Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 04:53:52 -0500 (CDT) From: crosswix@ix.netcom.com (camille zanni) Subject: Fwd: NACLA: Gay Rights in Latin America ---- Begin Forwarded Message Reprinted from the March/April 1997 issue of NACLA Report on the Americas. (For subscription information, E-Mail to nacla-info@igc.apc.org) [Amy Lind teaches sociology and Latin American Studies at Brown University] Like many gay-pride marches throughout the world, last year's Gay/Lesbian/Transvestite/Transsexual Pride March in Buenos Aires was held on June 28 to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City. Some 1,500 people, representing over 22 organizations from diverse regions of the country, were present--almost double the number of participants in the previous year's march. In many respects, this turnout was an expression of the growing political visibility of sexual minorities in Argentina. While only a small number of gay- rights organizations existed in Argentina--as in other Latin American countries--just two decades ago, today a broad range of organizations have emerged, reflecting the diverse experiences, types of oppression and political activism of sexual minorities. Many of the marchers in Buenos Aires, fearful of the consequences of "coming out," wore masks or partially covered their faces as they marched through the downtown streets of the capital city. The need felt by many demonstrators to conceal their identities highlights the contradictions of becoming politically visible for sexual minorities in Latin America. On one hand, the demonstrators publicly manifested their pride--and anger--as they walked to the Congress from the Plaza de Mayo, an important public place for political expression in Argentina. The marchers also showed their growing discontent with Argentine laws and institutional practices which legitimize police brutality against gay men, lesbians, transvestites, transsexuals and other sexual minorities. It is precisely because of this violence, however, that many of those who protested in the streets were cautious about publicly revealing their identities. Yet, while risks remain for gay and lesbian activists who engage in open protest, people are increasingly willing to take them. Pride marches have been organized in other countries, most notably in Mexico and Brazil. And throughout Latin America, gay and lesbian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have played important roles in launching educational campaigns and in monitoring human rights abuses against sexual minorities. While many progressive groups have supported this growing activism of Latin America's gay and lesbian community, the increased visibility has also triggered a backlash against gay-rights organizations. Police brutality has increased over the past few years, as have measures harassing sexual minorities, such as raids of gay and lesbian bars. Paramilitary groups have become more visible in their self- styled morality campaigns to "clean the streets" of "disposable" sectors of the population, including gays and lesbians as well as transvestites, transsexuals, male prostitutes, street children and other social "undesirables." Systematic, accurate documentation in recent years by gay- rights groups has highlighted the scope of the problem--and has provided a basis for local organizations to develop alliances with like-minded organizations in their cities and in other regions and countries. Only a few countries, including Nicaragua, Ecuador and Chile, have laws which criminalize homosexual practices. In some cases, these laws have existed for decades, but in others, new anti-gay laws or legal campaigns have emerged. In Nicaragua, for example, the conservative government of Violeta Chamorro passed an anti-sodomy law in 1992 which mandates prison sentences of up to three years for "anyone who induces, promotes, propagandizes or practices in scandalous form sexual intercoure between persons of the same sex." Such legislation serves as "a constant threat," according to a recent report by the Inter-Church Committee on Human Rights in Latin America, "allowing the police to intimidate, abuse and extort lesbians, gays and transvestites." And in Guadalajara, Mexico, although no national law criminalizes homosexuality, the governing right- wing National Action Party (PAN) passed a local ordinance last December which outlaws "abnormal sexual behavior." The origins of the ordinance date back several decades, but this new version has received public attention because it renews the legal power of the local police to arrest homosexuals, and it makes extra-legal police practices like extortion more likely to occur. Elsewhere in Latin America, existing laws designed to uphold "public morality" are being applied with renewed vigor against sexual minorities. For example, police in Peru have used laws against prostitution to arrest transvestites and male sex workers. Last January, under the guise of a campaign to crack down on prostitution known as "Operation Thunder," Peruvian police detained over 300 people in a series of raids on gay nightclubs. A similar wave of police raids of gay and lesbian bars and nightclubs threatened Argentine sexual minorities in 1995 and 1996. While no law in Argentina specifically criminalizes homosexuality, the police have resorted to a number of other legal instruments to harass individuals they consider "dangerous." For example, police edicts, which are not laws as such, but regulations set in place nearly 50 years ago, and applied at the discretion of the Argentine police, have been used extensively to harass sexual minorities. The "Edict Against Public Scandals," which punishes those "who disturb with flirtatious remarks" and prohibits "public exhibition of persons wearing or disguised with clothes of the opposite gender," has been used to arrest gay men, lesbians and transvestites. The "Edict Against Public Dancing" punishes any proprietor who "allows men to dance together." Individuals arrested under these edicts have been held by police for up to 30 days and fined. The Buenos Aires group, Gays for Civil Rights (Gays D. C.), says that it documented 331 complaints of arrest under the edicts in 1995--twice the number of complaints documented over the two-year period between September, 1992 and September, 1994. More than 50 transvestites and transsexuals were arrested every night in Buenos Aires in 1995 and the first half of 1996, according to the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), a non-profit organization based in San Francisco. In a single sweep last February, 160 people were arrested under the charges of cross-dressing and prostitution. More brutal forms of repression against sexual minorities have also risen alarmingly over the past few years, especially in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Paramilitary groups and "social cleansing" death squads claim to be taking justice into their own hands by "disposing" of those viewed as "dirtying" the social fabric of society. In Brazil, the Gay Group of Bahia (GGB) has documented more than 1,200 cases of assassinations of lesbians, gay men and transvestites since 1982. The group says that at least 12 anti-gay death squads operate in various parts of the country, including the "Group for Hunting Homosexuals" in Belem do Para and a neo-nazi skinhead group in Sao Paulo whose members wear t-shirts saying "Death to Homosexuals." And in Colombia, 39 groups have engaged in "social cleansing" activities, according to activist Juan Pablo Ordonez, including the groups, "Death to Dangerous Homosexuals" and "Death to Homosexuals." The common denominator of the so-called "disposables" is, according to Ordonez, their poverty. In this sense, the problem of human rights abuses against sexual minorities is directly related to issues of class and race. More often than not, it is homosexuals, prostitutes, or transvestites who are poor or members of racial or ethnic minorities who are targeted and who suffer the most brutal forms of violence and discrimination. Death-squad activities occur in the context of a more general hatred and fear of any group deemed an "other" by the dominant society. Left-wing insurgent groups supposedly fighting for social justice have also adopted the dominant society's hatred of sexual minorities. The Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), which was considered defunct in Peru until last December's hostage-taking at the Japanese ambassador's residence, killed at least three gay men in Pucallpa and Tarapoto in 1990, saying homosexuals are "anti-revolutionary" and "products of capitalism." The oppression of sexual minorities is closely linked to other forms of class, race, ethnic and gender oppression. Indeed, upper-class gay men and lesbians, who often enjoy the protection that their social status bestows, are less likely to be the target of such violence. Although homosexuality was by no means condoned during the military rule of Gen. Augusto Pinochet in Chile, upper-class gay men's clubs that aligned themselves ideologically with the Pinochet regime were relatively unaffected by the military curfews that regulated the daily lives of most Chileans. Such protection is not always assured, however, as recent events in Peru suggest. Shortly after announcing his "self-coup" in April, 1992, in which he closed Congress and suspended the Constitution, President Alberto Fujimori announced a restructuring of the foreign service, arguing that the Peruvian government was threatened by corruption and political dissent from within. Fujimori referred to homosexuality as one form of "subversion" which the state needed to eliminate, and several gay members of the foreign service were expelled from their long-held jobs. Legal and extra-legal practices which deny the human rights of sexual minorities--including the basic right to life--are often premised on the notion that homosexuals are a "danger" to society. Because homosexuality is perceived as a threat to what is considered the foundation of nation-building--the family--it is seen as a threat to "preserving the nation." Such notions of the family as the basic building block of society, to be preserved at all cost, are at the root of many military and formal democratic government projects, as well as what social critic Jean Franco has referred to as the "gender wars" launched by the Catholic Church in recent years. In the case of right-wing military governments, national-security doctrines and other state military policies have served to institutionalize a repressive heterosexist order. Similarly, the traditional left has often criticized both women's and gay-rights movements for "dividing" the family and, therefore, the revolutionary movement. An important strategy of activist groups has been to challenge age-old stereotypes about homosexuality and sexual difference as these stereotypes become the bases for laws and repressive political practices. Pointing out how the state and legal system seek to control the seemingly most natural, intimate, private aspects of people's lives provides a powerful critique of the traditional view that the family is a nonpolitical, purely private institution. Sexual minorities have attempted to carve out alternative political spaces which challenge these moralistic premises of both the right and the left. Obviously, many of the gay- rights groups in existence today have their roots in the anti-authoritarian and human rights struggles of the 1970s and 1980s, as well as in the burgeoning women's movement, the organized left and other popular struggles. But because Latin American societies have so thoroughly stigmatized homosexuals as "sexually deviant," they and other sexual minorities have felt the need to develop their own organizations. This has led some gay activists to abandon the left, partly because of their past experiences of being marginalized within leftist political parties and organizations. Many of these activists have been key to the formation of autonomous networks of NGOs defending and promoting gay rights. The Homosexual Movement of Lima (MHOL), for example, which was founded in 1983, has become an important institution representing the rights of gays and lesbians in Peru. It has played a crucial role in monitoring human rights abuses against sexual minorities and in providing support for sexual minorities and for people living with HIV/AIDS. Some gay activists have nevertheless continued to work in the loosely defined left while struggling for gay rights. In Nicaragua and Brazil, for example, gay-rights groups have successfully gained the support of conventional leftist parties for specific initiatives. The Sandinistas, for example, supported Nicaragua's gay-rights groups in opposing Chamorro's sodomy law, which they saw as unconstitutional. The Workers' Party (PT) has also challenged anti-gay legislation in Brazil. What has emerged through this historical process is a variety of new human rights and political agendas. Increasingly, local groups have participated in regional and international networks and conferences, thereby developing a more adequate network to respond to processes of violence as well as overcoming some of the isolation felt in the act of local organizing. Funding for human rights and HIV/AIDS-related projects for gay and lesbian NGOs has contributed to this institutional strengthening, as has the sheer dedication of activists to build local coalitions and transnational networks. While much needs to be done to build trust among organizations and to develop more effective, shared agendas, recent trends point in the right direction. In response to the dramatic rise in murders of male prostitutes and transvestites in Ecuador, for example, gay activists have sought to make links between prostitution laws and violence against gays and lesbians. Other groups have also sought to end the marginalization of transvestites and transsexuals in the broader struggle of sexual minorities, as in Argentina's pride march. Many activist groups have also begun addressing complex questions of homophobia in relation to broader processes of violence and discrimination in Latin American societies. In practice, however, this is not an easy task. Much has yet to be done to further enable communication among individual organizations and, most importantly, to work towards creating social spaces in which homophobic attitudes and oppressive legal and political structures can be transformed. Some hopeful signs have emerged recently. Activist protests in Argentina helped get the police edicts repealed this past August, ending a wave of repression against sexual minorities. An antidiscrimination clause was also introduced in the city's legislation, making Buenos Aires the first Latin American city with legislation forbidding discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. In Chile, it is likely that the Senate will approve a liberalization of the Sodomy Law so that it applies only to persons under the age of 18, despite a Senate committee recommendation to uphold the law. Local activists would not consider this a total victory, since it would constitute an age of consent for homosexuals that is higher than that permitted for heterosexual relations, but they still see it as a step forward because it would decriminalize sodomy for adults. Regional and international networks have been formed as well, thus creating a stronger institutional base for activists to document abuses and challenge specific legislation and processes of violence. Many organizations throughout the region are now members of the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA), the first international gay-rights organization to gain consultative status with the UN. ILGA activists have worked closely with Amnesty International, IGLHRC and several regional organizations to introduce sexual orientation into the UN human rights frameworks. ILGA, which started out as an umbrella organization of gay and lesbian organizations in Europe, now has a membership of over 300 organizations from over 70 countries, and has encouraged members from Latin America, Africa and Asia to assume leadership positions within the organization. Peruvian activist Rebeca Sevilla, former director of MHOL, was ILGA's co-secretary general between June, 1992 and 1995. More than ever before, Latin American gay and lesbian organizations are acting simultaneously on several levels-- locally, regionally and internationally--to bring the rights of sexual minorities to the forefront and to place pressure on national governments to reform discriminatory state policies and laws. This was evident in the strong presence of regional activists at the 1994 UN Human Rights conference in Vienna and the 1995 UN Women's Conference in Beijing. And it is evident in the growing presence of organizations like the Mexican lesbian-rights group called the Closet of Sor Juana, which has played a major role in pushing for antidiscriminatory legislation and in including sexual minorities in human rights agendas at local and international levels. Increasingly, people are willing to take the risk of "coming out." While violence and homophobia persist, the public decision-making arena is sure to be transformed by the presence of gay and lesbian organizations which have emerged from the closet to challenge homophobia and traditional moralistic views of sexual identity. ** End of text from cdp:nacla.report ** ***********************************************************************