranged on a scale from more to less rejection, these attitudes were: child abandonment, drug consumption, suicide, minor crimes, homosexuality, prostitution, the betrayal of a comrade, alcoholism, infidelity, and divorce. "It is revealing," the study pointed out, "that homosexuality is more disapproved of than prostitution or the betrayal of a comrade, behaviors that have always been considered extremely negative in our society." Seventy-five percent of the interviewees said that they would accept homosexuals as neighbors and 70%, as fellow-members of an organization or entity. For the psychologists carrying out the study, this represented the "maximum acceptance." On a lower scale was their acceptance as a member of the immediate family (49%), as a son or daughter (43%), as a relative (39%), as the friend of a family-member (48%), as an intimate friend (31%) and as a friend of one's son or daughter (28%). Finally, the "minimum acceptance" was evident with regard to renting a hotel room or sharing living quarters with a homosexual (21%), and also in sharing a room at school or in other types of lodging (12%). Copyright (c) by Cuban Review, 2001 Global Reflexion's "Cuba Review" is on the web at: http://www.globalreflexion.org/cubanrev/ ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytsxp-08.22.01-13:15:25-6685