Over the past few years, the government of Cuba has earned
praise for an unlikely development: a campaign to improve the
status of the island's gays. Standing at the forefront of this
effort has been an even unlikelier figure: Mariela Castro EspÃn,
the daughter of Raul Castro, who officially assumed the Cuban
presidency last year after his brother Fidel fell ill. The latest
entry in this narrative was a largely laudatory profile of EspÃn in
The Advocate, which described her as a "champion" of the
island's "gay and transgender community." EspÃn is director of the
Cuban National Center for Sex Education, an organization which,
according to its website, promotes "the development of a culture of
sexuality that is full, pleasurable, and responsible, as well as to
promote the full exercise of sexual rights."
Like most Latin American countries, Cuba has long been marked by
regressive policies concerning homosexuality, due largely to a
machismo culture that promotes a heroic masculinity portraying gays
as weak and ill-suited to positions of leadership, whether in home
or government. As EspÃn herself says, "Homophobia in Cuba is part
of what makes you a 'man.'" But while EspÃn should be praised for
her attempt to change Cuban attitudes about homosexuality, her
advocacy in this realm ought not disabuse anyone of the fact that
she is part and parcel of the architecture of repression that has
governed the island for five painful decades.
Whatever pleasant sounding pieties she mouths about the dignity
of gay people, EspÃn is a communist, an appellation that ought
carry no less opprobrium today than it did before the fall of the
Berlin Wall. In Castro's Cuba it's still 1956, the year Soviet
tanks crushed a peaceful democratic uprising in Hungary, one of the
Cold War's darkest moments. Cuba remains the most repressive
country in the Western hemisphere; Freedom House, the international
human rights monitoring organization, lists it as the only "unfree"
nation in the region (on a scale of one to seven - seven being the
worst - Cuba earns a seven for political rights and six for civil
liberties). The time warp is evident in a more literal sense: the
few cars you'll see on the streets are decades old, except, of
course, the late-model Mercedes that chauffeur around the island's
elite.
It may seem strange that, in this day and age, one still has to
mount a case against communism, but as long as a prominent member
of the family that has ruled Cuba without interruption for 50 years
is the subject of a flattering profile in a major publication, the
work remains sadly necessary.
As a political system, communism has killed some 100 million
people, according to The Black Book of Communism, a number
that increases each day the North Korean slave state continues
unabated. Castro's Cuba is responsible for a relatively minor
portion of those victims, but that's only because "el jefe" has had
just a small island's worth of people to oppress, imprison, and
murder. And Castro's treatment of gays is particularly notorious:
Not long after taking power, his regime herded thousands of gay men
into concentration camps for "reeducation," where they were
subjected to sexual humiliation and forced labor and were murdered
en masse. In 1980, gay Cubans were among the 125,000 people -
"scum," in the words of the Cuban government - whom Castro allowed
to leave for U.S. shores in the famous Mariel Boatlift. To
underscore what he thought of gay people, Castro made sure that an
ample number of violent convicts and patients from mental asylums
joined the departing masses.
As she related to The Advocate and elsewhere, EspÃn remains a
fervent proponent of the "revolution" which has wreaked so much
misery and poverty on Cuba, and she thus carries all of the
malicious baggage that such an avowal entails. She says that her
uncle is a "brilliant man." Considered the "first lady" of Cuba,
she recently told a Russian government-controlled television
station that "Cuba will stay socialist after Castro's death." She
told The Advocate that, despite her "faith and hopes" in
President Barack Obama, "he has shown no real democratic outreach
to Cuba." On top of this, she patronized the American people by
saying how "proud" she was of the "miracle brought about by" their
electing "a young, intelligent black man." If only she cared for
democracy and racial tolerance in her own nation, where there has
never been an election, and where people of African descent face
systematic and rampant discrimination by the government.
Moreover, EspÃn's activism is largely hype, and mostly the
product of people who have a vested interested in putting a
pleasant face on a despicable regime. For true believers, Cuba is
the last bastion of an utterly discredited political and economic
system. But with gay equality now a component of the "progressive"
agenda, it has become painfully necessary to portray the Cuban
regime as gay-friendly.
Yet it's difficult to point to any tangible benefits that
EspÃn's activism has accrued, other than a decision last year by
the Cuban government to dispense free sex-reassignment surgeries.
This is a policy of dubious merit that affects an infinitesimally
small number of people, and is better understood as a propaganda
tool rather than a genuine sign of concern for the plight of gays.
This is the sort of thing that's fodder for those who think that
our health care system should emulate that of an island prison.
But no matter how genuine or fervent her promotion of gay rights
may be, EspÃn's activism will ultimately go nowhere as long as Cuba
remains communist. And that's because homophobia has been intrinsic
to communism, which, like all totalitarian ideologies, seeks to
perfect mankind, often through violent means. Doctrinaire
communists view homosexuality as a bourgeois affliction standing in
the way of our "progress" towards a utopian society in which there
is no private property, war, or discord and all responsibilities
are equally shared. Same-sex attraction is held as an expression of
the "false consciousness" that distracts us from the class
struggle.
Like Sean Penn, who has also emerged of late as a self-styled
advocate for gay rights, Mariela Castro EspÃn has a serious blind
spot. It is the failure, so pervasive and persistent throughout
human history, to understand that no political system - regardless
of how wonderful in theory or the marvelous claims it makes for
itself - can be considered humane as long as it inherently denies
fundamental rights like freedom of conscience and speech, the
ability to practice religion, vote for one's leaders, and earn a
living commensurate with one's talents and abilities.
"Being considered a lesbian would not be an insult to me," EspÃn
told The Advocate. "Being considered corrupt would be." Her first
concern is of but prurient interest. As for her second, by proudly
embracing a moral stain as a badge of honor, it's far too late. Gay
rights are human rights, and if one is not an advocate for human
rights, as Mariela Castro is most certainly not, one cannot be an
advocate for gay rights, no matter how well disposed toward gay and
lesbian people one may be.
Let's posit, for the sake of argument, that Cuban gays truly
earned equal rights. No doubt the Cuban regime's apologists would
point to its supposedly "progressive" attitude, contrasting it
favorably to the Christian yahoos who run the United States. But
even if Cuba legalized gay marriage tomorrow - a highly dubious
prospect - it would still be a dictatorship. No matter the degree
to which the status of homosexuals in Cuba improves under the
communist regime, Cuban gays - like Cuban straights - would still
be thrown into prison for daring to tell an anti-Castro joke. They
still would not be able to organize peaceful demonstrations against
government policies, never mind vote in a free election. More
fundamentally, they still would not be able to leave the island of
their own volition.
What sort of freedom is this?