This video depicts shots of the Dominican Republic, a Caribbean nation that is known for its beaches, resorts and golfing. The video includes shots of the rainforest-covered karst mountains at Los Haitises National Park, one of the most stunning protected areas of the Caribbean. Additionally, Dominican cities and daily life are portrayed, such as cities like Santon Domingo and Santiago de los Caballeros.
As gay Cubans gain more rights, opposition is also growing. AP Photo/Desmond Boylan
As Cuba Backs Gay Marriage, Churches Oppose the Government’s Plan
Cubans are debating a constitutional reform that, among other legal changes, would open the door to gay marriage. It would also prohibit discrimination against people based on sex, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity in the communist nation.
The proposed new Constitution, drafted by a special commission within Cuba’s National Assembly, was unveiled in July. If the National Assembly and President Miguel Díaz-Canel approve the document after a Feb. 24, 2019 public referendum, marriage would be defined as a “union between two people.”
Cuba’s 1976 Constitution, known as the Carta Magna, defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman. And it does not fully protect private enterprise, freedom of association or allows for same-sex marriage – despite growing social acceptance and political tolerance for such rights.
Emigrés who retain Cuban nationality have been invited to participate in Cuba’s public debate on the constitutional reform – though not to vote on it – via a digital forum run by the Foreign Ministry – a level of citizen outreach that’s “unprecedented” in Cuba, says Ernesto Soberón, the ministry’s director of consular affairs and Cubans residing overseas.
Cuba’s political process opens up
This lively, broad-based debate is a sign of how much Cuba – a main subject of my research as a professor of literature and cultural studies – has changed in recent years.
President Raúl Castro, who took over for his ailing older brother Fidel in 2006, began to open Cuba’s economy to foreign investment and normalized diplomatic relations with the United States, which has maintained its economic embargo on the Communist island since 1962.
Raúl Castro also worked with President Barack Obama to ease some economic restrictions on Cuba.
Castro stepped down in April 2018, handing power over to the much younger Díaz-Canel.
Presidents Barack Obama and Raúl Castro met in Havana in 2016, the culmination of the diplomatic ‘normalization’ process between the U.S. and Cuba. Reuters/Jonathan Ernst
Cuba has moderately amended its Carta Magna just three times. A 1978 constitutional reform created an official channel for youth political participation, for example, while that of 1992 liberalized elements of Cuba’s socialist economic model to revitalize Cuba’s economy.
Today’s proposed reform is a complete overhaul. It would add 87 articles, change 113 and eliminate 13, even a section of Article 5 affirming Cuba’s “advance toward a Communist society.”
Beyond legalizing gay marriage, the new Constitution would protect private property, limit the presidential term to five years and introduce the role of prime minister.
Intense debate has surrounded the possibility of marriage equality in Cuba, and not just within the government’s official public meetings. Cubans are also discussing and debating gay marriage with neighbors and friends, in the streets and online – a departure from Cuba’s traditionally more top-down style of government.
The rise of gay rights in Cuba
Cuba’s nascent LGBTQ rights movement also began under Raúl Castro, thanks in large part to the leadership of his daughter Mariela Castro, a National Assembly member and president of the semi-governmental Centro Nacional de Educación Sexual, founded in 1987 to advance sexual awareness in Cuba.
A lack of opinion polling makes it difficult to measure Cuban public support for gay marriage. But acceptance of homosexuality, both within the government and in civil society, has grown appreciably.
During the 1960s and 1970s, homosexuality was considered incompatible with Cuba’s model of the revolutionary man: atheist, heterosexual and anti-bourgeoisie. Gay people, active Christians and others who defied these ideals were sent to military work camps to “strengthen” their revolutionary character.
Today, the Cuban government appears to accept homosexuality as part of socialist society. In 2008 the National Assembly approved a law allowing sexual reasignment surgery.
La Habana holds annual marches against homophobia and transphobia and cities across the island celebrate the Gay Pride parade.
Mariela Castro (center), daughter of former president Raúl Castro, is a leader in Cuba’s LGBTQ movement.Reuters/Alexandre Meneghini
But legacies of intolerance remain.
The Assembly of God Pentecostal Church, the Evangelical League and the Methodist Church of Cuba, among other Christian churches, have issued a joint statement opposing gay marriage.
Traditionally, religion has taken a back seat to politics in Cuba. AP Photo/Cristobal Herrera
Their public letter, published on June 8, argues that such “gender ideology” has “nothing whatsoever to do with our culture, our independence struggles nor with the historic leaders of the Revolution.”
Cuba is a secular country where political ideology has historically trumped religion. Religious opposition to a government proposal is rare.
It is even more unusual for the church to attempt to mobilize the Cuban public, as some Christian leaders are trying to do now.
According to the Cuban magazine La Jiribilla, preachers on the streets have been handing out fliers saying gay marriage defies God’s “original design” for the family.
Traditionally, religion has taken a back seat to politics in Cuba. AP Photo/Cristobal Herrera
LBGTQ activists answer
Gay rights groups and feminists are responding with a creative show of force.
Clandestina, Cuba’s first online store, and the tattoo studio La Marca are spearheading a campaign called “Cuban design,” celebrating a “very original family” – phrasing that rebuts Christian claims about God’s design.
“More than anything, this is an issue of free expression,” Roberto Ramos Mori, of La Marca, said in an email. “The way to push back against hate is calmly, with intelligence – and, of course, humor.”
Cubans with internet access use the hashtag #mifamiliaesoriginal to signal their support for LGBTQ rights on social media.
The church’s powerful opposition to marriage equality reflects a strategy commonly deployed across Latin America, says the Cuban feministAilynn Torres Santana.
Catholic and evangelical groups in Ecuador used similar language, for example, to oppose a 2017 law allowing citizens to choose their own gender identifier, she says. In response to the legislation – which recognized gender as “a binary that is socially and culturally created, patriarchal and heteronormative” – churches called for “citizens to live in harmony with nature.”
Similar scenes played out when both Colombia and Brazil advanced LGBTQ rights, with Christian groups dismissing any attempt to change traditional gender roles as the “result” of what they pejoratively call “gender ideology.”
What’s next for Cuba
Gay marriage is not the only battlefield for Cuba’s newly empowered churches.
Abortion, illegal in most of Latin America, has been a woman’s right in Cuba since 1965. Traditionally, not even Cuba’s Catholic church publicly opposed it.
Recently, though, Christians in Cuba have begun publicly advocatingagainst abortion.
If conservative religious groups manage to prevent gay marriage in Cuba, I believe it would be a setback for social progress on the island.
But the mere existence of alternative voices in Cuba’s public sphere – including that of its churches – is, itself, proof that the country has already changed.
MARÍA ISABEL ALFONSO is a Professor of Spanish at St. Joseph's College of New York.
THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE CONVERSATION
Hosay procession in St. James. Nicholas Laughlin, CC BY-NC-SA
How an Ancient Islamic Holiday Became Uniquely Caribbean
A throng of Trinidadians line up along the streets of St. James and Cedros to admire the vibrant floats with beautifully bedecked models of mausoleums. Their destination is the waters of the Caribbean, where the crowds will push them out to float.
This is part of the Hosay commemorations, a religious ritual performed by Trinidadian Muslims, that I have observed as part of the research for my forthcoming book on Islam in Latin America and the Caribbean.
What fascinates me is how a practice from India has been transformed into something uniquely Caribbean.
Re-enacting tragedy
During the 10 days of the Islamic month of Muharram, Shiite Muslims around the world remember the martyrdom of Hussein, Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, who was killed in a battle in Karbala, today’s Iraq, some 1,338 years ago. For Shiite Muslims Hussein is the rightful successor to Prophet Muhammad.
Ashura, the 10th day of Muharram, is marked by public mourning and a re-enactment of the tragedy. Shiite Muslims put on passion plays that include inflicting suffering, as a way to remember Hussein. In Iraq, Shiite are known to beat themselves with swords. In India, mourners whip themselves with sharp blades. Some Shiite also visit Hussein’s shrine in Iraq.
Ashura procession in Pakistan. Diariocritico de Venezuela, CC BY
The commemoration has also become a symbol for the broader Shiite struggle for justice as a minority in the global Muslim community.
Early history
In Trinidad, the 100,000 Muslims who make up 5 percent of the island’s total population, celebrate the day of Ashura, as Hosay – the name derived from “Hussein.”
The first Hosay festival was held in 1854, just over a decade after the first Indian Muslims began to arrive from India to work on the island’s sugar plantations.
But Trinidad at the time was under British colonial rule and large public gatherings were not permitted. In 1884, the British authorities issued a prohibition against Hosay commemorations. Approximately 30,000 people took to the streets, in Mon Repos, in the south, to protest against the ordinance. Shots fired to disperse the crowd killed 22 and injured over 100. The ordinance was later overturned.
The “Hosay Massacre” or “Muharram Massacre,” however, lives in people’s memories.
Colorful floats of Trinidad
These days, Hosay celebrations in St. James and Cedros not only recall Hussein, but also those killed during the 1884 Hosay riots. Rather than recreate the events through self-flagellation or other forms of suffering, however, people in Trinidad create bright and beautiful floats, called “tadjahs,” that parade through the streets to the sea.
The tadjah, a colorful model of a mausoleum. Nicholas Laughlin, CC BY-NC-SA
Each tadjah is constructed of wood, paper, bamboo and tinsel. Ranging from a height of 10 to 30 feet, the floats are accompanied by people parading along and others playing drums, just as is the practice in India’s northern city of Lucknow. Meant to reflect the resting place of Shiite martyrs, the tadjahs resemble mausoleums in India. To many, their domes might be a reminder of the Taj Mahal.
Walking ahead of the tadjahs are two men bearing crescent moon shapes, one in red and the other in green. These symbolize the deaths of Hussein and his brother Hassan – the red being Hussein’s blood and the green symbolizing the supposed poisoning of Hassan.
The elaborateness of the tadjahs continues to increase each year and has become somewhat of a status symbol among the families that sponsor them.
A bit carnival, a bit Ashura
Trinidad’s Hosay brings in a more carnival-like joy to a somber remembrance. Nicholas Laughlin, CC BY-NC-SA
While the festival is certainly a somber one in terms of its tribute, it is also a joyous occasion where families celebrate with loud music and don festive attire. This has led some to compare Hosay to Trinidad’s world-famous carnival with its accompanying “joie de vivre.”
But there are also those who believe that the occasion should be a more somber remembrance of the martydom of Hussein. More conservative Muslims in Trinidad have made attempts to “reform” such celebrations. These Muslims believe local customs should be more in line with global commemorations like those in Iraq or India.
What I saw in the festival was an assertion of both the Indian and Trinidadian identity. For Shiite Muslims, who have dealt with oppression and ostracism – both in the past and in the present – it is a means of claiming their space as a minority in Trinidadian culture and resisting being pushed to the margins. At the same time, with its carnival-like feel, the festival could not be more Trinidadian.
Indeed, the celebrations each year illustrate how Indian and Trinidadian rituals and material culture merged to create a unique festival.
KEN CHITWOOD is a Ph.D. Candidate in Religion in the Americas and Global Islam at the University of Florida
THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE CONVERSATION
Travel to Cuba
A return to the past, old cars, colonial houses, and decoration anchored in the 50s. Cuba, marked by dictatorships and political revolutions, maintains its lifestyle intact. A tour of the north and center of the island: Havana, Viñales, Cayo Jutías, Playa Larga, Bahía Cochinos, Playa Girón, Trinidad, Cienfuegos, Santa Clara, Cayo Santa María.