Cuba’s First Transsexual Politician
HAVANA TIMES — Jose Agustin Hernandez, who goes by the name “Adela”, is the first transsexual ever to occupy a government post in all Cuban history. She was elected municipal delegate – a kind of town councilor – by her neighbors.
Adela lives in the town of Caibarien, in the province of Villa Clara, which is located in Cuba’s north-central region. After a year in office, she agreed to an interview with Publico magazine and to draw a balance of her work during this time.
Delegates and deputies in Cuba are not professional politicians. They make their living through regular jobs and do not receive a salary for these government positions. It was thanks to her day job, in fact, that Adela was able to secure many votes.
“I am a nurse who specializes in electrocardiograms and I am also part of the ER team. I have to deal with many serious cases and I try to establish a human relationship with patients and their relatives. Because of this, they see me as a human being as well and they realize that a person’s sexual orientation is of no importance.”
Adela became her neighborhood’s political and administrative representative through a popular, direct and secret vote. “I have to address the needs of the more than 500 people who voted for me. I am also responsible for managing two ration book stores that sell subsidized food products, a fish shop, a doctor’s office and three schools. I’ve been fairly successful if you bear in mind we’ve taken seven local matters to different State entities and received positive replies everywhere,” she explains to us.
Taking on Cuban Bureaucrats One on One
Adela tells us that “the management at State institutions and companies get back to other delegates through their secretaries, but they see me in person because they know I’m not afraid to take things to any level.”
She adds that “when a high official gives me an answer that doesn’t convince me I don’t accept it. They ask me to sign it, but I refuse because, if I’m not convinced, my voters will be less convinced.” Cuban officials know that “I can shake hands just as easily as I can put up my dukes,” a local phrase which means one can converse in a civilized manner and kick up a fuss with the same ease.
Adela and the electrical company had one such confrontation over the streetlights in the town’s Marti promenade. “They would tell me they didn’t have the resources to fix them. When I told them I would take the matter to the provincial capital and Havana, all of the materials they needed turned up.”
“Not long ago, an official closed down the locale where Caibarien’s gay community gathered. He claimed the ‘instructions had been handed down.’ I started looking into it higher and higher to find out who had given that order. I never found the person responsible, but the locale was reopened.”
Adela tells us she also has to work with her voters, as part of social work within the community. “For example, in my neighborhood there’s a girl who’s a prostitute who became pregnant. It was a risk pregnancy and she was taken to a prenatal clinic, where she was given good food and round-the-clock medical attention. The problem is that she left the clinic and the Ministry of Public Health asked me to try and convince her to go back. After patiently talking to her in a very humane way, I managed to get her to return to the maternity home.”
From “Faggot” to Politician
Adela lives in a poor neighborhood in Caibarien. Before being elected municipal delegate, she was the chair of a Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, a position she held for 29 years. While still very young, she was jailed for her sexual preferences. Her own father, who also mistreated her for “being a faggot”, had pressed charges against her.
Nothing, however, managed to break her. She tells us that “I set the goal of not bowing down to anyone, not letting anyone force me to do what I don’t want to do. I am a human being, just like everyone else, and I don’t stop at the obstacles in my way. To the contrary, every obstacle makes me grow and gives me greater confidence in myself.”
She insists that “nothing was able to make me renounce my ideals, neither the mistreatment, nor the insults nor the blows changed my feelings towards the revolution. I can’t continue to hold a grudge for the suffering I endured. Every country makes mistakes and Cuba made them in the way it treated us, but it has had the courage to acknowledge this.”
“Now I have the right to choose how to live, to the point that, soon, they are going to issue me a new ID card where I figure as a woman.”
Thinking about the future, Adela tells us Cuba is changing a lot, so much so that “Mariela (Castro) has said the National Sexual Education Center (CENESEX), which protects the rights of the LGBT community, will one day not be needed anymore.”
“I also hope that happens, that, one day, we won’t need anyone to defend our rights. It’s possible that, down the line, I’ll become a deputy. Becoming a provincial candidate and later a national parliamentary representative depends on how I fare as a delegate.”
“As a revolutionary, I am willing to get there if the country needs me and Cubans elect me.”
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(*) Visit Fernando Ravsberg’s blog (in Spanish).
The “implication that her chosen name is less real” that I was referring to was “who goes by” – it occurred to me since posting my comment that that could be a direct-ish translation of “quien/que se llama” which in Spanish (as far as I know?) rarely if ever carries that connotation, so I apologise if it was simply a linguistic mistake. The rest of my comment stands though.
“[previous name], who goes by the name “Adela””
How about you actually USE her chosen name, don’t imply it’s somehow less real than the one that was imposed on her, and DON’T use the one she’s abandoned.
Slowly but surely you have finally come to agree with me regarding the dysfunctional Castro regime. In as much as this is a blog about Cuba, your views on the US are irrelevant to this blog and to me. Now if I can get you to stop believing in Santa Claus….
I’m happy to see that you recognize the fact that the Cuban electoral system is controlled by the government leadership, which is in turn controlled by the Party.
However, you seem to think this is in contradiction of how Poder Popular is supposed to work. In fact, the Cuban electoral system is doing exactly what the people who designed it intended: it’s providing total political control to the ruling elite.
That’s not a bug, it’s the main feature.
As Fidel Castro once said, “We did not win a revolution just to lose an election.”
Hahahahahahhahahahhahaahaha.
Hohohohohohohohohhohoho
And I really mean it
Ron, it is fact that there are a disproportionate number of PCP members nominated and elected to the assemblies in relation to their numbers in the society as a whole.This because anyone who wishes to serve in electoral office is more likely to be politically active and associated with the PCP
But then, how many independents are there in the federal U.S government : people who are not owned by the very wealthy who will finance only members of the twin parties of capitalism in the U.S. ?.
.
It is also true that PP officially forbids active participation of the PCP in elections and cannot campaign for any candidate under the PCP banner nr can anyone run as anything other than an individual .
Each nominee IS required to list her/his affiliations when running.
All that being said, the sitting government has corrupted PP to the point that it operates largely outside the original democratic intent of PP and not unlike the way in which the U.S government has gone from a barely representative democracy to an outright oligarchy .
A totalitarian form is a totalitarian form .
The Cubans happen to prefer their autochthonous variety to that the U.S wishes to impose upon them .
That you choose to misquote me or willfully misinterpret what I write is becoming rather tiresome.
I have made it more than clear that I believe that the Cuban government, in ignoring and undermining the tenets of Poder Popular, have created a quite undemocratic society in Cuba albeit with an equitable means of distribution of the necessary and available goods and services.
The U.S has two ostensibly separate political parties but the reality is that both parties serve the same rich minority without whose financial support , no one can win national political office .
The thought that somehow having two-three or one hundred political parties makes a difference when every elected candidate is in the pockets of its financial backers is :
1) naïve?.
2) ignorant of reality ?
3) wishful thinking ?
4) a “necessary illusion” ?
5) propaganda ?
( the answer is all of the above)
In Cuba at least they are more honest about having only one party and the people there know how totalitarian THEIR government is .
Would that you were as intelligent as they are about your own government .
Were you familiar with how Poder Popular was intended to work , you’d understand that no political parties are necessary in a true democracy, a direct democracy or a republic .
Majority rule needs no parties at all.
Cuban-American gay activists in Miami protest Mariela Castro’s visit to San Francisco, New York
These gay Cubans point out that Mariela’s support for gay rights is conditional upon Cuban gays supporting the regime. Step out of line, and they are abandoned by her organization.
“The true LGBT leaders are routinely arrested, beaten up or simply disappear at the hands of the Castro leadership every time Mariela marches,” said Herb Sosa, executive director of Unity Coalition, Miami-Dade County’s leading Hispanic gay rights group.
Read more here: http://miamiherald.typepad.com/gaysouthflorida/2012/05/cuban-american-gay-activists-in-miami-protest-mariela-castros-visit-to-san-francisco-new-york.html#storylink=cpy
Read more here: http://miamiherald.typepad.com/gaysouthflorida/2012/05/cuban-american-gay-activists-in-miami-protest-mariela-castros-visit-to-san-francisco-new-york.html#storylink=cpyhttp://miamiherald.typepad.com/gaysouthflorida/2012/05/cuban-american-gay-activists-in-miami-protest-mariela-castros-visit-to-san-francisco-new-york.html
Read more here: http://miamiherald.typepad.com/gaysouthflorida/2012/05/cuban-american-gay-activists-in-miami-protest-mariela-castros-visit-to-san-francisco-new-york.html#storylink=cpy
Most people elected are not members of the Communist party. If you are arrogant enough to think you should be elected just because you are amember of the party the people will will soon cut you down to size and not vote for you!
Exactly that, plus the impossible to understand election system we have in Cuba. (= 0 democracy)
Fernando, thank you for this fine report on an admirable person. Adela shows the good that can come from combining humanity, revolution and democracy. We need Adelas everywhere. Real democracy depends on the participation and public support of such
honestly motivated representatives. The opposite, whether by corruption or cowardice can exist regardless of the ideological claims or the alleged constitutional guarantees. The list of failures to represent the interests of the people, whether in the name of democracy or revolution is long enough to prove that Manafestos and titles do not guarantee the outcome. Only people like Adelea multiplied thousands of times, gives hope for the future.
The covert agents of the empire argue that we should put our trust and hope in the great casinos of the US or bet our rent money on the national lottery system of government represented by the two parties of the rich.
Thank you Fernando for this inspiring article, thank you Adela for not letting the negatives in your family and society prevent you from becoming a better person.
What is it? It makes me smile, seriously. I am not sure what am I reading here, but it sounds just like a bad propaganda meant to be good. Hahaha.
You forgot to mention the part about only one legal political party. That kinda’ puts a crimp in the whole FULLY democratic society hashtag don’t you think?
Much credit to Mariela Castro for her work in the field of civil and social rights for the LGBT community and in putting Cuba in the lead toward a more accepting society in Latin America and the Caribbean .
Cuba’s badly corrupted electoral system , Poder Popular retained its very democratic nature in the case of her nomination and election to the municipal assembly as was intended by PP and the article amply displays how PP should be working to make Cuba an exemplary democratic society .
Everyone who is not familiar with the totality of PP might wish to read Canadian Arnold August’s .” Democracy In Cuba and the 1997-98 Elections” which details the history of Cuba pre-revolution and then goes into full detail on Poder Popular and the election mentioned in the title.
I look forward to a future with the principles of PP in full power right up to the top of Cuban government and society once the U.S ends its war and normalizes relations with Cuba.
PP is a model for democracy ( representative democracy ) every society would benefit from adopting.
To understand PP in depth is to understand how a fully democratic society could and should function
IMO