Leni Villagomez Reeves, M.D. is active in WILPF, both in the Fresno Branch and nationally, co-chairing the Cuba and the Bolivarian Alliance Committee, and with the Pastors for Peace Caravan to Cuba. In non-pandemic years, she spends about 2 1/2 months each year in Cuba, where she has close ties.
Peggy Gilpin, film director is a social worker who was on the faculty of the Albert Einstein college of Medicine. From the early 70's to end-90's she headed US-Cuba Health Exchange (US-CHE) a Cuba solidarity group that took hundreds of health care workers to Cuba to study the Cuban health care system. US-CHE also arranged innumerable scientific interchanges and provided up-to-date medical journals to Cuba. On one of those delegations, ICAP arranged a visit to the community of La Guinera to visit the construction brigades building housing for the community, There, she stumbled across the drag show program (in the workers dining room) intended to provide some home-grown entertainment during the so-called special period. Butterflies on the Scaffold was born. She began the doc with a Cuban filmmaker who left Cuba after 2 hours of filming and decided she was going to make the film for better or worse. A committed solidarity activists starting in 1971 she spoke at countless universities across the US about Cuba and their health care system and published many articles on that subject. Later she was a reporter and news director for the WBAI radio program Cuba in Focus in NY.
Webinar organized by:
US Women and Cuba Collaboration’s Lesbian and Allies Project
Sponsored by:
CODEPINK, International US-Cuba Normalization Conference Coalition, Federation of International Gender and Human Rights (FIGHR), Maestra Productions, Vancouver Communities in Solidarity with Cuba (VCSC), Gallatin Valley Friends of Cuba – MT, Legacy of Equality, Leadership and Organizing (LELO), Cuba Connections – Helena, MT, Cuba & the Bolivarian Alliance Committee – WILPF-US
"Mariposas en el Andamio" (Butterflies on the Scaffold) is a rare documentary film showing the day-to-day life onf the gay and drag community in Cuba in the 1990s. This award-winning documentary, premiered in 1996 and was the first since the Cuban Revolution in 1959 to examin the issues facing gays, trans folks, and drag performers.
uscubalesbianandalliesproject@gmail.com
Moon "Luna" Vázquez jmoon57@earthlink.net
Deb Goldman: debgold315@gmail.com
