The way he dealt with LGBTQ+ community is definitely a black mark. For what it's worth it literally snuck into one of the camps and saw how they were treated and shut the camps down iirc and took responsibility for it.
Fidel Castro stated categorically about the UMAP, “I can tell you for sure that there was prejudice against homosexuals.”
On the island, the Cuban National Union of Artists and Writers (UNEAC) reportedly protested treatment of homosexuals working in UMAP, prompting Fidel to check it out for himself.
A Cuban who worked in a UMAP, interviewed by Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal in 1970-1971, related that Fidel slipped into a UMAP brigade one night and lay down in one of the hammocks. The interviewee said: the UMAP guards would sometimes cut the hammock cords with their sabers. “When one guard raised his saber he found himself staring at Fidel; he almost dropped dead. Fidel is the man of the unexpected visits.” (“In Cuba”)
A youth described as a “young Marxist revolutionary” told Cardenal that 100 young males from the Communist Youth were sent to the UMAP to report back about how they were treated. “It was a highly secret operation. Not even their families knew of this plan. Afterward the boys told what had happened. And they put an end to the UMAP.”
The way he dealt with LGBTQ+ community is definitely a black mark. For what it's worth it literally snuck into one of the camps and saw how they were treated and shut the camps down iirc and took responsibility for it.
Do you have a link where I can read about him sneaking into one of the camps?
Fidel shut down the UMAP
Fidel Castro stated categorically about the UMAP, “I can tell you for sure that there was prejudice against homosexuals.”
On the island, the Cuban National Union of Artists and Writers (UNEAC) reportedly protested treatment of homosexuals working in UMAP, prompting Fidel to check it out for himself.
A Cuban who worked in a UMAP, interviewed by Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal in 1970-1971, related that Fidel slipped into a UMAP brigade one night and lay down in one of the hammocks. The interviewee said: the UMAP guards would sometimes cut the hammock cords with their sabers. “When one guard raised his saber he found himself staring at Fidel; he almost dropped dead. Fidel is the man of the unexpected visits.” (“In Cuba”)
A youth described as a “young Marxist revolutionary” told Cardenal that 100 young males from the Communist Youth were sent to the UMAP to report back about how they were treated. “It was a highly secret operation. Not even their families knew of this plan. Afterward the boys told what had happened. And they put an end to the UMAP.”
https://www.workers.org/2007/world/lavender-red-92/
I will say this though -there aren't really any sources here. Would like there to have been some sources
I've been trying to find it actually. I definitely read about it at some point though