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Rating: 
Summary: Cuban heteronormativity critically analyzed
Review: Marvin Leiner lived in Cuba in 1968-69 and revisited the island periodically thereafter. In 1978 he published _Children are the Revolution_, a book on Cuban daycare programs. A democratic socialist in the I.F. Stone and Michael Harrington tradition, Leiner admires the dramatic and effective extensions of literacy and healthcare to the masses, while believing that "socialism without democracy is a contradiction...lead[ing] to horrendous abuse of power." It is as a "friend of the social revolution" that Leiner criticizes repression of dissent and the ongoing history of persecution of males judged insufficiently masculine (this is the official and folk Cuban construction of male homosexuality). Women-women relations have never been an official or social concern. Extirpating male homosexuality, on the other hand, has been an enduring preoccupation of the regime. Toughening effeminate boys) through a variant of aversion therapy began early. "At no time did social scientists or educators consider homosexuality as anything other than 'feminine' behavior by males, in accordance with common cultural stereotypes", This model was accompanied by a belief that effeminacy/homosexuality is infectious, which justified removing effeminate boys from regular schools and barring "homosexuals" from jobs in education, medicine, and the mass media, where they might "infect" youth with their "incurable disease." With the help of the block-level Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, those regarded as deviant by their neighbors were forced into "rehabilitation" work camps from 1963 until 1967, when these military-run concentration camps were closed in response to international pressure. The view of male homosexuality as an "incurable disease"- and the eagerness to isolate its carriers where they could not infect others-were recapitulated when HIV was recognized in Cuba: another incurable disease reactivated the response of massive surveillance and quarantine of those identified as "diseased." In addition to the equation of gender variance and homosexuality, another tenet of machismo is relevant to the strategy for dealing with AIDS that Cuba developed. ... In this widespread view, male sexual compulsivity is part of nature, not amenable to education, so stopping sexual transmissionof HIV required quarantine of those afflicted with incurable diseases, even of those macho "good revolutionaries" who volunteered for Cuba's African military adventures and contracted HIV there. Rather than use the highly-developed educational system and the CDR structure to ensure that HIV+ people knew about and practiced safe sex, Cuban public health officials mandated life sentences in concentration camps ("sanatoria") for healthy HIV+ people (three-quarters of them men, one third of whom are estimated to be "homosexuals"). Leiner is well aware that married heterosexuals receive the best treatment in the camps (that since the writing of his book have been too expensive to maintain) and are much more likely than homosexual "degenerates" to be considered "responsible" enough to be furloughed out). Leiner is critical of the Cuban government's enduring authoritarianism, machismo, heterosexism, and how the latter two blocked sex education and a more humane AIDS policy. Although there is less than one would expect from his own long-running observations and interviews, Leiner marshalls a range of data from published and unpublished sources about official policies. More in sorrow than in anger, he criticizes Cuban sex education, persecution of homosexuals (and of the effeminate boys regarded as proto-homosexuals), and the incarceration for their lifetime of HIV+ persons (now alledgedly relaxed). While ably analyzing cultural roots of sexual politics, Leiner's book gives practically no sense of what it is like for men or for women to live in Cuba, in or out of its concentration camps. (For what it was like during the 1970s, there is Reinaldo Arenas's chilling memoir _Before Night Falls_).
Rating:
Summary: Must be appreciated as an original text.....
Review: The history of homosexuality and homophobia in Cuba is rich; just like most topics related to the Island. Nowadays, everyone is writing about "gay Cuba." The release of the film "Before Night Falls" only exemplifies and promotes the trend. However, when this book was written that was not the case. The book sometimes feels like it is picking for straws. Still, as an original effort it is worth the read. I remember being glad this book existed when I found it.
Rating:
Summary: Must be appreciated as an original text.....
Review: The history of homosexuality and homophobia in Cuba is rich; just like most topics related to the Island. Nowadays, everyone is writing about "gay Cuba." The release of the film "Before Night Falls" only exemplifies and promotes the trend. However, when this book was written that was not the case. The book sometimes feels like it is picking for straws. Still, as an original effort it is worth the read. I remember being glad this book existed when I found it.
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