Havana, Cuba – These are some of the realities that Mrs. Mariela Castro hides, leaving the LGBT community in absolute deprivation of all rights.
A number of night clubs that hosted parties for the LGBT community have been closed in the past few days. To cite some examples:
– Due to a general restoration, ’El Café Cantante,’ took over the space of ’Divino’ leaving it without its usual site.
– The public club ’José A. Echeverría’ has a number of regulations, which, in the first place, forced the ’Ibiza Project’ to change its name, and eventually it was moved to ’El Colmado’ in the municipality of Centro Habana, a site in precarious conditions for the activities of the LGBT community.
Also, ’La Mamba,’ which operates at this same location (El Colmado) on Fridays is looking for a new space to continue organizing these kinds of parties.
– Las Vegas Cabaret is in the process of analyzing its role since it had always been a place for the elite in the capital, and it has been transformed like the palace of impersonations in the city, with real international impact.
In regards to ’meeting sites’:
– The very well known tendedera, located across from the Capitol, in Old Havana, has been under restoration along with the emblematic headquarters of former Government, with a great concentration of policemen and celebrities.
– Central Park, on the side of the movie theater ’Pairet,’ young people walking by are required to show their IDs, simply because they are in a tourist area and may be considered potential hookers or hustlers in to the eyes of the policemen.
– Fraternity Park, surrounded by bus stops, now has the highest level of outdoor lighting in the capital.
– Cafeteria Infanta.cu, also known as the Bin Bon, is actually the only place from which the authorities have not been able to eliminate the presence of the LGBT community. However, they are vulnerable to abuses from the authorities on a daily basis.
In other words, we are going back to the era of prohibition. The problem lies in that many of the night clubs had stopped throwing “de Cheo” (boring) parties and had specialized in LGBT community parties only. The ’Karachy’ is closed, as well as ’Asia’ in La Víbora.
There are still a number of open locations.
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Parties are currently shifting locations and are not taking place in their usual spaces.
Like we said before, the main night clubs in this situation are:
Ibiza, La Mamba, Divino, and El Olimpo.
November 9 2012
