Cuba: For a Census in Which All Unions Count  · Global Voices
Mariana Valdés

In the last few months, the following slogan has accompanied the preparation process for the National Census of People and Households: “From September 15 to September 24, in Cuba we count everyone.”
Since the Census will be carried out soon, activism on blogs and social networks has intensified, particularly after a supposed change in the instruction manual for survey distributors came to light. Certain crossed out lines have made bloggers and activists in favor of sexual diversity believe that same-sex unions were originally going to be included, but now the question revolves around why they were eliminated.
Maykel González, from El Nictálope [es], asks:
Adaptations of the official logo for the Census for People and Households in Cuba. Photo taken from El Nictálope under CC license.
¿Por qué se abandonó el proyecto original? ¿Quién ordenó -persona o grupo- que se eliminara una pauta incluida por los propios especialistas de la ONEI? Lo que parecía una omisión ahora es discriminación. Afirmar que las parejas homosexuales no serían admitidas era anticuado; incluirlas, luego tacharlas, es discriminatorio. ¿Los responsables sabrán que obran contra la política del Estado?
In his blog, El Nictálope [es], Maykel González refers to the fact that the original manual contained the following phrase: “in this case same-sex couples are admitted, so long as they live in the same household per the Census.” A document that was subsequently circulated by the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) [es] included a list of corrections where they ordered the removal of the aforementioned phrase, to be substituted with “couples must be of different sexes.”
González considers the following [es]:
A la medianoche del 14 de septiembre oprimirán el botón y veremos el flashazo. Ya sabemos, sin embargo, que nos harán una foto desenfocada.
When there was still a year left before conducting the Census, Francisco Rodríguez, an activist for sexual rights known as Cuba's Paquito, commented [es] on his blog [es]:
Sería restrictivo, discriminatorio y —además— falso que las personas que conformamos parejas del mismo sexo apareciéramos como solteras o solteros, cuando en realidad vivimos en una unión de hecho o consensual, tal vez no por voluntad propia, sino por la carencia de cualquier otro tipo de vínculo jurídico posible.
According to Mariela Castro Espín, Director of the National Center for Sexual Education (CENESEX) said,
La respuesta de la ONEI ante una solicitud de esa institución al respecto (…) es hasta ahora realizar en algún momento una encuesta nacional más detallada que abarque una información de mayor amplitud sobre toda la diversidad sexual de la población cubana y sobre la base del principio de no invadir la privacidad de las personas.
During a recent encounter with Cuban State press executives, the ONEI director agreed with the blog “Paquito el de Cuba” [es] and took into account that the declaration, on behalf of transexual individuals, “is a very complicated issue to explain to the students who act as survey distributors.”
In this context, the Rainbow Project [es], which defines itself as “an independent, anti-Capitalist, Cuban LGBT collective,” has distributed a flyer via email and its blog to make the fight for sexual diversity in Cuban society known.
Rainbow Project banner. Republished with permission.
El adjunto lo puedes imprimir, usar, discutir, compartir, o reenviar a toda persona que creas puede ser discriminada por omisión en el próximo Censo 2012 o esté interesada en la lucha contra las discriminaciones.
Additionally, various members of the LGBT community on the island [es] and some international media sources [es] have echoed Paquito's recent proposal [es], which sets out the following:
According to  Fernando Rasvberg's blog, the BBC correspondent in Cuba:
Este 15 de septiembre, mi esposa –que es ciudadana cubana- pondrá la bandera del arco iris en el frente de nuestra casa, sumándose a los que quieren construir una nación en la que realmente todos los cubanos y las cubanas cuenten.