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People are do gullible, it's ridiculous. Yet the left still sees hope in Cuba...Dee Dee Dee Dee

Alberto it certainly is for international consumption and not Cuban. I saw an interview with a Cuban Transexual who says Mariela had an office where they could visit and have group chats in Havana.

She even gave them letters to carry with them in the event that the police stopped them as was very common, BTW this was a year ago, anyway, this interviewee was arrested one night and he presented the "letter" of exoneration from Mariela, and the police laughed at that and dragged him off to jail where he spent 45 days of verbal and physical abuse at the hands of the police.

After he got out of jail, he went to the support office and Mariela was out, so he made an appointment to see her when she returned. That never happened. When he went back to the support group, everything was fine until he asked to see Mariela, she wouldn't see him nor ever returned his phone calls, the same thing happened to anyone there who got arrested for crossgender dressing. Mariela never answered their pleas for help and they all figured that the letter had been used as a marketing tool, since it had been presented to them in the presence of some European gay rights group that was there to interview Mariela and her "dedication" to this cause.

You've got to hand something to that regime, and that is the incredible marketing department that they have, it has had the ability to fool people with various campaigns for the last fifty years.

Alberto, you are SO right. With almost 2 million Cuban-Americans or Americans of Cuban ancestry living here in the US, they couldn't find ONE gay CUBAN to ask? I would've volunteered and said the exact thing you said.

And Lori, thank you SO much for telling that story. I had not heard those specifics before. I love reading this blog for insight such as yours. I can add a story that occurred to me when I accompanied my mother on her only return visit to Cuba since our arrival in 1962, to visit her last remaining sister in 2001. We stayed at a private home where we rented a couple of rooms (my family's home did not have functioning bathrooms or air conditioning).

The propietor of this private home, Lazaro, was also a Professor of Dentistry at the University of Havana, although he told me he was looking to retire as a Professor to devote himself full-time to attending to tourists. It turned out his father was one of the military assigned to protect Celia Sanchez. He told us stories of how upset they were that Christmas had been banned, yet they watched Celia celebrate Christmas and provide her children with gifts. Obviously, he grew up in a very communist environment. It also turned out he was gay and desperate to come to the US. In fact, he laready had a brother in the US and his sister had also become a gusana, although still in Cuba. All this in spite of a VERY communist father (whom I actually met - another long story). He knew I was gay because of the whole connection process that got us to rent there in the first place - long story). He was boasting about the "gay nightlife" in La Habana and promised to take me out on a Friday night to take in the "sights." Lucky for me, I told him it had to be very late because I did not want to upset my mother, as my mother was in mortal fear of everything during the entire trip.

We called for a taxi around 1 am after everyone had gone to bed for the evening. He told me that local gays would be hanging out around the Hotel Presidencial waiting for the word on where the happening party was for that evening. He got the word somehow (I wasn't involved as I was not too enamored of the "gay" crowd milling about - another long story). So we tell the taxi to take us to some factory somewhere nearby that the factory manager had "rented" (been bribed) out to some gay group to conduct their party. These things I heard were fairly organized, with people bringing rum to sell and DJs with music setting up, others setting up decorations. They would charge a small fee at the "door" to cover costs. All of this done clandestinely, of course. As we start to pull in to the factory gates at around 1:30 AM, we see a crush of people start running towards us. They pass us yelling to turn around and get out as the cops were "busting heads" inside. It didn't take our taxi driver but 2 seconds to back his taxi out over the bridge we entered on and get the hell out of there. As I looked back, all I could see were all of these poor gay folks running for their lives everywhere.

That was gay life in Cuba in 2001. The same as straight life in Cuba in 2001. Look on the bright side - no discrimination though!

Unbelievable.

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