Castro champions gay rights in Cuba

Last Updated: Thursday, 27 March 2008
There is a Castro who is fighting to introduce radical changes in Cuba.

A meeting of transvestites and transgender people in Havana
Transsexuals have a chance to meet at support group sessions

Not the new president, Raul, although he has promised to push through "structural and conceptual" changes to this communist island in the Caribbean.

It is Raul's daughter, Mariela Castro.

As head of the government-funded National Centre for Sex Education, she is trying to change people's attitudes towards minority groups in the community.

She is currently attempting to get the Cuban National Assembly to adopt what would be among the most liberal gay and transsexual rights law in Latin America.

The proposed legislation would recognise same-sex unions, along with inheritance rights. It would also give transsexuals the right to free sex-change operations and allow them to switch the gender on their ID cards, with or without surgery.

There are limits: adoption is not included in the bill and neither is the word marriage.

"A lot of homosexual couples asked me to not risk delaying getting the law passed by insisting on the word marriage," Mariela Castro said.

"In Cuba marriage is not as important as the family and at least this way we can guarantee the personal and inheritance rights of homosexuals and transsexuals."

She says that her father is supportive of her work, although he advises her to move slowly.

"I've seen changes in my father since I was a child. I saw him as macho and homophobic. But as I have grown and changed as a person, so I have seen him change."

Mariela's mother, the late Vilma Espin, was an internationally recognised champion of women's rights.

For Mariela, it is the rights of homosexuals and transsexuals that need fighting for.


Mariela Castro
In the early years of the revolution much of the world was homophobic. It was the same here in Cuba and led to acts which I consider unjust