This article by Jason Spencer appeared in The Mississauga News.
In the film Before Night Falls, the life of exiled Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas is depicted as he lives through his country’s revolution.
Portrayed by Javier Bardem, Arenas faced persecution for being gay, including time in prison in 1974.
Though Arenas eventually fled to the U.S. and later took his own life while dying of AIDS, the treatment and views toward LGBTQ people in Cuba is making progress – Fidel Castro’s niece is making sure of it.
Mariela Castro Espin, daughter of current Cuban President Raul Castro, told an audience at the University of Toronto Mississauga campus late last week that Cuba is very much still a country in revolution, but has shed a lot of its conservative skin since the Communist Party took over more than five decades ago.
However, while political changes brought about about more rights for women, children and youth, Castro Espin admits that, early on, the country slid backwards in other areas.
“I used to wonder, ‘If we had made progress in so many ways, why are we not making progress on LGBT issues in our country?’ We really ended up quite conservative in our views of LGBT issues and we went backwards,” Castro Espin said through her translator Dania Green Thursday night (Nov. 19).
Castro Espin, who works for Cuba’s National Centre for Sex Education and was at the university to kick off Transgender Day of Rememberance events taking place the following day, added that it wasn’t just Cuba that was “LGTB-phobic” at the time.
She noted that through consultation with what was called the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, health care was provided to transgendered Cubans in 1979, but the dominant thinking back then was that gender dysphoria was a disease.
This gradually shifted to the country offering hormone therapy and counselling to trans people – even performing the country’s first gender reassignment surgery in 1988.
But, after the surgery’s success was announced, there was a huge public backlash and the procedure was no longer offered by the government. Yet, she said, the demand continued.
When Castro Espin began working for the country’s National Centre for Sex Education in 2000, she heard from the transgendered community that they wanted the reassignment procedure to be offered again and legal recognition for their new gender identity, but also an end to police harassment.
Telling the crowd about how she researched the issue and drafted a report to be presented to the Cuban government, she said, “If you want to be listened to by decision makers, you should not only come with a good explanation of the problem, but you should come with a solution and offer to do it.”
She added that the problem was ideological “because we’re talking about the oppression of some people…domination of one group by another.”
“We decided that we needed a shift in consciousness and we needed to move away from a medical model to move toward a more socio-cultural model.”
As of 2010, gender reassignment surgery has been covered by Cuba’s health care system.
As a member of government, Castro Espin has stood up for labour code changes to include gender identity as well as same-sex marriage.
Toward the end of the Q&A session, she was asked if her surname helped get things done.
“No,” she replied, pointing out that a lot of stuff is passed through parliament that’s not on her wish list, leaving her to “stress” over the issues she cares about.
“That’s what you get for being a Castro,” she said.
For the original report go to http://www.mississauga.com/news-story/6135187-fidel-castro-s-niece-visits-utm-discusses-cuba-s-progress-with-lgbtq-issues/
