Cuba | Good News For Humankind

A Cuban national identity document on a desk, for an article about Cuba's gender marker reform for transgender people

Cuba lets trans people change ID gender markers without surgery

By Peter Schulte / July 27, 2025 / Good News For Humankind

Cuba’s transgender gender marker reform marks a significant step forward for trans rights in Latin America. In 2025, Cuba’s National Assembly passed legislation allowing transgender Cubans to update gender markers on official identity documents through simple administrative declaration, requiring no surgery or judicial approval. The reform matters because mismatched IDs create cascading barriers to employment, housing, and healthcare for trans people. Notably, the change decouples legal recognition from medical access at a time when U.S. embargo-related shortages limit hormone availability, joining Argentina, Uruguay, and others in embracing self-determination over medicalized gatekeeping.

Havana streets, for article on same-sex marriage Cuba

Cuba approves same-sex marriage in historic turnabout

By / September 26, 2022 / Good News For Humankind

Same-sex marriage in Cuba is now legal, after roughly two-thirds of voters approved a sweeping new family code that also opens adoption to gay couples. Before the referendum, the draft was workshopped at more than 79,000 neighborhood meetings, drawing over 300,000 citizen suggestions that shaped the final text. The 100-page code goes well beyond marriage equality, condemning family violence, urging equal sharing of housework, and giving children a formal voice in family decisions. It’s a remarkable turn for a country that once sent gay men to labor camps, and it places Cuba alongside Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia in Latin America’s steady movement toward fuller recognition of who counts as a family.

Cuba bolsters conservation efforts with new 271 square mile Marine Protected Area

By Peter Schulte / January 27, 2022 / Good news links

The MPA will protect mangrove forests, seagrass beds and coral reefs, and boost the nation’s overall marine protected coverage to 28.5% of its marine continental shelf.

Cuba is the first country in the world to eliminate mother-to-child HIV and syphilis transmission

By Peter Schulte / June 7, 2021 / Good news links

The country’s efforts include prenatal care, HIV and syphilis testing for pregnant women and their partners, treatment for women who test positive and their babies, cesarean deliveries and breastfeeding substitution.

Cuba scraps mandatory exit permits, freeing citizens to travel abroad

By Peter Schulte / January 1, 2012 / Archive of Human Genius

Cuba’s exit permit system ended in January 2013, lifting a decades-old rule that required citizens to seek government approval before traveling abroad. Most Cubans now needed only a passport and a destination visa, though doctors, scientists, and known dissidents still faced hurdles. It was a partial but real opening toward a basic freedom of movement.

Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar founds San Cristóbal de la Habana

By Peter Schulte / January 1, 1514 / Archive of Human Genius

Havana was founded in 1514 by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, though the settlement wandered Cuba’s coast for five years before anchoring beside a deep natural bay around 1519. That accidental harbor would become Spain’s “Key to the New World,” shaping Atlantic trade — and the lives bound to it — for centuries.

Reconstruction of a Taíno village in Chorro de Maíta, for article on Taíno Caribbean civilization

Taíno people establish complex societies across the Caribbean islands

By Peter Schulte / January 27, 0001 / Archive of Human Genius

The Taíno built a thriving island civilization across the Caribbean long before Columbus arrived in 1492, descended from seafarers who reached the islands from South America roughly 2,500 years ago. Their matrilineal chiefdoms sustained large populations for some 1,500 years, and their words — hurricane, hammock, canoe — still travel the world today.

Early Caribbean peoples establish Levisa as Cuba’s first settlement

By Peter Schulte / January 17, 0001 / Archive of Human Genius

Levisa, on Cuba’s coast, is the island’s oldest known archaeological site, dating to around 3100 B.C.E. The people who lived there fished, gathered, and shaped tools from stone and shell, leaving no monuments but a clear trace of sustained life. It marks the opening chapter of a human presence in Cuba stretching across five millennia.

Cuba landscape, for article on Cuba's first settlers

First peoples settle Cuba, launching thousands of years of Indigenous Caribbean life

By Peter Schulte / January 16, 0001 / Archive of Human Genius

Cuba’s first peoples arrived by sea in the 4th millennium B.C.E., paddling through the Caribbean and settling an island they would shape for thousands of years. The oldest confirmed site, Levisa, dates to around 3100 B.C.E. Their legacy lives on in words we still use daily: hurricane, canoe, tobacco, Cuba itself.