The surgery of change of sex opens new era for Cuban transsexuals
The surgeries of change of sex, announced by Mariela Castro, daughter of the provisional president of Cuba, Raul Castro, open a new one was for the Cuban transsexuals, on those who weigh decades of prejudices and marginalization.
The resolution of the ministry of Health (Minsap) that gives green light to those surgeries “practically is approved”, said Mariela, after inaugurating IV the Congress of Education, Direction and Sexual Therapy, that join until the next Thursday in the Palace of the Conventions. To obtain a “attention integrated to the transsexuals”, including the surgeries “when the person requires it or wishes it”, has been one of the goals of the National Center of Educación Sexual (CENESEX), who organizes the Congress and directs Mariela from her creation, in 1989.
“We are advancing” and this congress allows “that we are centered in the tasks that we considered like most important”, it added to the sexlogist and pedalogist, of 44 years. Always foresighted in the battle that it initiated 19 years ago in favor of the sexual diversity, Mariela advanced that managements are made to send to Belgium to Cuban surgeons so that they train in the surgery. “It is not a problem of whim, but humanitarian”, said, on the operation of “reassignment of sex”.
The Commission of Attention to People Transsexuals - created in 2005 - has analyzed 100 cases, among them 28 already diagnosed, of who single one was put under the surgery in 1988, after which the procedure by the controversy stopped that it generated. Created by initiative of the mother of Mariela, the deceased president of the Federation of Cuban Women, Vilma Espín, the CENESEX is defined as an educational, investigativa and welfare institution in the area of the human sexuality, that makes its work “with an integral approach”.
A Law of Identity of Sort, still pending took to the table of the Parliament in 2006 of approval, and asked for the revision of the Cuban Code of Family for “introducing aspects to him related to the transexualidad”. In spite of counting on “the understanding and the support” of the Communist Party of Cuba, that also has been directing for almost 18 months Raul, in substitution of its brother Fidel, Mariela recognizes to have before himself a difficult task. “It is necessary to break prejudices that went away constructing throughout history”, it warned.
In Cuba, a society that such Cuban considers very machista, weighs decades of prejudices and marginalization of the homosexuals - and transsexuals, although then the term was not handled, that in the decade of the 60 even was committed of unavoidable way in collective farms. “They were excesses that were committed”, but “most important it is than at the moment we are speaking of which it happened”, it expressed, when emphasizing that “it is satisfied with which we are doing” for “avoiding that they are repeated”. “The fundamental thing is not to transgress the customs and to educate”, limited.
A transsexual, who attends the congress and she did not want to reveal his identity, declared to the AFP that hopes with “anxiety” to be put under the surgery, a “possibility that will change the life to many of its colleagues”. “You do not change in a day the mind of people, but I believe that substantial changes in our situation have taken place, although clear that in the long term”, it added the young person.
Source: AFP News
