A Short Visual Tour of Male Havana
The boys at Italy's Gay.tv are at it again. This time it's not greasy English bikers but the young men of Cuba they've focused their sights on. Since I'm no speaker of Italian, I turn to Google to read the introductions to these galleries, and as usual, am left with the poetry only a web-based translator can provide:
The colonial city waits for to you in order to be strange to you. Last travels in a climate that soon it will change: after Fidel it is an incognito, we enjoy the present with its fascination and its contradictions.
Those who have been to Cuba feel free to share your thoughts about the gay scene there in the comments.
Posted May. 10,2005 at 2:08 PM EST by Andy Towle in Photography | Permalink
Ok, gay Cubans. At last I have a topic.
Posted by: Ed | May 10, 2005 3:31:39 PM
I spent the better part of a week in Havana in January 2004. Most of it was in Old Havana, where the architecture is stunning, but one night a friend an I decided to check out the gay bar/club scene. My high school and college Spanish is limited, but it was enough to communicate where I wanted to go to a cab driver.
I hadn't really prepped for it (Cuba was just one stop of eight or nine on a whirlwind world tour) and prepared to learn as I traveled, so I didn't have a guidebook to go by. But the cab driver (or should I say, Coco taxi driver) understood what my friend and me wanted, but it became readily apparent she didn't know where to take us.
We took about a 30 minute drive through downtown, stopping along the way so the driver could ask a few people about a place to take us (not knowing a destination shouldn't keep her from accepting our business, right?). The whole time she was very hush hush with the people she spoke to about the "type of place" we wanted to go, always returning with a smile or giggle.
We ended up in front of a sketchy looking place and decided it'd be best not to get out, lose our taxi and get stranded. So we urged her owward until we found a club with people actually outside and music blaring. We kept asking her (our taxi driver), "Gay club? Gay club?" to reassure ourselves more than her .. and then we got out. There were swarms of Cuban guys (and girls) speaking way too fast for me to catch on to more than a couple conjugated verbs.
But we paid the cover, went inside and quickly realized it wasn't what we expected. We grabbed some beers and approached a smiling girl, asking her what type of place it was. She replied, "Mixed," as in gay/straight/whatever. "Alright," we thought, the music was great and the scene was decent.
So we got our dance on a little, and then it started pouring (most of the space was open-air) so we ran underneath an overhang where we were joined by a gaggle of Cubans - and two very attractive girls, in particular. One spoke very broken English, and with my limited Spanish we were able to have a staccato back-and-forth. It wasn't long before we realized these two girls were actually prostitutes and were interested in going back with us for some extracurricular activities.
We finally broke free from their conversational grasp, but the rain was still pouring as we made our way to the exit. We managed to flag down another Coco taxi after running across the freeway a couple times and made it home safely.
So that's my "gay clubbing in Cuba" experience, though it turned out to be anything but. Can't wait to do it again!
Posted by: David Hauslaib | May 10, 2005 6:21:18 PM
Since I speak Italian, here is what it the introduction really says (do excuse my lousy translation skills though):
"The colonial city beckons to surprise you. The last travels in a climate that will soon change: after Fidel there is only uncertainty. For now let's enjoy the present with its charm and contradictions."
Posted by: Kasper | May 10, 2005 11:26:17 PM
I'm really disappointed anybody is advocating giving vacation dollars to Cuba, a country where until, very recently, being gay meant torture, imprisonment or worse.
Here's excerpt from the Spring 2002 edition of the Gay and Lesbian Humanist:
"While Castro challenged many backward ideas as remnants of the old society, he embraced with enthusiasm the homophobia of Latin machismo and Catholic dogma, elevating it into a fundamental tenet of Cuba's new socialist morality. Idealising rural life, he once claimed approvingly that "in the country, there are no homosexuals".
When Cuba adopted Soviet-style communism it also adopted Soviet-style prejudice and puritanism. Ever since Stalin promoted the ideology of "the socialist family" and recriminalised gay sex in 1934, communist orthodoxy dictated that homosexuality was a "bourgeois decadence" and "capitalist degeneration". This became the Cuban view. "Maricones" (faggots) were routinely denounced as "sexual deviants" and "agents of imperialism".
Laughable allegations of homosexuality were used in an attempt to discredit "corrupting" Western influences, such as pop music, with the communists circulating the rumour that the Beatles were gay.
In the name of the new socialist morality, homosexuality was declared illegal in Cuba and typically punishable by four years' imprisonment. Parents were required to prevent their children from engaging in homosexual activities and to report those who did to the authorities. Failure to inform on a gay child was a crime against the revolution.
Official homophobia led, in the mid-1960s, to the mass round-up of gay people, without charge or trial. Many were seized in night-time swoops and incarcerated in forced-labour camps for "re-education" and "rehabilitation". A few disappeared and never returned.
One gay man recalls: "We were taken to Camagüey, at the other end of the island. It was a camp surrounded with barbed wire, with watchtowers manned by guards with machine guns."
The camp inmates included not just homosexuals, but also criminals, students, Catholics and political dissidents. They were set to work at 3 a.m., cutting sugar cane with machetes. It was backbreaking labour on meagre food rations. The gay prisoners were often beaten, and occasionally raped, by criminal gangs in the camps. Some gays were killed; others committed suicide.
At the First National Congress on Education and Culture in 1971, the cultural repression of homosexuality intensified. It was decreed that homosexuals were "pathological", "antisocial" and "not to be tolerated" in any job where they might "influence youth". Widespread anti-gay purges followed in schools, universities, theatres and the media. Gay professors, dancers, actors and editors ended up sweeping roads and digging graves.
The repression did not begin to ease until the mid-1970s and even then it was not because the Cuban leadership recognised their error. They halted mass detentions and reduced prison sentences largely because they were shamed by international protests - some organised by the newly-formed gay liberation movements in the US and Europe, and others by left-wing intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre, in defence of persecuted gay writers and academics.
A more significant softening of official attitudes took place in the early 1990s. With the advent of AIDS, the Cuban authorities initially cracked down hard, quarantining everyone with HIV in special sanatoria. But, by the early 1990s, the authorities felt compelled to adopt a more liberal approach, abandoning their detention policy - partly because it was costing too much! More significantly, Cuban health officials realised that they had to show greater tolerance towards the homosexual community in order to win their trust, confidence and support for safer sex.
Another factor that influenced changes in government attitudes was the secondment to Cuba of East German doctors and psychologists during the 1980s. They viewed homosexuality as a natural minority condition, and this eventually prompted more enlightened thinking among Cuban medical staff and health educators.
It was not until 1992 that President Fidel Castro finally declared that homosexuality was a "natural human tendency that must simply be respected". He has, however, never apologised or expressed remorse for his past homophobia and persecution.
Today, the legal status of lesbian and gay people in Cuba is still ambiguous. Amnesty International regards the lack of clear, categorical civil rights for homosexuals as being tantamount to illegalisation.
While the 1979 penal code formally decriminalised homosexuality, gay behaviour causing a "public scandal" can be punished by up to twelve months' jail. This vague law, which is open to wide interpretation, has often been used to arrest gay men merely because they happen to be effeminate and flamboyant.
Discreet open-air cruising in public squares and parks is nowadays mostly tolerated, although often kept under police surveillance. Most gay bars are semi-legal private house parties and are subject to periodic police raids. In 1997, Havana's biggest gay bar, El Periquiton, was closed down by the police. One organiser of an unofficial gay bar, Lorenzo, confides: "The police can knock the door down at any moment and arrest everyone here ... instead of sending you to jail, these days they just fine you." A typical fine for those who run gay bars from their homes or courtyards is about 1,500 pesos, which is nearly seven months' wages. The police also usually confiscate the lights, sound systems and record collections.
Homosexuals are still deemed unfit to join the ruling Communist Party, because being gay is supposedly contrary to communist ethics. This can have an adverse impact on a person's professional career in a society where all senior appointments depend on party membership.
Lesbian and gay newspapers and organisations are not permitted. The Cuban Association of Gays and Lesbians, formed in 1994, was suppressed in 1997 and its members arrested. Gay Cuba? Not yet!"
But hey, the music's good and the boy are hot, right? What's a few thousand human rights violations, anyway?
Posted by: daverydc | May 10, 2005 11:38:54 PM
All I can say is I have a Cuban boyfriend and will never go back!
Posted by: Ed | May 11, 2005 2:23:09 AM
After reading my post again, let me clarify -- I have a Cuban boyfriend and I'd LOVE to go to Cuba (I'll never go back to the drugging, clubbing stereotype we call gay in America).
Posted by: Ed | May 11, 2005 2:25:19 AM
You can read my research paper on the history of gay (lack of) rights and culture in Cuba, "Somewhere Under the Rainbow: Gay Cubans and the Revolution," that I wrote for my class on the History of Cuba at the University of Miami here:
http://hor.diaryland.com/gaycuba.html
Posted by: H | May 11, 2005 7:41:05 AM
I live in Miami and I've heard the stories of how aggressive and cheap the Cuban hustlers are. My friend said a lot of them are married and the wives welcome tne new income. But Cubans boys are hot!
Posted by: EDS | May 11, 2005 10:07:12 AM
I've known and am friends with many Cubans, gay and straight. Most of the stories from those that were fortunate enough to escape are unbelievable and horrifying.
The Fidel Castro government persecutes everyone! No one is safe there. US foreign policy has only made it worse by tightening and severing ties between those that have immigrated and those that are trapped. The US needs to have an open dialogue with the Cuban government in order to encourage change.
To add to daverydc's comment check out this article: http://www.amigospais-guaracabuya.org/oagaq003.php
To clarify something that may be getting lost here, the Cubans are a wonderful beautiful people with an enormous strength and an incredible culture. Don't blame them that their gov't is fucked up.
Posted by: orbicon | May 11, 2005 1:51:23 PM
To the gentleman with the tirade about Cuba's past persecution of gays.... Was it not this happening about the same time that American President Regan was musing about moving AIDs patients into forced quarantine? And is it not the case that your current government (obama) still maintains a ban on HIV+ persons from even entering the USA?
Times change, plus your country is no beacon of hope for gays.
I spent a month in Havana January 2009. The gay scene is open, but still challenging. The best venue is the Sea Wall after dark, where guys come to hang out an cruise. You buy a bottle of rum and some plastic glasses ..and maybe some mix. Then you hang on the Sea Wall and make friends. Musicians will play music for you all night for about $5 or $10. Surprisingly, few men speak much english. But if you speak Spanish you'll do well.
There is also a cruisy little bar just across from the Congress building where guys go in the early evening.
Due to the extraordinary poverty in Cuba, combined with the total defeat of Christianity almost any man you meet is available for sex...but always for a price. The equivalent of $10 or $15 will get you most guys. They will all know where to rent a room for about $10 to go for sex.
Havana is so poor, it is the only place in the world where I have been as a rich white guy...and still had trouble finding food.
Rum, music and sex are the only things not rationed by the government in Cuba...so Cubans indulge in all with abandon.
My month in Havana was challenging, exciting, frustrating, fun, and educational.
I'd suggest they you go if you can, before the Communists fall, and the place is over run with Americans.
Posted by: doug | Oct 24, 2009 4:57:30 PM
I have visited this island now 3 times, and i am gradually falling in love with this country and its people.
It can not be summed up in a few words, although i am now trying: Its a lively people, so charming, sweet and with a pride of their cuban lifestyle and culture. Still so many hope for a better future with more freedom, more goods, more possibilities. The regime is slowly changing, although many are frustrated that it doesnt change rapidly enough. Still, people are patient, try to live their lives with happiness, although material conditions are rough for most people and some people are real poor.
Yes, the cuban sexual freedom is there, kind of flowing everywhere for both gays and straight people, maybe because religion never managed to surpress this carribean sexuality and heat, and the political anti gay strive has been coming and going through the last 20 years, though lately has the statehomophobia been weaker.
Posted by: Tom | Sep 22, 2011 3:39:57 PM