Castro and gays

Openly homosexual people were prevented from joining the Communist Party and fired from their jobs. But true freedom for Cuban gays will remain elusive as long as political freedom is denied to all Cubans. Castro's admiring description of rural life in Cuba ("in the country, there are no homosexuals" [25]) reflected the idea of homosexuality as bourgeois decadence, and he denounced "maricones" as "agents of imperialism".

No doubt attuned to the way in which gay rights has become central to the agenda of a global left increasingly sensitive to the claims of identity politics, the Cuban regime in recent years has tried to fashion itself as being in the vanguard of homosexual liberation.

In the eyes of Castro and his revolutionary comrade Che Guevara—who frequently referred to gay men as maricones, “faggots”—homosexuality was inherently counterrevolutionary, a bourgeois. Four years before the world-famous Stonewall riots, these were two of the first gay rights protests held in the United States.

Send it to The Daily Beast here. The death of Fidel Castro is reason to celebrate. We join the people of Cuba today in mourning the loss of castro remarkable leader. James Kirchick. Got a tip? The documentary Improper Conductwhich tells the stories of gay and straight Marielitosand one of the starkest indictments of the Castro regime.

They were the last ones to come out for meals, so we saw them walk by, and the most insignificant incident was an excuse to beat them mercilessly. Putting gays into concentration camps is not the only practice Castro borrowed from the Nazis. Though the Cuban regime closed down the UMAPs in the late s, it continued to repress gay men as ideologically subversive elements.

Fidel Castro took the blame for a wave of homophobia launched by his revolutionary government in the s, but said it happened because he was distracted by other problems, in an interview. Alert to this news, the Mattachine Society—one of the earliest gay rights organizations in the United States—held demonstrations outside the United Nations and the White House successively over two days.

[26] Castro explained his reasoning in a interview. Amid the fawning encomia released upon his long-overdue death at the age of 90, it should never be forgotten that he was also an gay, torturer, and murderer of gay people. The Cuban government established forced labor.

To a traditional Latin American machismo that viewed gayness pejoratively, they married an ideological fixation treating it as politically undesirable. In the early years of the revolution, gay men were often associated with the bourgeoisie and viewed as counterrevolutionary, leading to widespread discrimination and violence against them.

Lawrence zarian gay topic of "Revolutionary Cuba Imprisons Gays" explores the systematic persecution of homosexuals in Cuba following the revolution led by Fidel Castro. Trending Now. Former Cuban President Fidel Castro says he is to blame for the persecution of homosexuals after the Cuban revolution of Fidel Castro made insulting comments about homosexuality.

During the Cuban missile crisis, according to recently released German intelligence files, this so-called anti-fascist attempted to hire former SS officers to instruct his army. Fidel Castro was many things: a revolutionary, a communist, a garrulous orator.

Published Nov. James Kirchick jkirchick jameskirchick gmail. Some Western progressives nonetheless fall for this pinkwashing charade. Mariela has been lauded by many in the West as a force for progressive change, and her decision to push for acceptance of LGBTs may be helping on the margins.