Thread by @CoronaDLaurel

From an anarchist Cuban born and raised on the island till I was a teenager and who has her entire family there, whom I speak to every single week:

This is all empty words for 3 key reasons: a 🧵

https://twitter.com/emmakinema/status/1533325681039269888

1) housing: Cuba’s housing crisis is horrifying. People live with 3-4 generations under one roof. If you can’t move out of your nuclear family’s house, in what scenario are you creating your own “chosen family”. There’s no such thing as roommates in Cuba.

Housing is handed out along extremely patriarchal-nuclear family lines: no kids, no independent housing.

2) Private tourism rentals- despite the awkwardness of living with your whole nuclear family, people have gotten so used to it to the point that they’re willing to take it further and squeeze 2-3 related nuclear families (all multi generational) into a single house (we’re talking

a dozen people in a house meant for 4-5) so that they can rent out one family house in order to feed them all. This compounds the lack of freedom to move around for the individual Cuban, & makes it so that the only way to fix this is to collapse the private rentals market…

which would collapse the economy, so not happening.

3) #Homophobia: no matter what is claimed, Cuba is an INCREDIBLY homophobic place. There is nothing but mockery and condescension to the LGBTQ community from both the average Cuban and the government.

Moreover they STILL haven’t apologized for putting gay men in concentration camps during the AIDS crisis & abandoning them to DIE! The gov also targets dissenting artists more if they’re not straight.
Everything the Cuban government may try to do to appear progressive is a lie.

They don’t have the resources to allow any of this to actually take effect in society and that’s why they actually do it: they can make all these claims and look good but everything will stay the same as if it were 1977.