Following is a talk by Mariela Castro Espín on July 29 at the ICAP (Instituto Cubano de Amistad con los Pueblos / Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples) House of Friendship, in Havana, Cuba, with the participation of the Venceremos Brigade and LGBTIQ+ activists from the United States, along with members of the community networks linked to Cenesex (Centro Nacional de Educación Sexual / National Center for Sex Education), among other invited individuals.
This event was the Cuban launch of the book published in the U.S. by Struggle-La Lucha, “Love is the law: Cuba’s queer rights revolution.” Castro Espín contributed to the book. She is director of Cenesex, the Cuban National Center for Sex Education, which has led the way in advancing LGBTQI+ rights.
Transcribed and translated by Gregory E. Williams
United by all struggles against injustice
Good afternoon, thank you for organizing this meeting. Thank you very much for coming and for your solidarity with Cuba and the rest of the peoples. Well, I really enjoyed the book presentation, everything you said.
So, I’m going to speak as an activist. Here, we are integral activists; women fight for men, men for women, LGBT people for straight people. We are interactivists. We are comprehensive activists. We also share solidarity with each other. We are united by all struggles against injustice.
So, we’ve been working on this within Cuban society for many years. This was achieved after many years of work, many dialogues, many opportunities to raise awareness.
We also had to study a lot. What did the different sciences have to say about this? What did the different social groups have to say about this?
We watched the struggle for civil rights in the United States with great respect. But we haven’t experienced what you experienced in your political struggles in your country. There were situations of injustice with which we disagreed, and which are inconsistent with our revolutionary ideals.
And we said we have a very complex dialogue to undertake, and we have to convince a lot of people. And those are the arguments we used to convince our colleagues in Cuban society.
If we’re fighting for a socialist revolution — that socialist revolution for human rights and equality for all people — it has to address all issues. And we took it upon ourselves to demonstrate that there were problems that we had to resolve.
And that has been above all our work, our activism: educate, educate, educate.
We had to expose those inconsistencies with words that would convince people what we had to do. And then, after many years, we saw results.
And we were inspired by the activism of the Federation of Cuban Women. And by the activism that public health institutions had developed to confront the HIV epidemic. And little by little, we made progress, advancing in dialogue, in the design of policies and laws.
And since we started organizing the Cuban Days Against Homophobia and Transphobia, we tried to empower the Cuban population to talk about these issues. These were taboo topics.
[SLL note: The “Jornadas” or Days Against Homophobia and Transphobia, the Days for Children’s Rights, etc., are national mobilizations that occur annually.]
Prejudice a colonial legacy
And we found that many used derogatory terms to refer to LGBT people. Even when we began developing a film-discussion space called Cine Club Diferente. In that debate, the LGBT population participating reproduced the same prejudices they internalized against themselves. They thought they were sick people. They apologized. They said, “I’m sorry I’m like this. Why am I like this?”
And precisely what we tell them in these debates is that the disease isn’t in you, it’s in society. It’s a colonial and neocolonial legacy that we haven’t transformed. There was no awareness that it needed to be transformed. Nor did anyone know how to do it. Nor did we know. That’s why this collective space for dialogue allowed us to learn about them collectively.
Struggle cannot be compartmentalized
And then we started developing LGBTI rights activists, also encouraging non-LGBTI people to get involved. Because sexual rights don’t just focus on LGBTI issues, it’s much broader.
And we didn’t want to compartmentalize the problem with respect to Cuban society. Also, taking into account the experiences other countries have had – seeing or taking into account LGBTI activism in other countries – we learned from that and included it in our work.
And we were able to see how, through funding from certain international organizations, they tried to co-opt, blackmail, direct, and fragment these LGBT struggles, apart from other popular struggles. And when I was in San Francisco, on Castro Street, I went to a small LGBT museum, and I talked to many people, even on the street. It was very interesting because they recounted those experiences.
They questioned the New York-centric nature of LGBT struggles. And they said, a lot of blood was shed here in San Francisco before it was in New York. And in the same museum, you could see how the grassroots struggles were all connected, all integrated. And they were anti-system struggles. They were deep struggles. And they divided the groups, they divided them.
And so they have tried to prevent these divided popular struggles from uniting to change the capitalist system. And neoliberalism, above all, worked to divide the struggles of the proletariat, using, above all, diversity as a trap.
But you were all very clear in your speeches at today’s event: Our struggles are inseparable. And I believe this perspective unites us. And I believe we must continue uniting, strengthening ties, to strengthen these struggles. To strengthen solidarity.
Anti-imperialism key for LGBTQI+ liberation
I see how the government is brutalizing people in the United States, in your protests. In your demonstrations against racism. In the struggles of immigrants. Against anti-immigrant policies. Against the genocide of the Palestinian people, Libya, Syria, Lebanon. In other words, they’re repressing solidarity with all countries with anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist stances.
You’ve seen that the official space of politics in the United States is completely Zionist. Both the Republican and Democratic parties are Zionist. Both are imperialist.
Two years ago, when we began our Days Against Homophobia, Cuban LGBTI activists dedicated the day to the Palestinian struggle. And this year, we dedicated ourselves to the anti-imperialist, anti-colonial, and anti-fascist struggle. We cannot allow them to trivialize the struggles of LGBT people. We cannot allow them to obscure the classist nature of discrimination.
We’re going to join forces to organize different spaces to fight for LGBT rights as part of everyone’s struggle. We have to join forces.
Liberation isn’t a spectator sport
But during these campaigns, when we ask people to sign declarations for LGBTQI rights, there are people who don’t sign! It’s like solidarity is up in the sky somewhere. They’re like spectators. They don’t participate. They don’t take part in these struggles for solidarity. But everything is connected. When you fight for the rights of LGBTQI people, you’re also fighting for all people and against the blockade of Cuba.
And to discredit what we were doing, there were foreign journalists who said, “Well, since you’re defending Palestine, you’re homophobic. Muslims are homophobic.” Huh? What did you say? Why are we defending Palestine if Muslims are homophobic?
And we responded, there’s homophobia in every society. There’s homophobia in every religion. In the United States, there’s a homophobic policy. And all the governments that support U.S. foreign policy are homophobic, including the countries of the European Union.
Because sometimes they support LGBTI communities, sometimes they don’t — it’s just politics. There’s no conviction behind their actions.
Consciousness transformed through struggle
Well, then, I’m very pleased to meet people like you. It’s truly fascinating to meet people who share our ideological stance. Sometimes, we don’t find them here in Cuba. So it’s a constant ideological struggle in the country.
Most of the 33% who voted against the Families Code did so only because it guarantees the right to equal marriage. Were they all religious? No, they weren’t. Some were also Communist Party activists!
But that’s part of the process of revolutionary transformation. We must continue the fight, the dialogue, and the educational campaigns.
The most important thing is that the political will of the Cuban Communist Party, the state, and the government has been clearly expressed in policies and laws. The Constitution of the Republic has protected the rights of LGBT people as constitutional rights.
Almost no country has that in its constitution. There are only 10. And the Constitution was approved by a constitutional referendum as an exercise of democracy.
People agreed. And that demonstrates the process of cultural transformation in socialism. In the 1970s, people didn’t think that way. Now they do. But there has been intentional education. As Paulo Freire said, “educate for freedom.” The meaning of education is freedom. That’s our job. That’s what Cenesex’s mission is all about: educating for emancipation, educating for freedom.
I always say, jokingly, that the sex education that Cenesex proposes isn’t about teaching the positions of the Kama Sutra! That’s not what we’re interested in. It’s true. That doesn’t matter to us.
Our goal is to eliminate violence. What’s important to us is to educate to overcome prejudice, to educate for freedom.
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