“We need to give them more news, inform them, give them records, posters, things, for them to finally see. We have to give the people... We have to get the news to the people. Because the social networks... Yes, the networks are very good too, but it’s us who use them, but there are thousands who do not have a mobile, thousands who do not know and see anything, do not see us. Common people do not see anything, they do not understand.”
“In my times, the word gay was not pronounced, it was not known at those times, it was kind of obscene... The word was faggot. So imagine what was it for a family to have a fag a part of it… My mother realized what I was like, but she supported me. They accepted me in my family. But there used to be discrimination inside of the families. Cousins… Yes, there were some who discriminated me. Imagine, in this country, to be a homosexual and a black one, was almost a crime.”
“There were many people washing with maguey, with ash, they ate fongo [a type of banana] with peel... Quilts as steaks, putting condoms instead of cheese, all that was experienced in this country. Did the people faint? Yes, yes, yes, here it happened. They killed young people for a couple of packages of cassava, for a couple of bananas. All that was seen here. How many people were killed throughout Cuba, for cassava, for bananas. They were stopping to kill them, I saw that too.”
“Because my childhood was… a childhood that I find very beautiful. Cuba was a country that shone. A country where there was no evil and malignancy that exists now. And I say malignancy because I have seen Cuba since triumphing the Revolution until nowadays.”
Tomás Núñez Magdariaga was born into a humble family on December 29, 1952, in Palma Soriano, province Santiago de Cuba. He is the fifth of seven brothers. His father died in an accident in 1963. Tomás, in 1968, fulfilled the obligatory Military Service, and at the age of 20, began to work. In 1976 he was imprisoned for 180 days and fined 360 pesos. His brother emigrated from Cuba through the Peruvian Embassy during a mass exodus of Cubans in 1980. Tomás, due to his homosexual orientation, suffered abuse both in his civic life and during his incarceration. The Cuban Revolution instilled hatred of homosexuals in Cuban society. Since 2012 he has been a part of the Cuban opposition, and in 2018, he took part in a 62-day hunger strike while in prison. He lives in Palma Soriano.
