Following the broadcast of the Round Table on Friday, May 9, dedicated to the 18th Conference Against Homophobia and Transphobia, the Miami press took excerpts from the program and began a campaign to manipulate its content.
Several digital media outlets financed by the US government echoed the action and replicated it. These are the same media outlets that have never spoken out against the blockade or said a word against the vote that the United States and Israel cast together every year at the UN to maintain it, in disregard of the will of almost all nations.
To keep our people and the revolutionary LGBTIQ+ activists informed, in response to this manipulation, we are publishing below the full text of the words of Dr. Mariela Castro Espín, Director of the National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX), during the exchange of ideas at the Round Table.
Randy Alonso: Each of the 18 editions of the conference against homophobia and transphobia has included, in addition to the defense of these rights, the defense of other rights, even beyond our borders.
“The rights of the Palestinian people have been defended. The rights of the Cuban Five Heroes to return to their country have been defended. The right of Óscar López Rivera to return freely to his Puerto Rico has been defended. And that is why I would like, Mariela, to open our Round Table by talking about what this 18th edition of the Conference Against Homophobia and Transphobia is about.”
Mariela Castro: Well, first of all, we are continuing with the slogan Love is the law. We are celebrating that love is the law for all families, and we continue to celebrate it, educate, communicate, and contribute to the processes of cultural transformation of our people, as evidenced in the new Constitution of 2019 and the Family Code, because, if we compare it with the 1976 Constitution and the 1975 Family Code, we can see very clearly how the revolutionary process has contributed to the cultural enrichment of our people in order to advance in closing the remaining gaps in equity, to advance in meeting people’s needs, as they are identified through consensus building to determine important changes in policies and in our laws.
“This is the first thing we are working on. That is, to continue working with our people to understand, read, and interpret the meaning of normative texts in their proper context, starting with the Constitution, because sometimes interpretation leads to the violation of rights.
“So this is a way of contributing to that process of guaranteeing or effectively exercising the rights of all people, with special emphasis on LGBTIQ+ people, especially those for whom these actions are specifically intended, that is, so that all families understand their responsibilities according to what has been established, to everything that is being instituted as humanist values of the revolutionary process.
“Before, they used to say, ‘Well, they didn’t do it before.’ No, before we were learning, before all societies were transforming, they were integrating new elements for the advancement of society itself.
“But as we understand more, as scientific institutions contribute elements of analysis to political decision-making, well, these elements that were not understood before are being introduced. And this was true globally, not just in Cuba.
“Now, as you rightly said, our activism is not only oriented toward looking selfishly or seeking very specific reforms for certain social groups, which is a bit what capitalism has tried to do: that everyone fight for their specific rights and not for general rights.
“The world’s problems belong to everyone. The problems of humanity affect LGBTIQ+ people, and the problems of LGBTIQ+ people affect all of humanity. Therefore, all transgressions, discrimination, social exclusion, and social injustices must be viewed in an integrated manner.
“Capitalism, and especially neoliberalism, insisted heavily on the social segmentation of different groups of popular struggles. Why? So that they would not unite in understanding the need for systemic change, as did the first Latina activists who stood out in those famous Stonewall protests in New York, which later led to the development of activism and struggle.
“In this sense, those comrades fought against the capitalist system, they fought against capitalist oppression, and attempts have been made to sugarcoat them and make them very superficial so that the next generation who identify with these struggles will also be very superficial. And that is what we defend: the depth of popular struggles, of struggles for social justice. And this year, of course, we dedicate it to them.
“Last year, it went to Palestine, to the struggle of the Palestinian people, and we were convinced that this year we would not have to talk about the struggle of the Palestinian people because victory would have been achieved and respect for the sovereignty of this people would have been achieved. Well, it’s quite the opposite, it’s worse. With impressive impunity, imperialism continues to use the Zionist entity entrenched in the same occupied territories that they identify as the State of Israel to achieve complete and total ethnic cleansing and impose a vacation spot in Gaza because they like that wonderful place on the Mediterranean.”
Randy Alonso: Something more or less similar to what Hitler’s fascism wanted to do to the Jewish people themselves.
Mariela Castro: Exactly. Well, there is no Jewish people, there is a Jewish religion. There were actually many people of the Jewish religion in Europe who were used and victimized in an exaggerated way, using biblical myths to lead them to occupy Palestinian territories.
“Of course, at that time, imperialism was led by the United Kingdom, then by the United States, in order not to lose geopolitical control of the Bosporus Strait and the Red Sea.
“In other words, they didn’t want to lose their colonial power, so they established a very brutal neocolonial power that got worse over time, using people who initially came from Europe.
“They are not Hebrews, they are of the Jewish religion, and many are also Christians, but they are not Hebrews, nor are they Semites, and above all, what they imposed was a Zionist power that distances itself from the values of the Jewish religion, because it is not the same thing.
“Zionism is a political supremacist movement that emerged shortly before Nazism and was closely linked to the persecution of Jewish families. It is closely linked to all the worst aspects of Nazism and fascism, which are now resurging with great force.
“That is why this year we are drawing attention not only to one place, Palestine, but to all of humanity. In other words, we are focusing on the historic anti-imperialist, anti-fascist, and anti-colonial struggles, which also include the situation in Cuba, which has been suffering for more than 60 years from economic, financial, and commercial blockade and many other forms of aggression by imperialism.”
Source: Cubadebate, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English
