Castro regime agents beat down and arrest Gay activists at Pride Parade in Havana

“Gay” “rights” in Cuba are like all the other “rights”: nonexistent. - Ambassador Roger Noriega, over Twitter on May 11, 2019

On Saturday, May 11, 2019 the Castro regime's efforts at Pinkwashing its totalitarian edifice came crashing down as gay rights activists were beaten down, arrested and taken away for carrying out a Gay Pride march in Havana.

It is important to recall that there is a deep-seated homophobia at the heart of communist ideology that viewed it as a symptom of bourgeois or capitalist contamination. This resulted in the systematic repression of homosexuals in Communist China and the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union homosexuality was criminalized in 1933, "punishable by prison and hard labor, and Stalinist anti-gay policies persisted throughout the 1960s and 1970s." In 1949 upon taking power in Mainland China the communists declared homosexuality a symptom of "bourgeois decadence" and set out to eliminate it.

On March 13, 1963 Fidel Castro gave a speech were he openly attacked “long-haired layabouts, the children of bourgeois families,” roaming the streets wearing “trousers that are too tight,” carrying guitars to look like Elvis Presley, who took “their licentious behavior to the extreme” of organizing “effeminate shows” in public places. The Cuban dictator warned: “They should not confuse the Revolution’s serenity and tranquility with weaknesses in the Revolution. Our society cannot accept these degeneracies.”


Fidel Castro went further in 1965 declaring: “We would never come to believe that a homosexual could embody the conditions and requirements of conduct that would enable us to consider him a true revolutionary, a true communist militant.” ... A deviation of that nature clashes with the concept we have of what a militant communist should be.

In 1964 the Castro regime began rounding up Gays and sending them to Military Units to Aid Production or UMAPs (Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción). These forced labor camps were for those suspected of or found guilty of "improper conduct."  Persons with effeminate mannerisms: what the Cuban government called "extravagant behavior" were taken to these camps.  

Taken away by secret police in Cuba for marching for Gay rights.

April 11th marked the 35th anniversary of the release of Improper Conduct, the film that exposed communist intolerance to Gays and Lesbians in Cuba, and documents what happened during the first 30 years of the Castro regime.  One month later and the relevance of this film was seen in the streets of Havana, Cuba.

Mariela Castro, General Raul Castro's daughter, has led efforts to Pinkwash the Castro dictatorship. Saul Landau, a Castro apologist who passed away in 2013, worked on a project that highlighted her efforts, Mariela Castro's March: Cuba's LGBT Revolution. In light of what happened this past Saturday, the documentary screened by HBO in 2016 has aged badly.

You can march for the rights of animals in Cuba, but not for the rights of human beings. https://t.co/RNk520oBk2

— Phil Gunson (@philgunson) May 11, 2019

Reports emerged on May 7, 2019 that the state-run Center for Sex Education, headed by Mariela Castro, said in a Facebook post that the Conga Against Homophobia scheduled for an unspecified date in May had been canceled on orders of the Ministry of Health.

#CUBA: Yasmany Sanchez Perez says #Cuban #gay community is not just @CENESEX. Says he was there reclaim his rights in the context of the new #Cuban #constitution. He was one of several later arrested for disobeying orders. @WPLGLocal10 pic.twitter.com/kX1zGQsyds

— Hatzel Vela (@HatzelVelaWPLG) May 12, 2019

Gay rights activists condemned the cancellation and then organized their own demonstration. On Saturday, more than 100 demonstrators took to the streets of Havana. After setting out on Havana's Paseo del Prado, the marchers came up against a large number of police and state security forces. Beatings, detentions and several arrests ensued.

This would be a good time to invite friends that do not know the Castro regime's history on Gays to see Improper Conduct.

Get help to Cubans impacted by Irma without filling the coffers of the Castro dictatorship

Hurricane Irma relief effort in Cuba: How to really help

Hurricane Irma flooded Havana neighborhoods although worse impact was elsewhere.

Cubans are in desperate need of help
Despite the official propaganda channels trying to portray a speedy government response in Cuba, independent press say different. Luz Escobar reported on September 23rd "Hurricane Victims Along Havana’s Coastline Wait for Help That Never Comes." In years past support sent through official channels ended up on sale in government stores. Independent channels are the best way to get help to Cubans devastated by Hurricane Irma. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called for a special collection for Hurricane Irma victims for the week of Sept. 23-24. The effort is to cover all the areas impacted by Irma although one can directly select which impacted countries to send aide to victims.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/weather/hurricane/article173653801.html#storylink=cpy

Gathering belongings following Hurricane Irma

 Beware using official regime channels
On September 18, 2017 Babalu Blog reported that "Mariela Castro Espin, the jet-setting daughter of Cuban dictator Raul Castro, posted a request for hurricane relief donations on Facebook and included a bank account number to where donations could be sent. A little research turned up that the bank account is from the Cuban regime’s International Finance Bank and it belongs to a Cuban company named GAESA." On September 15, 2016 in testimony before the House Agricultural Committee Mauricio Claver-Carone gave the following description of GAESA:

Today, the Cuban military owns and operates one of the largest conglomerates in Latin America, known as the Grupo de Administración Empresarial, S.A., or GAESA. Its portfolio includes companies that dominate ports, trade zones, tourist attractions, restaurants, hotels, real estate, retail stores, currency exchanges, gas stations, airlines, and other transportation services. Its head, Gen. Luis Alberto Rodriguez Lopez-Callejas, is Raul's son-in-law.

Sending donations through the account promoted by Ms Castro Espin will end up in the dictatorship's coffers, and will most likely not get to the average Cuban. There is an alternative with a proven track record.

Good way to get aide to Cubans
However if you want to get aide directly to the Cuban people there are other options and one of the best is through Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami and  its Disaster Relief Hurricane Irma effort.

Archdiocese of Miami: To donate to Catholic Charities, visit www.ccadm.org and https://give.adomdevelopment.org/irma.

Destruction in Cojimar, Cuba

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/weather/hurricane/article173653801.html#storylink=cpy

Human rights day at MDC, Eve Ensler's monologue, and the crackdown in Cuba

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality." -  Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Activists arrested in Cuba on human rights day for peacefully assembling (Reuters)

In Cuba shouting "freedom" and "long live human rights" can get you arrested. On International Human Rights Day 2015 in Cuba the democratic opposition and independent civil society peacefully gathered to celebrate. Meanwhile the Castro regime began on December 9th to detain activists and lay siege to their homes in what can only be described as a crackdown. Preliminary estimates placed the number of detained activists today at 100 but despite this Cuban human rights defenders across the island carried out their activities. Reuters reported that at least six protesters were detained for shouting "Freedom!" and "Long live human rights!" in Havana. Amnesty International placed events into context on December 10, 2015:

Cuban human rights activists are at increased risk of detention or harassment from the authorities amid demonstrations on International Human Rights Day, 10 December, said Amnesty International following a wave of almost 1,500 arbitrary arrests in just over a month. Yesterday, police in the capital Havana arbitrarily restricted the movement of members of the prominent Ladies in White (Damas de Blanco) group of activists as they prepared for today’s demonstrations. This came after at least 1,477 politically motivated detentions in November 2015, the highest monthly total in many years, according to the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN). [...] For years, harassment on Human Rights Day has been the rule rather than the exception, and is absolutely unacceptable,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas Director at Amnesty International.

 Unfortunately 2015 has been a terrible year for human rights in Cuba not only because of the huge number of arbitrary detentions but also the escalating violence against activists and the silence by visiting American human rights defenders who met with representatives of the dictatorship without addressing the violence the system commits against its own people. This has and will continue to have profoundly negative consequences for the marginalized and dispossessed. 

Human rights defender Sirley Ávila León machete attacked on May 24, 2015

 An emblematic example of this is the plight of Cuban human rights defender, Sirley Ávila León, age 56, who was gravely wounded in a machete attack in Cuba on May 24, 2015 by Osmany Carrión who had been sent by state security agents. She lost her left hand while raising it to block a machete blow to the head. She suffered deep cuts to her neck and knees, lost her left hand and the machete cut through the bone of her right humerus leaving her arm dangling. Sirley, a one time delegate of the People’s Assembly of Majibacoa worked through official channels to represent her community but when they ignored her requests to keep a school open she went to the international media and was later removed from office. She joined the democratic opposition and this led to escalating acts of repression by state security against the 56-year-old mother of two culminating in this attack. Sirley is still in danger and her assailant is free to walk the streets of Cuba. Her case has been documented in a precautionary measure by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on September 2, 2015.

Surprisingly, on October 30, 2015 when Eve Ensler a dramatist and American feminist, known for her work the Vagina Monologues, was visiting Cuba she didn't meet with the women who are regularly beaten up by agents of the Castro regime for exercising their human rights to peaceful assembly and expression but with Mariela Castro. Mariela Castro is the privileged daughter of the Cuban dictator Raul Castro and a fierce advocate of the 56-year-old communist dictatorship.  Ms Castro is known to use the same dangerous and dehumanizing rhetoric against dissenters as her dad, Raul Castro, and uncle, Fidel Castro do. An example of this is the highly reported incident over twitter with Yoani Sánchez in 2011 when the dictator's daughter denounced tolerance and called critics "parasites."  Eve Ensler has a campaign called One Billion Rising that purports "to amplify the voice of marginalized women." Furthermore the name of the campaign revolves around the idea that one billion women in the world are the victims of some form of violence. This raised a number of questions in the incongruity between her stated aims in the One Billion Rising campaign and her actions and statements when visiting Cuba.

Miami Dade College had invited Eve Ensler to speak on International Human Rights Day and that seemed a prime opportunity to raise awareness for marginalized Cuban women who have and continue to be victims of the Castro dictatorship's violence. This was also a good moment to ask the American feminist one question: "Who is more marginalized the wealthy daughter of Raul Castro or the women beaten up on the dictator's orders?" However, she was not physically present and spoke over Skype for around 40 minutes and then did not take any questions. Ensler's critique of U.S. foreign policy, during her monologue, as imperialist and advocacy for "revolution" may explain her moral blindness with the Castro dictatorship but does not excuse it and raises questions such as the one posited above.


Nevertheless the organizers of the event had a more interactive approach that allowed Cuban activists to raise the plight of Cuban women with several posters and two activists were able to speak out. One of them, Ana Olema, was able to reach the microphone and speak out on behalf of Cuban women. Meanwhile in Cuba the international media captured images of Cuban women being rounded up and roughed up for wanting to peacefully march and express their dissent. It was an honor to roughly translate her impassioned words to English and only hope that in the stress of the moment that it was understood. Let me close by echoing the words that got activists arrested in Cuba earlier today: "For freedom" and "long live human rights" for men and women!

Castro agents cover Lázaro Yuri Valle's mouth to stop him shouting long live human rights

Fact Checking the Romney Campaign's Chávez For Obama Ad

President Barack Obama and Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez

The Chavez for Obama political advertisement released by the Romney Campaign links together Hugo Chavez, Mariela Castro, and the image of Che Guevara in a thirty second spot which states the following (translation below courtesy of The Miami Herald):

NARRATOR: Who supports Barack Obama?
CHAVEZ: “If I were American, I’d vote for Obama.”
NARRATOR: Raúl Castro’s daughter, Mariela Castro, would vote for Obama.
CASTRO: “I would vote for President Obama.”
NARRATOR: And to top it off, Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency sent e-mails for Hispanic Heritage month with a photo of Che Guevara.
CHAVEZ: “If Obama were from Barlovento (a Venezuelan town), he’d vote for Chávez.”
ROMNEY: I’m Mitt Romney, and I approve this message.

Below is the actual advertisement:


Supporters of the President have attacked it and the media has reported on the debate over the advertisement describing its content as controversial and incendiary, but the question remains, is it accurate? Is it true?

Three claims are made:

1) Hugo Chavez would vote for Obama if he were an American citizen.

Reuters reported on September 30, 2012 that Hugo Chavez had endorsed President Obama quoting the Venezuelan strongman saying: "I hope this doesn't harm Obama, but if I was from the United States, I'd vote for Obama,"  ... "Obama is a good guy ... I think that if Obama was from Barlovento or some Caracas neighborhood, he'd vote for Chavez". The video in the advert does not represent or take out of context what Hugo Chavez is saying. The claim is accurate and true.

2) Raul Castro's daughter, Mariela Castro said as a citizen of the world she would vote for Obama.

In an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour on June 4, 2012, Mariela Castro: "As a citizen of the world, I would like him to win," Castro told CNN's Christiane Amanpour in an interview set to air Monday. "Seeing the candidates, I prefer Obama." ... "If Obama counted on the full support of the American people, then we can normalize the relationships; we can have better relations than what we had under President Carter". The claim is accurate and true.

3)  President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sent e-mails for Hispanic Heritage month with a photo of Che Guevara.

The Washington Post reported on September 14, 2012 that the EPA sent an e-mail out that "contained passages about Hispanic culture apparently copied word-for-word from Buzzle.com. And as icing on the oopsie-cake, it also featured a photo of a horse and buggy — no doubt meant to illustrate the picturesque elements of the culture — passing a painted billboard of Che Guevara." It was widely covered in the media. The claim is accurate and true.

The claims made in the advertisement are accurate and not taken out of context. It is not the advertisement that is incendiary or controversial but the affinity of a authoritarian despot, and the daughter of a dictator for President Obama and EPA circulating an image of Che Guevara, a mass murdering advocate for totalitarian dictatorship and a symbol for violent political action. 

Orlando Zapata Tamayo and his ongoing nonviolent victory

A nonviolent moment that shook the dictatorship and exposed its repressive nature to the world.

Orlando Zapata Tamayo

July 23, 2010 marks exactly 5-months since Cuban prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo died after 83 days on a water only hunger strike in which prison officials for more than two weeks denied him water in an effort to break his will and failed. He was protesting the systematic denial of human rights and horrible prison conditions which recently freed prisoners described as subhuman. On February 24, 2010 the New York Times reported on how Orlando Zapata's death had ignited protest actions, among them Guillermo Fariñas.

Five months later the dictatorship's smear campaign continues against Orlando but only succeeds in exposing its own reprehensible nature. The latest Mariel Castro, Raul Castro's daughter, interviewed in Der Spiegel on July 21, 2010 led the interviewer to correct her on the facts. recognition of what he has accomplished is being reported around the world. At first media focus was on the role of the Catholic Church and the Spanish foreign minister, but over time it has shifted especially when taking into account what has brought about the largest release of Cuban political prisoners since Pope John Paul II's 1998 visit. The role of the Ladies in White was highlighted in a previous posting and should not be underestimated. In the video below CNN describing the release of prisoners into exile Orlando Zapata Tamayo's hunger strike and death is referenced:



On July 22, 2010 the Chicago Reader published The Martyr and the Stool pigeon where the author Michael Miner described "Orlando Zapata Tamayo as Cuba's Bobby Sands" and a martyr. Although both men were willing to defend fundamental principles putting their own lives on the line there is a crucial difference between Orlando Zapata and Bobby Sands: Sands advocated political violence in an "armed revolution" and Zapata rejected it embracing nonviolence as practiced by Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.



Despite Bobby Sands and the Irish Hunger strikers attracting greater international press attention at the time Orlando Zapata Tamayo was able to achieve concrete results that eluded the Irish hunger strikers namely the release of Cuban political prisoners. Orlando Zapata Tamayo also exposed the structural violence undergirding the Cuban dictatorship to the world. This was achieved because, unlike Bobby Sands who had advocated revolutionary violence, Orlando Zapata Tamayo had died has he had lived a practitioner of nonviolent resistance and a human rights defender.

The facts about the kind of man he was can be gathered by information, provided by Amnesty International when declaring Orlando Zapata Tamayo a prisoner of conscience in January of 2004, described his history of activism as follows:

Orlando Zapata Tamayo is a member of the Movimiento Alternativa Republicana,Consejo Nacional de Resistencia Cívica, National Civic Resistance Committee. Alternative Republican Movement, and a member of the

He has been arrested several times in the past. For example he was temporarily detained on 3 July 2002 and 28 October 2002. In November 2002 after taking part in a workshop on human rights in the central Havana park, José Martí, he and eight other government opponents were reportedly arrested and later released. He was also arrested on 6 December 2002 along with Oscar Elías Biscet, but was released on 8 March 2003.

Most recently, he was arrested on the morning of 20 March 2003 whilst taking part in a hunger strike at the Fundación Jesús Yánez Pelletier, Jesús Yánez Pelletier Foundation, in Havana, to demand the release of Oscar Biscet and other political prisoners. He was reportedly taken to the Villa Marista State Security Headquarters. He has not been tried yet, but the prosecutor is reportedly asking for three years’ imprisonment for “desacato”, “desordenes publicos”, “public disorder”, and “desobediencia”.

He has reportedly been moved around several prisons, including Quivicán Prison, Guanajay Prison, and most recently, Combinado del Este Prison in Havana. According to reports, on 20 October 2003 he was dragged along the floor of Combinado del Este Prison by prison officials after requesting medical attention, leaving his back full of lacerations.

Before moving on it is necessary to revisit Orlando's December 6, 2002 arrest. Amnesty in an earlier report offered more details on what happened:

On 6 December 2002 Oscar Elias Biscet González, president of the unofficial Fundación Lawton de Derechos Humanos, Lawton Human Rights Foundation, was detained with 16 other dissidents after they attempted to meet at a home in Havana to discuss human rights.(15) This meeting was reportedly part of an effort by Dr. Biscet to form a grassroots project for the promotion of human rights called "Friends of Human Rights." When police prevented them from entering the home, Oscar Biscet and the others reportedly sat down in the street in protest and uttered slogans such as "long live human rights" and "freedom for political prisoners." They were then arrested and taken to the Tenth Unit of the National Revolutionary Police,Décima Unidad de La Policía Nacional Revolucionaria (PNR), in Havana.

The attempts to smear Orlando Zapata Tamayo and the pro-democracy movement in general is part of a desperate attempt by the dictatorship to diminish the moral authority of the opposition. The regime understands its own shortcomings. Miner went on to describe, in the before mentioned article The Martyr and the Stool pigeon, one of the Cuban agents who infiltrated the dissident movement, Manuel David Orrio, as a "stool pigeon" explaining that this word is a close approximation of the Spanish word "chivato" and quoted The Chicago Tribune's Gary Marx's observation that Orrio seemed kind of "despicable" and "someone with no moral compass." The contrast between Cuban human rights activist and prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo and the snitch of a brutal dictatorship Manuel David Orrio could not be more stark as laid out in an article of an "alternative weekly."



Orlando Zapata Tamayo posthumously won an important nonviolent battle that along with the Ladies in White and the opposition in general placed the dictatorship on the defensive. It pressured the Castro brothers into the current round of releasing political prisoners. That is not just the opinion of the author of this article but the reported analysis of the BBC, the New York Times, The Guardian, AlJazeera, and many more cite Orlando Zapata Tamayo by name as a major factor leading to the prisoners release.

The MettaCenter reproduces the definition originated by Yehudhah Mirsky of a nonviolent moment:

[A] climactic event in a campaign when all of the resistors’ forces are pitted against all of the oppressor’s forces in an open confrontation. The oppressor has two choices: escalate the oppression in a way that is repugnant to the rest of humanity, or back down and concede. Historical examples include the Dharasana Salt Raid during India’s anti-colonial struggle, the EDSA confrontation during the Philippines People Power movement, and Dr. King’s Selma march. Whether or not a nonviolent moment succeeds depends on numerous factors, some of which can be learned and practiced, such as the strategic efficacy of the resistors. However, not all factors are controllable and sometimes you can miscalculate, as in the Tiananmen Square massacre.

The Cuban dictatorship was faced in early 2010 with two nonviolent moments where it decided to ignore international opinion and escalated its brutality. One was to deny Orlando Zapata Tamayo water during his water only hunger strike and refuse to meet his demands leading to his death and the second was a month later when the regime organized mobs that beat up Cuban women seeking to march peacefully to demand their loved one's freedom.

Five months later the dictatorship is refusing to allow Reina Luisa Tamayo Danger, Orlando Zapata Tamayo's mother, to attend Mass and peacefully march in remembrance of her son and has resorted to acts of repudiation and violence. Yesterday, Reina was able to text blogger Yoani Sanchez the following message which Yoani tweeted on her account:

YOANI I INFORM YOU THAT SINCE TODAY AT EARLY HOUR BEEN UNDER SIEGE BY STATE SECURITY & PNR CARIDAD CABALLERO WAS ARRESTED & BEATEN & MARI BLANCA IS MISSING, WE LOVE YOU #OZT FAMILY

If this escalates , and the opposition is able to maintain its nonviolent discipline, then another nonviolent moment may emerge where the regime either escalates repression that will generate international and national repugnance or back down.

However, just because the regime has lost a battle does not mean that it will not seek to recoup its losses and maintain power. That is to be expected, and the opposition in the island and friends of freedom everywhere need to be prepared for the next battles in the ongoing struggle for fundamental human rights and freedoms to be restored and respected in Cuba. Nevertheless Alvaro Vargas Llosa is correct when he observes that: "The Black Spring heroes and their Ladies in White have revealed to us, against all odds, that the Castros are not invincible. "

Thank you Orlando Zapata Tamayo. My prayers and thoughts are with you and your family especially today.



Update: This afternoon learned that despite increased repression, detentions and death threats Reina Luisa Tamayo Danger was able, along with about twenty others, to march from her home to the cemetary in Banes, Cuba where her son is buried and honor her son's memory. Audio above provided by the Cuban Democratic Directorate.