Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar and French designer Jean Paul Gaultier were among the several hundred people detained in the August 23 raid on Havana's most popular gay discotheque, El Periquiton, according to an unconfirmed report from the Cuban Independent Press Agency.

Cuban customers of the club were fined 30 pesos (US$1) and released from a police station the next day. Two busloads of foreigners were transported to immigration authorities for a document check.

Marianela Ferriol, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Relations, said police targeted the disco because prostitutes, pimps and minors were present.

Revolutionary National Police head Angel Diaz told Radio Rebelde that the raid netted "prostitutes, pimps, some underage youth and various foreigners."

But sources in Havana and Miami say the raid was, in fact, the latest move in a widescale crackdown on all things gay.

"Gays are falling under the thumb of the government," said Alberto Montano of Miami's Cuba AIDS Project. The government "needs to keep everyone in their place and these [private house-discos] had become a place of freedom for gays. El Periquiton was the ... gay Tropicana, and drew a lot of foreigners."

According to Miami's El Nuevo Herald, several of the dozen or so other private gay clubs in Havana also have been raided, including Mi Cayito, Jurassic Park and Fiestas de Serrano y Correa.

Several government nightclubs whose customers were predominantly homosexual also have been raided, including La Red, El Karachi and El Joker, all located in the Vedado nightlife district. Since the raids, police have restricted entry at the official clubs to opposite-sex couples, sources said.

In addition, the Cuban Association of Gays and Lesbians, which formed in 1994, has been squashed and its members were taken into custody from their places of employment, El Nuevo Herald said.

"Homosexuals and transvestites are regularly detained by the police and accused of public scandal for which they can be condemned to three months in jail or a 500 peso fine," the newspaper said.

Article 303 of the Cuban Penal Code punishes "publicly manifested" homosexuality with up to one year in prison.