Current:Home > MarketsCuba’s first transgender athlete shows the progress and challenges faced by LGBTQ people -前500条预览:
Cuba’s first transgender athlete shows the progress and challenges faced by LGBTQ people
View
Date:2025-04-17 14:47:48
HAVANA (AP) — Ely Malik Reyes stepped onto the cordless platform and began delivering powerful punches and spectacular flying kicks against his combatant. He lost the fight, but won a major victory that day by becoming the first transgender athlete to officially compete in a Cuban sports league.
Reyes, a 26-year-old transgender man, competed for the first time in the male 60/65-kilogram (132/143-pound) category of sanda, a demanding contact sport that blends martial arts like kung fu with kickboxing.
The June 1 milestone marked the latest step toward inclusion in Cuba, one of Latin America’s most progressive countries when it comes to LGBTQ rights. Yet, Reyes himself acknowledges having to overcome challenges, including the lack of medications, a law that sets conditions to change his gender on his ID and the “suspicious looks” he sometimes gets from people in the street.
“Educating society doesn’t happen in two days,” he said.
Reyes, who lives with his girlfriend in a colorful house on the outskirts of Havana, supports himself by repairing air conditioners, as his sanda fights are unpaid. He has been on hormone therapy for two years, but says he does not want full genital reassignment surgery.
His transition has been far from easy.
It began over four years ago when he visited Cuba’s Center for Sexual Education and consulted with a psychologist. He then saw endocrinologists and underwent tests to obtain a “tarjetón,” a special card that allows Cubans to purchase medication at pharmacies, enabling him to get the hormones needed for his transition.
But as Cuba’s economic crisis deepened, medications became scarce so he had to rely on other people who brought testosterone from abroad. While not illegal, the practice can be very expensive. “I’m an athlete; I can’t neglect my hormone treatment. ... I have to stay on top of it,” he said.
Changing his identity in official documents posed yet another challenge. While Reyes was able to legally change his name last year, his ID card still displays an “F” for female. That is because Cuba’s current law requires full genital reassignment surgery for this change — something he does not want to do.
LGTBQ activists in Cuba say a solution could come soon through a new Civil Registry law currently being drafted in the National Assembly that would allow people to change their gender on their ID cards — or eliminate this requirement altogether.
The changes stem from Cuba’s 2019 constitution, which gave way to the 2022 Family Code that allowed same-sex couples to marry and adopt as well as surrogacy pregnancies among other rights. Though approved via referendum by a large majority, the measure faced opposition from evangelical groups and other conservative groups that disagreed with its provisions.
While Reyes’s ID still formally identifies him as female, sports authorities accepted his male status based on his hormone treatments, medical reports and self-identification. This allowed him to compete in the male category of the Cuban Fighters League.
“It’s something new; it’s a challenge that I have embraced with much love,” said Reyes’s coach, Frank Cazón Cárdenas, the president of Cuba’s sanda community who handled the athlete’s registration.
Cazón said he had to work on two fronts to make it happen: discussing Reyes with the other sanda male team members — and securing approval from the powerful Cuban Sports Institute, which ultimately authorized Reyes to participate in the male category.
Cuba’s LGBTQ community celebrated Reyes’s milestone, noting it was the result of a hard-fought battle.
“It was only a matter of time,” said Francisco “Paquito” Rodríguez Cruz, a well-known LGBTQ rights activist in Cuba, referring to the sports institute’s unprecedented greenlight for a transgender athlete to take part in an official competition. “It’s the logical consequence of what has been done in the last 15 or 20 years.”
“It’s obviously a cultural process of change that is still controversial,” Rodríguez said.
___
Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
veryGood! (57211)
Related
- At site of suspected mass killings, Syrians recall horrors, hope for answers
- Stories behind Day of the Dead
- Australia’s Albanese calls for free and unimpeded trade with China on his visit to Beijing
- 8 simple things you can do to protect yourself from getting scammed
- Scoot flight from Singapore to Wuhan turns back after 'technical issue' detected
- Beshear hopes abortion debate will help him win another term as governor in GOP-leaning Kentucky
- Virginia voters to decide Legislature’s political control, with abortion rights hotly contested
- Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Have Not Been Invited to King Charles III's 75th Birthday
- The company planning a successor to Concorde makes its first supersonic test
- Ohio is the lone state deciding an abortion-rights question Tuesday, providing hints for 2024 races
Ranking
- McConnell absent from Senate on Thursday as he recovers from fall in Capitol
- Customers at Bank of America, Wells Fargo and other banks grappling with deposit delays
- Michigan State men's basketball upset at home by James Madison in season opener
- Youngkin and NAACP spar over felony voting rights ahead of decisive Virginia elections
- Jamie Foxx gets stitches after a glass is thrown at him during dinner in Beverly Hills
- Job openings tumble in some industries, easing worker shortages. Others still struggle.
- Barbra Streisand details how her battle with stage fright dates back to experience in Funny Girl
- Michigan State men's basketball upset at home by James Madison in season opener
Recommendation
Trump suggestion that Egypt, Jordan absorb Palestinians from Gaza draws rejections, confusion
AP PHOTOS: Death, destruction and despair reigns a month into latest Israel-Gaza conflict
Can you make your bed every day? Company is offering $1000 if you can commit to the chore
Kelly Osbourne Pens Moving Birthday Message to Son Sidney After Magical First Year Together
A South Texas lawmaker’s 15
New Edition announces 2024 Las Vegas residency, teases new music: 'It makes sense'
Protests turn ugly as pressure mounts on Spain’s acting government for amnesty talks with Catalans
Shohei Ohtani among seven to get qualifying offers, 169 free agents hit the market