PLEASE MEET MARIELA CASTRO: Internationationally known champion of the lesbian, gay, bisexual transgender and intersex right in Cuba

Bachelor of Psychology-Pedagogy and Master of Sexuality, Mariela Castro

¨Bachelor of Psychology-Pedagogy and Master of Sexuality, Mariela Castro is known internationally as a champion of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) rights in Cuba.


Mariela joined social networks and created an account on twitter, @CastroEspinM and the blog  HERE in order to dismantle the prejudices that have been historically established and banish homophobia.

“the Revolution has changed not only the lives of Cubans but also their sexuality”   Why?

The Cuban Revolution meant not only the achievement of the long-awaited national sovereignty, but also a complex process of creating and implementing the project of justice, social equity and solidarity that has been built and defended during these 53 years.


This scenario led to the confrontation and dialogue between generations, cultural patterns, classes and social strata. Old paradigms of power based on domination and exploitation, inherited from Spanish colonial system and the U.S. neocolonialism, were questioned.


Undoubtedly, this process has generated radical and deep changes in our culture, our prejudices about sexuality, in the relation of domination of men over women, in the reconfiguration of courting, in sexual politics that privilege heterosexual relationships and exclude other forms of erotic and love relationships between human beings, which deny certain rights to those who do not meet these parameters.


Cuban cinematography and other artistic expressions have portrayed from a very creative point of view the vicissitudes of men and women for the development of these changes. For example, the overrated criteria of virginity and its contributing factor to marriage have been transformed. The same has happened with the imposition of a couple for the rest of our life, the sole responsibility of men as head of family, the loyalty standard of women and infidelity in men, the rejection of race relations, the myths of menstruation, the disqualification for single mothers and single women, women's rights, a disapproval to transgender people, gay and bisexual, among others...¨ please read it all, HERE

·  Thanks to Mariela Castro, National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX)
· Thanks to Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Jamaica, sidebar
· Thanks to Aday del Sol Reyes
· Thanks to CubaSi

CUBA´S NATIONAL SEX EDUCATION CENTER: ¨Surgery is not an aesthetic whim, but a scientific procedure agreed upon internationally, which benefits transsexual people.¨ BREAKING: Police murder Transwoman in Cuba!

CUBA:  Mariela Castro Espin invites ¨people going through conflict can come to us¨

Cuba Makes Progress in Sex Reassignment Surgery ... expects communist party to accept LGBT rights

¨Havana, Jan 17 (Prensa Latina) Cuban surgeons have performed 15 sex reassignment surgeries, and other transsexual people, who are assisted by a committee in compliance with international standards, are applying to that kind of procedure, an expert said on Monday.

The director of the National Sex Education Center (CENESEX), Mariela Castro Espin, explained that the first such surgery in Cuba was performed in 1988. However, it was not until 2007 that the Ministry of Public Health decided to perform sex reassignment surgeries again. As we spread this service in the media, more people going through the conflict and who do not know that they can get help will come to us, said the expert in an interview with the website Cubasi.

So far, transgender people must go through a follow-up period of two years, during which they are assisted by specialists, along with a personalized hormone therapy for the duration of the transition to the gender with which they are identified.

At the end of the process, the committee endorses those eligible for sex reassignment surgery (commonly known as sex change) and for a legal identity change, said Castro Espin...¨ HERE

Reported that Trans woman ¨Jessica¨ Leidel Luis killed by Cuban police

UPDATE --  Not so fast with the compliments for CUBA:

Florida-based news website Cubanet  is reporting  that a young transgender woman has been beaten to death in police custody in Cuba.

¨Eighteen-year-old Leidel Luis, who was known as Jessica, originally from the province of Santiago de Cuba and who lived with her partner named Yariel in Las Tunas, died after receiving a brutal beating in Guáimaro in Camaguey, southern Cuba.

It is alledged that she was picked up at a traffic stop 4 January by police calling her "faggot, nigger and disgusting."

The report is sourced to a prison inmate, Rolando Castro Sanchez who names those he alleges beat Luis to death as police officers Galindo Yarian Larena, Juan Ramon Lorenzo, their commanding officer Heriberto, and the sector chief Boris Luis Caballero. It is alleged that her body was removed after she was found dead in her cell in the middle of the night to an unknown location.

Cuba's Communist Party Congress, which opens 28 January, will reportedly adopt pro-gay provisions. Mariela Castro Espín, the daughter of Cuban President Raúl Castro and the leading advocate for LGBT rights in Cuba, wrote on her blog this week that the revision of the Family Code in 2013 will include recognition of same-sex couples.


However, continuing police harassment in Cuba, including arrests, has been reported on a number gay Cuban blogs, such as that of the Reinaldo Arenas Memorial Foundation. Gay Cuban blogger Francisco Rodríguez Cruz has also condemned 'irregularities' committed by Cuban police, who, he says, have repeatedly fined visitors to a gay meeting spot in central Havana. In September a death in custody of a transgender man was reported in Havana...¨ read it all, ¨Muere Travesti Tras Golpiza Propinada Por Policias¨


· Thanks to Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Jamaica, sidebar
· Thanks to Prensa Latina, Cuba
· Thanks to Mariela Castro Espin, CENESEX
· Thanks to LGBT Asylum News, sidebar
· Thanks to Francisco Rodriguez Cruz
· Thanks to Rolando Castro Sanchez
· Thanks to Cubanet, Dania Virgen Garcia