Speaker 1: It happened somewhere else a while ago, and also somewhere
Speaker 1: else now ish several days ago. What a great title
Speaker 1: for a show. I love, I love how snappy and
Speaker 1: remember and memorable. That is that look, we can we
Speaker 1: we can, we can go and we can go into it.
Speaker 1: A tiny bit of pulling back the curtain, which is
Speaker 1: that you can't do too many good intros because if
Speaker 1: you do too many good intros, and everyone expects you
Speaker 1: to constantly have a good intro, So every once in
Speaker 1: a while you have to just make you have You
Speaker 1: have to lower the overall quality of the intro so
Speaker 1: that when you are truly desperate, have just been dragged
Speaker 1: out of bed at like three am and you have
Speaker 1: to record a podcast, just sort of a tonal noises
Speaker 1: will be considered normal. That's why I script all my intros.
Speaker 1: But I'm just I'm just I'm just built. Yea different
Speaker 1: is that could happen here? What are we what are
Speaker 1: we doing here today? Chris um? We are talking about Well, actually,
Speaker 1: admittedly we we had planned this episode before this happens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were on this episode before the referendum in Cuba
Speaker 1: about the new family code. But yeah, we're we're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about the kind of bleak but sort of
Speaker 1: gets better history of homosexuality in Cuba and how things
Speaker 1: went from very bad to getting a lot better, and
Speaker 1: then also how a lot of American leftists like picked
Speaker 1: up a version of the history of this that is
Speaker 1: just sort of nonsense. And here here with us talk
Speaker 1: about this is Andre's Petira, who is well doing doing
Speaker 1: many things, one of which is studying for PhD in
Speaker 1: Latin American history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. On
Speaker 1: today's Welcome to the show. Oh, thanks so much for
Speaker 1: having me. It's great to be here. Yeah, like I'm
Speaker 1: excarted to talk to you about this. So okay, I
Speaker 1: guess the the place that I want to start is
Speaker 1: I want to go back to the sixties and I
Speaker 1: want to go back to something that I I don't
Speaker 1: think a lot of people understand very well in terms
Speaker 1: of what happened in I just happened in various ways
Speaker 1: over a lot of sort of these new sort of
Speaker 1: revolutionary socialist states, which is that you get this attempt
Speaker 1: to like form of like a sort of like like
Speaker 1: a new revolutionary subject. Sometimes it's it's like, I mean,
Speaker 1: the Soviet one was like the new Man. They're they're
Speaker 1: sort of different versions of this across there's sort of
Speaker 1: various social revolutionary states. I guess I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: you to talk about how this kind of got really
Speaker 1: really homophobic in Cuba, like pretty quickly. Yeah, so, I
Speaker 1: mean and and and one of the interesting parts about
Speaker 1: the story in Cuba is that it actually is look
Speaker 1: in part important from the USSR and ideas in the USSR.
Speaker 1: And that's actually one of the connections which in the
Speaker 1: literature isn't in the academic literature at least isn't always
Speaker 1: that well explored because Cuban is tends to be very insloyed.
Speaker 1: We don't really tend to learn Russian. I'm I'm kind
Speaker 1: of crazy. I actually am learning Russian, but but no,
Speaker 1: so so um. You know, there was obviously lots of homophobia,
Speaker 1: lots of you know, all like lots of bigotry against
Speaker 1: LGBT people before nineteen fifty nine, not unlike the United
Speaker 1: States of the nineteen fifties, like you could live privately
Speaker 1: or maybe in certain safe spaces, you could live a
Speaker 1: kind of okay life, but you know, it was definitely
Speaker 1: very marginalized position lots of biggotry and lots of personal
Speaker 1: danger in addition to a lack of basic rights. Um.
Speaker 1: After nineteen fifty nine, Uh, you know, you have this jettison,
Speaker 1: jettison ing of the Catholic Church and kind of religious
Speaker 1: reasons for being being bigoted, with the coming of the revolution,
Speaker 1: which is a secular communist revolution. Um. But what what
Speaker 1: ends up happening is they And this is something that
Speaker 1: Abel Sierra Mario's recent book on on U on these policies,
Speaker 1: talks about a lot. Is this kind of attempt to
Speaker 1: remake human men into the man that's needed for this
Speaker 1: communist society in the future. And as part of this,
Speaker 1: they engage in a sort of social hygiene. We don't
Speaker 1: want people who are lazy, we don't want people who
Speaker 1: are degenerate, but you know, bourgeois degeneracy by you know,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. And within this, you know a
Speaker 1: persecution of people who are seen as either out, either
Speaker 1: as gay or at least as soft and they need
Speaker 1: to be made into real macho men for the revolution.
Speaker 1: And um, this started out in a very series of
Speaker 1: isolated things. Right. You would have like Vihitio Pinieta was
Speaker 1: who was a dramaturge. He was um, he was jailed, uh,
Speaker 1: and he basically he was being targeted because people wanted
Speaker 1: his house, and so if he was jailed and his
Speaker 1: belongings were separated from him, then like someone could get
Speaker 1: to keep his apartment. Like that seems to be why
Speaker 1: he was originally targeted. And he was detained twice for
Speaker 1: basically walking while gay. That's how basically what the incident
Speaker 1: boils down to. He was walking effeminately in people and
Speaker 1: he was detained by police, and he was free because
Speaker 1: he had like he was an important person. He was
Speaker 1: you know, he had some protections. But then as the
Speaker 1: decade rolls on, as the nineteen sixties rolled on, that's like,
Speaker 1: that's nineteen sixty one year after the revolution. Nine sixty five,
Speaker 1: you have the creation of a series of forced labor
Speaker 1: camps and there's not really any way to get around that. Um.
Speaker 1: We don't know exactly how many were sent there, um,
Speaker 1: but it seems to be in the thousands, maybe tens
Speaker 1: of thousands. We again, we don't know because the government
Speaker 1: hasn't the class by that information. So it's still a conjecture.
Speaker 1: But it's not because people don't want to investigate the details. Um.
Speaker 1: And these are thousands and thousands of people who are
Speaker 1: being set for all sorts of reasons. Jehovah's witnesses, um uh,
Speaker 1: people who listened to rock, people who are seeing as
Speaker 1: hippies uh lvi spresleanos so Elvis presleyan's so people who
Speaker 1: listened to Elvis Presley because that was seen as too
Speaker 1: effeminate and too yankee. Um and and so they were
Speaker 1: sent to the camps and to forced labor. But the
Speaker 1: camps weren't just about forced labor. They were about remaking
Speaker 1: through labor, these men into real men, because hard labor,
Speaker 1: proletarian labor, would you know, remake their spirits and their
Speaker 1: ethics and a ha ha. I mean it's kind of
Speaker 1: not unlike what we're seeing in the nineteen sixties in China.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a very explicit like
Speaker 1: one one of the thing well yeah, well one of
Speaker 1: the things that is just going on from the culture revolution. Also, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like that they had that they had this sort
Speaker 1: of re education through labor. The thing that starts and
Speaker 1: it gets it doesn't. Yeah, Like I've seen conflicting accounts
Speaker 1: of the extent to which like people were directly targeted
Speaker 1: for being gay. I it definitely did happen, And there's
Speaker 1: a yeah, and you get a lot of this sort
Speaker 1: of same thing of like these people are like spiritually
Speaker 1: un pere and like they have to be like re
Speaker 1: educated and they have to be sort of like turned
Speaker 1: into like proper like subjection. There's a lot of the
Speaker 1: especially like there's a lot of sort of like there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people like being forced to hold science
Speaker 1: and say sodomite and ship yeah, which is a funnily enough.
Speaker 1: And the weird part about this is that like in
Speaker 1: the Chinese case, so the cultural revolution is like not
Speaker 1: a great time to be gay, but there's also this thing.
Speaker 1: There's this thing kind of like it's kind of like
Speaker 1: like Nies Berlin, where like there are there is some
Speaker 1: really bad stuff that happens, but there's also this sort
Speaker 1: of like there's a kind of general political chaos so
Speaker 1: you can get away with some stuff too that there's
Speaker 1: actually there's another and pain in China in starts about
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three. Yeah, it's called the Strike Hard Campaign.
Speaker 1: Interestingly that there's there's actually two Strike Hard campaign So
Speaker 1: there's one of the eighties that's supposed to be this
Speaker 1: campaign against like crime and stuff, and so like they
Speaker 1: target a bunch of people who are like supposed to
Speaker 1: be like social criminals, and then that winds up being
Speaker 1: a lot of like there's just there are just mass
Speaker 1: arrest of gay people. They're in prison for a very
Speaker 1: very long time. Um yeah under Although that one's also
Speaker 1: interesting because it's like you have very similar kind of reasoning,
Speaker 1: but it's like but it's in this sort of like
Speaker 1: dang like kind of revolutionary like phase where it's like
Speaker 1: instead of being instead of being a danger to the revolution,
Speaker 1: they're like sort of a danger to like traditional Chinese values,
Speaker 1: which is interesting and bleak. Yeah, well, because like this
Speaker 1: is one of the one of things happens in China,
Speaker 1: writes it like in in you know there there is
Speaker 1: an attempt to sort of do more egalitarian like gender
Speaker 1: relations during the Drean culture revolution between the sort of
Speaker 1: like revolutionary period and then when Dane takes power, part
Speaker 1: of this thing is like, no, we're going back to
Speaker 1: traditional gender relations. All of this egalitarian stuff was a mistake,
Speaker 1: and like this is part this is part of whether
Speaker 1: when child policy comes from But then also you get
Speaker 1: a really homophobic crackdown in like eighty three, like like
Speaker 1: three or four years after sort of like he's actually
Speaker 1: weirdly almost exactly the same time that like the real
Speaker 1: sort of market reforms hit like like it's it's it's
Speaker 1: like a year later is when the package that's sort
Speaker 1: of like really brings the market back to try to happen.
Speaker 1: Is I don't. It's it's a very weird. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: we have gotten gotten very off topic, but it's it's
Speaker 1: a very weird and interesting sort of like social flip
Speaker 1: that happens. Yeah, I'm sure, and that definitely makes me
Speaker 1: want to read more about like China during this period. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting, like like the over thing that
Speaker 1: you're talking about earlier, that is interested, Like it's so
Speaker 1: much to me as I've talked to like people from
Speaker 1: Vietnam and they have a very similar story about like
Speaker 1: like I mean there was homophobia before, but they have
Speaker 1: a very similar story to the Cuban story about how
Speaker 1: like there is this sort of importation of like Soviet
Speaker 1: homophobia and how that made everything like when then this
Speaker 1: starts out between the eighties and it gets just significantly worse. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: it's uh and in Cuba, Um, what's it called? Like
Speaker 1: the whole idea that this is a form of bourgeois
Speaker 1: degeneracy and the gayness gayness is specifically bourgeois is like
Speaker 1: was really surprising to me as I dug into this,
Speaker 1: Like there's comics I in this thing I wrote, I
Speaker 1: include a couple of them, but it's basically like it's
Speaker 1: put up there with wanting to be in so leave
Speaker 1: it at like free society in the West, and so
Speaker 1: the West is it's like it's almost like a factionary
Speaker 1: I mean, it is reaction, but I mean it's like
Speaker 1: it's it's like a very weird, weird mirror of like
Speaker 1: far right discourse because it's like the degeneracy of the West. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: here we have masculine values. I mean, did you even
Speaker 1: see that type of rhetoric with We were talking about
Speaker 1: Alexander Dugan recently and he he is. I suppose there's
Speaker 1: a lot of that type of stuff as as as
Speaker 1: well as the one who is you know, a fascist
Speaker 1: writer who's pulled on some of the national Bolshevik type
Speaker 1: stuff before. Um, yeah, you can attack attack gayness as
Speaker 1: it's like a sign of liberalism in the West as
Speaker 1: like this like almost like a bourgeois tendency. Yeah, I forget,
Speaker 1: I forget who it was. There was someone on Twitter
Speaker 1: who was talking about there's like it's it's very interesting
Speaker 1: thing like yeah like in in like in the US,
Speaker 1: like I don't know, like being like for a very
Speaker 1: very long time. It's so kind of now you get
Speaker 1: this versus like like being gay, like is is you know,
Speaker 1: like being queer as a sign of like you're a
Speaker 1: communist and you're like like a degenerate communistic et cetera.
Speaker 1: And then you go to like Vietnam and it's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this person is gay there. They're they're they're degenerate Western
Speaker 1: like kind of revolutionary, and it's it's it's it's like
Speaker 1: it's always the same. The actual sort of like homophobic
Speaker 1: thing is the same. It's just like the signs are
Speaker 1: flipped of like what the other is and who you
Speaker 1: can accuse them most sort of having the values of
Speaker 1: I wonder if the unifying factor here is is and
Speaker 1: this is something I'm thinking of a lot, a lot
Speaker 1: because of Other's book, which is that I mean greatness
Speaker 1: as a disease, Yeah, an illness and so like that,
Speaker 1: so it allows you to glump onto it anything you
Speaker 1: don't like from your own ideological prism. So I also
Speaker 1: wonder a lot about how nationalism plays into it, because
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that happens in a lot
Speaker 1: of these sort of revolutionary projects is like, yeah, like
Speaker 1: the sort of ideal of the new man is sort
Speaker 1: of like a communist thing, but it's also like very
Speaker 1: specifically something that you get with like with nationalist revolutions,
Speaker 1: where it's like, well, okay, so we like we we
Speaker 1: we have to like like part of part of it,
Speaker 1: like the basis of our national identity is like we
Speaker 1: are these like incredibly sort of masculine hard man or whatever.
Speaker 1: And then this like, I don't know, it strikes me.
Speaker 1: It strikes me as interesting that like the further that
Speaker 1: sort of nationalism becomes entangled in like these revolutionary projects,
Speaker 1: like the more you start to see this kind of stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and definitely part of this is nationalism because it's
Speaker 1: it's not just homophobia in Cuba in this context in
Speaker 1: the sixties, it's not just homophobia for the sake of homophobia.
Speaker 1: So there is that too, but it's it's also that
Speaker 1: I don't think Fiddel Castro is entirely lying when he
Speaker 1: says that it was part of the need to mobilize
Speaker 1: as much of society as possible for the economy. What's
Speaker 1: happening in Cuba in the nineteen sixties is basically the
Speaker 1: economy is going into a meltdown. Um. The economic policies
Speaker 1: that they're enacting have not been working. They've burned through
Speaker 1: any surplus they had in nine including good will surpluses
Speaker 1: and a couple of respects. Uh. And I think that
Speaker 1: like some people point to like the new Man and
Speaker 1: people will work for moral incentives, not material incentives, as
Speaker 1: just this naive thing. And then I think the most
Speaker 1: convincing counter argument is they didn't have anything else to
Speaker 1: incentivize people. Yeah, people, people mate this this this is
Speaker 1: a this is like basically there's an identical like argument
Speaker 1: that you get about the culture Revolution, where like you
Speaker 1: start to see these like incentives are like maw will
Speaker 1: like give you a mango or something, or like you
Speaker 1: have these like pins that you get and and like
Speaker 1: it it's it could like yeah, it's it's it's very
Speaker 1: it's like the same thing of like you have these
Speaker 1: rewards that are sort of like, yeah, there's sort of
Speaker 1: like spiritual almost or sort of like a spiritual ideological
Speaker 1: rewards and then eventually like kind of just stops working
Speaker 1: because it turns out that's not actually a very good
Speaker 1: basis for economic system. Do you guys know the old
Speaker 1: joke about check Givada when he was given a sign
Speaker 1: to become the Minister of the banks. I don't know
Speaker 1: the joke. I know the thing about like he was
Speaker 1: my my my vague memory is like the story that
Speaker 1: I heard was like he signed his name like really
Speaker 1: sloppy on it because he was piste off that like
Speaker 1: he had to put his face on money or something.
Speaker 1: But I have no idea that's that's that's that part's
Speaker 1: actually true. He did. He hated money so much he
Speaker 1: refused to sign his actual name. He just signed his
Speaker 1: nickname as like just to show his disdain for for
Speaker 1: for economics. But at a meeting that the old jocos
Speaker 1: And this is something that Chad apparently like to tell
Speaker 1: as well, even if it's not necessarily true that at
Speaker 1: the meeting where they were deciding who's going to become
Speaker 1: the minister of what, uh they said, uh, who here
Speaker 1: is an economist and he raises his hand and everyone
Speaker 1: goes to Chay. But you're a doctor, You're not an economist.
Speaker 1: Is this Oh I thought you asked for a communists
Speaker 1: like so yeah, no, I mean chair and and I
Speaker 1: think I've heard arguments. I'm not an expert on chat,
Speaker 1: but I've heard that he was actually pretty heavily influenced
Speaker 1: by China, really compared to the U. S. S. R.
Speaker 1: Helan closes in China. Yeah, that actually that actually gets
Speaker 1: and make I think I think, I guess that kind
Speaker 1: of makes sense given his sort of like like the
Speaker 1: way his military strategy seems to have worked, which is
Speaker 1: very very much like a lot closer to sort of
Speaker 1: like MAOIs strategy than Wow, okay, I mean, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: put Soviet strategy and quotation marks because oh my god,
Speaker 1: is there like the I have. I have a very negative,
Speaker 1: a very dim view of of sort of the military
Speaker 1: strategy of people who are of like guerrilla organizations who
Speaker 1: are taking their military trying directly from the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of like We're gonna build up one giant,
Speaker 1: I mean in a place and one day they're going
Speaker 1: to roll into the capital and it's like this okay, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that make that makes sense? Um, okay, yeah, raining, raining
Speaker 1: myself in a little bit. We have these basically labor
Speaker 1: camps that gay people are getting put into. We have
Speaker 1: kind of a material basis for it, which is and
Speaker 1: this is one of the things that like people actually
Speaker 1: use as a defense of sort of like like, well,
Speaker 1: we had to put these people in these camps because
Speaker 1: of our matrial conditions, which I think, like I feel
Speaker 1: like that makes it worse. Like I feel like the
Speaker 1: fact that there's a there's a material basis for your
Speaker 1: homophobia like makes it harder to get rid of and
Speaker 1: makes it like a more entrenched part of the system,
Speaker 1: which I don't know, bizarre defense to me. But yeah,
Speaker 1: can we talk a bit about like because like how
Speaker 1: how did this actually end and to what extent did
Speaker 1: it end? And did it sort of like have this
Speaker 1: like half life afterwards? Sure? So, so these last for
Speaker 1: a couple of years. This is not like a flash
Speaker 1: in the pan like oops are bad kind of like
Speaker 1: you know, six months in This is like a series
Speaker 1: of multiple work camps across the province of Come a Way,
Speaker 1: which is in central Cuba, and they last for three
Speaker 1: years and there's pushback during this period, domestic pushback, international pushback,
Speaker 1: like people have been complaining about it for exactly what
Speaker 1: the definitive thing that got them the few mock closed
Speaker 1: specifically close sort of. The UNIDA is mely that is
Speaker 1: the au Ala rugs showing military units to aid production.
Speaker 1: So the Umak themselves, which are open from nine sixty eight,
Speaker 1: they do eventually get close and sixty eight people are freeding,
Speaker 1: you know, like you know, the camps are closed and
Speaker 1: uh people are sent home and um. There are varying stories.
Speaker 1: I have looked through like trade tried to trace as
Speaker 1: many stories as I can get um uh and even
Speaker 1: even people who like we're participants have different stories. So
Speaker 1: like I remember Carlos Frankie, who was one of a
Speaker 1: position figure. He has one story that centers himself in
Speaker 1: the closure. Other stories say that it was the international pressure.
Speaker 1: Other stories say that it was the Right Writers and
Speaker 1: Artists Union, the official one, the state one, the NIAC,
Speaker 1: which filed enough complaints and that convinced Fidel to get
Speaker 1: it closed down. UM. That anecdote is actually from Maddie
Speaker 1: Glass Iglesias Dad Josse Glesias, who wrote about Yeah his grandfather,
Speaker 1: his grand his communist grandfather. Um. But he who actally
Speaker 1: who wrote a book about the six It's he's an
Speaker 1: interesting guy. But anyway, so the camps get closed one
Speaker 1: way or another, and I don't think we're gonna ever
Speaker 1: know the definitive answer until like there's actually classification. But
Speaker 1: they're closed. But the thing is um. While the camps
Speaker 1: get closed, we have reports from different people, including some
Speaker 1: of the sources that are used as apologia for the
Speaker 1: MOP saying wait wait wait. Social disgrace units keep existing
Speaker 1: well into the early nineteen seventies, and so we do
Speaker 1: have sporadic reports of things like this happening where seminarists
Speaker 1: are sense to religious people for for being atheists, are
Speaker 1: certain for not being atheists. Uh, you know, gay people
Speaker 1: are being sent other people mighty one ados, So people
Speaker 1: who spoked smoke pot, you know, anyone who's seen as
Speaker 1: like not conforming into this ideal new man you're sent
Speaker 1: there in the labor is supposed to reform you. And
Speaker 1: that's that's a key part of this. It's not just
Speaker 1: as punishment's labor as ideological reform. There's even one of
Speaker 1: the people, some of the people in one camp say
Speaker 1: that there was a sign that says work will make
Speaker 1: you men Jesus. Oh no, yeah, like work will set
Speaker 1: you free. Yeah, it's uh so, so the camps do
Speaker 1: contain seem to continue and Um, it's it definitely seems
Speaker 1: to be the case that, uh, you know, gay people
Speaker 1: do continue to be arrested for being gay, even though
Speaker 1: the intensity of this does die down by the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: There's something pretty bad that also happens in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: but it's a slightly different project. It's not as centered
Speaker 1: on force labor. So yeah, and I guess so the yeah,
Speaker 1: the thing that you wrote this piece about that I
Speaker 1: actually probably mentioned that is one of the things we're
Speaker 1: talking about is you you wrote a very long piece
Speaker 1: about Um called factually Based, which is about sort of
Speaker 1: the kind of mythology that developed in the US about
Speaker 1: like how these camps were closed and the sort of
Speaker 1: like apology around it, and a lot of this is
Speaker 1: based on Leslie Feinberg, which is depressing in a lot.
Speaker 1: Leslie Feinberg, people who don't know, is like one of
Speaker 1: one of the most important like trans authors ever. UM
Speaker 1: wrote Stone, which Blues, which is like if you've ever
Speaker 1: been in like any sort of like queer trend scene
Speaker 1: you probably know about or possibly have read, And she wrote,
Speaker 1: m M, not a great account of this. Yeah, do
Speaker 1: you want to talk a bit about what what this
Speaker 1: was and how people have sort of used it in
Speaker 1: different ways? Sure? So, Like for years I heard like
Speaker 1: arguments from this book and I didn't know they were
Speaker 1: from this I just saw people sharing online online and thinking,
Speaker 1: where the hell are people getting this? This is not
Speaker 1: this is not true, And eventually I find out that
Speaker 1: it's It dates back to this book called Rainbow Solidarity
Speaker 1: and Defensive Cuba by Leslie Finberg, was written mid to
Speaker 1: late two thousand's UM. Really it's not a book, it's
Speaker 1: a compilation of articles which Fineberg wrote for as part
Speaker 1: of the Lavender and Read series for This World's Workers
Speaker 1: World newspaper, which is like this Marciite sect which Fineberg
Speaker 1: SMUs have been a part of. UM. Real real weirdos,
Speaker 1: like they those people like they have positions that are
Speaker 1: like bizarre even by the standards of like modern tankies,
Speaker 1: like they're they're like these are people who are like
Speaker 1: hardline on defending the DIRG in Ethiopia, which is like
Speaker 1: stuff that's weird enough that like most most modern like
Speaker 1: idea like hardline ideological stalinists don't know what this they
Speaker 1: don't even know what this is or won't defend it
Speaker 1: because it's like because like most Ethiopian Mark Sister like
Speaker 1: this was fucked like it's it's yeah. Also that this
Speaker 1: is every thing about these guys. So if you know
Speaker 1: what the PSL, the Party of Socialist Liberation, they emerged
Speaker 1: from a split with the w w P. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: the it was the w w P was too moderate
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah. My my my memory of it was
Speaker 1: it was a split about whether whether or not you
Speaker 1: should take money from North Korea. I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know if that's a percent that
Speaker 1: that that's my memory the last time I read about it.
Speaker 1: So these are who these guys are. Yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: I mean there's a reason that PSL and WWP seem
Speaker 1: to have very similar lines. Um. So so anyway, so
Speaker 1: I'm I finally get this book. I ordered second hand,
Speaker 1: so I'm not giving anyone royalties. Um and I get
Speaker 1: the book and it starts like arguing, you know, trying
Speaker 1: to you know, defend the track record of the revolution,
Speaker 1: and really it's like, basically, it seems that this book
Speaker 1: and an article that came out before any of Fineberg's articles,
Speaker 1: an article by John Hilson in the early two thousand's,
Speaker 1: are kind of a response to how as the kind
Speaker 1: of like how LGBT rights were treated in the mainstream
Speaker 1: in like the United States was shifting. There was a
Speaker 1: like less homophobia movement towards more recognition of rights in
Speaker 1: the two thousands. And in that context, he was Cubist
Speaker 1: track record on LGBT rights, which is pretty pretty bad,
Speaker 1: you know, it was getting hammered, and so they're writing
Speaker 1: this as a response to that. And Findberg Warrens in
Speaker 1: the introduction don't expect a criticism of Cuba in this book.
Speaker 1: It's factually based, but you know, and I put it
Speaker 1: in quotes factually based, but uh, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: factually based, but it's you know, where this is. It's
Speaker 1: basically meant as counter propaganda to the criticisms and the
Speaker 1: section that everyone quotes. I mean, the book is the
Speaker 1: book isn't that long. It things like a hundred pages.
Speaker 1: I have it over here. Um, it's like a hundred
Speaker 1: pages long. It's all these different articles. Um, the section
Speaker 1: that most people quote is actually like two or three pages.
Speaker 1: It's this very short section on the map, and uh,
Speaker 1: Fineberg talks about the MOP and sites basically three people
Speaker 1: to talk about it. Basically. One one of those sources
Speaker 1: is Ignacio ramon It, who is this foreign journalist who
Speaker 1: interviews Fidel and gave Fidel the opportunity to give these
Speaker 1: explanations and defenses of his policies, where basically Fidel uh, basically,
Speaker 1: Fidel defends it as a part of the necessity of
Speaker 1: mobilizing the entire country in the face of the crisis
Speaker 1: that it felt that was facing in the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: from the United States. So it needed to mobilize everyone.
Speaker 1: And it was part of the economic mobilization. And it
Speaker 1: was almost a favor to gay people because they didn't
Speaker 1: go into the military because there was too much homophobia
Speaker 1: in the military. So they almost did them a favor
Speaker 1: by giving them sending them off to do labor that
Speaker 1: wasn't with the military in these nice little you know,
Speaker 1: economic productive units. And then you know, oh there was
Speaker 1: some use, you know, there's some stuff, so we shot
Speaker 1: them down. Um. And this is before Fidel actually admitted
Speaker 1: that there was persecution of LGBT people in Cuba under
Speaker 1: his watch, which comes in like interview. So this is
Speaker 1: like his version of things right before then, and that's
Speaker 1: what Feinberg sites. Another of the sources is Cardinal and
Speaker 1: Nesto Cardinal, who I'm happy to expand on him. But
Speaker 1: the short version is that in Nesto Cardinal is going
Speaker 1: around Cuba in nineteen seventy and ninety one for two
Speaker 1: short trips and he's just basically writing down everything and
Speaker 1: anything people tell him. Some of it's very critical, some
Speaker 1: of it's very supportive. He's not actually claiming anything is factual.
Speaker 1: He's saying, I am in Cuba. This is what people
Speaker 1: are telling me. Make up your own minds like that
Speaker 1: is his stense. It is presented as this, uh like,
Speaker 1: it's not critically analyzed at all, and it's these two
Speaker 1: separate stories. One of them is that a hundred Communist
Speaker 1: youth members infiltrated the camps on hearing that there were
Speaker 1: abuses there, and they wrote reports saying that there were abuses,
Speaker 1: so the camps were shutdown. And then there's this separate story,
Speaker 1: also source to Cardinal by Feinberg, that Fidel personally infiltrates
Speaker 1: the camps incognito. And then there's this like guard who
Speaker 1: was going to like cut the cord on his hammock
Speaker 1: to wake him up and get him force him to work,
Speaker 1: and Fidel revealed himself and and you know, almost almost
Speaker 1: like why dost thou persecute me? Saul? A kind of deal,
Speaker 1: like very it sounds like a very biblical story, so
Speaker 1: it's it's a good yard, but it's not doesn't sound
Speaker 1: very serious. And also the two stories tying to contradict
Speaker 1: each other, Why does Fidel have to infiltrate if the
Speaker 1: hundred Communist youth members have gone you know, or vice versa,
Speaker 1: you know you don't. It's really weird, like like why
Speaker 1: why would there be both like both of them, you
Speaker 1: can't present both of them as true at the same time,
Speaker 1: like they they're they're they're mutually contradictory accounts of how
Speaker 1: this happens, very very weird, exactly, and and and in
Speaker 1: in Cardinal they're not even presented back to back. The
Speaker 1: hundred Communist youth members is literally a dude he saw
Speaker 1: on the street who told him this. It's a paragraph,
Speaker 1: and that's it. Like we don't have any other context.
Speaker 1: The other story that Fiddel Infiltrating is shared is slight
Speaker 1: sounds slightly more credible if you really want to believe it,
Speaker 1: but then if you actually read into it, it's more
Speaker 1: like it doesn't. It also doesn't water. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: a guy heard from another guy. Like it's it's yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he he's a guard. It is a guard narrating this.
Speaker 1: But he like he talks about what he saw up
Speaker 1: until like half into the paragraph, and then the rest
Speaker 1: is clearly implied to be stuffed stuff he heard about
Speaker 1: but wasn't actually present for, and find represents him as
Speaker 1: a witness of both. So anyway, so that's that's Fineberg's
Speaker 1: whole defense, Like, basically, Fidel had no idea that we're abuses,
Speaker 1: even though the very existence of the camps themselves were abuses.
Speaker 1: And then but they were shut down and everything's hunky dorry.
Speaker 1: You know. That's that's Fineberg's defense. And then of course
Speaker 1: the third thing is that she refers both citations to Hilson,
Speaker 1: which I can get into a second but just I
Speaker 1: think part of the problem is that Fineberg didn't actually
Speaker 1: read Cardinals. Yeah, so Hilson Wilson is another activist. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure he's LGBT and not like that that part
Speaker 1: of melist clear run. But he was another activist. He
Speaker 1: died very early in the two thousands, I think um
Speaker 1: from from cancer. He uh, but he wrote an article
Speaker 1: that cites Cardinal and cites both sections that Feinberg later
Speaker 1: sites and not more not less. And I think what's
Speaker 1: what happened was that Feinberg basically goes to this article
Speaker 1: which basically makes more or less makes the kind of
Speaker 1: arguments that Finberg is already making in her in her
Speaker 1: own work. But m what what when when she sees
Speaker 1: things that seem to exculpate the Cuban government, she basically
Speaker 1: does copy paste and a little parenthesis to give credit
Speaker 1: to Hilson and then moves on right. She doesn't actually
Speaker 1: read Hilson. Hilsen even like treats it a little more
Speaker 1: cautiously than Finberg, even though not sufficiently cautiously. And I
Speaker 1: think that that explains why and the least this is
Speaker 1: a generous interpretation. Fineberg doesn't actually address the fact that
Speaker 1: in her own exculputatory source there's talk of other camps
Speaker 1: like at the time Cardinal is like I am going
Speaker 1: to the camps. I'm visiting the camps. There are camps here,
Speaker 1: like you know, So it doesn't it doesn't make sense
Speaker 1: unless maybe findber didn't read the book, like just like
Speaker 1: copied and paste and didn't really think about it, yeah,
Speaker 1: or or just like went and found the one session
Speaker 1: that that was useful and then just read that part yeah,
Speaker 1: which yeah, not not a great way to do history,
Speaker 1: as it turns out. Um, yeah, yeah, I will do
Speaker 1: my one return to marks moment in this interview, which
Speaker 1: is to say, ruthless critique of all that exists, things
Speaker 1: that you generally support, because otherwise you wind up with
Speaker 1: this stuff. Yeah. Yeah, Oh my god, it's done the round.
Speaker 1: This thing has been going around around and around on
Speaker 1: the internet for years and years. Yeah. And I guess
Speaker 1: we should also say that, like, yeah, and this is
Speaker 1: this is the thing that happens with like any any
Speaker 1: like every one of these, like every one of the
Speaker 1: social countries you've been talking about, Like you will get
Speaker 1: people who basically are like like, hey, look at this
Speaker 1: bad thing. Uh, we're gonna but people who are like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, you get yeah, you get like Cuban
Speaker 1: right wingers who are like also unbelievably homophobic who suddenly
Speaker 1: like discover a passion for gay rights because hey, look
Speaker 1: at these abuses and it's like, yeah, it's I don't know,
Speaker 1: it sucks it. Yeah, I mean I think it genuinely
Speaker 1: is a part of the reason why this version becomes
Speaker 1: like a memory that like like this for these sort
Speaker 1: of versions of the story, which like don't have are
Speaker 1: not like really credible, like become sort of entrenched in
Speaker 1: the sort of like socialist memory of of this period
Speaker 1: in the US because it's like, well, okay, so so on.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, you have a bunch of sort
Speaker 1: of like like incredible fanatical right wingers talking about what
Speaker 1: was going on, and then you have like, hey, here's
Speaker 1: another story from a socialist. It's like, well, we're gonna
Speaker 1: believe the socialist version. It's like, well, neither of these
Speaker 1: people like not like but both of these groups like
Speaker 1: have an incredibly clear agenda going into what they're doing,
Speaker 1: and so you have to sort of like actually sift
Speaker 1: through the stuff yourself, otherwise you're weird wind up with
Speaker 1: very very weird and distorted histories. Yeah, and and people
Speaker 1: just really want to believe it. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: that's that's my conclusion. Like I when I was originally
Speaker 1: researching for this, I was I was pissed, Like I
Speaker 1: was like, this is these are just not true. How
Speaker 1: could someone publish this? You know, it's really angry. And
Speaker 1: I kept trying to write that like a piece or
Speaker 1: based on that, and I keep kept stopping and like,
Speaker 1: this is not the right approach, This is not the
Speaker 1: right Like I kept stopping myself, and then I finally
Speaker 1: just like try to, okay, put my shelf slf in
Speaker 1: Fineberg's shoes. If I was you know, really loved you know,
Speaker 1: if I was like as enamored as Fineberg was of
Speaker 1: everyone and everything involved in the Cuban Revolution and at
Speaker 1: the same time one a member of a persecuted group, right,
Speaker 1: you know, and I really want to to swear this circle,
Speaker 1: Like and I saw something to let me do that,
Speaker 1: I would probably also just glimb onto it and just
Speaker 1: not really try and not think about it too much
Speaker 1: for the same reason, right, you want you know, our
Speaker 1: defenses are low. One, it's something we want to believe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is there is an enormous amount of stuff that
Speaker 1: just sort of people, I mean just yeah, like everyone
Speaker 1: has a bunch of stuff that they believe because they wanted,
Speaker 1: they want it to be true. Like it's it's not
Speaker 1: like like we're we're we're we're we're being hard on
Speaker 1: the socialist here, but like, I don't know, like this
Speaker 1: is why half the people who believe Q shit believe it, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's it's, it's, it's it's the thing they
Speaker 1: want to believe, and I think they sort of have
Speaker 1: to believe for the ideology to function. So it's like
Speaker 1: it's not like I don't know, like it's it's it's.
Speaker 1: It's not that much different than like and Paul wolfowits
Speaker 1: like still thinking the Iraq war works or something, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's it's, it's, it's it's the thing you
Speaker 1: have to believe in order to not like have to
Speaker 1: sort of process the complications of what you're supporting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think, yeah, everything I want to talk about
Speaker 1: sort of moving past this is about the stuff that's
Speaker 1: been happening recently and about how stuff got better in Cuba,
Speaker 1: because this is I like, this is this is one
Speaker 1: of the places where like things actually did genuinely get
Speaker 1: a lot better than like it was, and I want
Speaker 1: to talk a bit about like how that happened before
Speaker 1: we get to sort of the stuff that's been happening
Speaker 1: in the last week or so. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: I'm happy to get into happier territories. Yeah, it sucks, like,
Speaker 1: oh god, it's it's it's definitely dumer stuff to always
Speaker 1: think about the sixties of the um. So, after the sixties,
Speaker 1: it did get pretty It was pretty bad in the
Speaker 1: nine seventies too. There was a purge of education and
Speaker 1: culture of anyone LGBT or suspective being LGBT, because the
Speaker 1: ideas that they would recruit and influence and corrupt the miners.
Speaker 1: And yeah, uh so I can probably do an article
Speaker 1: of comparing the Culture and Education Congress in seventy one
Speaker 1: in Cuba with with with policies in the United States
Speaker 1: right now. Um. And but then things start to get
Speaker 1: better in the nineteen eighties, a little bit like the
Speaker 1: the throttles pulled back. It's not great, but it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's not terrible as terrible as it was. And then
Speaker 1: from the late nineteen eighties into the nineteen nineties, we
Speaker 1: really see to see start to see a sea change,
Speaker 1: both in terms of popular culture and in terms of
Speaker 1: the of state policy, and of course they're intertwined because
Speaker 1: the who who who allows films to be put on
Speaker 1: in theaters the state, They own all the theaters, so
Speaker 1: um in terms of culture. Actually know one of the
Speaker 1: people who had a play played a key role in this,
Speaker 1: which is sin and Us and sene of Us is
Speaker 1: this writer from a small town in Cuba, small village,
Speaker 1: and he goes to have been and he's a he's
Speaker 1: a writer and artist, and he wrote this short story
Speaker 1: about this platonic relationship between a patriotic gay man and
Speaker 1: a patriotic human heterosexual member of the communist youth who
Speaker 1: develop a respect for each other. And it's like, even
Speaker 1: though like the gay man is alienated from state policies
Speaker 1: because of the persecution of LGBT people, he actually knows
Speaker 1: a lot more about history and culturing Cuba than the
Speaker 1: heterosexual guy who's raw ra revolution but doesn't actually know
Speaker 1: like all these important writers and artists and and things
Speaker 1: like that are also important for Cuban national identity. That
Speaker 1: when that was first read in the Castable and Samericas,
Speaker 1: which is like this huge building for human culture, people
Speaker 1: wept just openly and then it was made into a
Speaker 1: movie called So Strawberry and Chocolate. I can explain the
Speaker 1: type people, but basically it basically it's the same story.
Speaker 1: It's expanded a bit because the original was a short
Speaker 1: story and you can actually get in I states. I
Speaker 1: think Paramount bought the rights for distribution. Fox maybe bought
Speaker 1: the rights. I don't know, but it was came out
Speaker 1: in and it was a big turning point for public
Speaker 1: public perception, right. Um. Actually have a friend of mine
Speaker 1: was who who knows who knows the offer? He was
Speaker 1: stopped at his building and this the wife of a
Speaker 1: colonel who lives in this building says, my husband wants
Speaker 1: to see my friends, like, what would you? What did
Speaker 1: I do? It goes up to the colonel's house. The
Speaker 1: colonel says that you want coffee or anything? I said,
Speaker 1: My friends says no. The colonel says, explained to me
Speaker 1: this film that's come out recently, because the colonel wasn't
Speaker 1: gonna see it in theaters. Then my friend explains the
Speaker 1: movie and guy says no, no no, no, explain everything. So
Speaker 1: basically my friend does a scene by scene synopsis for
Speaker 1: memory and after like an hour and change in this
Speaker 1: guy's house. The Colonel's just sitting there not saying anything.
Speaker 1: He said, if I understood this and seeing this earlier,
Speaker 1: things might have been different, like like thank you. It's
Speaker 1: it's a huge turning point culturally, and then politically you
Speaker 1: also have Maria la castro So. Maria la castro is
Speaker 1: daughter of Raoul castro So, niece of Fidel and she
Speaker 1: from within the government, using her position of privilege, really
Speaker 1: starts to push for better LGBT policies for resil GBT
Speaker 1: people and better laws and runs. And she at the
Speaker 1: head of the Senesex which is the National Center for
Speaker 1: Sex Education, she really starts to spearhead and improvement. And
Speaker 1: we start to see the ninety nineties and two thousand's
Speaker 1: not just a pulling back of persecution, at least official persecution.
Speaker 1: You know, you can still have informal prosecut level of jobs.
Speaker 1: But you also start to see things like trans people
Speaker 1: can have gender affirming surgery backed by the state, you know,
Speaker 1: free of cost, Like all these sorts of different protections
Speaker 1: and policies, like the senatex will if there's like a
Speaker 1: homophobic incident to the school, they can send out somebody
Speaker 1: to give a talk and say this is why persecuting
Speaker 1: someone for their gender identity or the sexual orientation is wrong.
Speaker 1: But but but you really see a shift in the
Speaker 1: position of the state. And that's not just Mariella. I
Speaker 1: don't want to make it about Mariella. But behind her
Speaker 1: is of course all these other these LGBT people who
Speaker 1: would not be in the position to demand this for themselves.
Speaker 1: But she definitely spearheads this, and I think she deserves
Speaker 1: some merit for that. Yeah, it's interesting that they have,
Speaker 1: like that they have a level of sort of buy
Speaker 1: in from the state, because I think like that doesn't
Speaker 1: happen in like China and Vietnam, and like you know,
Speaker 1: I mean like Vietnam, like that there has actually been
Speaker 1: stuff there in the last like a year where there's
Speaker 1: been a lot of real progress, but like they like
Speaker 1: literally one month ago the government was like we're going
Speaker 1: to declare almost axuality no longer like a mental illness,
Speaker 1: and like that's sort of just like a month ago, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And then then there's only people a bit like cool
Speaker 1: people have been fighting for in Vietnam for like a
Speaker 1: long time, but like and even then, like there's this
Speaker 1: whole thing there where like people like you get you
Speaker 1: get this because if you talked to medical people in
Speaker 1: like you start to doctors, you get this thing where like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: so there's like real and the other thing, this thing
Speaker 1: that is outlawed conversion therapy. But if you talk to
Speaker 1: doctors about the doctors are like, well, there are real
Speaker 1: gay gay people and there are fake gay people, and
Speaker 1: the real gay people you can't do conversion therapy on
Speaker 1: but but this rule there. But these guys are like,
Speaker 1: this ruling only covers the real gay people, doesn't cover
Speaker 1: the fake gay people because so do conversion therapy. Like
Speaker 1: it's it's a disaster, and like I I don't know,
Speaker 1: like it's and like China also has been really bleak.
Speaker 1: Like I'm just gonna you're talking about a lot about
Speaker 1: sort of like the effect the media has on it.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read this thing from the Chinese General Rules
Speaker 1: for Television Drama Content Production from PLS and fifteen, which Okay,
Speaker 1: I've seen conflicting things, but I think this is still
Speaker 1: an effect. If it's not still effect, it was only
Speaker 1: reversed in one, but I think it's still in effect.
Speaker 1: And also there have been new sort of guidelines have
Speaker 1: been putting out from movies that are about like I
Speaker 1: mean the specifically their stuff, like you you can't have
Speaker 1: gay men in movies. You can't have men they were
Speaker 1: to effeminate in movies, Like you can't have men that
Speaker 1: look like they're cross dressing in movies. I'm gonna read
Speaker 1: this thing from the TV code. Um so this is
Speaker 1: this is stuff that he says is explicitly is not
Speaker 1: to be shown. Content which depicts or portrays unnatural sexual
Speaker 1: relations and actions such as incests, homosexuality, perversion, sexual harassment,
Speaker 1: sexual assault, sexual violence, etcetera. This is Vision Best version
Speaker 1: two RISI and three. Content which portrays and promulgates unhealthy
Speaker 1: perspectives on marriage and married loves such as extra marital love,
Speaker 1: one night stands, free love, etcetera. Sorry, try guys not allowed.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, Like it's like it's oh god, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna do a try guys joke every episode
Speaker 1: for Never Never can get off the recording. The French
Speaker 1: are surely complaining that the ban on cheating on your
Speaker 1: wife is an imposition on their culture. Yeah, definitely, that's
Speaker 1: actually extremely racist against the French. The actually he said
Speaker 1: it doesn't mention I was gonna make up I was
Speaker 1: gonna make a French film pedophilia joke. But it doesn't
Speaker 1: actually ban. It bands incests, but it doesn't actually ban
Speaker 1: like that. I mean, I think the hearing on I
Speaker 1: think I on pedophile I think I think it's a
Speaker 1: different section of the code that I didn't coffee here.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and I think part of what was going
Speaker 1: on there was like like there wasn't like I mean,
Speaker 1: I think things have gotten like it the law that
Speaker 1: was being used to arrest like gay people in China,
Speaker 1: like was the abolish in the nineties, but like and
Speaker 1: like there was a culture shift, but it didn't like
Speaker 1: the state decided it was going to do the same
Speaker 1: thing the US state which is doing, which is like
Speaker 1: do this sort of backlash to it, and it didn't.
Speaker 1: Like that kind of stuff didn't happened, which is I
Speaker 1: think really bleak. But also like is genuinely a thing
Speaker 1: that like like yeah, like the good good good for
Speaker 1: good for the Cuban people, good for Cuba, Like glad,
Speaker 1: glad you all are doing this. This is major because
Speaker 1: like major win. Yeah, because because it because you know,
Speaker 1: like you can you can see what happens when like
Speaker 1: this doesn't happen, which is all of this bullshit that
Speaker 1: exists in a lot of the other sort of post
Speaker 1: Soviet like or post communist countries. Yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: Cuba would have done it eventually, but I think that
Speaker 1: Mariela definitely just spread it along. And like there's there's
Speaker 1: definitely a problem of a cult of Mariella, where like
Speaker 1: abroad where it's like all all things be great, be
Speaker 1: due to Mariella. It's like completely cuts out all the
Speaker 1: people behind her, you know, who also been like please
Speaker 1: ask ask your uncle to do that's for me. I
Speaker 1: gotta get married someday. But you know, but at the
Speaker 1: same time, I think we can't cut her out of
Speaker 1: the story either. Yeah, and and that gets us to, well,
Speaker 1: I guess I guess you're starting quinting n tea first.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the the new family code that's passed, which
Speaker 1: also I do want to mention this because I don't
Speaker 1: think like people don't even know this when I tell
Speaker 1: them about this, about neither China nor Vietnam is game
Speaker 1: in neither trying to nor Vietnam is game. Marriage legal,
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of people who think that the
Speaker 1: repeal that happened to Vietnam legalized gamma marriage, and that's
Speaker 1: not what happens. Like the thing that it did is
Speaker 1: you will no longer be arrested for having your own
Speaker 1: unofficial marriage, which is the thing that could happen. But
Speaker 1: this is this, this is this is not this is
Speaker 1: not the thing that is happening in Cuba. Like I
Speaker 1: see those are people a lot where like something good
Speaker 1: will happen in Cuba and people will prorect it onto
Speaker 1: like China, and it's like that's no, like they're not
Speaker 1: the same place, Like don't don't don't do this with
Speaker 1: this stuff. Don't project the Cuban medical system onto the
Speaker 1: Chinese medical system. They're not the same. Please stop. Yeah yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: but yeah, going on to stuff that's good and this stuff,
Speaker 1: but on also the sort of like yeah, so we
Speaker 1: talk a bit about like what talking about like the
Speaker 1: en referendum and the sort of like the stuff about
Speaker 1: sort of how do you find this, like the story
Speaker 1: of how the stuff that's happening now didn't happen in yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so when the ins the Raoul Castro, who who
Speaker 1: took over after fidel Um, he began using a bunch
Speaker 1: of referendums decide major things, major policy changes, and using
Speaker 1: referendums kind of just till like because like the because
Speaker 1: the nationalists, the police basically a revereren stamp committee. Like
Speaker 1: referendums really took to the four as a way to
Speaker 1: like channelize, channel support and you know, show popular acquiescence
Speaker 1: to major changes among the constitution. So as part of
Speaker 1: the they did a draft constitution. They debated it, their
Speaker 1: debase all around the country at local levels, in in
Speaker 1: in in neighborhoods and workplaces, and people gave feedback the
Speaker 1: um marriage equality and and and things connected to it,
Speaker 1: which we can get into in a second. These were
Speaker 1: part of for the most part, part of the twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen constitution, but there was a lot of pushback. Um Like, obviously,
Speaker 1: if if the state has been repressing LGBT people for decades,
Speaker 1: that part of their coalition just doesn't stop overnight, does
Speaker 1: It doesn't just stop being bigoted overnight because of you know,
Speaker 1: a change in policy. So you know, it wasn't just
Speaker 1: that the religious right, like evangelicals, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of evangelicals in Cuba right now. There's a growing evangelical
Speaker 1: population I'm sorry to say, yeah, backed by the joical money.
Speaker 1: Uh no, please repressing the wrong people. And and then
Speaker 1: there's the Catholic right obviously you know, much more you know,
Speaker 1: discreetly but still very you know, against this. Uh And
Speaker 1: there was enough pushback that the government was worried that
Speaker 1: I don't know if they were worried that the constitution
Speaker 1: the referendum would fail entirely, but it did seem like
Speaker 1: they were worried that it would lower the voting percentage
Speaker 1: in favor of the new constitution enough that it would
Speaker 1: hurt the new constitution's legitimacy or something. So they decided
Speaker 1: to carve off the more controversial parts about the LGBT
Speaker 1: rights and basically carve them off, pushed them into a
Speaker 1: referendum on the family code with all the new laws
Speaker 1: based on the new constitution, all the new laws governing
Speaker 1: family law, and pump that down the road indefinitely. And
Speaker 1: so what's happening now that would just happened is the
Speaker 1: culmination of this red ferendom that they punted down the road.
Speaker 1: In twenty the original Constitution was passed with something like
Speaker 1: approval uh And and this was just kind of left
Speaker 1: on the to do list, and then with the current
Speaker 1: crisis in Cuba. I mean, like there's a couple of
Speaker 1: there's a couple of ways to read this, but I
Speaker 1: think one of the most obvious is that, uh, the
Speaker 1: Cuban government needed to win, and this was an easy
Speaker 1: win they could actually deliver in the age of extreme
Speaker 1: scarcity and rolling blackouts. It's like, we can just at
Speaker 1: least deliver on this promise, and they did. So. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess. So can we talk a bit about like
Speaker 1: what what what what actually is in the new code
Speaker 1: and what like what what it does? Yeah? So it does.
Speaker 1: It does a bunch of pretty cool things. It legalizes
Speaker 1: same sex marriage, which is great for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: not just because you know, not not just because of
Speaker 1: the principle of it, but also things like, Okay, you're
Speaker 1: separating from your partner, but everything is under your partner's name,
Speaker 1: you're not never need marry and what are your rights?
Speaker 1: Pop up up up us so you like, for for separation,
Speaker 1: for immigration, if you're trying to immigrate and you're not
Speaker 1: married to your spouse, you know, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: trying to inheritance, all these kinds of things. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is gonna be. This is like important in concrete material ways.
Speaker 1: It legalizes adoption by same sex couples, which is also
Speaker 1: pretty cool. That was not allowed at all. Good it
Speaker 1: wasn't before. Glad, Glad, glad, glad. You can now do that.
Speaker 1: That that's good. Hopefully we can still continue to do
Speaker 1: that here for like a few more years at least.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, um, it legalizes surrogacy and same scop sex
Speaker 1: couples can can benefit from can use surgacy now, although
Speaker 1: on a not for profit basis, and that's that's specific.
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert on whether or not it is
Speaker 1: the best policy to have it as only not for profit. Um.
Speaker 1: I know that there's a lot of debate over it,
Speaker 1: but the law says not for profit only for surrogacy.
Speaker 1: But that's still another option for people. In addition to adoption. UH.
Speaker 1: It expands civil unions to be much more inclusive. They're
Speaker 1: called uh in Spanish, so now they were much more inclusive.
Speaker 1: And also you know, you know, you you don't have
Speaker 1: to get married. You can get a civil union if
Speaker 1: you can we explain what that is, because that was
Speaker 1: a like there there was a whole thing in the
Speaker 1: US like in the in the two thousand's about like, oh,
Speaker 1: like you can do civil Like there was a period
Speaker 1: it was like there are a lot of places you
Speaker 1: can get civil unions, but you couldn't get married. So
Speaker 1: can you explain what a civil union is? Because I
Speaker 1: think that's a thing that like a lot of our
Speaker 1: audience probably isn't gonna like remember when that was a
Speaker 1: thing anyone talked about. Sure, I mean, like I'm I'm
Speaker 1: not a lawyer. Yeah, my understanding is it is it
Speaker 1: is a way to recognize your your basically partners. You
Speaker 1: have some rights, and it helps with some issues of
Speaker 1: like I think it also varies country to country, but
Speaker 1: it's basically like a step down from the full commitment
Speaker 1: of marriage, is my understanding. Um, sorry, that's less. No, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know like that that was that was by understanding
Speaker 1: of it. It was like like in the US, it
Speaker 1: was this whole thing of like, wow, you can have
Speaker 1: still unions so you don't need to be married. And
Speaker 1: then people were like no, because it doesn't give you
Speaker 1: It doesn't give you this sort of full suite of
Speaker 1: rights and stuff, but it gives you some things, which
Speaker 1: I'm glad. I'm glad he was doing like, no, you
Speaker 1: can do both of these things. And then wasn't there
Speaker 1: something about like like, yeah, there there were changes to
Speaker 1: like what like changes to what can be recognized as
Speaker 1: a family That is the part that I've seen the most,
Speaker 1: Like I have read a bunch about this, and I'm
Speaker 1: I still feel like this is something that's not it's
Speaker 1: not entirely clear what this is going to look like
Speaker 1: in practice. So basically it expands the what the legal
Speaker 1: definition of what can constitute as a family unit uh
Speaker 1: to be more focused less focused on blood ties, and
Speaker 1: more focused on affective ties, so of affection, you know,
Speaker 1: caring for each other. Uh so that for example, let's say,
Speaker 1: I think like the big hypothetical that was held up
Speaker 1: was like grandparents, so like if the parents aren't around,
Speaker 1: but in practice, these people are the ones that raise you,
Speaker 1: you know that you know, for for for legal stuff
Speaker 1: that has to do with kids in family law, Like
Speaker 1: we can consider this a family unit, is my understanding.
Speaker 1: It's still really murky and it's not really helping me
Speaker 1: feel like like that. The things I've read on this
Speaker 1: also seemed to be kind of like like here's an explanation.
Speaker 1: I'm like that that doesn't really help me understand this
Speaker 1: at all. It is a little and and I've seen
Speaker 1: people running about this is like human government has abolished
Speaker 1: the family ray And I'm like, didn't. Yeah, And for
Speaker 1: everything everybody it seems like it's something they abolished the family.
Speaker 1: It's that they've allowed you to change what a family
Speaker 1: is in the like in the eyes of the state eight,
Speaker 1: which is not the same thing, right, Like it's like
Speaker 1: giving you more wiggle grow. Yeah, um is my understanding.
Speaker 1: But again it's one of those things where I feel
Speaker 1: like everyone who I've seen running with it has run
Speaker 1: with a completely different, very triumphilist explanation that are sometimes
Speaker 1: mutually contradictory. And I'm like, I'd like to see what
Speaker 1: this actually looks like in practice and like seeing the
Speaker 1: effects better because it's it's an underdiscussed dynamic of it
Speaker 1: because like what most people abroad we're looking at was
Speaker 1: like same sex marriage, so like this, so that was
Speaker 1: less discussed, but I mean it seems to be positive.
Speaker 1: The thing that the thing that caused more controversy on
Speaker 1: the island was there was a shift to patio stud
Speaker 1: which is uh father paternal rights basically parental rights right
Speaker 1: and um, basically, the idea is to swit the child
Speaker 1: from nearly being a subject of their parents, will in
Speaker 1: theory they have more rights in our subject on their own,
Speaker 1: even if they're just a kid that's trying, yeah, to
Speaker 1: like prevent things like corporal punishments and things like that
Speaker 1: you can't beat your kids, which also seems like a
Speaker 1: positive change. Yeah, I mean would would would love more
Speaker 1: of that in the US too, just like absolutely clawber
Speaker 1: the like parental rights people because oh my fucking they're
Speaker 1: they're going to kill us all yeah. And I mean
Speaker 1: the funny thing is like every time that there's a
Speaker 1: leftist movement, the thing is always there, coming for your kids.
Speaker 1: And then like oh god, yeah anyway, sorry no, yeah,
Speaker 1: like it's the right has one thing and it's the
Speaker 1: same thing every time. Yeah. Uh. Those are the kind
Speaker 1: of the big things that the friend of m The
Speaker 1: only thing I wanted to talk about was like, okay,
Speaker 1: so there was a thing of Okay, so like obviously
Speaker 1: it passed with like sixty seven percent of the vote.
Speaker 1: I think, um, something like that, like basically the theories
Speaker 1: of the vote. Um, and I want to talk a
Speaker 1: bit about like Okay, so something I saw okay, So like, okay,
Speaker 1: so you have the people who voted against it because
Speaker 1: they're Christian and they suck um and the young people
Speaker 1: who are just homophobic non Christian homophobes, non Christian homophobes.
Speaker 1: But then there was also like something that I saw
Speaker 1: that was like like people in opposition groups being like,
Speaker 1: we're going to vote against this as like a vote
Speaker 1: against the government, which yeah, can we explain what that
Speaker 1: was about, because that's yeah, sure. And I think that
Speaker 1: you also have a division there between the people who
Speaker 1: are like, it's really against the government, but really it's
Speaker 1: against the chance thought about like I think that even there,
Speaker 1: it's a mixed bag of both. But um, basically, the
Speaker 1: idea was that by approving this uh and voting in
Speaker 1: favor of something cooked up by the government, that they
Speaker 1: were giving credence to the government, legitimacy to the government. Uh. Ergo,
Speaker 1: the only moral position was either extension or voting now uh.
Speaker 1: And so I mean, again a lot of it's mixed
Speaker 1: up with they also really as a rule, did not
Speaker 1: like the content of the law. I mean, part of
Speaker 1: the thing is like it's the the the opposition is
Speaker 1: in this weird space right now, where they have like
Speaker 1: the more historical branch, which is you have like a
Speaker 1: historical branch that it's like rapidly far right. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then you have there's a lot of overlap with like
Speaker 1: default Catholic right in there uh and the Catholic of
Speaker 1: far right in there as I'm sure you understand what
Speaker 1: that means. But but but then you also have a
Speaker 1: growing prominent liberal contingent um who speaks better not just
Speaker 1: that doesn't just put on a better face for international audiences,
Speaker 1: but also puts on a better face for Cuban audiences. Um.
Speaker 1: And because like Cuba is not a far right wing society,
Speaker 1: like for example, abortion, Like I spoke to a right
Speaker 1: wing Cuban who left who's like, yeah, I like Ben
Speaker 1: Shapira and a lot of what he says, but I
Speaker 1: don't get his obsession with abortion. That's a woman's right.
Speaker 1: Like that's just so weird to me. It's because like
Speaker 1: Cubans aren't aren't necessarily super religious as well, which is
Speaker 1: a big part of it. Uh and solimant to the
Speaker 1: petis and all that, so the the so so that's
Speaker 1: so they're they're kind of like a but like it's
Speaker 1: like cats and dogs tied into a sack. So there's
Speaker 1: like you have these different opposition figures, and I think
Speaker 1: that the really right wing ones know that they can't
Speaker 1: be as openly homophobic as they used to be, and
Speaker 1: so they need to couch it in a different way.
Speaker 1: I think it's not just that I don't want to
Speaker 1: reduce everyone to that, but I do think that's a
Speaker 1: huge part of that project. And then in addition to that,
Speaker 1: just people who are like anything that the government does
Speaker 1: is bad because they're accelerationists, which is another big part
Speaker 1: of the opposite. Know why is every Why is everybody
Speaker 1: an acceleration is? Now this is the worst I I
Speaker 1: why an acceleration? I think I wonder if his material
Speaker 1: reality is a trick to that to the I am
Speaker 1: going to take a time machine. I am going to
Speaker 1: hunt down nick Land, and I am going to stop
Speaker 1: the g RU from forming, and no one will ever
Speaker 1: know what acceleration is. You know, that's not true. Without
Speaker 1: nick Land, someone else would come up with with accelerationism.
Speaker 1: It's a very easy thing to think of to to
Speaker 1: to be fair to nick Land, at least at least
Speaker 1: his version of acceleration ism had to do with like
Speaker 1: at least there was everyone. Yeah, like the first accelerationism,
Speaker 1: We're like, like capitalism is the human machine that's also
Speaker 1: a god that only exists in but that it exists
Speaker 1: continuously in potential and all all of you like the
Speaker 1: market being irresistible because because because because because it's like
Speaker 1: the market itself is the thinking machine that this is
Speaker 1: at least funny. Yeah, the moder stuff is, Oh god,
Speaker 1: this is like they I longed for the days where
Speaker 1: there was an argument where people where people would do
Speaker 1: the modern accelerationist thing and like the land Ens were go, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's not what accelerationism is. It's just that I hate
Speaker 1: this reality. It's the worst. Yeah. So I mean, like
Speaker 1: I think I think a good chunk of the opposition
Speaker 1: movement can be described as alex accelerationist. It's not just
Speaker 1: it's not just accelerationists, but I do think a lot
Speaker 1: of them are in there. Any improvements to anything is
Speaker 1: helping the government. That's why they support the embargo. That's
Speaker 1: why they don't want an improvement on any law us.
Speaker 1: They want things to be as dysfunctional as possible because
Speaker 1: they think that like the government is incapable of actually
Speaker 1: getting doing better, and to the extent that it becomes
Speaker 1: better and stronger, it's just going to be more repressive ergo.
Speaker 1: The solution is bring the country to a standstill so
Speaker 1: there will be a general strike and overthrow the government.
Speaker 1: That's their plan. I think that seems like a terrible plan.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna gonna throw that out there. That's that,
Speaker 1: Like I get at that at that point, Like why
Speaker 1: do why not just become a terrorist? Like I don't know,
Speaker 1: Like because that's because that's more scary. Yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: actual reason. Yeah, it's like people, it's people, people who
Speaker 1: were too cowardly to like kill someone with their own bombs,
Speaker 1: so they kill people by trying to get sanctions due instead,
Speaker 1: which is like no, although there have there happened, there
Speaker 1: happened terns. There was the realist. He blew up a
Speaker 1: put a frag bomb in a Cuban hotel and killed
Speaker 1: the Cuban An Italian tourist. Um. Yeah, actually, actually, my
Speaker 1: my dad was working on the extradition case to get
Speaker 1: an extradited even over that. He was Yeah, he's he
Speaker 1: also committed the first act. So a Cuban, a CIA
Speaker 1: trained Cuban exile committed the first act of terrorism involving
Speaker 1: civil aviation in the Western hemisphere. That's pretty late. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean maybe maybe it was just people were just
Speaker 1: doing it in and maybe it was just a European thing,
Speaker 1: and then the CIA was like, what if we bring
Speaker 1: this here? It's like, no, sure, surely this will work
Speaker 1: better for us that it worked for every other group
Speaker 1: who's hijacked a plane in the nineteen seventies. Oh God,
Speaker 1: this sucks. I hope, I hope those guys have a
Speaker 1: bad time and that. Yeah. Yeah, well at least kicked
Speaker 1: it a couple of years ago. Oh, thank god. Okay,
Speaker 1: rest rest in piss official official pot opinion doing we're
Speaker 1: doing the crab Like god, these people suck. Um Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I guess do you have anything else you
Speaker 1: want to talk about? Or I think that's it. Just
Speaker 1: thanks a lot for having me on. It was it
Speaker 1: was great to be on. Thank thanks for coming on. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Queer rights good, not doing them bad. Don't kill people
Speaker 1: with sanctions, Yeah, definitely. The embargo has been an utter failure, everything,
Speaker 1: increasing human misery. Yeah, like all right, yeah, and I guess, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: but listening, do you do you have do you have
Speaker 1: stuff you want to plug? Oh? Sure, that's that's that's
Speaker 1: a very good and generous point. Um. So you can
Speaker 1: find me on Twitter at at a s R tier
Speaker 1: up Peas and Peter E r Teas and tom I
Speaker 1: e r r A. I also have a po podcast
Speaker 1: which is linked in my bio. I'm doing a history
Speaker 1: of Cuba um as an academic, but spreading for a
Speaker 1: poor popular audience. And we're going way when we start
Speaker 1: with the indigenous people. We don't just jump over them,
Speaker 1: and we're I'm currently working on Columbus and then uh,
Speaker 1: let's see. And I also have a sub stack called
Speaker 1: scene embargo s I N and then the word embargo
Speaker 1: so yeah, yeah that that's without embargo. If I'm Spanish,
Speaker 1: is okay, Yes, it means without embargo, but it also
Speaker 1: sounds like sid embargo, which is I feel like it
Speaker 1: would be a cool band name. So yeah, yeah, well
Speaker 1: we will, we will, we will link to stuff and
Speaker 1: we will link to that in the description, and yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you for joining us. This this has been na
Speaker 1: could happen here? Um yeah, make bad things happen to
Speaker 1: homophobes and get good things to happen. It Could Happen
Speaker 1: Here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from the cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Speaker 1: zone media dot com or check us out on the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen Here,
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.