Just as colonialism and imperialism left the island's fertile soil cultivated
as a single-crop plantation, class enslavement tilled the fields of culture.
When the revolutionary process began, it had to start from there.
Before the 1959 Revolution, the burgeoning sector of the Cuban economy was
Havana's prostitution industry, booming with Cold War consumption - the largest
in the Caribbean - and the gambling, drugs and tourism connected to it. US
crime syndicate bosses and wealthy Cubans with connections to Batista's regime
owned the profitable operations.
Researchers Lourdes Arguelles and B. Ruby Rich note that this illegal economy
'employed more than two hundred thousand workers as petty traders, casino
operators, entertainers, servants and prostitutes.'
Many were homosexual - male and female - and many male homosexuals were
feminine. Crime bosses also exploited tens of thousands of heterosexual women
and men in the prostitution industry. All performed to the sexual whims of the
fathers and scions of the US and Cuban ruling classes.
Cuban citizen, translator and interpreter Leonardo Hechavarria, and Cuban
defender, typographer and gay rights activist Marcel Hatch, sum up that era:
"Before the 1959 Revolution, life for lesbians and gays was one of extreme
isolation and repression, enforced by civil law, augmented by Catholic dogma.
Patriarchal attitudes made lesbians invisible. If discovered, they'd often
suffer sexual abuse, disgrace in the community, and job loss.
"Havana's gay male underground - some 200,000ˇXwas a purgatory of prostitution
to American tourists, domestic servitude, and constant threats of violence and
blackmail."
Arguelles and Rich explained: "It was just a profitable commodification of
sexual fantasy. For the vast majority, homosexuality made life a shameful and
guilt-ridden experience. Such was gay Havana in the fabled 'avant la guerre'
period."
Reactionaries prey on dislocation
For male homosexuals in Havana, particularly those who were feminine and/or
cross-dressing, social outlets for congregating were limited once this
large-scale illegal economy was shut down.
As a result, Arguelles and Rich explained, this "prolonged the relationship
between the declining underworld and more progressive homosexuals, locking the
two groups together for sheer companionship and sexual pleasure."
That was truer for Cuban males than females.
The two researchers noted, "Homosexual perspectives on the revolution could
shift according to class interests."
Middle-class homosexuals whose privileges were threatened by agrarian and urban
reforms banded, they said, with "the remaining veterans of the underworld" to
oppose the revolution.
"Some veterans of the old underworld enclave joined counter-revolutionary
activities or were pushed into them by the CIA," Arguelles and Rich reported.
"Not a few of the progressive homosexuals became implicated by default in
counter-revolutionary activities and were even jailed.
"Young homosexuals seeking contact with 'the community' in the bars and famous
cruising areas of La Rampa were thus introduced to counter-revolutionary
ideology and practice. One example of such a dynamic is the case of Rolando
Cubela, a homosexual student leader who fought in the revolutionary army but
was later enlisted by the CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro."
The two researchers concluded, "Homosexual bars and La Rampa cruising areas
were perceived, in some cases correctly, as centers of counter-revolutionary
activities and began to be systematically treated as such."
Cuban women organize for gains
The overall situation for Cuban women who loved women had its own
characteristics.
Under the triple weight of the patriarchies of colonialism, capitalism and
imperialism, a dynamic women's movement emerged in Cuba as early as the 1920s
and Cuban women won the right to vote and be elected to public office in 1934.
After the 1959 seizure of state power, it was Cuban women as a whole who became
the driving force to break the chokehold of centuries-old patriarchal economic
and social organization, and the attitudes about women and femininity it
engendered.
The Cuban Women's Federation formed quickly after the Revolution in 1960. It
exerted immeasurably more power because it was a part of the Revolution, not
apart from it.
At a 1966 leadership meeting of the Federation of Cuban Women, President Fidel
Castro observed, "Women's participation in the Revolution was a revolution in
the revolution, and if we were asked what the most revolutionary thing that the
revolution is doing, we would answer that it is precisely this - the revolution
that is occurring among the women of our country."
Hechavarria and Hatch stressed, "Following the Revolution, women won near full
equality under the law, including pay equity, the right to child care,
abortion, and military service, among other historic gains, laying the basis
for their higher social and political status.
"This foundation, a first in the Americas, played an important role in women's
greater independence and sexual freedom, a prerequisite for homosexual
liberation. The Revolution also destroyed the Mafia-controlled US tourist
driven prostitution trade that held many Cuban women and gay men in bondage."
Hechavarria and Hatch added, "The Revolution undertook to provide ample
education and employment opportunities for female prostitutes.
"Advances for women in general were naturally extended to lesbians, and many
became among the most ardent defenders of the Revolution."
Revolutionizing the sexes
Cuban men, as well as women, had been treated as the property of other men -
the patriarchs of property.
Revolutionary Cuban men have carried out their own work to consciously build
the consciousness of a 'new man' on the basis of new social principles.
Che Guevara, Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution as a whole challenged all
Cuban men to examine male consciousness, attitudes and behaviors.
This revolutionary effort, which continues today, aimed to change old ways that
men were taught to interact with women. Like the Revolution itself, this work
is most profoundly meaningful because it is a process, not a single act.
The Revolution challenged the biology-is-destiny 'natural order' ideologies of
colonialism, capitalism and imperialism that elevated patriarchs to rule.
The Revolution challenged the reactionary biological determinist concept that
men are innately superior and women are naturally submissive.
But genuine economic and social equality for women, and profound change of the
attitudes of men, could only be generated by economic and social reorganization
that could lift the standard of living for all. Imperialism was determined to
thwart and sabotage that work at every moment. US finance capital cinched the
island in an economic noose, and the Pentagon cordoned the island, attacking
overtly and covertly.
As Washington and the Pentagon ratcheted up the pressure on Cuba, and the CIA
having spearheaded the commando invasion at Playa Giron, the entire island's
population had to be organized and mobilized to meet two huge tasks in 1965 -
military defense of the Revolution and harvest of the crop that sustained
economic life.
Everyone - of all sexes, genders and sexualities, from children to elders - was
called up for these two life-and-death tasks.
Inside Cuba, trying to fit many thousands of urban homosexual and/or
transgender males into agricultural work sharpened a social contradiction.
Outside Cuba, propagandistic exploitation of this contradiction led to the
single greatest slander against the Cuban Revolution in the history of the
workers' state.
