As a youth growing up in Chicago, Phill Wilson had a Cuban fetish. The Spanish literature major romanticized the island nation, which was off-limits to U.S. travelers since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1963.
A half-century later, Wilson – now the out president of the Los Angeles-based Black AIDS Institute -would find himself en route to Havana, not just to soak up Cuban culture, but to see what the U.S. and Cuba could learn from each other in the fight against HIV and homophobia.
Wilson led a delegation of 15 gay men, many of color, to Cuba for two weeks starting on Christmas Eve; that was less than a year after President Obama helped normalize the once-strained relationship between the U.S. and communist Cuba.
After news broke last year of the lifting of the trade embargo and easing of the travel ban, “my interest in Cuba was reignited,” Wilson says. “Then I began to study the African influence in Cuba, and I’ve been familiar for a while with what they’re doing around HIV and AIDS. Given that, I thought it would be great to sponsor a gay men of color HIV delegation to Cuba.”