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Conclusion
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177 This book begins and ends with highly visible forms of gender transgression associated with Cuban male homosexuality. As stated earlier, the locas who came to the United States as part of the Mariel boatlift were the original inspiration for this project. Likewise, the locas whom I discuss in chapter 8 were important cultural interlocutors that complicated my research questions and shaped my understanding of Cuban American gay culture. Whereas I hope to center these highly visible Cuban American gay social actors, my project also highlights the erasure and reinvention of gender transgressions. My goal is to complicate our analysis of the politics of visibility as it relates to racialized and queer cultures. As I document throughout this manuscript, visibility played a key role in both the control of and empowerment of Cuban homosexual male populations. In Cuba before the Mariel boatlift, Cuban state authorities identified visible (i.e., gender-transgressive) male homosexuality as a threat to the state, and men who embodied certain visible characteristics associated with effeminate male homosexuality faced persecution. I use the term state gaze to discuss how male homosexuality was identified and subject to state control precisely through gendered characteristics believed to be socially visible. Ironically, the Cuban state’s persecution made homosexuality more visible to a wider national and international public. When the 1980 Mariel boatlift occurred, the Cuban state actively encouraged negatively valued populations, among them “obvious” homosexuals , to emigrate. Some in this generation imagined the United States to be a land of unrestrained gay freedom. In the United States during the 1970s, gay identity politics were developing that were strongly invested in a particular notion of visibility. The logic of gay visibility CONCLUSION 178 conclusion was that group rights could be ensured only through group recognition and group recognition could be achieved only through an explicit and visible articulation of group identity. A backlash against this politics ignited in South Florida, with the help of Anita Bryant, in the late 1970s. The audacity of gay visibility shocked Bryant and her followers who could tolerate closeted homosexuals exhibiting appropriate shame but who were unwilling to accept this new generation of gay activists. For many in the Mariel generation, the gay freedom they expected to encounter in the United States was one that allowed (and perhaps even celebrated) the expressions of homosexuality that had been restricted in Cuba. For the Mariel generation of locas, a strategy of hypervisible gender transgressions was an explicit challenge to the state gaze that had structured their lives prior to migration. If in Cuba they had to be very careful not to exhibit gender transgressions associated with male homosexuality, in the United States they expected to flaunt them. And, many flaunted, celebrated, and expressed their identities in ways that were culturally relevant to them, but they were entering a local area that was far from embracing the gay visibility that many of them embodied . In addition, these expressions of gay visibility did not neatly align with the politics of U.S.-style gay activists. While “coming out” and being proud were key elements of U.S.-style gay activism, the success of this movement also tended to center masculine men and marginalize the kinds of gender transgressions seen in many of the Mariel generation. As Jesse Monteagudo’s comments in chapter 2 suggest , even gay Latino activists in the United States did not see the visibility politics of gender transgression as serious, or as “politics” at all. The Mariel gay generation was visible not only in terms of gender and sexuality. They were also a racialized, stigmatized, first-generation immigrant population. For these reasons, they were both more visible and more eagerly erased. This generation’s poverty and detention made them more visible. From the broken sponsorship cases I document in chapter 3 that captured the media spotlight to the young gendertransgressive immigrants who lived in small apartments in what was to become South Beach, this generation seemed visible in ways that challenged gay communities and Cuban American communities that had previously lived in the Miami area. Accounts from the post-1980 period indicate that previous gay residents did not fully appreciate the gay expressions of the Mariel generation. Cuban Americans who had been living in Miami prior to 1980 and cherished their visibility as [35.175.232.163] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 14:09 GMT) conclusion 179 “Golden Exiles” worried that the negative visibility that came with Mariel would shatter their placement in the U...