Grupo OREMI: Black Lesbians and the Struggle for Safe Social Space in Havana

Abstract

Since 2003, mainstream American newspapers such as the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times have published featured pieces with titles such as “The Sexual Revolution in Contemporary Cuba.” The main argument of these pieces is that things have gotten so much better for Cuba's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) citizens that one simply has to walk through central Havana to see the large numbers of gays, men who have sex with men, and trasvestis (gay men who pass as women). Such public displays of nonheteronormativity may be interpreted as the successful progression of Cuba's state-led “sexual revolution,” in which sexual citizenship has been expanded to include Cuba's sexual minorities. Drawing on ethnographic, archival, and interview data collected between 1998 and 2006, this essay analyzes the social activism undertaken by the Havana-based, lesbian-run organization called OREMI, whose key founding members are women of African descent. It asks why the Cuban state has been unable to include all female-born citizens in Cuba's sexual revolution, instead allowing lesbians to live in a particularly intense form of social isolation.