Whitewash time

Our old friend Mariela Castro is at it again.

The publicity-savvy daughter of Raul Castro is making news this weekend following officially-sanctioned celebrations in Havana to mark International Day Against Homophobia - only the second time such an event has been held in Cuba.

And as you can see in the photograph above, this time around, Ms Castro has been joined at the event by none other than Ricardo Alarcon, the head of the rubberstamp Cuban parliament, an old ally of Fidel Castro and still among the top dozen bosses of the decrepit Communist Party.

Needless to say, the foreign media was there in force to record this "unprecedented openness", as you can see from this Associated Press report.

Now, it'd be churlish to criticise Ms Castro's work on behalf of one of the most marginalised minorities in Cuba. But her ability to essentially whitewash the atrocious treatment of Cuban homosexuals over the past 50 years by the regime led by her uncle, her father and the likes of Ricardo Alarcon is, well, breath-taking.

However, it's good to see that while Ms Castro seems to suffer from selective amnesia, some others do not.

The Spanish daily El Periodico has published an article about the celebrations in Havana in which the journalist speaks to a number of homosexuals who survived the worst of the Castro brothers' homophobic repression.

One of these is identified as Lila, a 40 year old artistic director who says her treatment by the regime was in fact quite common for most homosexuals during the 1960s, 1970s and as last as the mid 1980s.

"I was thrown out of university, I was dismissed from several jobs, I suffered discrimination, including discrimination by members of my own family, and then [the regime] accused me of being abnormal, sick ... and a counter-revolutionary," she says.

"But I am still here, while the vast majority of those who tried to wipe me out are now living in the United States."

Photo: Javier Galeano, AP