LGBTI rights | Cubans support by majority the legalization of same-sex marriage and surrogacy

“Cuba said yes to the Family Code”greeted from its cover Granma, the official newspaper of the Communist Party. According to preliminary data from the National Electoral Council, 8,447,467 citizens participated in the consultation that validated a new regulation and that represents an important political and cultural shift with respect to the past by enabling the legalization of same-sex marriage and the surrogacy . This represents 74% of the electoral register, a surprise number for a country accustomed to almost absolute unanimity. The vote took place in the middle of the effects of blackouts and scarcity. Such circumstances seem to have left their mark at the polls because the YES obtained 66.87% of valid ballots. The NO, meanwhile, 33%. However, if abstentions (close to 26%), blank and invalid votes were counted, the rejection figure would be higher.

the enthusiasm of Granma overlooked those nuances, which account for a new reality. In turn, the official press avoided all kinds of comparisons with the past. In fact, the participation in the constitutional referendum three years ago was 84.4%, a number that even then called attention because the 1976 constitutional referendum counted, in other political conditions, on the accession of the 98% of Cubans. AND

The Cuban president himselfMiguel Diaz Canel, hinted not only at the end of the era of unison voting, but also the possibility that the disgust for what is happening will translate into the consultation. “We have to get used to the fact that in such complex issues where there is a diversity of criteria and in the midst of a complex situation there may be people who even have a vote of punishment“, he said before voting. The evangelical churches had called for their part to reject the project.

Granma preferred to emphasize the positive aspects of the new Code “in favor of inclusion, empathy, love“, a body of laws that “portrays the country that we are and the one that we want to be and responds to the humanist essence of the Constitution of the Republic and the rule of law and social justice that is built on it.” In that sense , considered that each favorable vote has been “profoundly revolutionary” and in favor of “a future with fewer prejudices and stereotypes.”

Yes won. Justice has been done. Approve the #CodeOfTheFamilies is to do justice. It is paying off a debt with several generations of Cuban men and women, whose family projects have been waiting for this Law for years. Starting today, we will be a better nation. #ElAmorYaEsLaw ❤️🇨🇺 pic.twitter.com/O5o0Hi2cm1

– Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez (@DiazCanelB) September 26, 2022

historical court

Previous discussions of the Code brought to light the deep homophobia of the first decades of the revolution. This included a labor camp, the Military Production Assistance Unit (UMAP), where homosexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses were sent to “re-educate themselves”, as well as the persecution of writers such as Reinaldo Arenas, José Lezama Lima and Virgilio Piñera, among others. others.

Julio Antonio Fernandez Estrada He is a historian and doctor of legal sciences. He had to go into exile due to his confrontations with the government, always from leftist positions. “I think it is a very progressive law, an anachronistic and disturbing object in the current Cuban legal landscape. That is why it has been so controversial, even though it is clearly a great law, perhaps the best that has been passed in Cuba in decades,” he told Hypermedia Magazine. Although it is a “refined” code that puts the island in the 21st century, “was born in a very complicated time“. Cuban men and women “are struggling between the life and death of the nation.” The country is “in the midst of the most serious migration crisis in history” and “an unprecedented political crisis, after a tiring and deadly epidemic that killed many more thousands of Cubans than the State recognized, once again, in an indecent and unforgettable way”.

The distance between the plebiscite text and everyday life is, for Fernández Estrada, insurmountable: “it is a Code for an ideal country, a Code for the country that I would like, but not for the country that actually exists. We are fighting for bread and antibiotics, and we have a hard time looking at the part of justice that hides behind our material and basic survival”.

The immigration issue

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According to the United Nations, in 2019, Cuba had more than a million and a half emigrants, which represented almost 15% of its population. That figure has increased dramatically. A total of 197,870 Cubans entered the United States alone between October 1, 2021 and September 3, 2022. That represents almost 2% of the entire population of the Island. A good part of these men and women maintain their rights in force. as Cuban citizens. Nevertheless, they were not authorized to participate in the consultation. “The 2019 Cuban Constitution has many debts, many political loopholes of injustice and neglect. One of them is the failure to mention or consider the importance, presence and need for participation of the Cuban population living outside of Cuba,” said the jurist. .