It happened somewhere else a while ago, and also somewhere else now ish several days ago. What a great title for a show. I love, I love how snappy and remember and memorable. That is that look, we can we we can, we can go and we can go into it.
A tiny bit of pulling back the curtain, which is that you can't do too many good intros because if you do too many good intros, and everyone expects you to constantly have a good intro, So every once in a while you have to just make you have You have to lower the overall quality of the intro so that when you are truly desperate, have just been dragged out of bed at like three am and you have to record a podcast, just sort of a tonal noises
will be considered normal. That's why I script all my intros. But I'm just I'm just I'm just built. Yea different is that could happen here? What are we what are we doing here today? Chris um? We are talking about Well, actually, admittedly we we had planned this episode before this happens. Yeah, we were on this episode before the referendum in Cuba
about the new family code. But yeah, we're we're gonna be talking about the kind of bleak but sort of gets better history of homosexuality in Cuba and how things went from very bad to getting a lot better, and then also how a lot of American leftists like picked up a version of the history of this that is just sort of nonsense. And here here with us talk about this is Andre's Petira, who is well doing doing many things, one of which is studying for PhD in
Latin American history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. On today's Welcome to the show. Oh, thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here. Yeah, like I'm
excarted to talk to you about this. So okay, I guess the the place that I want to start is I want to go back to the sixties and I want to go back to something that I I don't think a lot of people understand very well in terms of what happened in I just happened in various ways over a lot of sort of these new sort of revolutionary socialist states, which is that you get this attempt to like form of like a sort of like like a new revolutionary subject. Sometimes it's it's like, I mean,
the Soviet one was like the new Man. They're they're sort of different versions of this across there's sort of various social revolutionary states. I guess I wanted to ask you to talk about how this kind of got really really homophobic in Cuba, like pretty quickly. Yeah, so, I mean and and and one of the interesting parts about the story in Cuba is that it actually is look in part important from the USSR and ideas in the USSR.
And that's actually one of the connections which in the literature isn't in the academic literature at least isn't always that well explored because Cuban is tends to be very insloyed. We don't really tend to learn Russian. I'm I'm kind of crazy. I actually am learning Russian, but but no,
so so um. You know, there was obviously lots of homophobia, lots of you know, all like lots of bigotry against LGBT people before nineteen fifty nine, not unlike the United States of the nineteen fifties, like you could live privately or maybe in certain safe spaces, you could live a kind of okay life, but you know, it was definitely very marginalized position lots of biggotry and lots of personal
danger in addition to a lack of basic rights. Um. After nineteen fifty nine, Uh, you know, you have this jettison, jettison ing of the Catholic Church and kind of religious reasons for being being bigoted, with the coming of the revolution, which is a secular communist revolution. Um. But what what ends up happening is they And this is something that Abel Sierra Mario's recent book on on U on these policies,
talks about a lot. Is this kind of attempt to remake human men into the man that's needed for this communist society in the future. And as part of this, they engage in a sort of social hygiene. We don't want people who are lazy, we don't want people who are degenerate, but you know, bourgeois degeneracy by you know,
that kind of stuff. And within this, you know a persecution of people who are seen as either out, either as gay or at least as soft and they need to be made into real macho men for the revolution. And um, this started out in a very series of isolated things. Right. You would have like Vihitio Pinieta was
who was a dramaturge. He was um, he was jailed, uh, and he basically he was being targeted because people wanted his house, and so if he was jailed and his belongings were separated from him, then like someone could get to keep his apartment. Like that seems to be why he was originally targeted. And he was detained twice for basically walking while gay. That's how basically what the incident
boils down to. He was walking effeminately in people and he was detained by police, and he was free because he had like he was an important person. He was you know, he had some protections. But then as the decade rolls on, as the nineteen sixties rolled on, that's like, that's nineteen sixty one year after the revolution. Nine sixty five, you have the creation of a series of forced labor
camps and there's not really any way to get around that. Um. We don't know exactly how many were sent there, um, but it seems to be in the thousands, maybe tens of thousands. We again, we don't know because the government hasn't the class by that information. So it's still a conjecture. But it's not because people don't want to investigate the details. Um. And these are thousands and thousands of people who are
being set for all sorts of reasons. Jehovah's witnesses, um uh, people who listened to rock, people who are seeing as hippies uh lvi spresleanos so Elvis presleyan's so people who listened to Elvis Presley because that was seen as too effeminate and too yankee. Um and and so they were sent to the camps and to forced labor. But the
camps weren't just about forced labor. They were about remaking through labor, these men into real men, because hard labor, proletarian labor, would you know, remake their spirits and their ethics and a ha ha. I mean it's kind of not unlike what we're seeing in the nineteen sixties in China. I think, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a very explicit like one one of the thing well yeah, well one of
the things that is just going on from the culture revolution. Also, yeah, it's like that they had that they had this sort of re education through labor. The thing that starts and it gets it doesn't. Yeah, Like I've seen conflicting accounts of the extent to which like people were directly targeted
for being gay. I it definitely did happen, And there's a yeah, and you get a lot of this sort of same thing of like these people are like spiritually un pere and like they have to be like re educated and they have to be sort of like turned into like proper like subjection. There's a lot of the especially like there's a lot of sort of like there's a lot of people like being forced to hold science and say sodomite and ship yeah, which is a funnily enough.
And the weird part about this is that like in the Chinese case, so the cultural revolution is like not a great time to be gay, but there's also this thing. There's this thing kind of like it's kind of like like Nies Berlin, where like there are there is some really bad stuff that happens, but there's also this sort of like there's a kind of general political chaos so you can get away with some stuff too that there's actually there's another and pain in China in starts about
nineteen eighty three. Yeah, it's called the Strike Hard Campaign. Interestingly that there's there's actually two Strike Hard campaign So there's one of the eighties that's supposed to be this campaign against like crime and stuff, and so like they target a bunch of people who are like supposed to be like social criminals, and then that winds up being a lot of like there's just there are just mass arrest of gay people. They're in prison for a very
very long time. Um yeah under Although that one's also interesting because it's like you have very similar kind of reasoning, but it's like but it's in this sort of like dang like kind of revolutionary like phase where it's like instead of being instead of being a danger to the revolution, they're like sort of a danger to like traditional Chinese values,
which is interesting and bleak. Yeah, well, because like this is one of the one of things happens in China, writes it like in in you know there there is an attempt to sort of do more egalitarian like gender relations during the Drean culture revolution between the sort of like revolutionary period and then when Dane takes power, part of this thing is like, no, we're going back to
traditional gender relations. All of this egalitarian stuff was a mistake, and like this is part this is part of whether when child policy comes from But then also you get a really homophobic crackdown in like eighty three, like like three or four years after sort of like he's actually weirdly almost exactly the same time that like the real sort of market reforms hit like like it's it's it's like a year later is when the package that's sort of like really brings the market back to try to happen.
Is I don't. It's it's a very weird. Yeah, we we have gotten gotten very off topic, but it's it's a very weird and interesting sort of like social flip that happens. Yeah, I'm sure, and that definitely makes me
want to read more about like China during this period. Yeah, well, I think it's interesting, like like the over thing that you're talking about earlier, that is interested, Like it's so much to me as I've talked to like people from Vietnam and they have a very similar story about like like I mean there was homophobia before, but they have a very similar story to the Cuban story about how like there is this sort of importation of like Soviet
homophobia and how that made everything like when then this starts out between the eighties and it gets just significantly worse. Yeah, No,
it's uh and in Cuba, Um, what's it called? Like the whole idea that this is a form of bourgeois degeneracy and the gayness gayness is specifically bourgeois is like was really surprising to me as I dug into this, Like there's comics I in this thing I wrote, I include a couple of them, but it's basically like it's put up there with wanting to be in so leave it at like free society in the West, and so the West is it's like it's almost like a factionary I mean, it is reaction, but I mean it's like
it's it's like a very weird, weird mirror of like far right discourse because it's like the degeneracy of the West. Meanwhile, here we have masculine values. I mean, did you even see that type of rhetoric with We were talking about Alexander Dugan recently and he he is. I suppose there's a lot of that type of stuff as as as well as the one who is you know, a fascist writer who's pulled on some of the national Bolshevik type
stuff before. Um, yeah, you can attack attack gayness as it's like a sign of liberalism in the West as like this like almost like a bourgeois tendency. Yeah, I forget, I forget who it was. There was someone on Twitter who was talking about there's like it's it's very interesting thing like yeah like in in like in the US, like I don't know, like being like for a very
very long time. It's so kind of now you get this versus like like being gay, like is is you know, like being queer as a sign of like you're a communist and you're like like a degenerate communistic et cetera. And then you go to like Vietnam and it's like, oh, yeah, this person is gay there. They're they're they're degenerate Western like kind of revolutionary, and it's it's it's it's like it's always the same. The actual sort of like homophobic
thing is the same. It's just like the signs are flipped of like what the other is and who you can accuse them most sort of having the values of I wonder if the unifying factor here is is and this is something I'm thinking of a lot, a lot because of Other's book, which is that I mean greatness as a disease, Yeah, an illness and so like that, so it allows you to glump onto it anything you
don't like from your own ideological prism. So I also wonder a lot about how nationalism plays into it, because that's one of the things that happens in a lot of these sort of revolutionary projects is like, yeah, like the sort of ideal of the new man is sort of like a communist thing, but it's also like very specifically something that you get with like with nationalist revolutions, where it's like, well, okay, so we like we we we have to like like part of part of it,
like the basis of our national identity is like we are these like incredibly sort of masculine hard man or whatever. And then this like, I don't know, it strikes me. It strikes me as interesting that like the further that sort of nationalism becomes entangled in like these revolutionary projects,
like the more you start to see this kind of stuff. Yeah, and and definitely part of this is nationalism because it's it's not just homophobia in Cuba in this context in the sixties, it's not just homophobia for the sake of homophobia. So there is that too, but it's it's also that I don't think Fiddel Castro is entirely lying when he says that it was part of the need to mobilize as much of society as possible for the economy. What's happening in Cuba in the nineteen sixties is basically the
economy is going into a meltdown. Um. The economic policies that they're enacting have not been working. They've burned through any surplus they had in nine including good will surpluses and a couple of respects. Uh. And I think that like some people point to like the new Man and people will work for moral incentives, not material incentives, as just this naive thing. And then I think the most convincing counter argument is they didn't have anything else to
incentivize people. Yeah, people, people mate this this this is a this is like basically there's an identical like argument that you get about the culture Revolution, where like you start to see these like incentives are like maw will like give you a mango or something, or like you have these like pins that you get and and like it it's it could like yeah, it's it's it's very it's like the same thing of like you have these rewards that are sort of like, yeah, there's sort of
like spiritual almost or sort of like a spiritual ideological rewards and then eventually like kind of just stops working because it turns out that's not actually a very good basis for economic system. Do you guys know the old joke about check Givada when he was given a sign to become the Minister of the banks. I don't know
the joke. I know the thing about like he was my my my vague memory is like the story that I heard was like he signed his name like really sloppy on it because he was piste off that like he had to put his face on money or something. But I have no idea that's that's that's that part's actually true. He did. He hated money so much he refused to sign his actual name. He just signed his nickname as like just to show his disdain for for
for economics. But at a meeting that the old jocos And this is something that Chad apparently like to tell as well, even if it's not necessarily true that at the meeting where they were deciding who's going to become the minister of what, uh they said, uh, who here is an economist and he raises his hand and everyone goes to Chay. But you're a doctor, You're not an economist. Is this Oh I thought you asked for a communists like so yeah, no, I mean chair and and I
think I've heard arguments. I'm not an expert on chat, but I've heard that he was actually pretty heavily influenced by China, really compared to the U. S. S. R.
Helan closes in China. Yeah, that actually that actually gets and make I think I think, I guess that kind of makes sense given his sort of like like the way his military strategy seems to have worked, which is very very much like a lot closer to sort of like MAOIs strategy than Wow, okay, I mean, I'm gonna put Soviet strategy and quotation marks because oh my god,
is there like the I have. I have a very negative, a very dim view of of sort of the military strategy of people who are of like guerrilla organizations who are taking their military trying directly from the Soviet Union. It's a lot of like We're gonna build up one giant, I mean in a place and one day they're going to roll into the capital and it's like this okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, that make that makes sense? Um, okay, yeah, raining, raining myself in a little bit. We have these basically labor
camps that gay people are getting put into. We have kind of a material basis for it, which is and this is one of the things that like people actually use as a defense of sort of like like, well, we had to put these people in these camps because of our matrial conditions, which I think, like I feel
like that makes it worse. Like I feel like the fact that there's a there's a material basis for your homophobia like makes it harder to get rid of and makes it like a more entrenched part of the system, which I don't know, bizarre defense to me. But yeah, can we talk a bit about like because like how how did this actually end and to what extent did it end? And did it sort of like have this like half life afterwards? Sure? So, so these last for
a couple of years. This is not like a flash in the pan like oops are bad kind of like you know, six months in This is like a series of multiple work camps across the province of Come a Way, which is in central Cuba, and they last for three years and there's pushback during this period, domestic pushback, international pushback, like people have been complaining about it for exactly what the definitive thing that got them the few mock closed
specifically close sort of. The UNIDA is mely that is the au Ala rugs showing military units to aid production. So the Umak themselves, which are open from nine sixty eight, they do eventually get close and sixty eight people are freeding, you know, like you know, the camps are closed and uh people are sent home and um. There are varying stories. I have looked through like trade tried to trace as many stories as I can get um uh and even
even people who like we're participants have different stories. So like I remember Carlos Frankie, who was one of a position figure. He has one story that centers himself in the closure. Other stories say that it was the international pressure. Other stories say that it was the Right Writers and Artists Union, the official one, the state one, the NIAC, which filed enough complaints and that convinced Fidel to get
it closed down. UM. That anecdote is actually from Maddie Glass Iglesias Dad Josse Glesias, who wrote about Yeah his grandfather, his grand his communist grandfather. Um. But he who actally who wrote a book about the six It's he's an interesting guy. But anyway, so the camps get closed one way or another, and I don't think we're gonna ever know the definitive answer until like there's actually classification. But
they're closed. But the thing is um. While the camps get closed, we have reports from different people, including some of the sources that are used as apologia for the MOP saying wait wait wait. Social disgrace units keep existing well into the early nineteen seventies, and so we do have sporadic reports of things like this happening where seminarists are sense to religious people for for being atheists, are
certain for not being atheists. Uh, you know, gay people are being sent other people mighty one ados, So people who spoked smoke pot, you know, anyone who's seen as like not conforming into this ideal new man you're sent there in the labor is supposed to reform you. And that's that's a key part of this. It's not just as punishment's labor as ideological reform. There's even one of the people, some of the people in one camp say that there was a sign that says work will make
you men Jesus. Oh no, yeah, like work will set you free. Yeah, it's uh so, so the camps do contain seem to continue and Um, it's it definitely seems to be the case that, uh, you know, gay people do continue to be arrested for being gay, even though the intensity of this does die down by the nineteen seventies. There's something pretty bad that also happens in the nineteen seventies, but it's a slightly different project. It's not as centered
on force labor. So yeah, and I guess so the yeah, the thing that you wrote this piece about that I actually probably mentioned that is one of the things we're talking about is you you wrote a very long piece about Um called factually Based, which is about sort of the kind of mythology that developed in the US about like how these camps were closed and the sort of like apology around it, and a lot of this is based on Leslie Feinberg, which is depressing in a lot.
Leslie Feinberg, people who don't know, is like one of one of the most important like trans authors ever. UM wrote Stone, which Blues, which is like if you've ever been in like any sort of like queer trend scene you probably know about or possibly have read, And she wrote, m M, not a great account of this. Yeah, do you want to talk a bit about what what this was and how people have sort of used it in
different ways? Sure? So, Like for years I heard like arguments from this book and I didn't know they were from this I just saw people sharing online online and thinking, where the hell are people getting this? This is not this is not true, And eventually I find out that it's It dates back to this book called Rainbow Solidarity and Defensive Cuba by Leslie Finberg, was written mid to
late two thousand's UM. Really it's not a book, it's a compilation of articles which Fineberg wrote for as part of the Lavender and Read series for This World's Workers World newspaper, which is like this Marciite sect which Fineberg
SMUs have been a part of. UM. Real real weirdos, like they those people like they have positions that are like bizarre even by the standards of like modern tankies, like they're they're like these are people who are like hardline on defending the DIRG in Ethiopia, which is like stuff that's weird enough that like most most modern like idea like hardline ideological stalinists don't know what this they don't even know what this is or won't defend it
because it's like because like most Ethiopian Mark Sister like this was fucked like it's it's yeah. Also that this is every thing about these guys. So if you know what the PSL, the Party of Socialist Liberation, they emerged from a split with the w w P. Yeah, because the it was the w w P was too moderate or something. Yeah. My my my memory of it was it was a split about whether whether or not you should take money from North Korea. I don't know, I
don't know. I don't know if that's a percent that that that's my memory the last time I read about it. So these are who these guys are. Yeah, no, no, I mean there's a reason that PSL and WWP seem to have very similar lines. Um. So so anyway, so I'm I finally get this book. I ordered second hand,
so I'm not giving anyone royalties. Um and I get the book and it starts like arguing, you know, trying to you know, defend the track record of the revolution, and really it's like, basically, it seems that this book and an article that came out before any of Fineberg's articles, an article by John Hilson in the early two thousand's, are kind of a response to how as the kind of like how LGBT rights were treated in the mainstream
in like the United States was shifting. There was a like less homophobia movement towards more recognition of rights in the two thousands. And in that context, he was Cubist track record on LGBT rights, which is pretty pretty bad, you know, it was getting hammered, and so they're writing this as a response to that. And Findberg Warrens in the introduction don't expect a criticism of Cuba in this book.
It's factually based, but you know, and I put it in quotes factually based, but uh, you know, it's it's factually based, but it's you know, where this is. It's basically meant as counter propaganda to the criticisms and the section that everyone quotes. I mean, the book is the book isn't that long. It things like a hundred pages. I have it over here. Um, it's like a hundred pages long. It's all these different articles. Um, the section that most people quote is actually like two or three pages.
It's this very short section on the map, and uh, Fineberg talks about the MOP and sites basically three people
to talk about it. Basically. One one of those sources is Ignacio ramon It, who is this foreign journalist who interviews Fidel and gave Fidel the opportunity to give these explanations and defenses of his policies, where basically Fidel uh, basically, Fidel defends it as a part of the necessity of mobilizing the entire country in the face of the crisis that it felt that was facing in the nineteen sixties from the United States. So it needed to mobilize everyone.
And it was part of the economic mobilization. And it was almost a favor to gay people because they didn't go into the military because there was too much homophobia in the military. So they almost did them a favor by giving them sending them off to do labor that wasn't with the military in these nice little you know, economic productive units. And then you know, oh there was some use, you know, there's some stuff, so we shot
them down. Um. And this is before Fidel actually admitted that there was persecution of LGBT people in Cuba under his watch, which comes in like interview. So this is like his version of things right before then, and that's what Feinberg sites. Another of the sources is Cardinal and
Nesto Cardinal, who I'm happy to expand on him. But the short version is that in Nesto Cardinal is going around Cuba in nineteen seventy and ninety one for two short trips and he's just basically writing down everything and anything people tell him. Some of it's very critical, some of it's very supportive. He's not actually claiming anything is factual. He's saying, I am in Cuba. This is what people are telling me. Make up your own minds like that
is his stense. It is presented as this, uh like, it's not critically analyzed at all, and it's these two separate stories. One of them is that a hundred Communist youth members infiltrated the camps on hearing that there were abuses there, and they wrote reports saying that there were abuses, so the camps were shutdown. And then there's this separate story, also source to Cardinal by Feinberg, that Fidel personally infiltrates
the camps incognito. And then there's this like guard who was going to like cut the cord on his hammock to wake him up and get him force him to work, and Fidel revealed himself and and you know, almost almost like why dost thou persecute me? Saul? A kind of deal, like very it sounds like a very biblical story, so it's it's a good yard, but it's not doesn't sound
very serious. And also the two stories tying to contradict each other, Why does Fidel have to infiltrate if the hundred Communist youth members have gone you know, or vice versa, you know you don't. It's really weird, like like why why would there be both like both of them, you can't present both of them as true at the same time, like they they're they're they're mutually contradictory accounts of how this happens, very very weird, exactly, and and and in
in Cardinal they're not even presented back to back. The hundred Communist youth members is literally a dude he saw on the street who told him this. It's a paragraph, and that's it. Like we don't have any other context. The other story that Fiddel Infiltrating is shared is slight sounds slightly more credible if you really want to believe it, but then if you actually read into it, it's more like it doesn't. It also doesn't water. Yeah, it's like a guy heard from another guy. Like it's it's yeah,
he's he he's a guard. It is a guard narrating this. But he like he talks about what he saw up until like half into the paragraph, and then the rest is clearly implied to be stuffed stuff he heard about but wasn't actually present for, and find represents him as a witness of both. So anyway, so that's that's Fineberg's whole defense, Like, basically, Fidel had no idea that we're abuses, even though the very existence of the camps themselves were abuses.
And then but they were shut down and everything's hunky dorry. You know. That's that's Fineberg's defense. And then of course the third thing is that she refers both citations to Hilson, which I can get into a second but just I think part of the problem is that Fineberg didn't actually read Cardinals. Yeah, so Hilson Wilson is another activist. I'm not sure he's LGBT and not like that that part of melist clear run. But he was another activist. He died very early in the two thousands, I think um
from from cancer. He uh, but he wrote an article that cites Cardinal and cites both sections that Feinberg later sites and not more not less. And I think what's what happened was that Feinberg basically goes to this article which basically makes more or less makes the kind of arguments that Finberg is already making in her in her own work. But m what what when when she sees things that seem to exculpate the Cuban government, she basically does copy paste and a little parenthesis to give credit
to Hilson and then moves on right. She doesn't actually read Hilson. Hilsen even like treats it a little more cautiously than Finberg, even though not sufficiently cautiously. And I think that that explains why and the least this is a generous interpretation. Fineberg doesn't actually address the fact that in her own exculputatory source there's talk of other camps like at the time Cardinal is like I am going
to the camps. I'm visiting the camps. There are camps here, like you know, So it doesn't it doesn't make sense unless maybe findber didn't read the book, like just like copied and paste and didn't really think about it, yeah, or or just like went and found the one session that that was useful and then just read that part yeah, which yeah, not not a great way to do history,
as it turns out. Um, yeah, yeah, I will do my one return to marks moment in this interview, which is to say, ruthless critique of all that exists, things that you generally support, because otherwise you wind up with this stuff. Yeah. Yeah, Oh my god, it's done the round. This thing has been going around around and around on
the internet for years and years. Yeah. And I guess we should also say that, like, yeah, and this is this is the thing that happens with like any any like every one of these, like every one of the social countries you've been talking about, Like you will get people who basically are like like, hey, look at this
bad thing. Uh, we're gonna but people who are like, I don't know, you get yeah, you get like Cuban right wingers who are like also unbelievably homophobic who suddenly like discover a passion for gay rights because hey, look at these abuses and it's like, yeah, it's I don't know,
it sucks it. Yeah, I mean I think it genuinely is a part of the reason why this version becomes like a memory that like like this for these sort of versions of the story, which like don't have are not like really credible, like become sort of entrenched in the sort of like socialist memory of of this period in the US because it's like, well, okay, so so on.
On the one hand, you have a bunch of sort of like like incredible fanatical right wingers talking about what was going on, and then you have like, hey, here's another story from a socialist. It's like, well, we're gonna
believe the socialist version. It's like, well, neither of these people like not like but both of these groups like have an incredibly clear agenda going into what they're doing, and so you have to sort of like actually sift through the stuff yourself, otherwise you're weird wind up with very very weird and distorted histories. Yeah, and and people just really want to believe it. I mean, I think
that's that's my conclusion. Like I when I was originally researching for this, I was I was pissed, Like I was like, this is these are just not true. How could someone publish this? You know, it's really angry. And I kept trying to write that like a piece or based on that, and I keep kept stopping and like, this is not the right approach, This is not the right Like I kept stopping myself, and then I finally just like try to, okay, put my shelf slf in
Fineberg's shoes. If I was you know, really loved you know, if I was like as enamored as Fineberg was of everyone and everything involved in the Cuban Revolution and at the same time one a member of a persecuted group, right, you know, and I really want to to swear this circle, Like and I saw something to let me do that, I would probably also just glimb onto it and just not really try and not think about it too much for the same reason, right, you want you know, our
defenses are low. One, it's something we want to believe. Yeah, this is there is an enormous amount of stuff that just sort of people, I mean just yeah, like everyone has a bunch of stuff that they believe because they wanted,
they want it to be true. Like it's it's not like like we're we're we're we're we're being hard on the socialist here, but like, I don't know, like this is why half the people who believe Q shit believe it, right, Like it's it's it's, it's, it's it's the thing they want to believe, and I think they sort of have to believe for the ideology to function. So it's like it's not like I don't know, like it's it's it's.
It's not that much different than like and Paul wolfowits like still thinking the Iraq war works or something, right, Like it's it's it's, it's, it's it's the thing you have to believe in order to not like have to
sort of process the complications of what you're supporting. Yeah, so I think, yeah, everything I want to talk about sort of moving past this is about the stuff that's been happening recently and about how stuff got better in Cuba, because this is I like, this is this is one of the places where like things actually did genuinely get a lot better than like it was, and I want to talk a bit about like how that happened before we get to sort of the stuff that's been happening
in the last week or so. Yeah, and you know, I'm happy to get into happier territories. Yeah, it sucks, like, oh god, it's it's it's definitely dumer stuff to always think about the sixties of the um. So, after the sixties, it did get pretty It was pretty bad in the nine seventies too. There was a purge of education and culture of anyone LGBT or suspective being LGBT, because the ideas that they would recruit and influence and corrupt the miners.
And yeah, uh so I can probably do an article of comparing the Culture and Education Congress in seventy one in Cuba with with with policies in the United States right now. Um. And but then things start to get better in the nineteen eighties, a little bit like the the throttles pulled back. It's not great, but it's you know,
it's not terrible as terrible as it was. And then from the late nineteen eighties into the nineteen nineties, we really see to see start to see a sea change, both in terms of popular culture and in terms of the of state policy, and of course they're intertwined because the who who who allows films to be put on in theaters the state, They own all the theaters, so
um in terms of culture. Actually know one of the people who had a play played a key role in this, which is sin and Us and sene of Us is this writer from a small town in Cuba, small village, and he goes to have been and he's a he's a writer and artist, and he wrote this short story about this platonic relationship between a patriotic gay man and a patriotic human heterosexual member of the communist youth who
develop a respect for each other. And it's like, even though like the gay man is alienated from state policies because of the persecution of LGBT people, he actually knows a lot more about history and culturing Cuba than the heterosexual guy who's raw ra revolution but doesn't actually know like all these important writers and artists and and things
like that are also important for Cuban national identity. That when that was first read in the Castable and Samericas, which is like this huge building for human culture, people wept just openly and then it was made into a movie called So Strawberry and Chocolate. I can explain the type people, but basically it basically it's the same story. It's expanded a bit because the original was a short story and you can actually get in I states. I
think Paramount bought the rights for distribution. Fox maybe bought the rights. I don't know, but it was came out in and it was a big turning point for public public perception, right. Um. Actually have a friend of mine was who who knows who knows the offer? He was stopped at his building and this the wife of a colonel who lives in this building says, my husband wants to see my friends, like, what would you? What did I do? It goes up to the colonel's house. The
colonel says that you want coffee or anything? I said, My friends says no. The colonel says, explained to me this film that's come out recently, because the colonel wasn't gonna see it in theaters. Then my friend explains the movie and guy says no, no no, no, explain everything. So basically my friend does a scene by scene synopsis for memory and after like an hour and change in this guy's house. The Colonel's just sitting there not saying anything.
He said, if I understood this and seeing this earlier, things might have been different, like like thank you. It's it's a huge turning point culturally, and then politically you also have Maria la castro So. Maria la castro is daughter of Raoul castro So, niece of Fidel and she from within the government, using her position of privilege, really starts to push for better LGBT policies for resil GBT
people and better laws and runs. And she at the head of the Senesex which is the National Center for Sex Education, she really starts to spearhead and improvement. And we start to see the ninety nineties and two thousand's not just a pulling back of persecution, at least official persecution. You know, you can still have informal prosecut level of jobs.
But you also start to see things like trans people can have gender affirming surgery backed by the state, you know, free of cost, Like all these sorts of different protections and policies, like the senatex will if there's like a homophobic incident to the school, they can send out somebody to give a talk and say this is why persecuting someone for their gender identity or the sexual orientation is wrong. But but but you really see a shift in the
position of the state. And that's not just Mariella. I don't want to make it about Mariella. But behind her is of course all these other these LGBT people who would not be in the position to demand this for themselves. But she definitely spearheads this, and I think she deserves
some merit for that. Yeah, it's interesting that they have, like that they have a level of sort of buy in from the state, because I think like that doesn't happen in like China and Vietnam, and like you know, I mean like Vietnam, like that there has actually been stuff there in the last like a year where there's been a lot of real progress, but like they like literally one month ago the government was like we're going to declare almost axuality no longer like a mental illness,
and like that's sort of just like a month ago, yeah, yeah, yeah, And then then there's only people a bit like cool people have been fighting for in Vietnam for like a long time, but like and even then, like there's this whole thing there where like people like you get you get this because if you talked to medical people in like you start to doctors, you get this thing where like, well, okay, so there's like real and the other thing, this thing
that is outlawed conversion therapy. But if you talk to doctors about the doctors are like, well, there are real gay gay people and there are fake gay people, and the real gay people you can't do conversion therapy on but but this rule there. But these guys are like, this ruling only covers the real gay people, doesn't cover the fake gay people because so do conversion therapy. Like it's it's a disaster, and like I I don't know, like it's and like China also has been really bleak.
Like I'm just gonna you're talking about a lot about sort of like the effect the media has on it. I'm gonna read this thing from the Chinese General Rules for Television Drama Content Production from PLS and fifteen, which Okay, I've seen conflicting things, but I think this is still an effect. If it's not still effect, it was only reversed in one, but I think it's still in effect.
And also there have been new sort of guidelines have been putting out from movies that are about like I mean the specifically their stuff, like you you can't have gay men in movies. You can't have men they were to effeminate in movies, Like you can't have men that look like they're cross dressing in movies. I'm gonna read this thing from the TV code. Um so this is this is stuff that he says is explicitly is not
to be shown. Content which depicts or portrays unnatural sexual relations and actions such as incests, homosexuality, perversion, sexual harassment, sexual assault, sexual violence, etcetera. This is Vision Best version two RISI and three. Content which portrays and promulgates unhealthy perspectives on marriage and married loves such as extra marital love, one night stands, free love, etcetera. Sorry, try guys not allowed.
Yeah no, Like it's like it's oh god, yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna do a try guys joke every episode for Never Never can get off the recording. The French are surely complaining that the ban on cheating on your wife is an imposition on their culture. Yeah, definitely, that's actually extremely racist against the French. The actually he said it doesn't mention I was gonna make up I was gonna make a French film pedophilia joke. But it doesn't actually ban. It bands incests, but it doesn't actually ban
like that. I mean, I think the hearing on I think I on pedophile I think I think it's a different section of the code that I didn't coffee here.
But yeah, and I think part of what was going on there was like like there wasn't like I mean, I think things have gotten like it the law that was being used to arrest like gay people in China, like was the abolish in the nineties, but like and like there was a culture shift, but it didn't like the state decided it was going to do the same thing the US state which is doing, which is like do this sort of backlash to it, and it didn't. Like that kind of stuff didn't happened, which is I
think really bleak. But also like is genuinely a thing that like like yeah, like the good good good for good for the Cuban people, good for Cuba, Like glad, glad you all are doing this. This is major because like major win. Yeah, because because it because you know, like you can you can see what happens when like this doesn't happen, which is all of this bullshit that exists in a lot of the other sort of post
Soviet like or post communist countries. Yeah, I think that Cuba would have done it eventually, but I think that Mariela definitely just spread it along. And like there's there's definitely a problem of a cult of Mariella, where like abroad where it's like all all things be great, be due to Mariella. It's like completely cuts out all the people behind her, you know, who also been like please ask ask your uncle to do that's for me. I
gotta get married someday. But you know, but at the same time, I think we can't cut her out of the story either. Yeah, and and that gets us to, well, I guess I guess you're starting quinting n tea first. But yeah, the the new family code that's passed, which also I do want to mention this because I don't think like people don't even know this when I tell them about this, about neither China nor Vietnam is game
in neither trying to nor Vietnam is game. Marriage legal, And there's a lot of people who think that the repeal that happened to Vietnam legalized gamma marriage, and that's not what happens. Like the thing that it did is you will no longer be arrested for having your own unofficial marriage, which is the thing that could happen. But this is this, this is this is not this is
not the thing that is happening in Cuba. Like I see those are people a lot where like something good will happen in Cuba and people will prorect it onto like China, and it's like that's no, like they're not the same place, Like don't don't don't do this with this stuff. Don't project the Cuban medical system onto the
Chinese medical system. They're not the same. Please stop. Yeah yeah, yeah, okay, but yeah, going on to stuff that's good and this stuff, but on also the sort of like yeah, so we talk a bit about like what talking about like the en referendum and the sort of like the stuff about sort of how do you find this, like the story of how the stuff that's happening now didn't happen in yeah. Yeah.
So so when the ins the Raoul Castro, who who took over after fidel Um, he began using a bunch of referendums decide major things, major policy changes, and using referendums kind of just till like because like the because the nationalists, the police basically a revereren stamp committee. Like referendums really took to the four as a way to like channelize, channel support and you know, show popular acquiescence to major changes among the constitution. So as part of
the they did a draft constitution. They debated it, their debase all around the country at local levels, in in in in neighborhoods and workplaces, and people gave feedback the um marriage equality and and and things connected to it, which we can get into in a second. These were part of for the most part, part of the twenty
nineteen constitution, but there was a lot of pushback. Um Like, obviously, if if the state has been repressing LGBT people for decades, that part of their coalition just doesn't stop overnight, does It doesn't just stop being bigoted overnight because of you know, a change in policy. So you know, it wasn't just that the religious right, like evangelicals, there are a lot
of evangelicals in Cuba right now. There's a growing evangelical population I'm sorry to say, yeah, backed by the joical money. Uh no, please repressing the wrong people. And and then there's the Catholic right obviously you know, much more you know,
discreetly but still very you know, against this. Uh And there was enough pushback that the government was worried that I don't know if they were worried that the constitution the referendum would fail entirely, but it did seem like they were worried that it would lower the voting percentage in favor of the new constitution enough that it would
hurt the new constitution's legitimacy or something. So they decided to carve off the more controversial parts about the LGBT rights and basically carve them off, pushed them into a referendum on the family code with all the new laws based on the new constitution, all the new laws governing family law, and pump that down the road indefinitely. And so what's happening now that would just happened is the culmination of this red ferendom that they punted down the road.
In twenty the original Constitution was passed with something like approval uh And and this was just kind of left on the to do list, and then with the current crisis in Cuba. I mean, like there's a couple of there's a couple of ways to read this, but I think one of the most obvious is that, uh, the Cuban government needed to win, and this was an easy win they could actually deliver in the age of extreme scarcity and rolling blackouts. It's like, we can just at
least deliver on this promise, and they did. So. Yeah, I guess. So can we talk a bit about like what what what what actually is in the new code and what like what what it does? Yeah? So it does.
It does a bunch of pretty cool things. It legalizes same sex marriage, which is great for a lot of people, not just because you know, not not just because of the principle of it, but also things like, Okay, you're separating from your partner, but everything is under your partner's name, you're not never need marry and what are your rights?
Pop up up up us so you like, for for separation, for immigration, if you're trying to immigrate and you're not married to your spouse, you know, you know, if you're trying to inheritance, all these kinds of things. Yeah, this is gonna be. This is like important in concrete material ways. It legalizes adoption by same sex couples, which is also pretty cool. That was not allowed at all. Good it wasn't before. Glad, Glad, glad, glad. You can now do that.
That that's good. Hopefully we can still continue to do that here for like a few more years at least. Like yeah, um, it legalizes surrogacy and same scop sex couples can can benefit from can use surgacy now, although on a not for profit basis, and that's that's specific. I'm not an expert on whether or not it is the best policy to have it as only not for profit. Um. I know that there's a lot of debate over it, but the law says not for profit only for surrogacy.
But that's still another option for people. In addition to adoption. UH. It expands civil unions to be much more inclusive. They're called uh in Spanish, so now they were much more inclusive. And also you know, you know, you you don't have
to get married. You can get a civil union if you can we explain what that is, because that was a like there there was a whole thing in the US like in the in the two thousand's about like, oh, like you can do civil Like there was a period it was like there are a lot of places you can get civil unions, but you couldn't get married. So can you explain what a civil union is? Because I think that's a thing that like a lot of our audience probably isn't gonna like remember when that was a
thing anyone talked about. Sure, I mean, like I'm I'm not a lawyer. Yeah, my understanding is it is it is a way to recognize your your basically partners. You have some rights, and it helps with some issues of like I think it also varies country to country, but it's basically like a step down from the full commitment of marriage, is my understanding. Um, sorry, that's less. No, Yeah, I know like that that was that was by understanding
of it. It was like like in the US, it was this whole thing of like, wow, you can have still unions so you don't need to be married. And then people were like no, because it doesn't give you It doesn't give you this sort of full suite of rights and stuff, but it gives you some things, which I'm glad. I'm glad he was doing like, no, you
can do both of these things. And then wasn't there something about like like, yeah, there there were changes to like what like changes to what can be recognized as a family That is the part that I've seen the most, Like I have read a bunch about this, and I'm I still feel like this is something that's not it's not entirely clear what this is going to look like
in practice. So basically it expands the what the legal definition of what can constitute as a family unit uh to be more focused less focused on blood ties, and more focused on affective ties, so of affection, you know,
caring for each other. Uh so that for example, let's say, I think like the big hypothetical that was held up was like grandparents, so like if the parents aren't around, but in practice, these people are the ones that raise you, you know that you know, for for for legal stuff that has to do with kids in family law, Like we can consider this a family unit, is my understanding. It's still really murky and it's not really helping me
feel like like that. The things I've read on this also seemed to be kind of like like here's an explanation. I'm like that that doesn't really help me understand this at all. It is a little and and I've seen people running about this is like human government has abolished the family ray And I'm like, didn't. Yeah, And for everything everybody it seems like it's something they abolished the family.
It's that they've allowed you to change what a family is in the like in the eyes of the state eight, which is not the same thing, right, Like it's like giving you more wiggle grow. Yeah, um is my understanding. But again it's one of those things where I feel like everyone who I've seen running with it has run with a completely different, very triumphilist explanation that are sometimes
mutually contradictory. And I'm like, I'd like to see what this actually looks like in practice and like seeing the effects better because it's it's an underdiscussed dynamic of it because like what most people abroad we're looking at was like same sex marriage, so like this, so that was less discussed, but I mean it seems to be positive.
The thing that the thing that caused more controversy on the island was there was a shift to patio stud which is uh father paternal rights basically parental rights right and um, basically, the idea is to swit the child from nearly being a subject of their parents, will in theory they have more rights in our subject on their own, even if they're just a kid that's trying, yeah, to like prevent things like corporal punishments and things like that you can't beat your kids, which also seems like a
positive change. Yeah, I mean would would would love more of that in the US too, just like absolutely clawber the like parental rights people because oh my fucking they're they're going to kill us all yeah. And I mean the funny thing is like every time that there's a leftist movement, the thing is always there, coming for your kids. And then like oh god, yeah anyway, sorry no, yeah, like it's the right has one thing and it's the
same thing every time. Yeah. Uh. Those are the kind of the big things that the friend of m The only thing I wanted to talk about was like, okay, so there was a thing of Okay, so like obviously it passed with like sixty seven percent of the vote. I think, um, something like that, like basically the theories
of the vote. Um, and I want to talk a bit about like Okay, so something I saw okay, So like, okay, so you have the people who voted against it because they're Christian and they suck um and the young people who are just homophobic non Christian homophobes, non Christian homophobes. But then there was also like something that I saw that was like like people in opposition groups being like, we're going to vote against this as like a vote against the government, which yeah, can we explain what that
was about, because that's yeah, sure. And I think that you also have a division there between the people who are like, it's really against the government, but really it's against the chance thought about like I think that even there, it's a mixed bag of both. But um, basically, the idea was that by approving this uh and voting in favor of something cooked up by the government, that they
were giving credence to the government, legitimacy to the government. Uh. Ergo, the only moral position was either extension or voting now uh. And so I mean, again a lot of it's mixed up with they also really as a rule, did not like the content of the law. I mean, part of the thing is like it's the the the opposition is in this weird space right now, where they have like the more historical branch, which is you have like a
historical branch that it's like rapidly far right. Uh. And then you have there's a lot of overlap with like default Catholic right in there uh and the Catholic of far right in there as I'm sure you understand what that means. But but but then you also have a growing prominent liberal contingent um who speaks better not just that doesn't just put on a better face for international audiences,
but also puts on a better face for Cuban audiences. Um. And because like Cuba is not a far right wing society, like for example, abortion, Like I spoke to a right wing Cuban who left who's like, yeah, I like Ben Shapira and a lot of what he says, but I don't get his obsession with abortion. That's a woman's right. Like that's just so weird to me. It's because like Cubans aren't aren't necessarily super religious as well, which is
a big part of it. Uh and solimant to the petis and all that, so the the so so that's so they're they're kind of like a but like it's like cats and dogs tied into a sack. So there's like you have these different opposition figures, and I think that the really right wing ones know that they can't be as openly homophobic as they used to be, and so they need to couch it in a different way. I think it's not just that I don't want to reduce everyone to that, but I do think that's a
huge part of that project. And then in addition to that, just people who are like anything that the government does is bad because they're accelerationists, which is another big part of the opposite. Know why is every Why is everybody an acceleration is? Now this is the worst I I why an acceleration? I think I wonder if his material reality is a trick to that to the I am
going to take a time machine. I am going to hunt down nick Land, and I am going to stop the g RU from forming, and no one will ever know what acceleration is. You know, that's not true. Without nick Land, someone else would come up with with accelerationism. It's a very easy thing to think of to to to be fair to nick Land, at least at least his version of acceleration ism had to do with like
at least there was everyone. Yeah, like the first accelerationism, We're like, like capitalism is the human machine that's also a god that only exists in but that it exists continuously in potential and all all of you like the market being irresistible because because because because because it's like the market itself is the thinking machine that this is
at least funny. Yeah, the moder stuff is, Oh god, this is like they I longed for the days where there was an argument where people where people would do the modern accelerationist thing and like the land Ens were go, no, no, no, that's not what accelerationism is. It's just that I hate this reality. It's the worst. Yeah. So I mean, like I think I think a good chunk of the opposition
movement can be described as alex accelerationist. It's not just it's not just accelerationists, but I do think a lot of them are in there. Any improvements to anything is helping the government. That's why they support the embargo. That's why they don't want an improvement on any law us.
They want things to be as dysfunctional as possible because they think that like the government is incapable of actually getting doing better, and to the extent that it becomes better and stronger, it's just going to be more repressive ergo. The solution is bring the country to a standstill so there will be a general strike and overthrow the government. That's their plan. I think that seems like a terrible plan.
I'm just gonna gonna throw that out there. That's that, Like I get at that at that point, Like why do why not just become a terrorist? Like I don't know, Like because that's because that's more scary. Yeah, that's the actual reason. Yeah, it's like people, it's people, people who were too cowardly to like kill someone with their own bombs, so they kill people by trying to get sanctions due instead, which is like no, although there have there happened, there
happened terns. There was the realist. He blew up a put a frag bomb in a Cuban hotel and killed the Cuban An Italian tourist. Um. Yeah, actually, actually, my my dad was working on the extradition case to get an extradited even over that. He was Yeah, he's he also committed the first act. So a Cuban, a CIA trained Cuban exile committed the first act of terrorism involving
civil aviation in the Western hemisphere. That's pretty late. Yeah, I mean maybe maybe it was just people were just doing it in and maybe it was just a European thing, and then the CIA was like, what if we bring this here? It's like, no, sure, surely this will work better for us that it worked for every other group who's hijacked a plane in the nineteen seventies. Oh God, this sucks. I hope, I hope those guys have a bad time and that. Yeah. Yeah, well at least kicked
it a couple of years ago. Oh, thank god. Okay, rest rest in piss official official pot opinion doing we're doing the crab Like god, these people suck. Um Yeah yeah, so yeah, I guess do you have anything else you want to talk about? Or I think that's it. Just thanks a lot for having me on. It was it was great to be on. Thank thanks for coming on. Yeah. Queer rights good, not doing them bad. Don't kill people with sanctions, Yeah, definitely. The embargo has been an utter failure, everything,
increasing human misery. Yeah, like all right, yeah, and I guess, um, yeah, but listening, do you do you have do you have stuff you want to plug? Oh? Sure, that's that's that's a very good and generous point. Um. So you can find me on Twitter at at a s R tier up Peas and Peter E r Teas and tom I e r r A. I also have a po podcast which is linked in my bio. I'm doing a history of Cuba um as an academic, but spreading for a poor popular audience. And we're going way when we start
with the indigenous people. We don't just jump over them, and we're I'm currently working on Columbus and then uh, let's see. And I also have a sub stack called scene embargo s I N and then the word embargo so yeah, yeah that that's without embargo. If I'm Spanish, is okay, Yes, it means without embargo, but it also sounds like sid embargo, which is I feel like it
would be a cool band name. So yeah, yeah, well we will, we will, we will link to stuff and we will link to that in the description, and yeah, thank you for joining us. This this has been na could happen here? Um yeah, make bad things happen to homophobes and get good things to happen. It Could Happen
Here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from the cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.