CUBA-RIGHTS: Homosexuals Cry ‘Homophobia’ at Closure of Gay Bar

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Aug 27 1997 (IPS) - Cuban authorities say a well-known Havana gay bar was closed down by police because it operated as an underground establishment. But those caught up in the recent raid charge that it was motivated by the homophobic sentiments of a “machista” or sexist society.

More than 800 people were in ‘El Periquiton’ discotheque-bar late Friday night when a team of elite police troops burst in. “They showed up with cameras and filmed everything. They separated the men from the women and took us to the police station,” said one gay man.

French fashion designer Jean Paul Gaulthier reportedly figured among the detainees. Spanish film maker Pedro Almodovar, on vacation here, was said to have left the bar shortly before the police arrived.

A police spokesman told the state-owned ‘Radio Rebelde’ Wednesday that the men running the clandestine disco, Leonardo Suarez and Guillermo Blanco, were still in custody. “They will have to respond for illegal activity that occurred in that place,” he added.

The spokesman avoided calling the disco a gay bar, and said prostitutes, pimps and two minors were taking into custody and transferred to Interior Ministry offices in charge of such matters.

The economic reforms introduced by the government of Fidel Castro since 1993 have included the granting of permits for the operation of small privately-owned restaurants, cafes and bars which function as family businesses.

Neighbours of ‘El Periquiton’ said the disco-bar had no permit and had already been closed twice. But, they added, this was the first time bar-goers were taken into police custody.

The bar, which occasionally staged shows with transvestite performers, “was an exclusive spot in Havana. People from other provinces and many foreign tourists came, as well as teenagers willing to sell sexual favours,” one habitue told IPS.

Some 30 foreigners were picked up in the raid and taken to a migration office. The detained Cubans were released after paying a fine of 30 pesos (1.40 dollars) for “altering the public order.”

Local obervers warned of a possible resurgence of official intolerance towards homosexuals, which was particularly intense in the 1960s and 1970s, in the wake of the closing of ‘El Periquiton’.

But the police operation came just a few days before the implementation of a reform of Cuba’s 1988 penal code, which eliminated all traces of homophobia from local legislation. The category of “public scandal” was replaced by “sexual offense”, including harassment with “sexual requests” — which in turn replaced “homosexual requests”.

In 1988, article 359 of the 1979 penal code was repealed. That article provided for fines and detention for those charged with the “public display of their homosexual condition or importuning or soliciting others with requests,” and defined “homosexual acts in public locations, or in private sites but exposed to involuntary viewing by other people,” as “crimes against the normal development of sexual relations.”

Thanks to the new penal code reforms put into effect on Monday, no crime will be conditioned by the sexual inclination or gender of the implicated individuals.

The legal reforms provide for tough sanctions for the activity of procurers of sexual favours, which up to now was not defined as criminal behaviour in Cuba. It also stipulates stiffer sentences — up to 15 years — for those who engage in sexual acts with minors, or exploit them through procuring or pornography networks.

Analysts suggest that the raid on ‘El Periquiton’ was part of a government campaign launched last year against “social indiscipline and illegal activity” such as corruption, prostitution, pandering, unauthorised internal migration, the occupation and illegal sale of housing and illicit enrichment.

“They could have closed the discotheque for any reason. But when things like this happen, people always think the worst, and memories of the 1970s are still very fresh in Cuba,” a 47-year- old woman told IPS.

That decade was marked by the Basic Units of Support for Production (UMAP), camps with military discipline where more than a few homosexuals were taken to work.

Others suffered the effects of the so-called “parameterisation” (failure to comply with established parameters), and were separated from their jobs in the areas of education and culture for “damaging the proper formation of the upcoming generations.”

For many years, homosexual preference was sufficient to keep one from being accepted in the Communist Party, Cuba’s only legal political party, from holding posts of responsibility and even from pursuing specific university degrees.

A 1993 survey conducted among homosexuals in Havana showed that although the majority believed that the era of worst intolerance had been left behind, they feared a throwback to the past.

Even authorities seem to have realised homosexuals’ need for gathering spaces in Cuba. Years ago they allowed the ‘El Mejunje’ gay and lesbian bar to open its doors in the city of Santa Clara, 300 kms east of Havana.

But academics here say the slight glimmers of tolerance come up hard against the “machista” mindset predominant in Cuba, which sees homosexuality as an “abnormal” phenomenon, either the result of errors committed in the raising of children, or a “curable” illness.