Cuba claims to offer free gender affirmation surgery to its citizens and elected a trans woman to office in 2013. Lived experiences of trans people in Cuba do not confirm a simple story of progress.

Photo by Cecilie Johnsen on Unsplash.

Cuba has had a complicated relationship with trans rights in large part because of the strong influence of machismo culture on understandings of gender in the country. Gender affirmation surgery is free but access for all has been difficult to achieve. The country elected its first openly transgender woman to office in 2013 but transgender women are still harassed and marginalized. Understanding Cuba’s relationship with trans rights and what progress needs to be made requires historical context.

Homophobia and Gender Repression in the 20th Century

In the blog post, “Erasure of Trans Men: The Story of Enrique Favez,” I looked at the story of an individual named Enrique Favez, who was subject to a trial in Colonial Cuba for living and identifying as a man. He was declared “guilty” of having brought defamation to Cuba and for threatening Cuba’s social fabric in the early nineteenth century. In Marriage, Class, and Color in Nineteenth-century Cuba, Verena Martinez-Alier argues that the regulation of sexuality and gender was particularly important in the construction of Cuba’s slave society, thus why interracial marriages were prohibited.¹ Because Enrique Favez was discovered as being female-bodied and having married a mixed race woman, he presented an even greater danger to Cuba. The regulation of gender and sexuality, with a focus on woman, continued into the twentieth century.

Fast forward to the mid-twentieth century, when Fidel Castro led a successful revolution against the military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, he would also implement a set of highly repressive policies against homosexuality. In Machos Maricones & Gays: Cuba and Homosexuality, scholar Ian Lumsden connects the machismo of the revolutionary culture to the broader strategy for Cuban leaders to liberate the new nation from countries like the United States.”² During the 1960s, discrimination against gays, lesbians, and transgender people was embedded into the culture and state policies. In the 1960s, there existed a system of work and rehabilitation camps for so-called “social misfits,” which included homosexuals and gender non-conforming individuals.³ Castro argued “he was building a new country, that he needed strong men free of psychological flaws, who could not be blackmailed; the homosexual was a bad example for young people.”⁴

The camps ended in 1967 after significant international backlash, though they remain ever-present in public memory as a symbol of Cuban homophobia.⁵ Though transgender individuals were not the primary targets in the camps, they were also forced into the camps for their gender non-conformity and perceived sexual deviance. In the decades afterward, the Cuban government would respond in ways that pointed to a desire to present itself as the most inclusive in the region. In 1979, for example, homosexual activity was legalized, decades before the United States.

Most prominently, in 1988, about eight Cubans participated in a new program in the healthcare system that provided free access to gender confirmation surgeries. There was an intense backlash against the program, as many Cubans argued that it was an irresponsible use of resources. It was suspended for two decades. That such a program began, even if it was quickly shut down, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, however, points to the beginning progress in the country toward trans rights.

Beginning Progress Toward Equal Rights

In 1997, transgender Cubans accessed the right to change their name and photo on their identity cards.⁶ When Raul Castro became president, however, is when policy began to substantially change. In the twenty-first century, Mariela Castro, the daughter of President Raul Castro, has emerged as a public LGBT-rights activist in Cuba, fighting for those previously marginalized like lesbian and transgender Cubans. Though the Cuban government, in part due to Mariela’s influence, has come to sponsor pride marches and parties, many LGBT activists have criticized her approach and the effectiveness of her methods.

Maykel Vivero, a gay blogger, for example, writes, “Clearly, as is frequently the case in Cuba, she speaks on behalf of everyone and does not consult with anyone.”⁷ Her harsh condemnation of those who criticize the government and her refusal to consult with communities in Cuba have led many to describe her as another pawn of the state participating in pink-washing for the government without a real commitment to LGBT rights.

This is perhaps most visible with one of the most progressive policies in Cuba today. In 2008, the ban on gender confirmation surgeries was quietly lifted after the National Sexual Education Center, led by Mariela, lobbied for years.⁸ The Cuban government announced that it would again offer free surgeries to eligible patients. It seemed like a great step forward, but discrimination and inability to access the surgeries has prohibited the policy change from becoming reality. In OnCuba Magazine, it was reported in 2016 that while 200 people were on the waiting list for surgery, doctors only legally operated on five patients a year.⁹

Additionally, the government continues to arrest LGBT activists who refuse to conform to the boundaries of “liberation” established by the state. In 2019, Cuban activists held an unauthorized pride parade. They were arrested and denounced as a “provocation,” with many receiving threats from state security.¹⁰ Cuba’s relationship with trans rights is complicated as the government attempts to put forward a rainbow face forward while repressing trans rights in reality. There is much progress still required in Cuba for trans people to have access to critical medical resources, safe homes, and a culture without discrimination.

The path forward may be more radical in nature than the state-sponsored parades led by a straight woman whose loyalties are with the state and not the community.

Notes