1 “The Law Can’t Change What People Won’t Rid of Their Minds”: The Work of Winning the Code of the Families in Cuba
alithia zamantakis, Ph.D.
Image 1. May Day Brigade 2023 with President Miguel Diaz Canal.
For 10 days, I was afforded the incredible opportunity to visit the socialist country of Cuba as part of a May Day Brigade organized by the International People’s Assembly–a coalition of leftist movements, parties, and organizations across the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Cuba has long been a lighthouse to people fighting for a new system here in the U.S.–one in which working and oppressed people are in power and are no longer exploited and repressed by those currently in power. Assata Shakur, a Black Panther and revolutionary from the U.S., fled to Cuba and received asylum after being arrested on false accusations of “murdering a police officer” (Shakur, 1987). Shakur’s comrade, Angela Davis–professor and Black Panther–said of Cuba, “I saw with my own eyes how Black people, Brown people, and white people have reached the point where they can work in harmony” after her trip to the country.
Operating in tandem with the Federación de Mujeres Cubanas (Cuban Federation of Women; FMC) the Cuban government established free infant daycare centers following the 1959 revolution, mandated paid maternity and paternity leave, and created the legal obligation for cisgender heterosexual men to share in housework and child rearing responsibilities within the family (Hinze, 2007). Within six years of the revolution, full access to free abortion was institutionalized, alongside guaranteed access to free contraceptives, condoms, and sex education for all (Walsh, 2022). CENESEX (el Centro Nacional de Educación Sexual; National Center for Sex Education), along with the Cuban government, provides free consultation to individuals experiencing homophobia and transphobia at work and in their families. Counselors, government officials, or labor directors are then sent to work with the individuals perpetuating harm to aid them in unlearning oppressive behaviors and ideology and to learn how to support and respect LGBTQ individuals (Castro, 2014). The Cuban people refer to ongoing, state-mandated efforts to undo residual effects of sexism stemming from capitalism and colonialism as “the revolution within the revolution” (Chase, 2015).
Traveling to Cuba, I was able to learn more about the ongoing work of the Cuban people to pave the way for a society in which all are respected and valued and none are denied equal access to the opportunities afforded others. One of the major ways this is taking place today is through the Codigo Nuevo de las Families (The Code of the Families). While in Cuba, I was afforded the ability to speak with numerous organizers, officials, and everyday people. On one of the first days, we listened to a panel of speakers, including an organizer for lesbian and bisexual women with CENESEX, an organizer with La Red Barrial de Los Afrodescendientes (The Neighborhood Network of Afrodescendents), and a lawyer who aided the passage of the Code of the Families. They explained that the passage of new legislation was never the end goal. As the first organizer with CENESEX explained,
La ley no puede cambiar lo que no se desharán de sus mentes.
The law cannot change what people won’t rid of their minds, so we have to organize political education.
Image 2. Izett Sama Hernandez, the MLK Memorial Center of Cuba
The process of moving toward the passage of the New Code of the Families was “a process of cultural transformation in regard to how we perceive social relations.” The New Code of the Families was not simply a new law passed but involved lengthy discussion and participation on the part of all people across the entire country. Just as the passage of a new constitution in 2019 involved thousands of conversations, consultations, revisions, and suggestions, so too did the Code of the Families (M, 2019). The code makes it possible for all, whether queer or heterosexual, single or coupled, to adopt children. The code legalizes surrogacy, so long as it is unpaid and consensual. The code guarantees the right to marriage for same-sex and same-gender couples, and it guarantees the right to familial relations with grandchildren for grandparents (Tucker, 2022). Referred to as the Code of the Families (and later the Code of Affection), the term “families” was specifically chosen over the term “family,” as the code recognizes that family is whatever we say it is. Family includes chosen and biological families. It includes those we care for and whom we love. As President Miguel Diaz Canal told us:
El Código de Las Familias reconoce la diversidad de la familia. Todos tenemos tipos diferentes de familia.
The Code of the Families recognizes the diversity of family. We all have different types of family.
Ultimately over 6 million voted in the election of the New Code of the Families (74% of all eligible voters). Out of these, 66.89% voted in favor. Prior to its passage, lawyers, organizers, and the Cuban government had thousands of consultations and meetings with people in their workplaces, unions, mass organizations, and neighborhoods. Hundreds of revisions, suggestions, and hours of debate and conversation took place as a process of popular education. Two years of work were involved in these conversations. They met with members of la Red Barrial de Afrodescendientes, members of CENESEX, unions, Evangelical Christian churches, and more. They met individuals where they were politically, but they did not leave them there. They provided popular education, a method of empowering education aimed at political struggle and social transformation in the vein of Brazilian socialist educator, Paulo Freire. The lawyer on the human rights panel who spoke to us about her work with organizing for the code explained:
Realmente, lograr un referendo sería más fácil, porque la asamblea nacional tiene el poder para aprobar las leyes. Pero también, la asamblea nacional con esta decisión acostó por todo este trabajo educativo de sensibilización la población, para incorporar realmente la gente LGBT.
Really, it would have been easier to pass a referendum, because the National Assembly has the power to just pass laws. But the National Assembly bet, with their decision, on the work of popular work to sensitize all people, to really incorporate LGBT people into society.
As stated at the start of this chapter, the decision to pass this code was not taken lightly. It was not a decision to just pass a law. It was a decision to transform the people. While, in the US, “cancel culture” and the division of those who are more “progressive” and those who are more “traditional or oppressive” abound in everyday life and social justice organizing, Cuban organizers saw the need to create unity. It was through unity that Cuba won its revolution, and it is through unity that Cuba continues its revolutionary process of guaranteeing the right to life free of exploitation, full participation in society, and equality of opportunity.
During my time in Cuba, one of our brigade members asked, “How do we create unity? How do we come together to fight for a better future?” Izett Sama Hernandez, a leader within el Centro Memorial de Martin Luther King, Jr. (the MLK Memorial Center), responded:
Fragmentamos mucho la lucha…pero si nos consumimos en nuestra propia lucha, no llegaremos al horizonte de la justicia. Tenemos que construir un ser militante. La lucha es por la aspiración de toda la sociedad.
We fragment ourselves a lot in the fight, but if we consume ourselves in our own singular fights, we won’t arrive at the horizon of justice. We have to build a militant self. The fight is for the aspirations of all. 
Image 3
Note: All images from author’s personal photo collection. Copyright 2023 by alithia zamantakis. Reprinted with permission.
In fighting for the New Code of the Families, building bridges across differences did not mean subsuming individuality within the larger collective. It meant coming together to understand who each other is so that we can move forward together, building solidarity through joint struggle. The popular education involved in passing this new code is part of how we build unity, as well. In ending, I lay out some of the principles of popular education to use in your own work as you move forward in building a just future for all of us.
Popular education acknowledges that all education is political. We have to choose to provide an education that is grounded in the needs and realities of working and oppressed peoples. Through the development of spaces of learning in which we can bring our whole selves and in which the divide between “teacher” and “student” and “you” and “I” is broken down, we are able to engage in a transformative and critical process of learning. Popular education combines theory and action (praxis), facilitating learning not for education’s sake but in order to act and grow (Highlander Research and Education Center, 2021). Rather than through lectures, popular education occurs through dialogue that acknowledges we all have different starting points of knowledge and awareness (Zuñiga, 2018). We all, though, have things we know and can share with others. With popular education as a methodology, we can jointly analyze the context of a situation, develop strategies for how to move forward, engage in work, reflect, and continue to build forward. “Linking our action to a deep understanding of social reality creates a specific relation between theory and practice, between thinking and acting. This in essence, is praxis. Engaging in concrete analysis creates a relation of integrated thought and action, enabled by a deep theoretic understanding of the factors at hand” (Popular Education Project, 2018). Using popular education, we can enable a process of deeper, more critical learning in which we are guided and facilitated toward organizing collectively for social change (Wiggins and Rios, 2007). As we do so, we should ask ourselves:
What are our goals?
What is the purpose of our action(s)?
What is possible for us to do today to make it possible tomorrow to do something else?
How can we get from a to b?
Who do we need to win over to join us in fighting for our goals?
What skills do we have and what do we lack? Can we learn the skills we are lacking or do we need others to help?
This can provide us a starting point for moving forward to building the type of future in which people of all genders and sexualities and all oppressed people, are respected, valued, and in power here in the U.S. as they are in Cuba. We are in a time pregnant with the possibility of change, and as we learn from the methods of other organizers across the world and here in the U.S., we can develop our own strategies and tactics to move forward and build a revolutionary process of change together.
¡Hasta la victoria siempre!
Onward to victory always!
References
Castro, M. (2014). Cuba: ‘For families free of homophobia.’ Liberation School. https://www.liberationschool.org/cuba-for-families-free-of-homophobia/.
Chase, M. (2015). Revolution within the revolution: Women and gender politics in Cuba, 1952-1962. Durham, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
The Highlander Research and Education Center. (2021). Popular education. https://highlandercenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/methodologies-EN-color-1.pdf.
Hinze, M. (2007). The revolutionary role of women in Cuba. Liberation School. https://www.liberationschool.org/07-03-01-the-revolutionary-role-women-in-html/.
M, A. R. (2019). Cubans overwhelmingly vote in favor of the new constitution. People’s Dispatch. https://peoplesdispatch.org/2019/02/26/cubans-overwhelmingly-vote-in-favor-of-the-new-constitution/.
Popular Education Project. (2018). How to do a concrete analysis of context. The People’s Forum. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5ed80a2018b1370c9a4f48a9/t/5f640ce50a7cd15fbfae1d0c/1600392421381/Conj+Analysis+4.0_PEP.pdf.
Shakur, A. (1987). Assata. London, UK: Zed Books Ltd.
Tucker, R. (2022). Supermajority of Cubans vote for revolutionary ‘Families Code’. Liberation News. https://www.liberationnews.org/supermajority-of-cubans-vote-for-revolutionary-families-code/.
Walsh, C. (2022). Abortion in Cuba vs. US shows which country is truly democratic. Massachusetts Peace Action (MAPA). https://masspeaceaction.org/abortion-in-cuba-vs-us-shows-which-country-is-truly-democratic/.
Wiggins, N. & Rios, T. (2007). An introduction to popular education. Community Capacitation Center. https://ciswh.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Intro-to-Popular-Education.pdf.
Zuñiga, R. E. (2018). La educación popular, apuesta política por la transformación de la realidad. El Centro MLK. https://cmlk.org/la-educacion-popular-apuesta-politica-por-la-trans
