Mujeres Creando ~ Bolivia

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• Mujeres Creando Bolivia
• Love and honesty in our struggle

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• Mujeres Creando Bolivia
• Targeting neoliberals, macho leftists and gender
  technocrats

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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
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Overview

• Sexual identity in Latin America
• Implications for GLBT persons
• Legal status
• Violence
• Organizing

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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!

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Sexual Identity in Latin America

• Machismo hypervirility
• Physical strength
• Bold sexual advances toward women
• Great sexual prowess
• Self-confidence
• Bravery

• Marianismo hyperfemininity
• Pure
• Submissive to father, brother, and spouse
• Lacks sexual desire
• Mary or Malinche
• Virgin or Whore

• Public and private spaces
• After Steven Bocchi

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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

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Legal Status

• Banning of homosexual acts some countries might
  overturn
• Legal protections for homosexual persons
• Police harassment
• Civil partnership

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Violence

• Relation to machismo
• Public and private space
• Amor Bandido Bruno Barreto

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Violence in Guatemala

• 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

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Famous GLBT Latin Americans

• 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

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Organizing

• No Stonewall in Latin America
• Mexico
• Argentina
• Central America

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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.

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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

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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.

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Current Organizing and News

• Resource Center for the Americas
  http//www.americas.org/

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