Sexual Revolutions in Cuba: Passion, Politics, and Memory

7 Silence and Taboo

seven Silence and Taboo This chapter explores two themes—silence and taboo—often associated with both sexuality and fieldwork. Oral historians, influenced in large part by psychoanalysis and literary theory, have argued that what remains unsaid in an interview is as important as that which is spoken.1 Silences also interest historians of sexuality, who grapple with how to identify sexual desires and acts that are unnamed in the historical record, whether because they were prohibited or pursued in secret in the past.2 “Taboo” is another term long linked to sexuality. The common anthropological definition of “taboo” is that which is ritually forbidden in a given society, whether particular acts—sexual or otherwise—or contact with certain people.3 Anthropological understandings of taboo draw on theories of pollution and the sacred, and are often associated with people in a state of liminality.4 The understanding of taboo in this chapter additionally draws on common usage in early twentieth-first-century Cuba. Our interview narrators frequently refer to certain topics as “taboo.”5 These include issues related to sexuality as well as more general topics. What these issues have in common is their relationship to revolutionary policy. Some (most notably male homosexuality and religion) involve acts or beliefs formerly prohibited and/or punished , that retain this sense of stigma. Others are problems (for example, racism , domestic violence, and the informal market) that, when mentioned, may embarrass a socialist society based on the principle of social and economic equality by challenging the moral legitimacy or practical functioning of the regime. Not only are certain topics perceived as taboo in contemporary Cuba, but the ways in which they are addressed also pose problems. When asked in early 2010 to identify the main taboo topics in contemporary Cuba—those which are subject to state censorship—a Cuban colleague in London identi- fied three: the health of Fidel Castro, failings in the health system, and prob- 192 silence and taboo lems with universal education.6 These issues are “taboo” because they call into question both the historical successes of the Revolution and the regime’s future. Similarly, the three topics analyzed in this chapter—HIV and AIDS, domestic and sexual violence, and interracial relationships—are not so much absent or silent in the interviews as perceived by narrators as hidden, forbidden , or difficult to express because they challenge widely accepted versions of revolutionary history. AIDS AIDS is not necessarily a taboo topic in itself. But it lies at the crossroads of topics perceived as taboo: crises in the provision of health care and education , and the history of institutionalized homophobia. Although health care is often hailed as one of the greatest successes of the Cuban Revolution, the revolutionary regime’s approach to the AIDS crisis was highly controversial. Following the first confirmed cases of HIV infection on the island in 1986, the Cuban government instigated a policy of compulsory HIV testing; those who tested positive were confined to sanatoria, and people who developed AIDS were hospitalized.7 Compulsory quarantine was lifted in 1993, but at the turn of the twenty-first century testing was still compulsory among certain groups,8 and people who tested positive for HIV had to spend some time in a sanatorium receiving instruction on how to live with the virus and to protect others from exposure. There is evidence that quarantine was relatively successful in minimizing levels of HIV infection and deaths from AIDS. In 2009 Cuba had the lowest HIV infection rate in the Caribbean, and death rates from AIDS-related illnesses were around 7 percent.9 But critics have condemned the quarantine system for (1) undermining sex education initiatives by creating the impression that HIV infection is not an issue for the general population; (2) reflecting the authoritarian nature of the Cuban political system, which restricts public debate about policy, stifles dissident voices, and prevents the formation of grassroots organizations; and (3) restricting the freedom of people with HIV and AIDS and increasing the stigma associated with them. In his important study of sex education, sexuality, and AIDS in Cuba, Marvin Leiner highlights the contradiction between the country’s generally outstanding achievements in education, on one hand, and the revolutionary government’s failure during the early years of the epidemic to develop a co- silence and taboo 193 herent AIDS education policy, on the other.10 AIDS education required...