Fidel Castro Put Gay Men in Labor Camps. His Niece Mariela Is Leading Cubas LGBTQ Revolution.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2016/11/26/how_fidel_castro_s_niece_mariela_led_a_lgbtq_revolution_in_cuba.html
What does it mean to be a revolutionary?
In the early days of Fidel Castro’s Cuba, being a revolutionary wasn’t just about commitment to socialist philosophy. It also reflected a certain machismo, a view of “a new man,” who “couldn’t be gay.” So says Luis Perez, himself gay and one of the subjects of Mariela’s March: Cuba’s LGBT Revolution, director Jon Alpert’s new documentary, which now takes on an extra layer of timeliness since it premieres on HBO at 9 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 28, just days after Castro’s Nov. 25 death.
Perez’s unsparing view of the Cuban Revolution was earned through his two years of toil at one of the misnamed “Military Units to Aid Production” during the 1960s. Gay men were sent to these facilities for conversion, for punishment, and as a kind of deterrence. After doing his time at what amounted to forced labor, Perez was rewarded by having his identification card “branded” with his incarceration and thereby shut out of education and employment.
Other stories from the early days of the revolution were equally harrowing, some even worse.
One unidentified trans woman explains that she wears sunglasses because of an incident long ago. She then removes the glasses to show an eye bleached by acid that was thrown in her face.
Margarita Diaz, a Cuban tennis champion, sadly recounts her experience of being kicked off the national team in 1988 because of her unfeminine ways.
Then there’s Yanet, a self-described “peasant” who lives in the Sierra Maestra Mountains. She and Mailin are in in a long-term relationship and seem happy enough. The young man who directs the filmmaker to the lesbian couple affirms that everyone in the area knows and respects them. Yet Yanet continues to suffer from discrimination at work—although she can’t prove it.
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