Camadas do preconceito ou o quimérico resgate da virilidade:

um estudo sobre a política de repressão aos homossexuais no contexto da Revolução Cubana

Abstract

This article analyzes in correspondence and autobiographical writings by intellectual Reinaldo Arenas the institutionalized persecution and gender relations in the Cuban Revolution. In this context of great repression of the practices considered adverse to the State's determinations countless individuals were persecuted for the performance of femininity or for not adapting to revolutionary standards. The investigation of Arenas' voluntary and involuntary accounts demonstrates that in addition to reflecting the Cubans' attachment to traditional moral values of sexuality the persecution was also sustained by a fanciful idea of masculinity, intensified by the “new man” ideology. The rigid polarization culminated in repressions against homosexuals, but it also affected heterosexual men and women.