[NYTr] Cuba's CENESEX proposes ground-breaking transsexual rights

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Workers World - Aug 7, 2007
http://www.workers.org/2007/world/lavender-red-108

Lavender & Red #108


Cuba's CENESEX proposes ground-breaking transsexual rights

Fidel Castro backs effort

By Leslie Feinberg

Mariela Castro Espín, director of Cuba’s National Center for Sex
Education (CENESEX), recalled that three decades ago a Cuban from
Matanzas who was born female-bodied but identified as male came to
Havana for help.

In response, Cuban revolutionary leader and president of the Federation
of Cuban Women (FMC), Vilma Espín, recommended in 1979 that a special
committee be established, coordinated by the National Work Group on Sex
Education—CENESEX’s predecessor. The FMC had formed the Work Group in
1972; CENESEX was established in 1989.

The first result, Castro Espín related, was an agreement with the
Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Justice to issue new
identity papers. Three transsexual Cubans got new identity documents
under that accord.

In 1988, the first sex-reassignment surgery—from male to female—was
carried out successfully in Cuba. The operation was successful and the
person lives without difficulty.

But the media coverage, Castro Espín remembered, was tinged with more
sensationalism than science. Historically unchallenged prejudice welled
up. As a result, the CENESEX director explained, the operations were
temporarily halted until the need for them could be explained to the
population. Clinical and psychological care continued for transsexual
Cubans, but with a lower profile.

Castro Espín stated in the January 2006 La Jornada interview, “We were
unable to convince people of the need to carry out these operations.
This reluctance also came from the professionals in the Ministry of
Public Health who were not experts on the subject. This is where I feel
the strongest resistance, even as we speak.”

Journalist Gerardo Arreola added that in recent years, “A group of
transsexuals joined CENESEX and were trained as sex health promoters in
the campaign for the prevention of AIDS. In the center they have a
permanent open debate forum and receive specialized care. The health
system provides them with free hormone treatment.” Sex change and
social change

“At the beginning of 2004,” Arreola wrote, “there was a new momentum
when CENESEX launched a national strategy: it increased and diversified
its professional staff, obtained support from President Fidel Castro
and directly contacted ministries and social organizations to discuss,
based on entity profile, the subject of transsexuals.”

Two years later, Mariela Castro Espín said, this move has accelerated
change. “It seems all this work is now bearing fruit. People are now
more receptive. We have also articulated a more persuasive discourse. I
see great flexibility, even among official leaders.”

Castro Espín, as director of CENESEX, took a plan about expanding
rights for transsexuals to two parliamentary committees on Dec. 20,
2005.

Granma reported the following day that CENESEX had “released results of
a survey on gender identity in today’s Cuban society to the committees
on Education, Culture, Science, Technology and the Environment, and
Youth, Children and Women’s Rights.

“Mariela Castro said that for people with a non-traditional gender
identity to fully develop their potential as a member of society, it is
first necessary to identify them so as to assure that they receive
adequate specialized assistance. She also noted the need in Cuban
society of a profound understanding of gender and sexuality.”

Correspondent Gerardo Arreola interviewed Castro Espín for the Jan. 9,
2006, issue of La Jornada about the move to widen rights for
transsexuals. Castro Espín outlined that her proposal to parliament
would make free sex reassignment surgery and hormones available to all
transsexual Cubans—all forms of health care are provided cost-free on
the island. New identity documents would also be immediately issued.

Arreola reported, “This is part of a national policy to recognize the
rights of these people to live a full life in the gender they chose.”

Castro Espín stated, “The draft was very well received by the
representatives in the two commissions examining the project.” She
added, “They not only accepted the proposal, but asked many questions
and made recommendations.”

By 2006, a transsexual Cuban woman traveled abroad on her new passport.
Four others who had sex reassignment surgeries abroad got changed
identity papers as soon as they returned home. “The Courts of Justice
were finally convinced,” Castro Espín concluded.

In early 2007, Cuba’s National Assembly of Popular Power agreed to
discuss making sex-reassignment surgery free of cost to all
transsexuals on the island who request it.

The newsletter Diversity (Diversidad) reported: “The measure would
complement the present Identity Law that already acknowledges the right
of citizens to change name and sexual identity. This places Cuba at the
vanguard of the legislations that acknowledge the rights of
transvestites, transsexuals and transgender in Latin America.”

In fact, by providing free health care, Cuba is leading the world on
rights for transsexual and gender variant people. Revolution takes work

Mariel Castro Espín and CENESEX don’t rest on these laurels. She
emphasized the need for legislation and other actions to block
discrimination and raise popular consciousness.

A job is a right in Cuba. However, she said, “there may be transsexuals
who have a job and are not rejected, because the law protects them,
even if they go cross-dressed. But the administrators always find a way
to get rid of them.”

Addressing a conflict between revolutionary security police and trans
Cubans two years earlier, Castro Espín was very clear. She stated that
neighbors had complained about street solicitation. But when the
security police arrested transsexuals and transvestites, based on an
assumption that they were prostitutes, Castro Espín stressed that they
were acting on backward ideas and prejudice.

“The police take measures—that’s what they are there for,” she
explained, “but they interpret things with their own way of thinking.
They have learned over their lifetimes that transsexuals and
homosexuals are intrinsically bad.” (Associated Press, Sept. 5, 2004)

“This attitude was not in keeping with the policy or the law, because
these do not penalize a person for cross-dressing.” (La Jornada, Jan.
9, 2006)

Castro Espín noted, “We have been given procedural guidelines so these
people know how to defend themselves in case of police transgression of
the regulations.”

She explained that CENESEX intervened and set up a channel of
communication with the revolutionary security forces and the Ministry
of the Interior. Together they ordered police not to hassle transgender
and transsexual Cubans. They also agreed to provide education to Cuba’s
National Revolutionary Police officers, including a seminar on distinct
expressions of gender and sexuality.

Castro Espín noted that the transsexual and transgender Cubans who had
been harassed came right to CENESEX to lodge complaints and demand
redress. “Of course, they came to demand their rights, because I don’t
know if you have noticed, we Cubans have a strong sense of justice and
fight when we have to,” she said.

“They spoke of everything that bothered them. I asked if I could tape
what they had said to prepare a report. And that’s what I did; a short
report so they could read it over rapidly and then a longer one with
many annexes.

“That is how a national strategy came about for attention to
transsexuals with an integral vision since 1979, which was created by
my mother, Vilma Espín, president of the Cuban Women’s Federation. What
we did was to broaden this work, to enrich it.” (BBC Mundo, Sept.18,
2006)

“We are even carrying out a very important study on representations of
transsexuality,” she concluded, “to carry out educational campaigns to
teach society to respect these people and respect their rights.”

Next: Revolution—’a battle of ideas’

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