Though much has changed since the 1960's - the first transvestite performed in a state-run cabaret in 1994 for example - gay behavior 'causing public scandal' is still a punishable offence, with room for wide and repressive interpretation.

Such uncertainty has left Cuba's gay community in a state of continual subversive flux and alienation. While many wear their sexuality like a badge of defiance and openly challenge the status quo, particularly after Tomas Gutierrez Alea's film addressing homosexuality, Strawberry and Chocolate, came out in 1993, there remains social consensus in much of Cuba rejecting ideological and sexual diversity. Deeply ingrained Latin 'Machismo' is largely responsibles. As Paul A. Schroder writes, "The military origins of the Revolution and the subsequent militarization of the state... promoted an identification of heterosexual virility with progressive politics that had existed before, but never in such extremes. The image of strong, bearded men in military fatigues, carrying rifles and smoking cigars - phallic symbols if there ever were any - turned into a symbol of discipline, leadership, and the will to effect strong and decisive changes to the conditions in prerevolutionary Cuba."

Babak Salari's photography provides us with new images of Cuba - capturing the nuances of anxiety, subversion, alienation and celebration that define the struggle of a community against the hegemonic discourse of Marxist Revolution and working to broaden their country's cultural ideology ; images of those at the margins of Cuban society.