By Daniel Soto
Many countries in Latin America have to deal with numerous social
and economic problems. Like most societies, they
seek ways to explain their difficulties, and they look for things that will
make them seem, at least to themselves, superior to
other societies. So they build their army, to prove that they are strong
and powerful and will defend their country to the end.
This brings with it hostility toward all "the others", those who are not
like us. If you are boasting that you are stronger,
smarter and more "macho" than anyone else, sooner or later you have to
prove it. So they say, " Hey, in our army we are
so macho and strong, that any "JOTO" won't survive." They go drinking and
carousing and whoring and looking for fags to
bash, just to prove how macho they are.
A second problem in Latin America is the Roman Catholic Church. It says we must love the homosexual but hate the sin of homosexuality (i.e., gay sex). So, the only way a person can be gay in the eyes of the Church is if they don't have sex, a most unreasonable expectation, by most recognized psychological standards.
The message is quite clear: If you are Catholic and macho then you can not be gay. If you are not gay, then what do you do when you encounter a gay person? The answer is equally clear: You must verbally and physically abuse him to further demonstrate that you are not like him. Oh, but there's one other thing. Before you beat him up you should have sex with him, just for kicks, of course. This situation afterwards brings with it great panic on the part of these true homophobes. They have experienced sexual attraction to members of their own sex. This terrifies them, so they feel that by beating up this person, with whom only a moment ago they were so physically intimate, somehow the act of brutality will cleanse them of what they fear is their own homosexuality. They are not feminine, no! They are big macho guys, because they use the faggots for pleasure and then beat them up afterwards. And so, the circle continues, from father to son, from brother to brother the message is handed down by society. "Gays and lesbians are not human like we are. They are deserving of only our contempt." (I refer more to males because in Latin America men are more actively homophobic than are women because male homosexuality is seen as a great affront to machismo.
Some Latin Americans (not all, by any means) feel so strongly that they are better than everybody else that when they encounter an openly gay Latino they feel that person brings shame to their culture. Why is this? It is because it is what the society teaches them, and it is what the Church teaches them as well. You may observe that this is very similar to the USA, and I have to admit that homophobia is everywhere much the same variety of malicious stupidity and prejudice based upon ignorance. What we end up with are societies that tacitly allow repressed social frustrations to be vented on a despised minority through the use of officially, or unofficially, sanctioned violence. This is how we get five, six, seven or more very macho "straight" guys beating a "faggot" to death in Mexico City, or Chicago, or Buenos Aires, or Rome, or Moscow, or where ever.
This is the truth, my friend. Homophobia any where in Latin America is the same. It is based upon and almost enforced by ignorance and stupidity. And why does it seem to happen more often in Latin America? Why do so many human rights abuses happen so often in Latin America? It is because of the long history and tradition of brutal repression by the military, which has so often usurped civilian authority. And, to be honest and place responsibility where it belongs, by far the largest amount of "aid" from the United States that Latin America receives has been for the benefit of these repressive military establishments. Furthermore, in Central America, Senator Jesse Helms even held legitimate humanitarian aid hostage to his demand that Nicaragua pass a stiff, anti-homosexual "sodomy law" which punishes homosexual acts with 5 years in prison for men and 2 years for women. I'm sure that most Americans are not aware of these facts, but these are the ways in which the United States has helped to encourage homophobia in Latin America. I do not say that Latin America is innocent, or that homophobia wouldn't exist if it weren't for the USA or even for our generals. But I do say that because the rest of the world ignores human rights abuses in Latin America, because gay-bashing is not reported in the news, as it is often not reported everywhere, the growth of such crimes will continue unabated. The so-called civilized world would protest the abuse, torture and murder of South African blacks, so why do we not protest as well the abuse, torture and murder of gay men in Brazil? By the way, South Africa is the only country in the world that has a constitution proclaiming the equality of gay people with straights. Wonder why?
In Chiapas, Mexico, at a political luncheon the governor made a flat statement that all homosexuals should be killed. During a period of less than two years twelve gay men were brutally murdered in Chiapas State. People in this region protested to the Mexican government, but, as usual, nothing was done. Until one day the people of Chiapas decided to take charge and said, among other things, "No more killing of homosexuals. Those people are our brothers!". Of course there were many, many other abuses in Chiapas, such as the government of Mexico allowing non-indigenous people to move in and take over the land that belongs, by right of treaty, to the Indians. This is what created a situation in Mexico where the people came to feel that they had no recourse but to fight. Now the question is what the USA and the rest of the world did, before and after? Not very much, I'm afraid, except to lend support to a corrupt and repressive government in Mexico City. This is what is meant by the negative influence of the United States in Latin America that encourages homophobia and other human rights abuses.
In Chile, the legislature is trying to repeal the nation's anti-sodomy laws, but great political pressure, from the radical religious conservatives, is being exerted to keep these repressive statutes in force. Last year in Santiago, off-duty military personnel set fire to a gay bar with some 400 gay men and lesbians inside. To this day not a single arrest has been made in the case. Chile, Ecuador and Nicaragua are the only three countries with specifically anti-homosexual laws on their books.
In El Salvador, however, a gay rights activist, who is also a vocal advocate for people with AIDS, was beaten almost to death by members of a neo-Fascist paramilitary group. Now that communists have been virtually eliminated as their enemy, such ultra conservative organizations increasingly turn their brutal attention toward gays and lesbians.
In Brazil, the country in Latin America with by far the highest rate of HIV infection, a gay man was severely beaten last year by the police simply because he was distributing free condoms on the streets of Rio de Janeiro. It should also be pointed out that in Brazil the position of women is so tenuous and male machismo so pervasive men regularly get away with murdering their wives by employing no more substantial defense than to say that the women had been unfaithful.
All these instances of abuse are born largely of a near-maniacal, hetero-male obsession with strictly enforced social conformity. Acts, which can only be described as pure terrorism, are perpetrated against gay people so they won't dare to come out of the closet, thereby preserving at least a patina of social uniformity. In these societies, dominated, as they are, by a grotesquely over-inflated vision of machismo, one can only be even marginally tolerated as a gay person if he is perhaps a transvestite or a drag queen who hides his male identity in women's clothes. These types are not considered to be any threat to masculinity, but only ridiculous and funny, perhaps slightly crazy, creatures of no consequence. But if you speak up and want recognition simply as a lesbian or a gay man, the system will not tolerate you. You must be silenced through intimidation, harassment, beating or even death.
In countries like Costa Rica, Argentina and Uruguay the struggle of GLB people is not over by any means, but things have improved somewhat. This improvement has come in Costa Rica, for example, as a result of the fact that the country no longer has a standing army. Over a period of nearly fifty years this removal of the strong influence of the military has helped to eliminated much of the former super-macho mentality from Costa Rican society in general. Argentina and Uruguay have both gone through very repressive times in recent years when the army was in control for long periods, but they are now emerging from those dark times into the light of liberal democracies that respect the rights of individual human beings.
There is a saying that goes: My freedom ends where your freedom begins. If we can only learn to respect each other as human beings, we will have learned the secret of the truly good and happy life.
We must strengthen our ties with our gay brothers and sisters in Latin America. As members of the International GLB family, we must stick together. On Arenal, the Internet e-mail list for Spanish speaking people, there are often postings of appalling stories about the abuse of gay people in places such as Venezuela, Spain, Argentina, Chile and even Costa Rica. We must continue to write letters to those governments and universities that tolerate, or even lend their tacit support to such atrocities so they will know that the world is indeed watching.
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