Liberty Bell Visit by Fidel Castro’s Sexologist Niece Angers Cuban-Americans

Eric Risberg/Associated Press Mariela Castro, the daughter of President Raúl Castro, during an appearance at an academic conference in San Francisco in 2012.

The Liberty Bell will receive a controversial visitor this afternoon.

Mariela Castro, Cuba’s premier sexologist and the daughter of President Raúl Castro, is visiting Philadelphia as a guest of the Equality Forum, a gay rights organization that is holding its annual conference there. Ms. Castro plans to visit the Liberty Bell and the surrounding Independence Mall around 3 p.m., organizers of her trip said. Detractors of her father’s government objected to the visit, though.

“It’s insulting that the Cuban dictator’s daughter and standard bearer of the Castro dictatorship would visit a symbol of America’s successful struggle for freedom from its colonial masters,” said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican. “Ms. Castro and her family represent everything that the colonists fought and died to overcome. She should be ashamed of herself, but that would be asking too much of her.”

Malcolm Lazin, executive director of the Equality Forum, which will honor Ms. Castro on Saturday for pushing for gay rights in Cuba, took a different view, telling The Times: “The Liberty Bell is a symbol of freedom not only for America, but a symbol around the globe.”

Ms. Castro, the director of Cuba’s National Center for Sex Education, was granted a diplomatic visa to attend United Nations meetings in April, but the State Department had initially refused her request to relax a rule that bars Cuban diplomats from traveling to other parts of the U.S. without prior authorization. The Equality Forum received word on Monday that the State Department decided to lift the restriction so that Ms. Castro could attend the Equality Forum 2013 Summit this weekend.

In an interview with CNN during a visit to the U.S. in 2012, Ms. Castro discussed her efforts on behalf of Cuba’s gay community.