Adela Hernández is a Cuban politician.^[1] Elected to the municipal council of Caibarién in the Villa Clara Province in November 2012, she is the first transgender person ever elected to political office in Cuba.^[1]

In 1962, Hernández was born in a sugar town in central Cuba.^[2] Early on, Adela was interested in women’s clothing.^[3] Hernández had her first sexual contact “too young,” at the age of 7 with a 21-year-old man.^[3] Adela Hernández’s family disowned her.^[2]

At the age of 16, her father, a distillery worker, reported her to the police.^[3] She spent two years in prison in the 1980s on charges that Adela describes as “social dangerousness.”^[3]

When Adela Hernández entered office, she was still legally Jose Agustin Hernandez since she had not undergone sex-change surgery.^[2] However, on May 20, 2013, the first transgender woman received a photo ID since 1997 with her preferred name and gender identity without undergoing sex reassignment surgery.^[4] Adela Hernández expressed that she started the process of applying for a name change on her ID card.^[4]

She later worked as a hospital janitor, a nurse, an electrocardiogram technician, and a drag queen.^[3] She also became the head of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution on her block and a member of the neighborhood watch committee.^[3]

Alberto Hernández, a farmer, nominated Adela because she was blunt and hardworking.^[3] Adela won in a run-off vote of 280 to 170.^[5] Hernández represented 2,000 residents of her neighborhood.^[3] In 2013, the neighborhood was routinely flooded and some houses experienced no running water.^[3] Adela got the authorities to provide running water at the local clinic, procured lights for the main street, and got the ration store to provide extra milk for the children.^[3] She was eligible for election to the National Assembly of People's Power in 2013, but she was not picked from a list of town councilors.^[3]