Midway through the cere-
mony in which Patricio
Aylwin was being offi-
cially nominated as the presiden-
tial candidate of the democratic
opposition in August, 1989, Las
Yeguas del Apocalipsis (The
Mares of the Apocalypse), a gay performance group, dramatically
unfurled a large banner that read
“Homosexuals for Change.” Pre-
sent at the ceremony-which
marked the beginning of Aylwin’s
campaign to be Chile’s first
democratically elected president
since Salvador Allende-were
most of the prominent political
New political horizons emerged
for the gay movement in the
wake of Pinochet’s defeat.
During this moment of
transition, Chilean homosexuals
articulated an organized and
militant political voice for the
first time.
figures of the opposition to the Pinochet dictatorship,
and the event received wide coverage in the national and
international media. The intervention of Las Yeguas
only briefly disrupted the event, but the unfurling of that
banner marked an important shift in the history of the
gay movement in Chile. It changed the tone of the
movement’s presence in the public arena, signaling the
beginning of a period in which politically organized
homosexuals would begin to demand their right to be
heard and included in the larger processes of change
sweeping the Chilean political landscape.
The history of the homosexual movement dates back
to the revolutionary days of Salvador Allende’s social-
ist government. The first public gay march took place in
1972, yet few remember the group of homosexuals and
transvestites that marched through downtown Santiago
demanding rights for “the third sex,” a phrase they
picked up from the title of a popular movie playing in
Victor Hugo Robles is a Chilean journalist and independent activist. He is a former member of the Steering Committee of the Homosexual Liberation Movement (MOVILH), and he directed and produced the radio program Open Triangle between 1993 and 1996. Translated from the Spanish by NACLA.
local theaters at the time. The
march, organized by an ad hoc
group of individuals, was an
isolated event and had no orga-
nization or movement behind it.
To no one’s surprise, it was bro-
ken up by the police, who
threatened participants with
violence and arrest if they did
not disperse. On the day after
the march, the headlines of El
Clarin, the most popular pro-
Allende daily, reflected the
left’s disdain for homosexuals:
“Faggots take over downtown
Santiago.”
In spite of the revolutionary
spirit of the times, those years were not a period that
would have allowed for a politically organized gay
movement. There was no place anywhere on the politi-
cal spectrum where the virulent homophobia of Chilean
society was questioned. In fact, that very homophobia
underwrote much of political discourse at the time. In
the intense political struggles between supporters and
opponents of the Popular Unity government, political
figures were often depicted as maricones, or “faggots,”
in speeches and political cartoons. This was particularly
common among the left, which was fond of portraying
its opponents as effeminate oligarchs of questionable
moral character.
Soon after the march, a variety of factors–growing
social turmoil, a hostile press that portrayed homosexu-
als as delinquents, the threat of a military coup and the
violence with which the gay march was handled-
forced homosexual activists to return to their ghetto and
await better conditions for their struggle. The wait was
long, for soon came the military coup in 1973, with its
bitter history of tortures, deaths and disappearances. The
victims were countless. Perhaps the most forgotten are
the many transvestites who were executed during the
days immediately following the coup.
36NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 36 NAGIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON SEXUAL POLITICS
The 1980s were difficult
years marked by intense
protests against the
regime, but change was in the
air. This period saw The a, the emergence of the participa first lesbian organiza- the
tions and the birth of human ,
the gay economy in mar
Santiago. The heavy
regulation of sexuality that has
always existed in Chile intensi-
fied during the Pinochet dicta-
torship as society became in-
creasingly militarized. At the
same time, however, the rise of frpp-mnrkpt idpnlov allnwud
for the emergence of the first gay dance clubs.
Interestingly, this phenomenon paralleled a much more
dramatic emergence of topless bars in which female
prostitution became quasi-legal. The emergence of gay
clubs was not a reflection of official tolerance towards
homosexuality, but of the tacit recognition of homosex-
uals as a potential economic market. The gay clubs that
emerged in this period, particularly those that attracted a
more working-class crowd, were regularly raided by
police. Nevertheless, it was during the 1980s that a
semipublic gay nightlife became possible in Santiago.
On the political front, the lesbian community began to
organize itself during the latter years of the military
regime. The Ayuqulen Lesbian Feminist Collective was
the first public organization of its kind. For several years
after its formation in 1984, it was the sole voice of
Chilean homosexuals both nationally and internation-
ally. “Our organization envisions a path that begins with
reflection in the context of the feminist experience,” said
an Ayuquelen member in a press interview, “and recog-
nizes the need to come together to study the issues that
emanate from our condition as lesbians.”‘ In Con-
cepci6n, a group of lesbians founded the Lesbians in
Action (LEA) Collective.
But up to this point, the presence
of gay and lesbian organizations
and the enunciation of their
demands had been discrete in
character. This all changed in 1988
with the irruption of Las Yeguas
del Apocalipsis onto the scene.
The interventions and perfor-
mances of this art duo sent shock
waves through Santiago’s cultural
circles. “We came together to pro-
voke,” said one member in an
interview. “Our name alone was
intended to produce allergic reac-
tions within a scene characterized
by conformism and complicity
with .tnte repreRsiCn We de.-
nounced hypocrisy and accomodation to the dictator-
ship. Before the advent of democracy, it was in part us
maricas (queers) who enunciated what others couldn’t
or wouldn’t say.” 2 Along with their intervention at
Aylwin’s nomination for the presidency, Las Yeguas
staged a series of performances that aggressively
“homosexualized” the political and cultural discourses
of the time. One of their most memorable performances
was their staging of the cueca sola in the foyer of the
building that housed the Chilean Human Rights
Commission. Years earlier, the mothers of the disap-
peared had appropriated the cueca-Chile’s national
dance in which a couple flirtatiously dance around one
another-to symbolize the disappearance of their male
partners by performing the dance alone. On the foyer
floor, Las Yeguas placed a large cloth map of Latin
America and covered it with broken glass. As these two
gay men “danced alone” wearing only long white skirts,
their feet bled and made imprints on the map. Through
performances like these, the group inserted the issue of
homosexual oppression into the larger discourses of the
opposition to the Pinochet regime and situated the polit-
ical demands of homosexuals squarely within the hori-
zons of the left.
VOL XXXI, No 4 JAN/FEB 1998
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