Hundreds March in Cuba

Mariela Castro, the daughter of Cuban president Raul Castro, joined hundreds of gay activists in a march in Havana on Saturday in a celebration leading up to the International Day against Homophobia on May 17, the Associated Press reports.

May 17 marks the 20th anniversary of when the World Health Organization stopped listing homosexuality as a mental illness.

“We have made progress in Cuba, but we need to make more progress,” Castro said as marchers made their way down the wide avenues in Havana’s Vedado neighborhood.

Fired from work and/or imprisoned after the Cuban revolution, gay people began seeing progress in Cuba in the 1980s, in large part because of the work of Mariela Castro’s National Sexual Education Center.

Read more about the march in Havana here.