3 - Homophobia in Ena Lucía Portela’s Cien botellas en una pared

Summary

In Cuba, the relationship between culture and politics is so close that its literature is soaked with political ideology. I was able to verify this while looking at the testimonials of intellectuals and homosexuals who were accused of desta-bilising the Cuban revolutionary government for my book Homosexuality and Invisibility in Revolutionary Cuba. In turn, these intellectuals accused the government of exercising political violence against those who did not fit their ideological standards.

I looked at how repressive mechanisms were exacerbated during one of the most critical times of the revolutionary government, the Special Period, due to the fall of the communist bloc in 1991. The economic depression of this period was at its most severe in the early to mid-1990s and slightly declined in severity towards the end of the decade. The Special Period was an especially hard period for the Cuban population due to the frequent electricity and water cuts and the restrictions on basic goods. At the time, the Cuban government/State intensified the control over people's beliefs and behaviours, allegedly for the benefit of the revolutionary project, and catalogued as a dissident anyone attempting to challenge the official discourse.

Until the mid-1990s, many homosexuals were imprisoned, and some were sent into exile. Others pretended they were heterosexual and stayed. Only a few have managed to articulate credible accounts of their trauma for being treated as dissidents due to their sexual identity. I looked at the testimonies of writers like Reinaldo Arenas and others in documentaries like Conducta impropia, as well as fictional works that were inspired by real-life events, like Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío's Fresa y chocolate, and, more recently, the novels by Leonardo Padura Fuentes and Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, among others. The study of this material allowed me to verify the frustration of this community under the dynamics of control and discipline led by the government for decades. I also verified how those initially at a disadvantage managed to endure the political violence and State repression enacted by the government.

From that study, I learnt that what makes the US–Cuba confrontation so interesting worldwide is that it tells the story of how a less powerful force (Cuba) manages to articulate a convincing discourse for many against the supremacy of its opponent (the US) in the world.