Great movie, but there is something I dont' understand...

well this movie was the only movie in cuba (that year) to recieve government funding..and civil unios for same sex couple are being discussed and the government is backing them...there has being a change in cuba towards gays..its getting better

Castro's grotesque attitude towards gays was getting him into trouble with his main backers in Western Europe and with the progressive elements in the US that love him. Especially after Alberto Arena's devastating autobiography was published in the West and made very public what the treatment of gay people was like in Stalinist Cuba.

Castro decided to change the policy for entirely self-serving reasons, and this movie was meant to distribute that fact among the chic elements that pay attention to Cuban cinema.

I just wonder what the rest of troglodite castroites in homophobic Latin America think of the whole thing? They probably realise that it's all PR.







If the Kingdom of Heaven is like a grain of mustard, It can also be like a chicken-pox mark.

Cuba, as many Cubans like to say, is a complicated country. There is an enormous amount of false propaganda from both the Cuban and U.S. governments, and it wouldn’t be wise to accept either as fact. In other words, don’t believe everything you’ve been told about Cuba, as much of it originates from the right-wing U.S. media which portrays everything in black and white. The reality is much more complex.

For one thing, views on homosexuality in Cuba, like in many countries, have evolved. The public persecution of homosexuals has declined sharply. Last year, the highest-rated show on Cuba’s state-run television was a soap opera in which a married man fell in love with another man. And now this country is on the verge of enacting a law that gives same-sex couples some form of legal status. One of the leading advocates of gay rights in Cuba is Mariela Castro, daughter of Raul Castro. This certainly doesn’t mean that Cuba is a gay haven, but things are changing. The U.S., meanwhile, is one of the most backward countries in the developed world when it comes to gay rights, and even trails a number of developing countries in this regard.

The reason you don't understand that is because the only things you know or think you know about Cuba were taught to you by right-wing anti-communist propaganda. Cubans are quite open about their shortcomings in fact. That's why the revolution has survived so long; because the Cuban people believe in self-criticism and in improving upon the revolution without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. This is a self-critical movie made in a time where attitudes toward gay people are changing in Cuba. Fidel himself has apologized for the discrimination against LGBTs in the past and has called for struggle against homophobia. The Cuban people believe in socialism but no one in Cuba has ever claimed the revolution is perfect, not even Fidel. This movie isn't denouncing the revolution; it's criticizing the shortcomings of the revolution and calling for the revolution to move beyond homophobia and embrace LGBTs as part of Cuba's socialist society. And it's working too. Last year, Cubans elected the first-ever transsexual to hold public office in Cuba.

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
- Goethe