394 Chapter 16
866 in the FARC.
869 if they,
870 I don’t know
871 if someone was able to let them know all the worries, problems
of homosexuals872 it seems to me that someone would listen.
873 Because of one of the principle of the Revolution is that its peo-
ple feel good
874 and I don’t know,
875 look for wellbeing for them.
876 So taking into account,
877 that we are a group that is so large they should change the policy
towards us.
878 And so if someone were to hear this,
879 this advice that I’m giving,
880 I’d say “Through the means of mass communication,
881 the posters that you see up everywhere,
882 in the policlinics, even in the bus stops, the pharmacies, every-
where,
883 can carry messages.”
884 So just using advertising (it can be done).Five years later, looking at the life story narrative presented here,
performed by Barbara in her home one afternoon in February of
2005, it is striking how much has changed, and how close Barbara has
come to predicting the future in her ideas for what the revolutionary
state could and should do. While it is not within the scope of the
paper to discuss the reasons for these changes, it would be irresponsi-
ble to leave this story where Barbara’s life story narrative ends, with-
out adding my own coda, which as Labov explains, can act to bridge
the gap between when her story leaves off and where the present
begins (Linde, 1993:71).
Since the historical period in which many of the key events of Bar-
bara’s life story narrative took place, much has changed in the way the
state relates to LGBT subjects. The Cuba of today is already different
from what it was just five years ago, when she consciously constructed
the narrative I have analyzed here. Life story narratives are “created in