Mariela Castro

Mariela Castro
Mariela Castro addressing the Latin America plenary of the International Conference on LGBT Human Rights in Montreal.
Born	1962 Havana, Cuba

Mariela Castro Espín (born July 27, 1962 in Havana, Cuba) is the director of the Cuban National Center for Sex Education in Havana and an activist for LGBT rights in Cuba.

She is the daughter of current Cuban president Raúl Castro and Vilma Espín, and the niece of former president Fidel Castro. She has a brother, Alejandro Castro Espín.

Her group campaigns for effective AIDS prevention as well as recognition and acceptance of homosexuality, bisexuality, transvestism, and transsexualism human rights. In 2005 she proposed a project to allow transgendered people to receive sex reassignment surgery and change their legal gender. The measure became law in June 2008 which allows sex change surgery for Cubans without charge.^[1]

Mariela Castro is president of the Cuban Multidisciplinary Centre for the Study of Sexuality, president of the National Commission for Treatment of Disturbances of Gender Identity, member of the Direct Action Group for Preventing, Confronting, and Combatting AIDS, and an executive member of the World Association for Sexual Health (WAS). She is also the director of the journal Sexología y Sociedad, a magazine of Sexology edited by her own National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX).

She has published 13 scholarly articles and nine books.^[2]

Mariela is now married to Italian photographer Paolo Titolo and has two children with him, plus a daughter from her previous marriage with the Chilean former FPMR member Juan Gutiérrez Fischmann.^[3]

See also

	Cuba portal
	Biography portal

• LGBT rights in Cuba

References

1. ^ BBC NEWS | Americas | Cuba to provide free sex-change
2. ^ Official programme of the International Conference on LGBT Human Rights
3. ^ Castro's Family Miami Herald Oct 8 2000

External links

• Mariela Castro’s Hopes for Cuba By Dalia Acosta, Havana Times June 24, 2009
• Cuban Parliament considers legal recognition of the rights of transsexuals, La Jornada (January 9, 2006).
• The Reyes Report: Free Sex Change Operations in Cuba, June 19, 2008.
• Cuban soap's gay story starts dialogue, Chicago Sun-Times (June 18, 2006).
• Interview with Mariela Castro from MEDICC Review 2006
• http://progreso-weekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=89&Itemid=1

Persondata
Name	Castro, Mariela
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	July 27, 1962
Place of birth	Havana, Cuba
Date of death
Place of death