“Well, in 2011, they completely cancelled all my projects, the 2011 was a quite difficult year for me in this sense because I kept fighting, they threatened me, even in everything outside, investigations were made about my life, about my relationship with possible foreigners, it was a disaster, a storm. Even for having friends who came to visit me and go out... They already wanted to apply to me that shitty and false law of doing tourism. That was embarrassing.”
So, Lázaro, are you one of the activists who thinks that CENESEX is an institution created as a smokescreen? “Well, in the case of CENESEX, which is, the first thing we have to know is in what sense. If we are referring to the meaning of the CENESEX project for the LGBT community, this was born long after CENESEX already existed as an institution, then yes. CENESEX, I am going to say that its initial objective is a sex education centre that has offered and created a lot of training in sex education, well, its project for the LGBT community is a very very fake project. I am going to comment that I even know person or a trans who has gone through the process of the sex change operation in Cuba and it has not been so easy, nor has it been as free as it is sold today, it is a lot of manipulation in this sense, there is a lot of cynicism and a background that must be understood by the voice of those who have lived it, by those of the few who have experienced it. Because at the beginning, part of this money was used for Mariela [Castro] to send to Belgium to train a medical unit in what was the sex change.”
“We have to understand that there is a background in Cuba, in Cuban society, which is a background marked by homophobia within the same society, which marks you a little, marks your own existence a little. And to be a teenager who wants to live his life in the best possible way, in the calmest way possible, to be a homosexual teenager who feels like expressing himself, wanting to feel free, wanting to be liberated, that people support you, understand what are you like, and be in this within this youth, within this environment of today's Cuban adolescence that comes with it, [with] that background that does not understand or that perhaps it does not accept or that for them to be homosexual is to be different that is what must be rejected, it is very difficult, it is very complicated. It is lived in a very difficult way because you have to try to overcome yourself, try to be yourself, try to achieve your goals, try to achieve your wills, and at the same time you face to the society that is rejecting you, you face to the very youth around you, that wants to trample you continuously, that wants to humiliate you continuously, that wants to criticize you, because it is you continuously... That is quite complicated.”
Lázaro Mireles was born in 1983 in Matanzas, Cuba. His family had a dairy near Matanzas. Since his family did not accept his homosexual orientation, at the age of 16, he left home to become independent and live a quieter life. In Cuba, he dedicated himself to activism and worked with the LGBTQ community. As a gay man, he faced difficulties and harassment. In 2012, he obtained a visa for Germany and left Cuba with the intention of living abroad. After four years in Germany, he decided to move to Spain due to the complicated German immigration process. In Spain, he finally got his asylum residency. He is dedicated to political activism and works with the LGBTQ community. On January 26, 2019, he participated in a worldwide event, “March of the Forbidden,” in Madrid. Together with other Cubans in Madrid, he created a worldwide movement called “Actions for Democracy.” He resides in Madrid and is highly active in the Cuban community.
