By Ray Sanchez | Havana Bureau-South Florida Sun-Sentinel
1:22 PM EDT, June 25, 2008
Havana - Cuba's first Gay Pride parade was abruptly canceled Wednesday,
before it even began.
The unofficial march, organized with Florida's Unity Coalition, was not
sanctioned by Cuba's National Center for Sex Education, which is headed
by Mariela Castro, the daughter of President Raul Castro.
Activist Mario Jose Delgado announced the cancellation of the march
moments before it was to start Wednesday at a park in Havana. He said
two organizers who were to deliver a set of demands to the Justice
Ministry were detained one day earlier. Delgado said he has no details
of the arrests.
"The president of the Cuban League Against AIDS and the president of the
Foundation LGTB Reinaldo Arenas in Memoriam have been arrested," Delgado
said. "They were to be here with our written demands but now we cannot
carry out our activity."
Only one other marcher appeared for the event at Don Quixote park in the
Vedado neighborhood.
"Our society needs to be sensitized," said Jandri Penton, 22, a teacher.
But a passerby, Felix Lopez, a 40-year-old personal trainer who said he
was gay, dismissed the Gay Pride march as unnecessary.
"Important strides have been made," he said. "We don't need to be
instructed by people in Miami or any other part of the world. We're
slowly gaining a space in our society and that's important."
The activists were seeking an apology from the government for its past
repression and, in some cases, incarceration of openly gay citizens, and
the inhumane treatment of prisoners with AIDS, according to Unity.
"Despite a so-called opening in the area of gay rights … homosexuals are
still being arrested and fined in Villa Clara and homosexuals are still
beaten in Granma, Pinar del Rio and Santiago," Delgado said. "We know
change is coming but it's coming too slowly."
One of the jailed organizers was identified as Aliomar Janjaque, who
said Wednesday that he was briefly detained and released by the police a
day earlier. Janjaque said that when he left the home of an activist to
attend the march Wednesday, two unidentified men escorted him home.
"They told me that I had to go home," he said. "They escorted me to my
door. From what I see, state security has succeeded in intimidating the
organizers of this event."
Delgado identified one of the jailed organizers as Aliomar Janjaque. In
an interview last week, Janjaque said homosexuals are still passed over
for jobs, prevented from gathering in certain places and, in some cases,
jailed because of their sexual orientation.
"Mariela Castro's work is good and valid and we're not criticizing it,"
said Janjaque, 31, a psychology student and president of the Foundation
LGTB Reinaldo Arenas in Memoriam, last week. "But we believe they should
do more."
In May, Mariela Castro led a public rally against homophobia that
briefly brought gay activists out of the shadows. Earlier this month,
Cuban officials announced they were allowing free sex-change operations.
At Cuba's National Center for Sex Education, Mariela Castro's secretary,
who gave her name only as Iliana, said there would be no comment on the
event.
In South Florida, Cuban natives like Pembroke Pines resident Arturo
Alvarez, who co-owns Club Azucar, said the government's recent measures
don't go far enough.
"We'll see with this parade if openness has really been achieved," said
Alvarez, 44, an internist by training who deserted 20 years ago while on
a medical mission in Namibia.
Alvarez traveled to Cuba in May to attend Mariela Castro's rally and is
cautiously hopeful about signs of change on the island. As a gay
teenager in Havana, he was barred from Communist youth groups and
experienced withering rejection.
"You couldn't have the slightest gay mannerisms. You could show no trace
of who you really were," said Alvarez, who has organized gay pride
parades in several Latin American cities, including the first in
Montevideo, Uruguay, last year.
For decades under Fidel Castro, Cuban gays were subject to widespread
antipathy and government crackdowns, Alvarez and others said.
But the community has seen a growing level of tolerance since the 1990s
and a lively gay social scene has for years thrived in Havana.
Last week, Janjaque said organizers hoped an orderly, peaceful march
would draw attention to their concerns.
"We want to raise awareness but we don't want to provoke a wave of
repression against the gay community," he said. "If there is a hostile
reaction from the government, we will stage a much larger demonstration.
We will take to the streets."
On Wednesday morning, moments before its scheduled start, the march was
canceled.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/cuba/sfl-0625,0,7044420.story
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