Castro blueprint

Published Dec 22, 2014

Share

In Cuba, street marches have historically been government-orchestrated events or dissident protests that are swiftly crushed by the authorities. So it was downright startling when, in May 2007, Fidel Castro’s niece sauntered down the street with a small army of drag queens waving gay pride flags.

Long before the Obama administration announced a dramatic shift in Cuba policy on Wednesday, asserting that isolating the island had failed, a couple of Western governments with close ties to the US saw the potential to help gay Cubans, even though it meant working with a prominent member of the Castro family. Havana’s first observance of the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia marked the beginning of a remarkable evolution of gay rights in the most populous island in the Caribbean, a region where hostile attitudes toward sexual minorities remain the norm.

Mariela Castro, the daughter of the current president, Raúl Castro, has led the charge on legislative and societal changes that have given rise to an increasingly visible and empowered community. In the process, she has carved out a rare space for civil society in an authoritarian country where grass-roots movements rarely succeed. Some Western diplomats in Havana have seen the progress on gay rights as a potential blueprint for expansion of other personal freedoms in one of the most oppressed societies on earth.

Norway and Belgium have financially supported Mariela Castro’s organisation, the National Centre for Sexual Education, offering a test of the merits of supporting certain policies of a government that the US and European capitals have largely shunned because of its bleak human rights record. As the Obama administration begins carrying out its new Cuba policy, it should draw lessons from the impact others have had by engaging.

“It’s fine to criticise, but you also have to acknowledge that they’ve done well,” said John Petter Opdahl, Norway’s ambassador to Cuba, in a recent interview. Opdahl, who is gay, said his government gave Mariela Castro’s organisation $230 000 (R2.6 million) over the last two years. “She has taken off a lot of the stigma for most people in the country, and she has made life so much better for so many gay people, not only in Havana but in the provinces.”

Related Topics: