Mariela Castro Espín, director of the National Center for Sexual Education (CENESEX) and a member of the National Assembly of People's Power, participated this Saturday in a political event held at the Circolo GAP in Rome titled "The Resistance of Cuba," where she defended the sovereignty of the Cuban regime against external pressures in front of an audience of academics, activists, and Italian politicians aligned with Havana.
The event, held in the Roman neighborhood of San Lorenzo, also featured the presence of the Cuban ambassador to Italy, Jorge Luis Cepero Aguilar, and the economist Luciano Vasapollo, a professor at Sapienza University and a leader of the Rete dei Comunisti — Network of Communists — an Italian organization with a long history of solidarity with the Cuban regime.
The panel table was draped with the Cuban flag, and in the background, flags of that Italian communist organization were displayed.
The focus of the event was the official narrative of the Cuban "resistance": Castro presented the Family Code — approved in a referendum in September 2022 and promoted by CENESEX — as proof that Cuba "does not give up on expanding rights or deciding its own path," even under economic pressure and the U.S. embargo.
The law introduced equal marriage, same-sex adoption, and non-commercial surrogacy.
The debate also addressed the situation in Palestine, internationalist solidarity, and the impact of the embargo on the island. Vasapollo, for his part, described Cuba as "a political and social laboratory that continues to generate international debate on issues such as sovereignty, social justice, rights, and cooperation among peoples."
CENESEX concluded its publication on the Roman event with a phrase that encapsulates the tone of the act: "Cuba remains alive, defending its sovereignty and nurturing the struggle for emancipation and dignity."
The event in Rome fits into a pattern of international appearances that Mariela Castro has multiplied in recent months with the discourse of resistance.
Last February, he stated that "with imperialism and all its facets, there is no possibility of negotiating, only of dialoguing," quoting Fidel Castro.
In April, during the Nuestra América Convoy, she stated that “there is pain in Cuba, but we will not kneel,” and described the independent LGBTQ+ opposition as “fictitious,” “invented,” and “mercenary”, accusing the United States of having created it.
This speech contrasts with the documented repression of autonomous LGBTQ+ activism in Cuba and with the suspension of gender reassignment surgeries in the public system due to a lack of resources.
In 2019, when CENESEX canceled its official march, independent activists organized their own conga and were repressed by the Ministry of the Interior, resulting in at least six arrests.
The visit to Rome comes just days after an investigation by El Confidencial revealed that Mariela Castro’s husband invested in tourist apartments in Barcelona for more than one and a half million euros.
The Italian photojournalist Paolo Titolo, son-in-law of Raúl Castro, acquired three properties in tourist areas of the city between 2015 and 2019, while he served for nearly two decades as the general director in Cuba for the business group Amorim, associated with the Portuguese magnate Américo Ferreira de Amorim, a personal friend of Fidel and Raúl Castro.
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