Mujeres Creando ~ Bolivia
“Love and honesty in our struggle”
Mujeres Creando ~ Bolivia
Targeting neoliberals, macho leftists
and ‘gender technocrats’
GLBT Identity in
Latin America
Pamela Hayes- Bohanan, MLS
James Hayes-Bohanan, Ph.D.
Safe College Coalition
Latin American & Caribbean Studies
GS 358: Geography of Latin America
Overview
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Sexual identity in Latin America
Implications for GLBT persons
Legal status
Violence
Organizing
Caveats
• As with any regional geography, we acknowledge
a tension between defining formal regions and
eschewing stereotypes
• We are both Latin Americanists, but we have
had less involvement with GLBT issues in Latin
America than in the United States
• Feel free to ask questions!
Sexual Identity in Latin America
• Machismo –
hypervirility
• Marianismo –
hyperfemininity
– Physical strength
– Bold sexual advances
toward women
– Great sexual prowess
– Self-confidence
– Bravery
– Pure
– Submissive to father,
brother, and spouse
– Lacks sexual desire
– Mary or Malinche
– Virgin or Whore
• Public and private spaces
After Steven Bocchi
Implications for GLBT Persons
• Duality of male homosexual activity
• Lesbians as anathema – so unlikely as to be
invisible
• Importance of transexual appearance
• Confusion among “gay,” “transvestite,” and
“transgendered”
Legal Status
• Banning of homosexual acts – some countries
might overturn
• Legal protections for homosexual persons
• Police harassment
• Civil partnership
Violence
• Relation to machismo
• Public and private
space
• Amor Bandido – Bruno
Barreto
Violence in Guatemala
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No law against homosexuality
No protection, either
Police detain on the basis of “scandalous behavior”
Authorities engage in rape, theft, beatings, and killings of
homosexual people
• In a generally violent society, homosexuality is used to
dismiss or diminish acts of violence
– Anthropologist Myrna Mack killed by death squad in 1990
– U.S. Nun Diana Ortiz kidnapped and tortured by army in 1989
– Guatemala City Bishop Juan Gerardi, murdered in 1998
Famous GLBT Latin Americans
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Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz – (Mexico) nun, poet, mystic
Manuel Puig – Argentina
Reinaldo Arenas – Cuba
Gabriela Mistral – Chile
Héctor Bianciotti – Argentina
Daniel Torres – Puerto Rico
Luis Rafael Sánchez – Puerto Rico
Virgilio Piñera – Cuba
Fernando Vallejo – Colombia
Jamie Bayly - Peru
Organizing
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No Stonewall in Latin America
Mexico
Argentina
Central America
Mexico
• Movement roughly
concurrent with Stonewall
– Frente Homosexual de Acción
Revolutionaria (gay)
– Grupo Lambda de Liberación
Homosexual (lesbian)
• OIKABETH (both) – now
defunct – saw lesbianism as a
political (socialist) choice
• First pride march 1978
• The 2002 Pride March
had 30,000 participants
• The June 21, 2003 march
had 30 floats and 80,000
participants. Even a PAN
candidate set up a booth.
Argentina
• 1969: El Grupo Nuestro Mundo –
formed by communist who had been
ejected from the party – bombarded
media with gay liberation message
• 1971: Frente de Liberación Homosexual
• 1976: Group dissolved after most FLH
members exiled or killed during the Isabel
Peron administration
• 1983: Groups such as Comunidad
Homosexual Argentina reemerge,
following Dirty War
• 1996: Constitution of Buenos Aires
amended to prohibit discrimination on
the basis of sexual orientation
Central America
Guatemala has no organizations,
though gay-rights groups
were formed in Honduras,
Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa
Rica, and El Salvador during
the 1980s.
Belize has little violence against
gays, but neither does it have
an open gay-rights
movement.
Current Organizing and News
• Resource Center for the Americas:
http://www.americas.org/
