"Obvious Gays" and the State Gaze: Cuban Gay Visibility and U.S. Immigration Policy during the 1980 Mariel Boatlift
On the day Armando went to the police station to ask for permission to leave Cuba, he wore the gayest outfit he could find.1 Having been dissuaded from a career in teaching because he was too "obvious," Armando had experienced firsthand the ways in which a visible gay man's life might be limited in Cuba. Although spared the more intense forms of repression faced by others of his generation, Armando had decided to find out if the tumultuous events in Cuba during the summer of 1980—events that would come to be known as the Mariel boatlift—would really lead to the promised authorization to leave the country.
During our interview almost twenty years later, Armando explained how he had purposefully picked out a flowery shirt and a little chain that fit snugly around his neck ("una cadenita bien pegadita al cuello") for his interview with the Cuban police officials who would decide whether he should receive an exit permit. In 1980 Cuba these fashion choices were seen as gender transgressive, so Armando hoped they would confirm to the police officers that he was a counterrevolutionary homosexual and, therefore, that he would be permitted, if not encouraged, to leave the country. Before this day he had thought his homosexuality was "obvious," but for this important interview with Cuban officials he did not rely on the [End Page 482] everyday visibility of his homosexuality: he made sure to perform the loca, the gender-transgressive effeminate homosexual man. Armando successfully passed the test. He was identified as socially undesirable, homosexual escoria (scum) by the Cuban state—negative labels that facilitated his exit from the country. At age twenty-six Armando crossed the Florida Straits on a ship named the Spirit of Ecstasy.
Armando's own ecstasy, however, soon gave way to confusion and instability. He described a chaotic scene in Florida. Mariel entrants were required to have a sponsor (either a family member or a volunteer) in order to be released from state custody. Although Armando had an uncle who was willing to sponsor him, a miscommunication kept him from making contact with that uncle when he arrived in Florida. Consequently, like many Mariel entrants, he was taken to Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, one of several resettlement camps around the country. Although he spent two months there, he recounts that it felt more like two centuries. He does not remember whether he was asked by camp officials about his sexuality. On 4 July 1980, after successfully being connected with his uncle, Armando left Fort Chaffee.
Armando's convincing performance of the ostentatious homosexual facilitated his exit from Cuba, but it was unclear how that same kind of performance might affect his entry into the United States. The clarity with which he recalls his exit interview with Cuban police contrasts sharply with his recollection of how (and if) sexuality was considered in his processing by U.S. authorities. This contrast could be simply explained by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service's (INS) lack of interest in immigrant sexuality, yet the historical record suggests that the INS was concerned rather than apathetic about such matters. Instead, as this article demonstrates, the U.S. government—from national, state, and local politicians to INS officials and local law enforcement—demonstrated a strong yet inconsistently focused interest in the sexuality of Mariel immigrants.
In the following article, I examine the state's "gaze" in relation to male homosexuals on both sides of the Florida Straits. I use the term gaze both to describe the methods used by the state to identify sexual populations as well as to highlight the ways in which these identification systems intersected with the...
