Fidel Castro: Blame Me For Cuba's Persecution of Queers

If anyone is responsible (for the persecution), it's me. I'm not going to place the blame on others. … We had so many and such terrible problems, problems of life or death In those moments I was not able to deal with that matter (of homosexuals). I found myself immersed, principally, in the Crisis of October (Cuban Missile Crisis), in the war, in policy questions.

—Fidel Castro, accepting blame for labeling Cuban gays "counterrevolutionaries" and shipping many off to work camps, and insisting it is not the fault of the state's Communist Party at large while trying to explain why he let the discrimination take place [via]