AREQUIPA, Peru – The actress and activist Kiriam Gutiérrez received this Friday on the Island the Emmy statuette, an award that was awarded to her at the beginning of December in the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion category together with the team of the series “Ser Trans”, made by Martí News.
Gutiérrez showed the award to his followers through a video on social networks and took the opportunity to dedicate it to the LGBTIQ+ community of Cuba.
“Of course, it is dedicated to that entire community that for many years was humiliated, was violated, was exiled, was imprisoned and there was no reparation, nor has there been, with all the suffering and all the violations of their rights,” he said.
Kiriam Gutiérrez’s victory makes her the first Latin American trans woman to receive the top prize in this category.
The activist also dedicated her Emmy to the community that suffered the hardships of the Military Production Support Units, known as the UMAP; the parameterization of the 70s; the exile of the 1980s across the Mariel; and harassment or imprisonment for having trans identities.
“To all my drag queen friends, to all those brave women from whom I was inspired, from the wonderful group Muñecas marginaladas (…) all my colleagues who are in exile, who had to leave Cuba for being drag queens,” she added.
Through “Ser Trans”, documentary series available on YouTubeits filmmakers sought to expand the visibility of the trans community, its work and history since 1959, highlighting the events that the Cuban Government has tried to cover up.
A little over a week ago, Kiriam Gutiérrez was threatened by a State Security agent so that she would not attend the presentation of the short film Kill a man (censored during the 45th International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana) at the International Film and Television School of San Antonio de los Baños.
“I received a call from a State Security agent, in which, with a threatening tone, he told me that I should stay away from the film,” Gutiérrez declared to CubaNet. “I consider that this is political repression, that I have the right as an actress and as a filmmaker to defend my film, to defend the cinema I make and, of course, to go to the spaces where my work is projected.”
Gutiérrez co-stars in Kill a mana 12-minute film by director Orlando Mora Cabrera that, according to the actress herself, is inspired by a real event and addresses the issue of the covert homosexuality of an agent of the National Revolutionary Police (PNR).
This December it also emerged that the short had been excluded from the Havana International Film Festival with the excuse of power cuts. However, Mora Cabrera consider that it was an act of censorship motivated by the discomfort caused by its approach to “violence, domination or control that can be exercised over our bodies” and by its focus on LGBTIQ+ issues.
His attempts to participate in independent cultural circuits, added to his public activism, have made Gutiérrez a target of persecution. The authorities have unofficially prohibited him from working in night shows and have banned him from accessing recreational spaces.
The 47-year-old actress was also the first trans woman to venture into film and television on the Island. She is the protagonist of the video clip Lola, of the Moneda Dura group, where he was placed under the direction of Lester Hamlet. The video could not be broadcast on Cuban Television until 2008.
