From The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/16/world/americas/a-transgender-elected-official-reflects-an-evolving-cuba.html
By VICTORIA BURNETT
Published: March 15, 2013
Ms. Hernández, 48, who identifies as a woman and goes by Adela, would sooner cut a lazy bureaucrat to size with her sharp tongue than chop sugar cane with a machete. And you would more likely catch her hauling water to her house in platform heels than trudging the streets in fatigues and work boots.
So Ms. Hernández was more than a little tickled when she became the first transgender person to be elected to public office in Cuba, a country whose government once viewed homosexuality as a dangerous aberration and, in the 1960s, packed gay men off to labor camps.
“It’s a huge achievement,” said Ms. Hernández, referring to her election in November to the municipal council in this coastal town where she represents the 2,000 or so residents of her destitute neighborhood. She raised her painted eyebrows, saying, “For a country that has been so homophobic to change so dramatically — it’s unheard of.”
As modest as Ms. Hernández’s official new powers are, her ascendance to the first rung of Cuba’s political ladder is a measure of how attitudes have evolved here, especially in the past decade, as the Cuban leadership gradually moved away from old prejudices, the Internet created new connections among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and Raúl Castro’s daughter, Mariela Castro Espín, took up their cause.
“Times have changed,” said Alberto Hernández, 53, a farmer who lives near Ms. Hernández, but is no relation. He nominated her because she was blunt and hard-working, he said, adding, “Her sexuality is her business.”
Continue reading at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/16/world/americas/a-transgender-elected-official-reflects-an-evolving-cuba.html
