The outbreak of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s was a turning point for sexual minorities in Latin America, where few well-established movements
for homosexual liberation existed before the arrival of HIV. Although lesbians
had won spaces within feminist and women’s movements as part of a broader
struggle for gender equality and reproductive rights, sexual minorities had been unable
to articulate themselves as an autonomous political force within the reformist and rev-
olutionary projects of the 19 6 0s and 1970s. The left’s sexism and homophobia played
no small part in their exclusion. The AIDS crisis, however, has generated openings for a critical public dis-
cussion of sexuality and homosexuality in countries where the Catholic Church and/or military regimes
exercised almost total control over how these issues were discussed in the public sphere. In many cases,
these openings served as the grounds from which broader debates and struggles for sexual freedom were
launched. These debates and struggles form the subject of this NACLA report.
Movements for homosexual liberation and reproductive rights have by no means gone unchallenged.
Recent years have seen an alarming conservative tide in many Latin American countries at the same time
that movements have sought to consolidate their political presence. This wave of conservativism is not sim-
ply an attempt to return to the past, but is part and parcel of larger social transformations. Globalization-
the imposition of a neoliberal system of exchange on all national economies-has dramatically reorganized
production and mandated the privatization of the state in the service of transnational capital. Within glob-
alized neoliberal economies, the need for more disciplined laborers and more efficient consumers has led
to greater policing of sexual and reproductive practices, particularly as the economic model proves itself a
failure for most Latin Americans. The regulatory functions of the nuclear family are more crucial to the reproduction of capital today than they have ever been, and in many countries, the Catholic Church hierar-
chy has gladly assumed the role of arbiter and enforcer of all things sexual.
Yet as regulatory controls intensify, the marketplace itself generates challenges to conservative moral- izing. Commodified mass culture, as Marta Lamas points out, poses a tremendous counterweight to right-
wing and religious discourses on sexuality and reproduction. Ruling classes perceive these liberalizing ten- dencies as a potential danger to the very institutions which ensure their reproduction, hence the “family values” campaigns, the refusals to decriminalize abortion, and the indifferent responses to the AIDS crisis
in many countries in the region.
Commodity culture itself, however, provides no real political alternatives to the structural arrangements that produce and reproduce sexism and homophobia. This issue has been raised in several countries where
strong gay economies have emerged. Modeled after their U.S. and European counterparts, emerging gay
enclaves in Latin American urban centers are offering some gay men increasingly “acceptable” lifestyle
options. Yet this “acceptance” is in many ways contingent on the ability and the willingness of individuals
to conform to the specifications of the consumer niche assigned to “gays” by mercantile interests in the pur-
suit of profit. More often than not, these specifications exclude women, transvestites and working-class peo- ple in general. In his article on Brazil, Charles Klein questions whether sexual identities that are defined primarily through consumption can be the site of progressive sexual politics. After all, the appearance of acceptance created by the marketplace is often just that, an appearance. The roots of sexism and homopho-
bia are left virtually intact. The problem here is not with identity politics per se, but with the atomizing and depoliticizing tenden-
cies within such politics. Identity can be a powerful source of political agency which can lead to broader projects for social transformation, yet it can also lead to the infinite fragmentation of social groups and
make effective political action impossible. The case of the Chilean homosexual movement, chronicled by Victor Hugo Robles, powerfully reveals these contradictions. But as he suggests, movements for sexual
rights become further politicized as they join other struggles-be they for human rights or better wages.
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