"Las Reinas" is a documentary work converging towards LGBTQ + Cuban communities, made in Havana in winter 2017.
For the last ten years, Cuba has reinvented itself as a progressive nation in LGBTQ + rights. While in the 1960s and 1970s, many homosexuals were imprisoned or forced to spend time in "re-education camps", forty years later, in 2005, the National Center for Sex Education, led by Mariela Castro -
Fidel Castro’s niece - asked for the adoption of a law that would allow transgender people to benefit from free reassignment surgery and hormone replacement therapy, in addition to new legal identity documents. The project was presented to the Cuban Parliament in 2005. Before being approved, it had been suggested that it would make Cuba the most liberal nation in Latin America regarding gender issue. The measure was adopted in June 2008.
Photography : Olivia Schenker
2017