By Richard Hack

The Castro family business known as Cuba has made great strides in the “handling” of homosexuals in this Communist country since the 60s and 70s when gays and lesbians were imprisoned in labor camps. Now they’ve been placed under the watchful eye of Mariela Castro, president Raül Castro’s daughter and niece to the “Maximum Leader” Fidel.

Mariela is the director of the state-run National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX), which has become the official “voice” of the Cuban LGBT community. To hear Mariela tell it, Cuba is on the verge of an amazing transition that would sweep acceptance of gays and lesbians into the largely Catholic general population without a flutter of bigotry.

During the seventh annual “International Day Against Homophobia,” some 500 people marched through Havana’s Vedado district waving rainbow flags and dancing to a conga beat, without getting much notice from locals who aren’t allowed to legally protest anything in the country—not even the same-sex couples holding hands in the street or the transgender women shaking their breasts to the music.

Much of this has been made possible by Fidel Castro’s admission in a 2010 interview published in the Mexican newspaper La Jornada. In it, Castro placed the blame for Cuba’s historical persecution of gays squarely on his own shoulders, calling it “a great injustice.”

“If anyone is responsible, it’s me,” he said. “We had so many and such terrible problems, problems of life or death. In those moments, I was not able to deal with the matter of homosexuals.”

As of 1979, being gay is no longer a crime in Cuba, although under Article 303a of the country’s Penal Code “publicly manifested” homosexuality remains illegal, as does “persistently bothering others with homosexual amorous advances.” Cruise in public and expect to get three months to a year in prison. Make amorous advances and get fined up to $500 U.S.

This is a country so out of touch with the world that it is difficult to know what is happening from town to town, let alone outside the island. Internet access is extremely limited, not by the government, by rather by the unavailability of modems to connect to a service. (The service that is available in Cuba is strictly dial-up and unbelievably slow in today’s age of super-fast cable service.)

In 2010, Raül Castro changed the law to allow businesses to cater to the gay community, and Mariela Castro continues to reach out to the few businesses who have the courage to attempt to attract a gay clientele.

Mariela visits each business personally and offers to “sponsor” the bar, club or store front by supplying uniforms and aprons with the logo of CENESEX. Not all gay bars agree, and are tempting fate by flying in the face of the government-created liberality projected to the world.

“Even though there is a revolution, the consciousness has not changed fast enough among many revolutionaries,” Mariela told Reuters news service during the “International Day Against Homophobia” last May 10.

“I’d like it to be faster, but I don’t lose hope. I am going to celebrate with great happiness the day that same-sex couples can start to get married,” she told Reuters.

“My father supports me but he can’t decide it all by himself,” said Mariela Castro, who is also a member of the national assembly. “We have to build a consensus, and that’s what we’re working toward.”

With the recent changes in the United State’s relationship with its island neighbor announced by President Barack Obama on December 17 of this year, we can expect more announcements about the liberalization of human rights in Cuba. The key to understanding the new relationship is sorting through the puff and uncovering the truth.

“Things are moving at the pace they need to so that people who aren’t used to these things can accept them more peacefully,” said Guido Quiñones, 57, who works in tourism and attended the Homophobia parade.

Perhaps. But as with all things Cuba, nothing is ever as it appears to be…. Until next week…

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