It Could Happen Here - From Camp to Code: Queerness in Cuba

Episode Date: October 3, 2022

Mia and Gare talk with Cuban historian Andres Pertierra about how Cuba went from putting gay people in work camps to progressive legal reformSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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What a great title for a show i love i love how snappy and remember and memorable that is yeah that's great we can we we can go in 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 to lower the overall quality of the intro so that when you are truly desperate and have just been dragged out of bed at like 3 a.m and you have to record a podcast your sort of atonal noises will be considered normal that's why i script all my intros i but i'm just i'm just i'm just built yeah yes you're

different so this is that could happen here uh What are we doing here today, Chris? We are talking about, well, actually, admittedly, we had planned this episode before this happened. Yeah, we planned this episode before the referendum in Cuba about the new family code. about the new family code but yeah we're today we're gonna be talking about the 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 with us to talk about this is Andres Petiera, who is, well, doing many things,

one of which is studying for a PhD in Latin American history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Andres, welcome to the show. Oh, thanks so much for having me. Great to be here. Yeah, Max, I'm excited to talk to you about this. So, okay, I guess the place that I want to start is I want to go back to the 60s. And I want to go back to something that I don't think a lot of people understand very well in terms of what happened in...

people understand very well in terms of what happened in i just happened in in various ways and over over a lot of sort of these new sort of revolutionary socialist states which is that you you get this attempt to like form a 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 the sort of various socialist 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 uh yeah so i mean and and one of the interesting parts about the story in Cuba is that it actually is in part imported 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 Cubans tend to be very insular. We don't really tend to learn Russian. I'm kind of crazy. I actually am learning

Russian. But no, so you know, there was all basically lots of homophobia, lots of, you know, lots of bigotry against LGBT people before 1959. Not unlike the United States

of the 1950s. 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 bigotry and lots of personal danger in addition to a lack of basic rights. After 1959, you know, you have this jettisoning of the Catholic Church and kind of religious reasons for being bigoted with the coming of the revolution, which is a secular communist revolution. is something that Abel Sierra Madero's recent book 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, bourgeois degeneracy, you know, that kind of stuff.

And within this, you know, a persecution of people who are seen as either as gay or at least as soft. And they need to be made into real macho men for the revolution. And this started out in a very series of isolated things, right? You would have like Virgilio Pineda, who was a dramaturg, he was jailed 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 and people and he was detained by the police and he was freed because he had like he was an

important person he was you know he had some. But then as the decade rolls on, as the 1960s roll on, that's like, that's 1960, one year after the revolution. 1965, you have the creation of a series of forced labor camps. And there's not really any way to get around that. We don't know exactly how many were sent there. but it seems to be in the thousands, maybe tens of thousands. Again, we don't know because the government hasn't declassified that information. So it's still a conjecture, but it's not because people don't want to investigate the details. And these are thousands and thousands of people who are being sent for all sorts of reasons. Jehovah's Witnesses, people who listen to rock, people who were seen as hippies, Elvis Presleyans, so Elvis Presleyans, so people who listened to Elvis Presley because that was seen as too effeminate and too Yankee.

And so they were sent to the camps and to do 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 uh i mean it's kind of not unlike what we're seeing in the 1960s in china i think yeah yeah yeah yeah there's a very explicit like one of the things well yeah one of the things that is this going on during the Cultural Revolution also, yeah, it's like that they have they have this sort of same thing of like these people are like spiritually unpure and like they have to be like re-educated and they have to be sort of like turned into like proper like subjects and there's a lot of especially like there's a lot of sort of like there's a lot of people like being forced to hold signs that say sodomite and shit yeah which is although 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 it there's this thing kind of like it's kind of like like 1920s 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 there's actually there's another campaign in china in starts about 1983 yeah it's called the strike hard campaign interestingly there's there's actually two strike hard campaigns so there's one in the 80s 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 arrests 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 counter-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 this is one of the things that happens in China, right? Is it like, in, you know, there is an attempt to sort of do more egalitarian, like, gender relations during the Cultural Revolution, during the sort of like revolutionary period. do more egalitarian like gender relations during the culture revolution during the sort of like revolutionary period and then when dang takes power part of his thing is like no we're going back to traditional gender relations like all this egalitarian stuff was a mistake and like this is

part this is part of where the one child policy comes from but then also you get a really homophobic crackdown in like 83 like like three or four years after sort of like he's probably so actually weirdly almost exactly the same time that like the real sort of market reforms hit like like he's probably so actually weirdly almost exactly the same time that like the real sort of market reforms hit like like it's basically it's like a year later is when the package that sort of like really brings the market back china happens i know it's it's a very weird yeah we've kind of gotten gotten very off topic but it's a very weird interesting sort of like social flip that happens yeah for 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 other thing you were

talking about earlier that is interesting like is similar to me as i've talked to like queer 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 a sort of importation of like soviet homophobia and how that made everything like when that this starts happening in the 80s and it gets just like significantly worse yeah no it's uh and in cuba um what's it called like the the whole idea that this is a form of bourgeois degeneracy and the gayness gayness is specifically bourgeois uh is like was really surprising to me as i dug into this like there's comics uh i i in this thing i wrote uh i include a couple of them but it's basically like it's put up there with

wanting to be in la social libre like free society in the west and so the west is it's like it's almost like reactionary i mean it is reactionary 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 you even see that type of rhetoric with we were talking about alexander dugan recently and he he exposes a lot of that type of stuff as as as well as someone who is you know a fascist writer who's pulled on some of like 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 bourgeois tendency yeah i forget i forget

who it was there was someone on twitter who was talking about there's like it's a very interesting thing like yeah like in in like in in the u.s 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 you know like being queer is a sign of like you're a communist and you're like there's like a degenerate communist etc and then you go to like vietnam and it's like oh yeah this person's gay they're they're they're a degenerate western like kind of revolutionary and it's it's it's it's like it's always the same the the actual sort of like homophobic thing is the same it's just this like the signs are flipped of like what the other is and who you can accuse them of sort of having the values of i wonder if the unifying factor here is and this is something i'm thinking about a lot because of abel sierra madero's book which is that uh i mean queerness as a disease yeah an

illness and so like that so it allows you to glomp onto it, anything you don't like from your own ideological prism. Also, like, very specifically something that you get with, like, with nationalist revolutions where it's like, well, okay, so we, like, we have to, like, part of the basis of our national identity is, like, we are these, like 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 is nationalism because it's it's not just homophobia in cuba in this context in the 60s it's not just homophobia for the sake of homophobia. So there is that too. But it's also that I don't think Fidel 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 1960s is basically the economy is going into a meltdown. The economic policies that they're enacting have not been working.

They've burned through any surplus they had in 1959, including goodwill surpluses in a couple of respects. And I think that some people point to 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 with yeah people people make this this is a this is like basically there's an identical like argument

that you get about the cultural revolution where like you start to see these like incentives or like mao will like give you a mango or something or like you have these like pins that you get and like it could be like yeah it's very it's like the same thing of like you have these rewards that are sort of like yeah they're supposed to be sort of like spiritual almost or sort of like 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 yeah an economic system uh do you guys know the old joke about che guevara when he was given uh assigned to become the minister of the banks i don't know the joke i know the thing about like he was

my my vague memory is like the the story that i heard was like he signed his name like really sloppily on it because he was pissed off that like he had to put his face on money or something but i have no idea if that's true that's that part's actually true he did he 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 uh economics but uh at a meeting the the old joke goes and this is something that chay apparently liked to tell as well even if it's not necessarily true that at the meeting where they were deciding who's gonna become the minister of what, they said, who here is an economist?

And he raises his hand and everyone goes, Che, but you're a doctor, you're not an economist. He says, oh, I thought you asked for a communist. Economista, communista, like. So yeah, no, I mean, Che, and I think I i've heard arguments i'm not an expert on chet but i've heard that he was actually pretty heavily influenced by china real compared to the ussr he leaned closer to china yeah that actually that actually gets i make i think i think i guess that kind of makes sense given his sort of like like the the way his military strategy seems to have

which is very very much like a lot closer to sort of like Maoist strategy than – well, okay. I'm going to put Soviet strategy in quotation marks because, oh my god, is there like – I have a very negative – a very dim view of the military strategy of people who are of like guerrilla organizations who are taking their military strategy directly from the soviet union it's a lot of like we're gonna build up one giant army in a place and one day they're gonna roll into the capital and it's like this okay this is a great strategy yeah yeah yeah that make that make sense um okay yeah uh 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 will use as a defense of sort of like well we had to put these people in these camps because of our material 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 i don't know bizarre defense to me but yeah um can we talk a bit about like okay so 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 these last for a couple of years. This is not like a flash in the pan, like, oops, our bad, kind of like, you know, six months in.

This is like a series of multiple work camps across the province of Camagüey, 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 a while. Exactly what the definitive thing that got the UMAP closed, specifically those are the Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción, Military Units to Aid Production. So the UMAP themselves, which were opened from 1965 to 1968,

they do eventually get closed in 68. People are freed, you know, like, you know, the camps are closed, and people are sent home. And there are varying stories. I have looked through, like, tried to trace as many stories as I can get, and even people who, like, were participants have different stories. So, like, I remember Carlos Franqui, who was one opposition 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 international pressure other stories say that it was the right writers and artists union the official one the state one the uniac which filed enough complaints and that convinced fidel to get it closed down um that anecdote is actually from maddie glass iglesias

his dad jose iglesias who wrote about really i didn't know he was his dad huh yeah oh sorry his grandfather his grandfather his communist grandfather um but uh he who actually who wrote a book about the 60s he's an interesting guy uh 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 actual declassification but they're closed. But the thing is, while the camps get closed, we have reports from different people, including some of the sources that are used as apologia for Fiumap, saying, wait, wait, wait, social disgrace units keep existing well into the early 1970s. And so we do have sporadic reports of things like this happening, where seminarists are sent to religious people for being atheists, or for not being atheists. You know, gay people are being sent, other people, marijuaneros, so people who spoke to Mukpat, you know, anyone who's seen as like not conforming into this ideal new man, you're sent there and the labor is supposed to

reform you and that's that's a key part of this it's not just labor as punishment it's labor as ideological reform there's even uh uh 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 oh no yeah like work will set you free yeah it's uh so so the the camps do continue 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 1970s. There's something pretty bad that also happens in the 1970s, but it's a slightly different project. It's not as centered on forced labor. The thing that you wrote this piece about that I should actually probably mention that is one of the things we're talking about is you wrote a very long piece about – 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 the most important like trans authors ever um wrote stone butch blues which is like if you've ever been in like any sort of like queer or trans scene you probably know about or possibly have read and she wrote 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 i 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 in

defense of cuba by leslie feinberg was written um mid to late uh 2000s um really it's not a book it's a compilation of articles which feinberg wrote for as part of the lavender and red series for this uh world's uh workers world newspaper which is like this marciite sect which feinberg seems to have been a part of um real real weirdos like i they those people like they they have positions that are like bizarre even by the standards of like modern tankies like they're they're like like these are people who are like hardline on defending the derg 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 like don't even know what this is or won't defend it because it's like it's like most ethiopian marxists are like this was fucked like it's it's yeah also this is the other thing about these guys is so if you know about the psl the party of socialism liberation they emerged from a split with the wwp yeah because the it was the wwp was too moderate or something yeah i i 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 i don't know if that's 100 that that's my memory the last time i read about it so these are who these guys are um 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 I ordered it secondhand, so I'm not giving anyone royalties. And I get the book and it starts like arguing, you know, trying to defend the Hilson in the early 2000s, 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 2000s. And in that context, Cuba's track record on LGBT rights, which is pretty bad, you know, was getting hammered. And so they're writing this as a response to that. And Feinberg warns in the introduction, don't expect a criticism of Cuba this far. It's factually based, but you know, I put it in quotes, factually based, but, you know, 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 isn't that long.

I think it's like 100 pages. I have it over here. It's like 100 pages long. It's all these different articles. The section that most people quote is actually like two or three pages. It's this very short section on the UMAP. And Feinberg talks about the UMidel and gave Fidel the opportunity to give these explanations and defenses of his policies, where basically Fidel defends it as part of the necessity of mobilizing the entire country in the face of the crisis that it felt that was facing in the 1960s from the United States. So it needed to mobilize everyone. It was part of the economic mobilization. And it was almost a favor to gay people because they couldn'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, there was some stuff, so we shut them down. And this is before Fidel actually admitted that there was persecution of LGBT people in Cuba under his watch, which comes in like a 2010 interview. So this is like his version of things right before then, and that's what Feinberg cites. Another of the sources is Cardinal, Ernesto Cardinal, who I'm happy to expand on him, but the short version is that Ernesto Cardinal is going around Cuba in 1970 and 1971 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 stance. But it's presented as this. It's not critically analyzed at all. And it's these two separate stories. One of them is that 100 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 on hearing that there were abuses there. And they wrote reports saying that there were abuses, so the camps were shut down. And then there's this separate story,

also sourced to Cardinal by Feinberg, that Fidel personally infiltrates the camps incognito. And then there was this guard who was going to 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 kind of deal like very it sounds like a very biblical story so it's a good yarn but it's not doesn't sound very serious and also the two stories kind of 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 yeah it's really weird like you know like 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 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 the the 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 fidel 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 does no 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 until up until like half into the paragraph and then the rest is

clearly implied to be stuff stuff he heard about but wasn't actually present for and Feinberg presents him as a witness of both so anyway so that's that's Feinberg's whole defense like basically Fidel had no idea there were abuses even though the very existence of the camps themselves were abuses and then but they were shut down and everything's hunky-dory you know that's that's Feinberg's defense and then of course the third thing is that she refers both citations to Hilson which I can get into in a second but just I think part of the problem is that Feinberg didn't actually read Cardinal.

Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network,

available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls

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Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose.

This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse, and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge, and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry, and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Yeah, so Hilson is another activist.

I'm not sure if he's LGBT. That part of the list is clear. But he was another activist. I'm not sure if he's LGBT. I'm not like that, that part of the list clearly run, but he was another activist. He died very early in the two thousands, I think from, from cancer. He, but he wrote an article that cites Cardinal and cites both sections that Feinberg later cites and not more, not less. And I think what happened was that Feinberg basically goes to this article, which basically makes, more or less makes the kind of arguments that Feinberg is already making in her own work. But

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. She doesn't actually read Hilson. Hilson even treats it a little more cautiously than Feinberg did, even though not sufficiently cautiously. And I think that that explains why, and at least this is a generous interpretation. I think that that explains why, and at least this is a generous interpretation. Feinberg doesn't actually address the fact that in her own exculpatory source, there's talk of other camps.

Like at the time Cardinal was 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 Feinberg didn't read the book,

like just like copied and pasted and didn't really think about it yeah or or just like went and found the one section 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 i i this i i will do my one return to mark's moment uh in this interview which is to say ruthless critique of all that exists yeah things that you generally support because otherwise you wind up with this stuff yeah and yeah my god it's done the rounds this thing has been going around and around on the internet for years and years yeah and i guess we should also say that like yeah this is this is the thing that happens

with like any any like every one of these like every one of the socialist countries we've been talking about like you will get people who basically are like like ah hey look at this bad thing uh we're gonna but people who are like i don't know yeah you get like cuban right-wingers who are like also unbelievably homoph yeah you get like cuban right-wingers who are like also unbelievably homophobic who suddenly like discover a passion for gay rights because oh hey look at these abuses and it's like yeah it's i don't know it sucks it yeah and 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 u.s because it's like well okay so so 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 going to 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 would 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, I was really angry. And I kept trying to write that, like a piece 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, I finally was like, tried to, okay, put myself in Feinberg's shoes. If I was, you know, really loved, you know, if I was like as enamored as Feinberg's shoes. If I was, you know, really loved, you know, if I was like, as enamored as Feinberg was, of everyone and everything involved in the Cuban Revolution, and at the same time, one member of a persecuted group, right? You know, and I really wanted to square this circle,

like, and I saw something to let me do that, I would probably also just glamp onto it and just not really try not think about it too much for the same reason right you want you know our defenses are low when it's something we want to believe yeah this is the 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 want to they want it to be true like it's it's not like like we're we're we're we're being hard on the socialists here but like i don't know like this is why half the people who believe q ship believe it right like it's it's it's it's the it's the it's the thing they want to believe and i thing 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 not that much different than like in Paul Wolfowitz, like still thinking the Iraq war works or something, right? Like 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 the other thing 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 happens before we get to sort of the stuff that's been happening the last like week or so yeah um and and you know i'm happy to get into happier territories yeah because this sucks it sucks. Like, oh, God, it's definitely doomer stuff to always think about the 60s.

So after the 60s, it was pretty bad in the 1970s, too. There was a purge of education and culture of anyone LGBT or suspected beingbt because the idea is that they would recruit and influence and corrupt the minors and blah blah blah blah blah blah where we heard this before uh uh someone can probably do an article comparing the the culture and education congress in 71 in cuba with with uh policies in the united states right now yeah um and but then things start to get better in the 1980s a little bit like the the throttles pull back it's not great but it's you know it's not terrible as terrible as it was and then from the late 1980s into the 1990s we really see to see it

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 who who allows films to be put on in theaters yeah they own all the theaters so um in terms of culture i actually know one of the people who had a play played a key role in this which is senel pas and senel pas is this writer from a small town in cuba small village and he goes to havana he's a writer and. And he goes to Havana. He's a writer and artist. And he wrote this short story about this platonic relationship between a patriotic gay man

and a patriotic Cuban heterosexual member of the communist youth who develop a respect for each other. And it's like, even though the gay man is alienated from state policies because of the persecution of LGBT people, he actually knows a lot more about history and culture in cuba than the heterosexual guy who's rah rah revolution but doesn't actually know like all these important writers and artists and and things like that that are also important for cuban national identity that when that was first read in the casa de las americas which is like this huge building for Cuban culture,

people wept just openly. And then it was made into a movie called Fresas y Chocolate. So strawberry and chocolate. I can explain the title if you want. But basically, it's the same story, but it's expanded a bit because the original was a short story. And you can actually get it in the United States, I think Paramount bought the rights for distribution. Fox maybe bought the rights. I don't know. But it came out in like 1993. And it was a big turning point for public perception, right? I actually have a friend of mine who knows the author. He was stopped at his building. And the wife of a colonel who lives in this building says, my husband wants to see you.

My friend's like, what did I do? He goes up to the colonel's house. The colonel says, sit, you want coffee or anything? My friend says, no. The colonel says, explain to me this film that's come out recently. Because the colonel wasn't going to see it in theaters. Then my friend explains the movie. My guy says, no, guy says no no explain everything so basically my friend does a scene by scene synopsis from 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 seen 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 raul castro so nisa fidel and she from within the government using her position of privilege really starts to push for better lgbt policies for lgbt people and better, you know, laws and rights. And she at the head of the CENICEX, which is the National Center for Sex Education, she really starts to spearhead an improvement. And we start to see in the 1990s and 2000s, not just a pulling back of persecution, at least official persecution, you know, you can still have informal persecution at the level of jobs uh but uh you

also start to see things like trans people can have gender affirming surgery backed by the state you know free of cost uh like all these sorts of different protections and policies like the senate sexual 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 sexual orientation is wrong. But you really see a shift in the position of the state. And that's not just Mariela. I don't want to make it about Mariela. 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 or vietnam and like you know i mean like vietnam like there has actually been stuff there in the last like 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 homosexuality no longer like a mental illness and like that's sort of just like a month ago yeah yeah yeah wow and there's only people a bit like queer 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 especially if you talk to medical people in like you talk to doctors you'll get this thing where like well okay so there's like real and the other thing this thing did is it outlawed conversion therapy but if you talk to doctors about doctors are like well there are real 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 you can still 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 um i'm gonna read this thing from uh the chinese general rules for television drama content production from 2015 which okay i've seen conflicting things but i i think this is still in effect if if it's not still in effect it was only reversed in like 2021 but i i think it's still in effect and also there have been new sort of guidelines have been put out for movies that are about like I mean specifically there's stuff for like you can't have gay men in movies you can't have men that are too effeminate in movies like you can't have men that look like they're cross-dressing in movies I'm going to read this thing from the TV code

so this is stuff that it says is explicitly is not to be shown content which depicts or portrays unnatural sexual relations and actions such as incest homosexuality perversion sexual harassment sexual assault sexual violence etc uh this is provision that's version two version three content which portrays and promulgates unhealthy perspectives on marriage and married love such as such as extramarital love one night stands free love etc sorry 2015 sorry try from 2015. Sorry, Try Guys, not allowed.

Yeah, no, like, it's like, it's... Oh, God, yeah. I'm gonna do a Try Guys joke every episode for all eternity now. Never kicking you 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. I... It doesn't mention... I was gonna make a French film

pedophilia joke, but it doesn't actually ban... It bans incest, but it doesn't actually ban... I mean, i think the thing on the thing on being pedophile i think is it a different section of the code that i didn't copy here but who knows yeah and i think part of what was going on there was like yeah like there wasn't like i mean think things have gotten like it the the law that was being used to arrest like gay people in china like was they abolish it in the 90s but like and like there was a culture shift but it didn't like the state decided it was gonna do the same thing the u.s 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 happen 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 yes no yeah major yeah because like major win yeah because like 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 i think that cuba would have done it eventually but i think that mariela definitely just sped it along yeah and like there's definitely there's definitely a problem of a cult of mariela with like abroad where it's like all all thanks be great be due

to mariela it's like completely cuts out all the people behind her you know who also been like please ask ask your uncle to do this for me i gotta get married someday uh but uh you know but at the same time i think we can't cut her out of the story yeah either yeah and that gets us to well i guess i guess you start in 2019 first but yeah the new family code that's passed which also i do want to mention this because i don't think like people don't seem to know this when i tell them about this about neither china nor vietnam is game in in neither china nor vietnam is gay marriage legal and there's a lot of people who think that the repeal that happened in vietnam

legalized gay marriage and that's not what happened like the thing that it did is you will no longer be arrested for having your own unofficial marriage which is a thing that could happen oh this is this this is this is not this is not the thing that is happening in cuba like i i see this with people a lot where like something good will happen in cuba and people will project 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 uh yeah yeah yeah okay but yeah going on to stuff that's good and the stuff but on also the sort of like yeah so can we talk a bit about like what talk about like the the the 2019 referendum and the sort of like the the stuff

about sort of sorry how to explain this like the the the story of how the stuff that's happening now didn't happen in 2019 yeah so referendum was happening yeah so so when the in in the the 2010s the Raul Castro who took over after Fidel um he began using a bunch of referendums to decide major things major policy changes and using referendums kind of just to like because like because the National Assembly is basically a rubber stamp committee like referendums really took to the fore 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, there were debates all around the country at local levels, 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 2019 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. 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 evangelical money oh no please repressing the wrong people oh and and then there's the 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 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. carve off the more controversial parts about the LGBT rights and basically carve them off, push them into a referendum on the family code, which all the new laws based on the new constitution, all the new laws governing family law, and punt that down the road indefinitely. And so what's happening now, what just happened, is the culmination of this referendum that they punted down the road in 2019. The original, the 2019 constitution was passed with something like 90% approval. 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, there's a couple of ways to read this, but I think one of the most obvious is that the Cuban government needed a win. And this was an easy win. They could actually deliver in an age of extreme scarcity and rolling blackouts. It's like,

we can just at least deliver on this promise. And they did. Yeah. And I guess, so can we talk a bit about like, like what, what, what actually is in the new code and what it does?

Yeah, so 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 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 legally married what are your rights 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 you know this is going to be this is like important in concrete material ways uh it legalizes adoption by same-sex couples which is also pretty cool yeah that was not allowed at all good sucks 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-sex couples can ben can benefit from can use surrogacy now uh although on a not-for-profit basis and that's that's specific uh i i'm not an expert on whether or not it is the best policy to have it as only not-for-profit um i 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 um in spanish so now they are 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 u.s like in the in the 2000s about like oh like you can do civil like there was a period where it was like there are a lot of places you can get civil unions but you couldn't get married so couldn't explain what a civil union is because i think that's a thing that like a lot of our audience probably isn't going to 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 you're 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, no,

like that, that was, that was my understanding of it. It was like, like in the U S it was this whole thing of like, well, you can have civil unions, so you don't need to be married. And then people like no because it doesn't give you doesn't give you the

sort of full suite of like rights and stuff but it gives you some things which i'm glad i'm glad cuba's doing like no you could do both of these things and then wasn't there something about like like yeah 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, the, what the legal definition of what can constitute as a family unit to be more focused, less focused on blood ties and more focused on affective ties.

So love affection, you know, caring for each other. 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, you know, for, for, for legal stuff that has to do with kids and 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 i've that the things i've read on this also seem to be kind of like like here's an explanation i'm like that that doesn't really help me understand

this at all yeah it is a little and and i've seen people running about this it's like human government has abolished the family hooray and i'm like did it yeah for everything everybody it seems like it's not that they've 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 which is not the same thing right like i it's like giving you more wiggle room yeah um is my understanding but again it's one of those things where i feel like i everyone who i've seen running with it has run with a completely different very triumphalist 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 uh because it's it's an under-discussed dynamic of it because like what most people abroad were looking at was like same-sex marriage so like this so that was less

discussed but uh i mean it seems to be positive the thing that the thing thing that caused more controversy on the island was there was a shift to which is father paternal rights, basically parental rights, right? And basically the idea is to switch the child from merely being a subject of their parents will in theory they have more rights and are a subject on their own even if they're just a kid uh that's genuinely cool yeah to like prevent things like corporal punishment and things like that you can't beat your kids uh which also seems like a positive change yeah yeah i mean would would love more of that in the u.s to just like absolutely clobber the like parental rights people because oh my fucking they are they're going to kill us all yeah and i mean the funny thing is like every time that there's a leftist movement uh the the

thing is always they're 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 render referend of that welcome i'm the any thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories

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identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast the one thing i wanted to talk about was like i okay so there was a thing of okay so like obviously it passed with like 67 of the vote i think um something like that like basically two-thirds 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 other people who are just homophobic i non christian homophobes non-christChristian homophobes but then there was also like

something that I saw that was 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 changes that the law brought about. Like, I think that even there it's a mixed bag of both. But basically the idea was that by approving this and voting in favor of something cooked up by the government, that they were giving credence to the government, legitimacy to the government. 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 abstention or voting no 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 yeah uh it i mean the part of the thing is, like, it's 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 is, like, rabidly far right. And then you have there's a lot of overlap with, like, Catholic right in there and the Catholic far right in there, as i'm sure you understand what that means yeah but

but uh but then you also have a a growing prominent liberal contingent um who speaks better not just 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 Shapiro 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 necessarily super religious as well, it it's because like cubans aren't aren't necessarily super religious as well which is a big part of it uh and swollen to the fetus and all that uh so the the so so that's so 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 oh no why is every why is everybody an accelerationist now this is the worst i i i long for the days why everyone's an accelerationist i wonder if there's i wonder if there's material realities which are contributing to that to the i i am going to take a time machine i am going to hunt down nick land and i am going to stop the GRU from forming,

and no one will ever know what accelerationism is. That's not, you know that's not true. Without Nick Land, someone else would come up with accelerationism. It's a very easy thing to think of. Yeah, but, okay, I mean, to be fair, to be fair to Nick Land, at least his version of

accelerationism had to do with, like, At least it was silly. Yeah, well, his version of accelerationism had to do with like – At least it was silly. Yeah. The version of accelerationism where like capitalism is a human machine that's also a god that only exists continuously in potentia. And all of – like the market being irresistible because it – like the market itself is a thinking machine. This is at least funny yeah the modern stuff is i god this is like they i i i long for the days where there was an argument where people where people would do the modern accelerationist thing and like the landians were

going no no no that's not what accelerationism is this is 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 accelerationist it's not just it's not just accelerationist but i do think a lot of them are in there any improvement to anything is helping the government that's why they support the embargo that's why they don't want any improvement on any laws they want things to be as dysfunctional as possible because they think that the government is incapable of actually 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 throw that out there. At that point, why not just become a terrorist? I don't know. Because that's more scary. That's the actual

reason. People who are too cowardly to kill someone with their own bombs so they reason yeah it's like yeah it's just people it's people people who are too cowardly to like kill someone with their own bombs so they they kill people by trying to get sanctions due instead which is like no although there have there have been there have been turns there was the um yeah he blew up a put a frag bomb in a cuban hotel and killed a cuban uh an italian tourist um yeah actually actually my my dad was working on the extradition case to get him extradited to venezuela over that uh 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 1976 that's pretty late yeah I mean 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 surely this will work better for us than it worked for every other group who's hijacked a plane in the 1970s 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 years ago oh thank god okay rest rest in piss official official pod opinion do it we're doing the crabs like god these people

suck um yeah yeah so yeah I guess do you have anything else you want to talk about or uh I think that's it just thanks a lot for having me on it was great to be on

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 yeah get rid of that yeah fuck that like

alright yeah and I guess do you have do you have stuff you want to plug oh sure that's a very good and generous point so you can find me on twitter

at asperitera p as in peter, er, t as in tom i e r r a I also have a podcast which is linked in my bio. I'm doing a history of Cuba as an academic, but writing for a more popular audience. And we're going way, we start with the indigenous people.

We don't just jump over them. I'm currently working on Columbus. And then let's see. And I also have a sub stack called SIN embargo, S-I-N and then the word embargo so i yeah yeah that that's without embargo if i'm my spanish is okay yes it means without embargo but it also sounds like sin embargo which is i feel like yeah would be a cool band theme. So, yeah. Yeah, we will link to stuff

and we will link to that in the description. And yeah, thank you for joining us. This has been It Could Happen Here. Yeah, make bad things happen to homophobes and get good things to happen. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow Brass. Thanks for listening. by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturno on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso

as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search,

Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia,

and that's a song that only Nuestra Gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.