Odette, Juani, and Malú await their turn for gender reassignment surgery, performed once a year by surgeons brought from Holland and Belgium by Mariela Castro, who militates for sexual education and the rights of sexual minorities and is the niece of Fidel Castro. Indeed, Cuba, known to outsiders primarily as an oppressive regime, offers its citizens not only free health care, but also therapy, hormone treatments, and plastic surgery for transgender individuals. Oppression does not come from the state here. Rather, it works through social forces that are constant everywhere, even in countries apparently devoted to egalitarianism: the church, the fear of novelty, plain discrimination, and poverty.