By James Kirchick / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
TOBIAS KLEINSCHMIDT/EPA/ Mariela Castro Espin, daughter of Cuban President Raul Castro, visits a memorial for homosexual Holocaust victims in Berlin in 2010.
On December 7, 1990, Cuban poet and novelist Reinaldo Arenas ended his
life. Forced into exile because of his political dissidence, and dying
slowly of AIDS, he could no longer withstand the physical and mental
torment of the disease. His brief suicide note, expressing contentment
for a life well lived, nonetheless conveyed a sense of burning rage.
“Persons near me are in no way responsible for my decision,” wrote
Arenas, whose life Julian Schnabel portrayed elegiacally in his
adaptation of Arenas’ memoir “Before Night Falls.”
“There is only one person I hold accountable: Fidel Castro.”
Like countless other gay Cubans, many of whom were executed or rounded
up into concentration camps and worked to death in the name of Socialist
revolution, Arenas was persecuted for his sexuality. So one can only
imagine how he would react to the recent spectacle at the New York
Public Library, in which a roomful of gay activists warmly welcomed a
high-ranking representative from that despicable regime.
On May 29, Mariela Castro Espin, the niece of Cuba’s former President
Fidel Castro and the daughter of its present leader, Raul, delivered a
talk at an event organized by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
Back in Cuba, Castro (who is heterosexual) heads something called the
National Center for Sex Education and is a prominent supporter of gay
marriage. Asked about the regime’s interment of HIV-positive people,
Castro “seemed to talk around the issue,” according to Gay City News.
Nonetheless, she received a standing ovation.
In isolation, Castro’s support for gays is laudable. But her campaign
for gay rights, such as it is, must be seen within the context of the
repression that the Castro regime has inflicted upon the Cuban people
for five decades.
The Castro brothers are wise enough to read international political
currents; revolutionary machismo isn’t in vogue like it was in the
1960s. They know that a sure way to warm the hearts of progressives is
to pledge support for some nebulous concept of “gay rights.” Never mind
Cuban gays — like all citizens of Cuba save high-ranking members of the
Communist Party — do not enjoy basic liberties like freedom of speech or
religion. They cannot join an independent labor union or vote. When it
comes to gay life in Cuba, “Not much has changed since Reinaldo Arenas’
time.”
That assessment doesn’t come from “terrorist groups based in Miami” or
the “mediocre yellow press,” as Castro recently described her critics in
a radio interview. It comes from In These Times, a left-wing American
magazine that publishes the likes of Noam Chomsky. Three years ago, it
ran a special feature on Cuba, including an in-depth report about
homosexuality.
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