Transcript
Speaker: I'm Jane Williams. This is the Red Eye podcast produced at the studios of Vancouver Cooperative Radio. In our episode today, I talk with journalist Owen Schock about the New Families Code in Cuba that enshrines full legal equality for women, children and LGBTQ plus people. In September, Cuban citizens at home and abroad cast their ballots in a referendum on the country's New Families Code.
Speaker: The code passed with the support of two thirds of the voters, expanding legal rights for women, children and LGBTQ people. The new code was drawn up with public input and has been described as one of the most progressive pieces of social policy in the world. Owen Chalk is a writer based in Winnipeg. He was in Cuba this spring and he joins me today to talk about the new Families Code. Hello. Hello. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker: It's a pleasure to have you here. Now, there's so much in this new code. It's hard to know where to begin. Maybe a good place to start is with LGBTQ people because there was widespread discrimination in Cuba for many years. What does the new code say about gender and sexual orientation?
Speaker: Yeah, so as you say, this is a very long, a very extensive code. It's 11 titles in total, almost 500 articles. And contained within this code are some very important social and economic guarantees, specifically equal marriage and adoption rights, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, you know, have parental rights that can be shared among extended and quote unquote, non -traditional family structures. And that could include, for example, grandparents. So in Cuba, a lot of like,
Speaker: Different generations of families live within the same house, so now grandparents can have equal parental rights. That could also include multi -parental family structures, as in more than two parents, in some kind of non -traditional relationship. We have the extension of labor rights to those who care full -time for children, seniors, or people with disabilities.
Speaker: what you might call, quote unquote, home work, which is often performed by women in a lot of societies. And just generally what this code does is it redefines the family as a much more open and fluid union of individuals in contrast to the more rigid understandings of gender roles, the role of children in the family, the role of fathers and mothers put forward by more socially conservative people and institutions. When you were in Cuba this past spring, you met with Ramón Silverio,
Speaker: founder of a famous LGBTQ Center in Santa Clara. What did he say about how much things have changed for queer folks in Cuba?
Speaker: Yeah, so it was great to meet with Ramon Celerio. El Mahunje is really an amazing place. We got to go there a few times and it was just incredible to see all of the people of Santa Clara just going there, all different types of people, just having a great time. It was so affecting. And Ramon Celerio, who we got to speak to, talked about his own experience of the Cuban Revolution as a gay man. He grew up in a time when
Speaker: to be gay in Cuba was, it was quite a dangerous thing. And he ascribed that to the Soviet model of governments that Cuba adopted in those decades. He said that rather than challenging a lot of the deep rooted machismo culture that existed in Cuba at that time and was still present in the revolutionary state, it exacerbated it.
Speaker: And so he spoke about his struggle and his conflicts, his internal conflicts as a gay man and a communist and a revolutionary struggling to find his place in Cuba and in the revolution in this time. But he also spoke very highly of the current Cuban president Miguel Diaz -Canel, who in the 1990s was the first secretary of the province of Via Clara, in which Santa Clara is situated.
Speaker: And he talked about how Diaz -Canel would visit El Mahunhe and he would encourage parents to bring their children to the center, to increase their exposure to non -heteronormative relationships. And he was very excited about the family's code. And when we were in Cuba, as well as meeting with Ramon Silverio, we got to meet with representatives from the National Center for Sex Education, CenaSex.
Speaker: and representatives from the Women's Federation, all of whom spoke about the process by which this code was drafted, the public consultations, and there was a lot of excitement throughout the country about this new code. So what was the impetus for the new code? Yeah, so in 2019, Cuba did a very far -reaching constitutional referendum.
Speaker: And it was during the public consultations of that period that the Cuban officials realized that amongst the Cuban population, there was a much more progressive idea of marriage and family life than they had previously believed. And so after the constitutional referendum of 2019, the authorities began to work on a new family's code. And before it went to public consultation, this code went through 21 edits in the National Assembly in late 2021.
Speaker: And then in early 2022, the document was submitted to public input. And 6 .5 million people, about 76 % of the population participated in those consultations. There were almost 80 ,000 public meetings held to discuss the Families Code.
Speaker: And these led to 119 revisions. And it was only in June that the final revised draft was approved by the National Assembly. And then the next step there was to submit the final draft to a public referendum. And this is the referendum where the Cuban people affirmed the document 67%. So it sounds like the impetus really came from the Cuban people rather than from the government.
Speaker: Yeah, so in a lot of systems in the Cuban one, especially, there is that disconnect between maybe what the individuals think on the ground level and then how that input filters up to the authorities. And that certainly existed within Cuba. It still exists to this day. And it was during the constitutional referendum process of 2019
Speaker: in which, importantly, the socialist character of the state was affirmed by the population. But at the same time, a lot of these contradictions started to become more visible. And one of the contradictions was the view of the population towards notions like marriage and family life and the current entrenched sort of legal definitions.
Speaker: And thankfully, what the government did was then move into a process of public consultation in order to address one of the areas that the constitutional referendum did not address, namely these ideas of marriage and family life. What kind of changes can women and children expect to see as a result of this new code? I think you touched on that earlier, but I wanted to ask you specifically about that.
Speaker: Yeah, so as I mentioned earlier, one of the changes that we see is the extension of labor rights to caregivers at home, which is something very important. We see the codification of a right to a family life without violence. And we see the codification of domestic violence penalties and the outlying of corporal punishment. Another thing that is important, another important change is that the code promotes the equal sharing of domestic responsibilities amongst all members of the household.
Speaker: and that parents have a, quote unquote, responsibility for the children rather than a custody over them. And so one of the important elements of this code is recognizing the dignity and integrity of children and adolescents within the family. Did people seem to think that, just thinking about promoting equal sharing of domestic responsibilities, that's a pretty hard thing to legislate.
Speaker: It is and one of the things that we see with this code is on the one hand the legislation element of it and then on the other hand the more social element of it.
Speaker: And we see different kinds of familial affiliation granted legal recognition in the code. So there are four main ones, such as what we might call traditional procreation. We have adoption, assisted reproduction, and finally bonds resulting from other social activities. And that's where
Speaker: the less rigidly defined parental structures get legal recognition. But as you say, it is difficult to legislate things like equal sharing of domestic responsibilities. That's something that is promoted more at the discursive or rhetorical level than actually legislated. Now, two thirds of the population voted for the new code, which means that a lot of Cubans opposed it. What were the grounds for that opposition?
Speaker: So the Catholic Church still actually has a pretty prominent position in Cuban life and they were very much opposed to this code. A lot of more conservative diaspora groups named some based in the United States also opposed the code.
Speaker: And we could just see that like different socially conservative views being aired amongst these people, amongst these institutions, a lot of the similar conflicts that we would see play out in Canada or the United States around issues like this. Within Cuba now, within the country itself, there is definitely a majority view that issues around LGBTQ plus rights need to be raised and need to be discussed and also that these rights need to be guaranteed.
Speaker: At the same time, we do, as you say, have these groups which are opposed to those things as we do elsewhere. But I think what's important with the family's code is that at the governmental level and then also at the public level through the referendum, there is now a very clear campaign to sort of sideline people who would be less inclined to accept these ways of life or more inclined to attack them and sort of erase them. We're seeing now a more public discussion and a more public recognition of these ways of life.
Speaker: So at the time when you were in Cuba in the spring and this family code was in process, news came from the United States that Roe v. Wade was going to be overturned by the Supreme Court. That must have been a very sharp contrast.
Speaker: Yeah, so when I was in Cuba, as you say, the news broke that Roe v. Wade was repealed. And our Cuban hosts were very concerned with the political developments going on in the United States. And we shared those concerns with them. And being there during the consultation process of the Families Code, it was really interesting seeing the contrast between the two. On the one hand, in Cuba, we had
Speaker: you know, millions and millions of people participating in editing and revising this code. And then in the United States, you have these unelected Supreme Court justices who can decide unilaterally to repeal fundamental human rights. And it was really just interesting to witness that contrast. And when we think about
Speaker: the idea of freedom and a lot of people saying that Cubans live in a totalitarian state in which there is less freedom than the United States or Canada. In this instance, I would say that the opposite was in fact true, that Cubans by being able to participate and have input into this process, demonstratively have more freedom in that instance, at least than people in the United States who had no say at all in the repealing of these fundamental rights.
Speaker: Did the people you spoke with seem hopeful that the principles outlined in the code would result in a change in their day -to -day lives? Yeah, I observed a lot of hope. I think everybody on our brigade did as well. There was certainly an idea that this code represented a very important step as the 2019 constitutional referendum did.
Speaker: Because within Cuban society, I observed personally a lot of pro -revolutionary sentiment, and at the same time, a recognition of the shortcomings of the revolution. And certainly around social rights, around LGBTQ plus rights, this had not been addressed by the revolution in any meaningful way until sort of the early 2000s.
Speaker: We saw that with Mariela Castro as the head of Senna sex leading the reforms to introduce free gender transition, for instance, within Cuba before so many countries in the hemisphere did. And so what we saw with the family's code within Cuba was that this represented the rectification of something in which an area in which the Cuban revolution really made a lot of mistakes. Well, it was really good to talk with you today.
Speaker: Great, thanks again for inviting me. I've been speaking with Owen Schock, a writer based in Winnipeg. You can read his recent article about Cuba's family's code in Canadian Dimension Online. The Red Eye podcast is produced at the studios of Vancouver Co -op Radio. You can support us by supporting Co -op Radio. Go to coopradio .org and click on the donate button. Independent media relies on the support of people like you.
