The first time I met Inocensio was during the second day of our transect through Havana Vieja. We were interviewing residents and measuring their apartments in his building. Hundreds of years ago, his building had once been the home of the Cardinal who presided Havana. Today, like so much of Cuban architecture, it’s grandiose past had obviously come on hard time. As we came to the third story balcony, he was on the far side, mopping the tile floor. When he saw us starting to make our way across the crumbling balcony, he warned that we should walk next to the wall and not the railing.
Wearing his long golden hair back in a rag, make up, a shirt tied-off mid-torso, tight spandex shorts and a pair of old dancing slippers, Inocensio is the most flamboyantly gay man I’ve seen in Havana. Despite the difficulties that gays typically face in Cuba, Ino [as he likes to be called] was making no effort to hide who he was or put on a false front. I thought this was extremely interesting given what we’d heard and experienced from other more secretive homosexuals and those who walked the Malecon & La Rampa at night.
Ino didn’t elaborate too much on his past—we focused more on his present circumstances. I did learn that he’s not originally from Havana. He had grown up in Santiago de Cuba with his parents and eight siblings. In 1982, at the age of fifteen, he came to Havana after an argument with his father over his choice of lifestyles became physical and was kicked out of the house. Since that time, he’s not turned his back on his family and still maintains a loving relationship with them, visiting and phoning frequently.
While the housing situation is tight in Havana, it is especially tight for those who are openly homosexual. One day while he was in the city, he came upon an elderly woman having trouble getting her groceries home and offered to help her. Having done this, he was asked by the family to stay and help take care of the elderly couple. So, after living in Vedado for several years, he came to live in Havana Vieja and has lived there for the past 18 years. He and other residents in the building are in the process of constructing a small apartment for him on the roof of the same building because he likes the neighborhood so much.
Ino’s occupational history is as dramatic as he is. He was educated as a pediatric nurse and, for a while, worked as one. However, his life’s true passion was dancing. One day, while involved in a children’s cultural event for the hospital, his dream came true. Alicia Alonso, primera ballerina of the Cuban Ballet Company was in attendance, saw him, took note of his “size and attitude” and asked that he receive dance instruction. And he did. First in classical ballet but later in salsa and other modern styles as well. He currently works with a small dance company performing 5 days a week. The 192 Cuban pesos [$7.25 USD] he makes in one month, however, have to be supplemented with money from outside Cuba and the new regulations introduced by the Bush Administration have him worried that things will only be getting tighter.
Ino is fortunate to have a network of friends outside of Cuba. The gay community, he says, is pretty disparate in Cuba—they don’t speak with one voice or have the unity as they do elsewhere in the world. It’s better to be single, he states. I wonder how much of that opinion is biased by the events of his life. For a long time, Ino had a long-term partner while living in Havana. However, in 1992, his partner committed suicide. In the note he left for Ino, his partner had admitted he’d had AIDS. Today, Ino remains HIV negative, but also seems to remain alone for the most part as well, and admits that he no longer does many of the things that he and his love had done together.
Like so many Cubans I have met, Inocensio loves Cuba. He’s also a diehard Communist and supporter of Fidel—to a degree I had not yet experienced. Despite this, he does believe some change is necessary within the government and would like to have the chance to better himself and his conditions by experiencing more of the world. He’d love to have the opportunity to dance in Spain or England.
Before we part ways for the afternoon and the end of the interview, he asks me—with a seriousness that took me by surprise—whether the U.S. would invade Cuba. The answer, of course, was ‘no,’ but I find it to be an extremely frustrating notion…
If it meant that Inocensio, that all Cubans, would be free to dance in England or to have any of the many opportunities we take for granted, it’d be hard to not support such a thing…
