The fear that the vote will not be used by the regime to improve its image pushes LGBT activists to prefer abstention.
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Contribute to the progress of the rights of the LGBT community, long stigmatized, at the risk of politically strengthening the Miguel Diaz-Canel regime, responsible for the imprisonment of a thousand people after the demonstrations against shortages and the Lack of freedom in July 2021. This is the dilemma facing many Cubans on the eve of the referendum on the family code.
More than eight million people are invited to decide, Sunday, September 25. The text, which aims to replace the family code, dating from 1975, legalizes marriage between people of the same sex, adoption for homosexual couples or even “solidarity gestation”, for others. Initially planned to be included in the reform of the Constitution voted in early 2019, it was extracted from it due to the controversy it raised. Twenty-four versions were written before the last one was approved in July by the Assembly. Its final validation depends on the result of the referendum. However, the outcome of the vote is all the more uncertain as to the opposition of the Church and conservative environments is added that of many progressive dissidents.
“Reflected abstention”
“I will not vote: I will make a thoughtful abstention, decides the social democratic opponent Manuel Cuesta Morua, joined by phone. I have long defended the rights of minorities, including LGBT, but vote for this referendum , while the civil rights of the whole population are flouted, would not only be a way of refreshing the democratic image of a regime which in fact is not, but also to help it to establish legitimacy policy that he does not have. “
In the various environments of opposition to the Cuban regime, the debate is lively. “We do not vot yes with the PCC [Cuban Communist Party]. It is the CCP that votes with us”, sums up on Twitter Maykel Gonzalez Vivero, journalist and director of the online review TreMenda Note, devoted to the LGBT community. His many passages in prison in recent years, for informing social troubles in Havana, will not prevent him from participating in the referendum.
Conversely, the independent and activist journalist LGBT Maria Matienzo, she has decided to abstain, arguing that “certain civil rights are not more important than others: it is not because I am authorized to get married that I will have rights of citizens “. Like many other LGBT activists, she also regretted that the government does not ask “forgiveness” for the persecution of homosexuals between 1965 and 1968, when they were sent to forced work camps, military units production assistance (UMAP).
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