“Fin a la Persecución de Homosexuales Cubanos!” Forging a Transnational Gay Rights Movement in Cuba and the United States, 1959–80

This essay will explore the relationship between Cuba and the United States in developing and advancing a transatlantic Gay Rights Movement.  It will first investigate the treatment of homosexuals in Cuba following the Revolution of 1959, providing an overview of the main events and ideologies that have characterized the institutionalized homophobia of Fidel Castro’s communist regime.  It will factor how queer Americans in the 1960s, who were then represented by a relatively silent minority, responded to the homosexual plight in Cuba.  In turn, this essay will also explore how Cuban exiles in the United States later used the American gay platform to lobby gay rights in their native Cuba.
The essay will add a new dimension and understanding to pivotal events in the American Gay Rights Movement.  In particular, it will demonstrate contemporary efforts to forge a transatlantic gay movement premised on international queer mobilization.  Reinterpreting signal events—such as the Stonewall Riots of 1969, Anita Bryant’s “Save Our Children” campaign (1977), and the Mariel boatlift (1980)—will unveil attempts of forging an international queer community.  This distinct U.S.-Cuba relationship will ultimately reveal how queer Americans and Cubans identified with one another as queer individuals who were socially and politically oppressed.  Their commonalities allowed them to tackle anti-queer initiatives in both countries in the name of gay solidarity.