Tag Archives: LGBT

Cuba - Social

¡QUEER CUBA! Socialism cannot be HOMOPHOBIC!

queerCuba

Friday June 21st, 2013 @ 7pm-9pm
Casa de las Americas

182 E. 111th St. (Btwn. Lexington Ave. and 3rd Ave.) Take the 6 train to E. 110th St.

LGBT rights have always been a controversial issue in Cuba! The Cuban Revolution has taken steps to promote LGBT rights, freedom of gender identity/expression, and to combat homophobia, but there is still a lot to be done! Join The Popular Education Project to Free the Cuban 5 for this special Queer Pride event!

Join us as we explore this hot button issue! We will answer questions; ask new ones; debate these issues; and learn from each other!

Program: Screening the film Mariposas en el Andamio (Butterflies on the Scaffold):
After the Revolution, gays were not respected in Cuba, but in the small Havana neighborhood of La Güinera, a few courageous women came to power and encouraged the gay community. Glamorous gowns fashioned from grain sacks and eyelashes made out of carbon paper are the reality of drag in Cuba. In La Güinera, gay transvestite performers have earned respect and status through creative work for the neighbourhood. On stage action and backstage preparation opens out into insightful interviews with community leaders, families, and the performers themselves. the question; can you be gay and accepted in Cuba?

An interview of Mariela Castro; director of CENESEX (the national Cuban sexual health and sexuality organization) by Filmmaker/Journalist Jennifer Wager.

Cuban Revolution, LGBT, Mariela Castro

Mariela Castro on Ending the Embargo – Swapping Cuban Five – Jailed U.S. Contractor Alan Gross

20 Comments

By DemocracyNOW – Amy Goodman

Mariela Castro, daughter of Cuban President Raúl Castro, calls on the U.S. to release five Cubans jailed for spying on anti-Cuban militants in Florida in exchange for Alan Gross, a U.S. citizen jailed in Cuba. The Cuban Five were convicted in 2001 for committing espionage in southern Florida. They say they weren’t spying on the U.S., but trying to monitor right-wing violent Cuban groups that have organized attacks on Cuba. “I want the Cuban Five to go back to Cuba and for Alan Gross to go home,” Castro says. “I want an end to the financial, commercial and economic blockade that violates the human rights of the Cuban people, and the normalization of relations between both countries.”

Mariela Castro

Mariela Castro fight for gay rights

7 Comments

Mariela Castro’s fight for gay rights

CNN|Added on June 5, 2012
Raul Castro’s daughter Mariela talks about her fight for gay rights and Cuba’s political future.

Cuba - Social, Mariela Castro

Contemporary LGBT rights in Cuba with Mariela CASTRO‏

9 Comments

Tuesday, May 29, 2012, 7 – 8:30 p.m.
PROGRAM LOCATIONS:
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street
New York, NY 10018-2788

Fully accessible to wheelchairs
First come, first served – Seating is limited and will be first come first served.
Initial funding of the LGBT Initiative provided by Time Warner Inc.

Mariela Castro¡Saludos! Greetings!

The program with Mariela Castro and Rea Carey on May 29 is ‘Sold Out!’ . . . and with all the negative publicity by the right it is important that those of us who did not get to register come out to show our support/solidarity with this important event.

Say ¡Presente! on May 29th! Bring your solidarity, flags, posters, etc. as we gather in front of the NYC Public Library.

Abrazos Solidarios,

Frank Velgara

 

In 2010 the Cuban government began providing sex reassignment surgery free of charge as part of their universal healthcare. This was the result of several years of work by the Cuban National Center for Sex Education under the leadership of Mariela Castro Espín, niece of Fidel Castro and daughter of current Cuban president Raúl Castro. The current developments in LGBT rights in Cuba are remarkable given the discrimination suffered by gays, lesbians, and transgender people in Cuba in the 20th century, as well as comparison with current LGBT movements in the U.S. and abroad.

Please join us on Tuesday May 29th at 7pm in the Trustees Room of the New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building as Mariela Castro Espín and Rea Carey, Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, discuss the current international context of LGBT rights, including issues of sexual identity and orientation in contemporary Cuba.

Mariela Castro Espín is the director of the Cuban National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX). She was President of the Cuban Society for the Multidisciplinary Study of Sexuality (SOCUMES) from 2000 to 2010. She is president of the Cuban Multidisciplinary Centre for the Study of Sexuality, president of the National Commission for Treatment of Disturbances of Gender Identity, member of the Direct Action Group for Preventing, Confronting, and Combatting AIDS, and an executive member of the World Association for Sexual Health (WAS). She is also the director of the journal Sexología y Sociedad, a magazine of Sexology edited by her own National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX). She is the author of 9 books, published in Cuba and abroad, among them Transexuality in Cuba (Havana, CENESEX Publishing House, 2008). In 2009 she was awarded with the Public Service Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS), and in 2012 she received the Eureka Award for Academic Excellence, given by the World Council of University Academy (COMAU).She is married with 3 children.

Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, is one of the most prominent leaders in the U.S. lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights movement. Carey, who came to the Task Force in 2004 as deputy executive director, has served as executive director since 2008.  Through her leadership, Carey has advanced a vision of fairness and justice for LGBT people and their families that is broad, inclusive and unabashedly progressive. Prior to her work with the Task Force, Carey worked extensively in HIV/AIDS prevention and in the LGBT community as one of the co-founders of Gay Men and Lesbians Opposing Violence and the founding executive director of the National Youth Advocacy Coalition. She has also served as an advisor to major donors and foundations, and has served on the advisory boards for such wide-ranging publications as Teen People magazine and the Georgetown University Journal of Gender and the Law. She serves on the Advisory Board of theLGBTQ Policy Journal, of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government

Contemporary LGBT rights in Cuba with Mariela CASTRO‏