Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Cuba Authorizes Sex Change Operations

While some Americans are celebrating the actions of the California Supreme Court invalidating prohibitions against gay marriage in California, sexual non conformists in oher parts of the world are slowly gaining rights and recognitions that the LGBT community in this country sometimes takes for granted. In Cuba, a country in which the ruling ideology, while usually characterized as "leftist" in matters of economic policy and fairly prissy in matters of sexual politics, it is telling that the government of Raul Castro has recently approved sex change operations for transsexuals. For a report (in Spanish), see Cuba autoriza la operación de cambio de sexo, La Nación (arg.) June 6, 2008). It is now clear that there will be significant changes within Cuba in the coming months. Not only is Raul Castrio to shed the nation of its Stalinist organization and approch to economic policy in favor of Deng Xiaoping engagement with globalization, but it seems that he will be much more progressive when it comes to issues of sexual politics. How much more liberal, of course, remains to be seen. This is certainly a step in a direction that would have been impossible under the rule of his brother. And more may be on the way.
Con el apoyo de su padre y del gobernante Partido Comunista -departamentos ideológico y de cultura-, Mariela Castro, hija del nuevo líder cubano, encabezó a mediados de mayo una cruzada nacional contra la homofobia que estremeció los cimientos machistas cubanos sostenidos durante cinco siglos.
Id. (transliteration: "With the support of her father and the ideological and cultural departments of the ruling Communist Party, Mariela Castro, daughter of the new Cuban leader from the middle of May headed a national campaign agabnist homophobia that was meant to shake the foundaitonal Cuban machismo privileged during the last five centuries"). Id.