Max and I first met in 2018. I hadn’t medically transitioned yet, and she hadn’t started writing and performing poetry. We met through mutual friends in the Afro-feminist and trans activist and performance worlds and quickly formed a trans sisterhood that spans racial formations and U.S. imperialism. Max and I were born in the same year, 1990, the year after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the year before the official start to the nine-year depression in Cuba called the Special Period. Now, as I write this, we find ourselves at new moments of inflection and crisis, as trans people become the prime target of a globally ascendant fascism and as Cuba deals with ever-worsening economic collapse and the largest migration of Cubans out of the island since the Revolution in 1959.
Max and I had planned to have the following conversation over a late-October weekend, but on Friday, October 18, the entire island was plunged into darkness as the Cuban government struggled to keep its aging power infrastructure going with less and less available fuel. It took a few days for power to tentatively be restored and for Max and me to reschedule. I called Max over WhatsApp from my backyard in San Diego; a U.S. Navy helicopter droning in the background of the recording offers a constant reminder of my location within the empire that was partially responsible for the situation that Max was living through.
Our conversation speaks to the current precarity that trans, queer, and Afrodescendent people in Cuba face today, as well as the life sustaining worlds of Afro-feminist/queer/trans activism in Cuba and its diaspora. Max addresses how her poetry emerges from these activist networks and how she uses poetry to contend with her experiences of violence as a Black Cuban trans woman. She concludes with her lack of hope for the future of trans life in Cuba, a tone that pervades the island today. Transcribing, editing, and translating her words in the United States, I felt ambivalent about ending the interview on such a pessimistic note. In other moments of the interview, readers will find her joy, her fierce resistance, and her determination to build solidarity in the face of violence. Nevertheless, I chose to close the conversation as she did, narrating the immediate desperation and necessity that mark trans life in Cuba.
—Kerry M. White, San Diego, CA, November 2024
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Kerry M. White: It’s so good to hear your voice, Max! How are you doing? What’s going on in Cuba in the last few days?
Max Fonseca: Look, currently, it has been terrible. This latest blackout was very serious; we are in a real crisis. It was about four days without electricity. In parts of the city, people were responding with solidarity—cooking their food before it went bad and sharing it, using their resources to help their neighborhoods. But in other places, people were individualistically finding ways to make money off the situation.
The biggest case of monetization was the recharging of phones. There are Cubans who have small generators from family members who live abroad. For every 50 percent of battery, they were charging 500 pesos, and for 100 percent battery they were charging up to 1500 pesos! It was really ugly to see Cubans running a business on the suffering of their fellow Cubans and not acting in solidarity with their neighbors. It has been really intense with many people going without food. Here in Centro Habana, I fortunately didn’t lose gas or water, but in other neighborhoods like Marianao and Párraga, more marginalized locations, many people also lost gas and water.
KMW: And, of course, those neighborhoods are predominantly Afrodescendent.
MF: Exactly. They finally restored power at dawn on the fifth day; it was very arduous. And then the hurricane came and hit the eastern zones of the island. It has been really difficult.
KMW: Oh Max! I’m so sorry. It strikes me that perhaps poetry has been a way for you to process the problems of Cuban trans life while also offering you an economic life, an affective life, and an intellectual life. How did you start to write and perform poetry and what does it mean to you?
MF: I first got the motivation when a couple of friends told me that I had stories to tell as a Black trans woman. Poetry is an important way to communicate and to build consciousness. My poetry speaks to my identities. It emerges from my experiences because I speak about myself, about what happens to Afro-descendent trans people, and about trans people who aren’t so Afro-descendent as well.
For example, I have performed a poem called “Querida gente cis” (Dear Cis People). It is about an experience I had one night when I was looking for some connection, looking to feel desired. Many men will only show desire to nosotrans (us trans girls) under the cover of darkness. So, I was standing near a street corner, waiting for someone to come by and show interest in me when a large group of men came around the corner chasing another trans woman. She yelled to me, “Run girl! Run! They are coming for me, they are coming for you, they are coming for all of us!” And we all had to run, and we lost each other trying to lose the men. Other times there are police officers trying to throw us in jail for looking to feel desired on our own streets, in our own lives.
KMW: And in your city!
MF: I was looking for sex, sure, but I can’t even look for that because there is constant persecution of trans women. I had to run. So, in the poem I argue that my body is mine, my gender is mine, and my sexuality is mine. You don’t have a reason to treat me this way, to chase after me, to try to detain me and throw me in jail. While I wasn’t looking to make money that night, many trans women are working the streets because they don’t have any other opportunities.
To share an example from my own life, I applied as a poet to be admitted to a national professional association here in Cuba [a kind of union for cultural workers]. This is an organization that many artists are associated with.
KMW: This is especially important as a trans woman because being registered as a professional artist would count as employment and help you not get arrested under vagrancy laws, since everyone assigned male at birth in Cuba is required to be working.
MF: Exactly. And they told me very diplomatically that I was not admitted. You think I don’t know exactly why? First, because I am a Black woman. Second, because I am a trans woman. And third, because I don’t talk about what those men are interested in, because I talk about my experiences as a Black trans woman.
I think in many ways my poetry speaks to who I am and how I represent myself. I am confident, I am filled with compassion, and I am not just a body to have sex with. You know? I am a beautiful and marvelous person. At times I feel used, and I think that this is a feeling that may resonate with many trans women. In my poetry, I want to say that we trans women are many things, not just our bravery, not only our physical beauty! Too often, men approach me only for sex. They never give me a rose or invite me to go out. It’s just sex, and that is not what I want or need.
KMW: There’s a line in one of your poems that always sticks out to me about being the image of a beautiful woman and an ugly woman at the same time. What does that mean to you?
MF: As a trans woman, I am supposed to want to be the perfect woman, or, better put, I need to try to achieve cis-femininity. We are expected to want to pass as a cis woman. But I am not a cis woman, I don’t want to be a cis woman, and I don’t feel like a cis woman. I am beautiful because I am a trans woman.
KMW: What does it mean to you to write and perform your poetry as a Black trans woman in spaces where I imagine you are the only trans woman on the stage, and likely in the crowd as well?
MF: It means so much to me to be a trans woman poet on the stage. I’m there because I have had many people open doors for me. Sometimes I don’t know if I’m only being invited so they can feel inclusive, but being trans has certainly closed as many doors as it has opened. Just the other day, I was trying to work with someone, and she told me that she couldn’t collaborate because, as she said, the space was “too intimate.” I think that the space is just very white, and she thinks that bringing me, a Black trans woman, would be a huge scandal.
KMW: What has been your reception at mainstream venues like La Fábrica de Arte Cubano where you have performed with [hip hop duo] La Reyna y La Real and others?
MF: My reception there has been really interesting and really beautiful. No one thinks that a Black trans woman is about to get on the stage. I remember when Big Freedia [the New Orleans- based bounce artist] did a show there. Everyone was saying, “Wow! Where did this person come from?” People didn’t know who she was. When Cubans see a trans person on stage, they think we will be lip syncing, that we have to be a drag performer. No one expects a trans woman to rap or perform poetry. A Black trans femme on the stage—that is a powerful thing.
La Reyna y la Real gave me the opportunity to be on stage. The first concert I performed with them was all women performers. The “Soy Ellas” concert was so beautiful to be a part of. Since that day, I always work to collaborate and build artistic community with other women. Men always think about themselves and only believe in other men and things that men do. That’s why I am very dedicated to women; my opportunities in life have always come more from womenthan from men. I could be wrong, but this is how I see it.
KMW: How did you get involved with Afro-feminist communities, and what do these communities mean to you and your poetry?
MF: I first got involved with the Afro-feminist project NOSOTRXS when a friend brought me to one of their events. It is a very important space for Black women in La Habana. I started to attend their workshops and nourish myself on the ideas shared there. Before getting involved in Afro-feminist activism, I was stuck in my own world of sex work on the street. I was mostly just interested in how to make money because I was dealing with a lot of emotional and economic problems. Then, I found myself surrounded by Black women, and they changed my life.
I gained the tools to understand and put words to my experiences as a Black trans woman. For example, I was always annoyed with white people trying to touch my hair, but I didn’t really understand that as a manifestation of racism. Through these workshops, I have empowered myself and I continue to be nourished by our dialogues. I know this knowledge will continue to benefit me. I hope to teach as well, to share through my poetry and to help make the world a bit more feminist, a bit more conscious of its relationship to Blackness. I hope that when trans women hear my poetry they can say, “That is something that I experienced, I lived that,” and I hope that it builds solidarity between trans women.
As trans women, we work very hard to be independent, to be tenacious, to be empowered, but the world tries to destroy us, and, in that context, many trans women destroy themselves and each other. It’s really hard. I hope to build trans consciousness through my poetry. Going back to that night when that group of men chased after us, I wonder what would have happened if, instead of running and losing each other, we fought back together. In my poetry, I am trying to put words to our experiences, to nourish the community, build solidarity, and improve our lives.
KMW: Thinking about this question of solidarity, what does the future for trans Cubans look like?
MF: Look, girl, the way I see it, the Cuban trans population has already decreased like 69 percent, and it feels like 89 percent, because even the trans girls who are here are only here because they don’t have family outside of Cuba who can help them leave. Every day the conversations I hear everywhere are all the same. There is nothing else to talk about. Everyone is leaving. Many trans women have left for Russia, but that seems like leaving one prison for another.
If you go to a LGBTQ party now, you won’t find any trans women there anymore. It’s only gay cis white men. We trans women used to be an important part of queer life. It was beautiful! The trans community used to go to parks, meet up at the Malecón. That large community is gone. Now, there are very few of us.
Some have died, others have left the island, and others are just trying to survive. The only place you will find trans women now is on the streets doing sex work, whether to survive or to save money to immigrate. They can’t enjoy themselves. We don’t have a life here anymore. There are no hormones, the government stopped gender affirming surgeries, even condoms are too expensive. Sex work is paying less and less. Necessity has created this situation, and necessity is very intense and very raw. To be honest, I feel like things are only going to get worse. It’s very sad. But the future here in Cuba for trans people, truly, as you have asked about it: no, no hay. There is none.
Kerry M. White is an ethnographer of trans life in the Americas living in San Diego, California. She is a PhD candidate in American Culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her previous work can be found in Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism.
