Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Preface xi

Introduction
* Hybrid Modernities, Modern Sexualities 1

Part I. Frames
Chapter One
* On Sexual Subjects and Public Spheres 27

Part II. Doorways

Chapter Two
* Occupying the Partisan Field: First Door on the Left 61
Chapter Three
* The Limits of Liberalization: Entering the Electoral Field 87

Part III. Pathways

Chapter Four
* Advancing Homosexual Citizenship:
Brazil's Early Turn to Legislatures 115
Chapter Five
* Life at the Margins: Coalition Building and Sexual
Diversity in the Mexican Legislature 146
viii Contents

Chapter Six
* Brazil without Homophobia, or, A Technocratic
Alternative to Political Parties 178
Conclusion
* The Hope and Fear of Institutions 204

Acronyms 219

Notes 221

Bibliography 247

Index 287
 Acknowledgments

A great number of people have contributed to the completion of this

project. I would particularly like to thank Jorge Dominguez for his peda­
gogical example, encouragement, and patience in reading extensive early
drafts of this work, as well as the other members of my dissertation com­
mittee, Grzegorz Ekiert and Steven Levitsky, for their guidance and sup­
port. Several people have been kind enough to read and respond to various
parts of this work. I would like to thank Richard Parker, Rosalind Pet­
chesky, Barry Adam, Paisley Currah, James Green, Berenice Bento, Claudia
Hinojosa, Peggy Levitt, Lisa Jean Moore, Amilcar Barreto, and Debanuj
Dasgupta for their enormously helpful feedback. My writing group in New
York City has become an invaluable space for creative exchange. I would
like to thank fellow members Grace M. Cho, Jean Halley, Ananya Mukher­
jea, Salvador Vidal-Ortiz, Hosu Kim, Sung Hee Yook, and Ron Nerio. To my
dear friend Grace M. Cho I owe special thanks for helping me find family
and community. I also owe a particular debt to Marianne Wifvesson for
her feedback and friendship; Adrian Palma for many helpful conversations
over coffee; Omar Feliciano for his emotional support and insights dur­
ing much of the time I was conducting research; and Michael Yarbrough
for the companionship, support, and intellectual exchange he generously
offered while I completed this book.
This project gave me the opportunity to make a number of new friends
and meet colleagues in Brazil and Mexico, many of whom contributed
by providing materials and generously offering their time. I would like
to thank all the people I interviewed, too many to name. But in Mexico I
would particularly like to thank Cecilia Riquelme, whose years in the activ­
ist movement are a source of inspiration to me, and Yan Maria Yaoy6lotl
,Castro, Antonio Medina, Enoe Uranga, David Sanchez Camacho, Manuel
Oropeza, Patria Jimenez, Trinidad Gutierrez, Jose Ramon Enriquez, Danny
Cohen, Edgar Sanchez, Adriana Ortiz Ortega, and Juan Carvajal. I was also
x Acknowledgments

fortunate enough to participate in two courses in the Gender Studies Pro­

gram at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, thanks to the wel­
come I received from Gloria Careaga ; her advice, based on years of scholar­
ship and activism, I greatly appreciate. For the generosity they extended
in terms of time, resources, and guidance in Brazil I would particularly
like to thank Beto de Jesus, Claudio Nascimento, Rogerio Diniz Junqueira,
Virginia Figueiredo, William Aguiar, Paulo Mariante, Dolores Rodrigues,
Roberto de Oliveira Silva, Eugenio Ibiapino, Rita Cerqueira Quadros, Ser­
gio Carrara, and Horacio Sivori. My research in Salvador owes a special
thanks to Luiz Mott. This work entailed research in a number of libraries
and archives, and I would particularly like to acknowledge the help I re­
ceived from the activists and staff at the Arquivo Edgard Leuenroth, at
the University of Campinas; Grupo Gay da Bahia; Grupo Arco-Iris de
Conscientizac;ao Homossexual; Rede Urn Outro Olhar; Fundac;ao Perseu
Abramo; Centro de Informac;ao da Mulher; Centro Academico de Estudos
Homoeroticos da Universidade de Sao Paulo; Associac;ao Brasileira Inter­
disciplinar de A I D S; Centro de Documentac;ao e Memoria, Universidade
do Estado de Sao Paulo; Centro de Informacion y Documentacion de las
Homosexualidades en Mexico Ignacio Alvarez; Letra s; Centro de Estudios
del Movimiento Obrero Socialista; Biblioteca Rafael Galvan; Instituto de
Estudios de Ia Revolucion Democratica; Fundacion Donaldo Colosio; Co­
municacion e Informacion de Ia Mujer, A. C . ; and the Recuperando Nuestra
Historia: Archivo Historico Lesbico de Mexico.
Several friends and family members provided invaluable emotional and
intellectual support as well. At the risk of forgetting some people, I would
like to express particular thanks to Maria Mercedes Gomez, Eliane Borges
Berutti, Jose Luiz Martins Lessa, Aldo Jorge Mendes da Silva, Mario Quei­
roz Ramos, Hercules Quintanilha, Oscar Gonzalez, Salvador Cruz, Kelly
Silfies, Leonore Mcintyre, Donna Jarvis, Teresa Raffaelli, and Christian
Gonzalez. I would like to recognize the love and support I received from
my mother, Lily Litvak; though posthumously, Jaime Litvak, who helped
me enormously in navigating the UNAM; Rosi and Manuel Aks; my cousin
Karen Aks, and Lupe Ramirez. Financial support for this project from Har­
vard University and PSC-CUNY greatly facilitated its completion. I also ex­
tend my thanks to Reynolds Smith and the staff at Duke University Press
for their support and work on this project.
 Preface

Arjun Appadurai (1996) has argued that to understand local expressions

of transnational symbolic practices - and to navigate the complex analytic
terrain between homogenization and difference in globalization - one
must consider both their genealogy and their history, the former involving
the evolution of a local habitus, the latter taking its embeddedness in a
broader universe into account. As I suggest in the pages that follow, these
two strands of the past intersect in multiple and refracted ways. A com­
parative approach to sexual politics in Latin America, I believe, permits
new ways to explore their entanglement.
I chose to work in Brazil and Mexico for several reasons. Both countries
have two of the largest and oldest LGBT movements in Latin America,
and the fact that activism emerged in the context of unusually protracted
transitions to liberal democratic regimes also permits close consideration
of the interplay between emergin g liberal institutions and activists' nego­
tiated entry into formal democratic politics. Moreover parallels in activists'
contacts with the partisan left permit an exploration of changing sexual
politics within that sector as well. In all of these respects, a comparative
approach sheds new light on how activism is changing in the context of
the broader restructuring of the public sphere. Because of their central
place in the history of activism in each country and my concern with the
arena of formal politics, particularly at the national level, my research also
focuses primarily on major urban centers: Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, and
Sao Pau lo. As a consequence, my account underplays dynamics in smaller
cities and rural areas. To some extent I tried to compensate for this through
short visits involving research outside of these cities. In Mexico this in­
cluded six weeks of fieldwork in the state of Veracruz (primarily in the
Port of Veracruz and the capital city of Xalapa, but also in short visits to
Cordoba, Cardel, and Orizaba); in Brazil I took shorter trips (one to two
weeks long) to other cities, including Porto Alegre, Recife, Salvador, and
xii Preface

Brasili a, whe re l also conducted interviews and performed limited archival

res earch.
My work builds on extensive research in each country conducted dur­
ing a period of over nine years, including seventeen months of fieldwork
in Brazil ( January and August 1999 ; February through November 2001;
May and November 2002; January and July 2006; June 2007) and sixteen
months in Mexico (June 1999 ; April through December 2ooo; June through
July 2002; June 2005; June 2006; August 2007; August 2008). In both coun­
tries I conducted extensive archival re search and a number of in-depth
interviews . To get a sense of the larger political landscape, I interviewed
not just LG BT activists but also political party militants, state officials, rele­
vant allies (feminists, A I D S activists, human rights activists, journalists),
and political op ponents (including members of the National Action Party
in Mexico and evangelical lawmakers in Brazil). I asked activists about
their own involvement with the movement and specifically about its ar­
ticulations with the international arena, political parties, legislatures , and
the state I interviewed party militants and allies who either had a history
.

of involvement with LGBT activists and their demands or were otherwise

linked to partisan and state institutions of sectoral representation (such
as women's commissions and social movement secretariats). In all I con­
ducted 139 interviews with 126 respondents in Mexico and 129 interviews
with 113 respondents in Brazil. In addition to these interviews, I conducted
extensive primary research in archives belonging to social movement orga­
nizations, a number of individual activists who were kind enough to open
their personal files to me, political parties, universities, religious institu­
tions, media organizations, legislatures, and state agencies. This archival
research complements the interview material I gathered to the extent that
it reflects the situated perspectives of various political actors over an ex­
tended history of LG BT mobilization in ways that interviews, shaped by
tricks of memory or current political considerations, may not.
In writing this book, I am very much aware that this writing is itself an
act of representing. And given my concern with the limits of represen­
tation, I think it is important for me to address certain choices I made,
their limits, and the reasons behind them. Perhaps most important, my
discussion in this work is decidedly state-centered. This in itself raises
a number of questions, particularly about how this sort of analysis can
privilege hegemonic and narrow understandings of politics and sexuali­
ties or reify totalizing accounts of nation. When presenting my work, for
example, I have occasionally been asked whether it is "better" to be gay in
Brazil or Mexico. I respond with a central assumption guiding the discus­
sion that follows: that there are multiple Mexicos and multiple Brazils and
that qualifications such as "better" and "worse" or indeed the salience of
a category such as "gay" depends crucially on one's position in a society.
 Preface xiii

This said, the Brazilian movement has arguably been more successful in its
engagement with the state. There are a number of reasons for this, many of
which I explore in the pages that follow, including the much later course of
Mexico's transition to democracy under the auspices of the right. Yet there
are differences in sexual culture that I do not address extensively but that
form a backdrop to the discussion. By sexual culture, I am not positing
a totalizing account of national character that denies internal heteroge­
neity and contradictions but rather refer to dominant narratives of nation
that are circulated at the level of elite discourse and in the public sphere.
In Brazil, as scholars have noted, such narratives often speak of a sexual
openness in ways that can have real effects on public policy, perhaps most
notably reflected in the country's global leadership in the area of H IV /AI DS
( Petchesky 2003; Parker 1994, 1999; Correa 2oo6).
Even in approaching activism I focus primarily on activists' engagement
with the state. While I consider the limitations of state-directed strate­
gies as they are embedded in a broader context, I focus less attention on
internal activism such as consciousness-raising groups or on cultural poli­
tics, such as the production of periodicals and cultural festivals. This is
not to discount their significance. Nancy Fraser (1994}, among others,
has pointed to the importance of such spaces in allowing people to forge
oppositional identities and understandings of justice. At the heart of her
critique is that the creation of such "subaltern counterpublics" is neces­
sary, among other reasons, to challenge the racialized, class, and gendered
biases that have historically structured the public sphere. I privilege a nar­
rower understanding of the public sphere due precisely to my theoretical
concern with its societal embeddedness and limitations.
While I focus on the state, moreover, I frame the discussion around
activists' strategies rather than policy outcomes. More than a thumbs-up
or thumbs-down assessment of whether a law is approved or not, address­
ing the how questions and not just the why helps shed light on the nego­
tiated and contested performative practices that produce the possibilities
for certain forms of representation. While I draw on the tools and insights
of mainstream social science, this approach is very much informed by the
challenges to positivism posed by queer and critical theorists ( Horkheimer
1995; Horkheimer and Adorno 1999; Marcuse 1966; Habermas 1970, 1971;
T. McCarthy 1992; Doty 1993; Linklater 1990; Duggan 1994; Manalansan
2oo6; Cruz-Malave and Manalansan 2002a; Butler 1990, 1993, 1997, 2000,
2002; Patton 2002; Guzman 2oo6}. In this regard, rather than taking cer­
tain political subjectivities (such as gay, lesbian, or heterosexual} as a given
or certain political strategies in and of themselves as rational, I explore the
conditions that shape and naturalize both subjectivities and rationalities.
Thus while I underscore certain differences in the histories of activism in
each country and offer certain explanations as to what gave rise to them,
xiv Preface

my hope is not so much to derive social laws from the proper arrangement
of social facts but to deconstruct the circumstances that permit those
facts to be regarded as such while marginalizing other possibilities. To this
end I also draw on interpretive methods such as discourse analysis and
genealogy.
With this in mind, I offer what follows not as objective truth produced
through neutral scientific observation but as an interpretation, one based
on a significant amount of research, but also shaped by my own back­
ground, including my academic training in the methods of social science ­
which, like any institutionalized discursive practice, filter the stories they
can tell - as well as by my own beliefs, assumptions, and desires. In this
regard there are ways in which the discussion very much grows out of my
personal history as well. I spent many summer and winter breaks during
my childhood and adolescence visiting relatives in Mexico City. The re­
search that produced this work meant a return to the country after a num­
ber of years and itself became the basis for a coming-out to several family
members with whom I had not been in close touch that owes a debt to
the stories of activism I tell here. I was also lucky enough to be introduced
at a fairly early age to Brazilian culture, which had always been present in
my home growing up. During college I fell in love with Brazilian music
and began taking classes in Brazilian literature. I also had the opportunity
to travel to the country for the first time, where I established some of my
oldest and closest friendships with other gay men.
In what follows I seek to steer a path that many will undoubtedly find
problematic. On the one hand, I think it is important to question a lib­
eral paradigm that celebrates the achievement of formal rights without a
critical eye to their societal embeddedness and entanglement with forms
of violence. At the same time, I also want to move away from a tendency
sometimes reflected in queer and critical theory dismissing any engage­
ment with the state as hopelessly compromising for social movements.
Goals that might be labeled "reformist," including access to medication
for H IV, the legal recognition of nontraditional families, and the ability
to change one's name and gender on official documents, can have real
material and symbolic effects on people's lives that I think are important.
My intention is not to disqualify any contact with the state as inevitably
tainted, but rather, while recognizing the efforts that have been made to
stretch the boundaries of formal politics, to offer a contribution to a criti­
cal engagement.
Given the extensive literature addressing the heterogeneity and contex­
tual specificity of local gender and sexual categories in Latin America, a
word or two is necessary regarding the terminology I use in this book.
At different points I refer to the homosexual liberation movement, the
gay and lesbian liberation movement, the sexual diversity movement, and
 Preface xv

the LGBT movement. Overall I try to be specific in my use of these terms,

referring to movements as most activists (or other relevant actors such as
partisan allies) identified them at a given point in time. I also use LGBT
movement to refer to activism in a broad, transhistoric sense, as this was
the most common denomination I heard activists use in both countries.
Indeed, in Brazil, the category was adopted formally through a vote at the
First National LGBT Conference, held in Brasilia in June 2008, an event
that brought together activists from every state in the country. I should
mention that while I refer to LGBT movements, my discussion tends to
focus more attention on lesbian, gay, and, to a lesser extent, trans activ­
ism. This in part is a reflection of the timing of my research, most of which
was conducted between 2000 and 2002, as well as my focus on legislative
and state-directed activism. During this time, I did not meet any bisexual
activists mobilizing as such in either country, although bisexual groups
have since organized in both countries. Moreover, while trans activism in
both countries has seen a legislative turn in recent years, as activists have
begun pressing for laws to permit trans people to change their name and
gender on official documents, my initial focus on efforts to press for anti­
discrimination laws and the legal recognition of same-sex partnerships,
both earlier priorities, means that I do not focus as much attention as I
should to the specific dynamics of trans movements.
I use the words homosexuality, heterosexuality, and sexuality, in the
singular, when referrin g to their specific inscriptions in formalized fields,
as i n legal or medical discourses. In referring to erotic experien ces and
self-understandings outside formal arenas, however, I use sexualities and
homosexualities to take into account the multiple organizations of desire
in daily life. I use the term trans rather than transgender to refer to a wide
variety of identities and expressions that cut across, move between, or
otherwise destabilize the dominant gender binary, including but not lim­
ited to male-to-female and female-to-male transsexuals, who seek to tran­
sition to the gender "opposite" the one assigned at birth through cosmetic
and in some instances chemical or surgical means; travestis and vestidas,
regionally specific categories referring to people assigned the masculine
gender at birth who feminize their bodies through various techniques, but
who may identify as homosexual men or incorporate both masculine and
feminine dimensions into their gender identity; and intersexed people,
born with traits constructed socially as both masculine and feminine, who
often confront surgical mutilation by medical systems concerned with
safeguarding the gender binary (Cabral and Viturro 2oo6; Currah 2oo6;
Kulick 1998; Bento 2oo6; Vieira Garcia 2oo8; Zuniga Reyes 2003; Prieur
1998; <;::o rrea, Petchesky, and Parker 2oo8). I use the word trans because it
was used in informal discussions with activists in both movements, while
the category "transgender," used similarly as an umbrella category in the
xvi Preface

United States and by many activists in Mexico, has elicited more contro­
versy in Brazil, where some have rejected it as a foreign import. This con­
troversy was reflected, for instance, in the name of the principal national­
level umbrella LGBT association in Brazil, the A B G LT, which changed from
the Brazilian Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Association to the Brazilian
Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Travesti, and Transsexual Association. While ini­
tially embracing the "transgender" category, most activists subsequently
opted for "travesti" and "transsexual" instead, given the limited roots of
"transgender" in Brazilian society. As all three categories, in fact, form part
of transnational repertoires, the point is interesting as a reflection of pro­
cesses of selection through which some transnational frames take root at
the local level, while others do not.
Finally, in referring to daily life, I also in some instances use the term
queer. I do so not to denote a "queer identity" or a postidentity politics but
rather as an "anti-normative signifier," similarly as an umbrella category to
refer to a multiplicity of relational positions, identities, and practices that
break with heteronormativity and the dominant gender binary (Manalan­
san 2oo6; Halperin 1995) .
Part I of this work, "Frames," offers a conceptual and historic framework
for understanding the discussion on LG BT activism that follows. Chapter 1
provides historic background on the construction of homosexual subjec­
tivities and sexual stigma in Brazil and Mexico within specific fields com­
prising national public spheres. In Part II, "Doorways," I consider activists'
initial engagements with the arena of formal politics, beginning with an
exploration of the early opening by the partisan left (chapter 2) and then of
the first experiments in electoral activism in each country, both occurring
in 1982 (chapter 3). In Part III, "Pathways," I consider broader trajectories
in activists' engagement with the state. I begin by examining differences in
legislative activism in Brazil and Mexico (chapters 4 and 5, respectively) .
I then consider Brazil without Homophobia, a federal program adopted
by the Brazilian government in 2004, in terms of a broader trajectory of
activism through executive branch bureaucracies, a technocratic alterna­
tive to political parties initially opened through the Ministry of Health
(chapter 6). The conclusion revisits the relation between formal law and
informal practice and the promises and pitfalls of engaging the state.
 t/t/rodttction

*
Hybrid Modernities, Modern Sexualities

Here in Brazil, things were always done from the top down. The masses were never the
subject ofaction, but they have always been the object ofaction. In light ofthis, I believe
(and evidently, I could be wrong) that the important thing is to win over the elite and
the "intelligentsia" (Brazilian intellectuals, particularly those linked to the media); in
short, the "Establishment," and principally in thefield where they have the most power,
in justice.... You might argue that laws do not change the social mentality and I would
agree, but only in part. Laws do not change the social mentality, but they contribute
decisively to that change.
-joO.o Antonio Mascarenhas, Rio de janeiro, to G. D., Turin, Italy, JI August 1982

Joao Antonio Mascarenhas, a Brazilian gay activist, wrote these observa­

tions to an activist in Italy in the early 198os, as the gay and lesbian lib­
eration movement in Brazil embarked on its first experiment in electoral
activism and a long trajectory of legislative efforts.1 The letter both reflects
early linkages to a broader transnational movement and echoes long­
standing critiques of liberal representative democracy as an essentially
elite enterprise, not only in Brazil but elsewhere. It also raises questions
about the relationship between formal political equality, as constructed in
law, and its reverberations "from the top down" in the private sphere, or in
changing the "social mentality."
Since the 196os Latin America has seen the emergence of activists mo­
bilizing around the banners of lesbian, gay, bisexual, travesti, transsexual,
and transgender (LG BT) rights; homosexual liberation; sexual diversity; the
right to control one's body; and free sexual choice. With varying success,
activists have sought to question prevailing understandings of family, gen ­
der roles, citizenship, and nationhood, marked by the often tacit assump­
tions attached to sexual stigma. What permitted these actors to challenge
these relations of power formally for the first time? What relationship
have LGBT activists established with broader movements for democratic
2 Introduction

change? How open have emerging democracies become to LGBT political

representation, and why? And how do the emergence and trajectories of
these movements reflect the transnationalization and limitations of liberal
norms suggested in this letter? These are the questions I explore in this
work.
To this end I trace trajectories of LGBT activism in Latin America's two
largest formal democracies, Brazil and Mexico, specifically focusing on
activists' participation in the public sphere. Since the 1970s both countries
have seen two of the oldest and la rge s t LGBT movements in the region
make significant inroads into the political arena. The Brazilian movement
in particular, arguably among the most successful in the Global South, has
achieved an impressive body of legislation on LGBT rights, organized the
largest LGBT pride marches in the world, and established a remarkably
cooperative relationship with the state, culminating in the launching in
2004 of a broad-based program to incorporate public policies across fed­
eral ministries under the banner "Brazil without Homophobia."
B oth m ovem ents em erged under so-called sem i-au thoritarian regimes ­
authoritarian regimes with some trappings of formal democracy, such as
periodic elections - in the course of protracted democratic transitions.
Both the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which had ruled Mexico
since its foundation in 1929, and Brazil's military dictatorship, installed
through a coup in 1964, maintained tight reins on this process through
violent repression of the left and a piecemeal tinkering with electoral insti­
tutions to channel discontent though legal opposition parties. Over time
massive cross-class opposition movements eroded authoritarian leaders'
grip on power. Homosexual liberation movements emerged as part of this
larger opposition movement, seeking to press the boundaries of demo­
cratic change beyond the narrowly institutional and into the cultural,
sexual, and, for some within each movement, economic terrains.
In this work I examine the interplay between evolving democratic ar­
rangements and activists' negotiated terms of entry into the political pub­
lic sphere. This focus on activists' engagement with the state, particularly
in alliance with political parties, the privileged institutions of representa­
tion under liberal regimes, offers a unique window onto larger questions
regarding the diffusion and variable expression of transnational norms as­
sociated with liberal modernity, a central concern of this work. Of course
the growing importance of a rights-based discourse, international financial
agencies, and market-oriented economic policies, considered in the pages
that follow, has a wider resonance. By framing the discussion through a
comparative and transnational lens, I seek to offer new insights on some of
the forces shaping sexual politics, and liberal democratic practice, in Latin
America and perhaps more broadly. To this end I consider the histories of
LGBT activism in each country as embedded in two larger fields: political
 Hybrid Modernities, Modern Sexualities 3

public spheres at the national level, themselves located in a changing and

contested transnational field.

S E X U A L I T I E S IN T H E MO D E R N WO R L D

World polity theorists have posited the consolidation o f a n international

global culture that grew out of the European Enlightenment in the course
of colonial and postcolonial capitalist expansion (J. Meyer, Boli, and
Thomas 1987; J. W. Meyer et a!. 1997; J. W. Meyer and Jepperson 2ooo;
Soysal 1994; Boli and Thomas 2ooo; Lechner and Boli 2005). Rationalized
norms, they argue, have legitimized certain tactics of governance (ranging
from administrative practices such as census taking to the recognition of
certain rights) and forms of collective action (such as political parties and
nongovernmental organizations) at both the national and international
levels. They have also legitimized particular constructions of agency, or
collective political or social identities, ranging from the sovereign nation­
state to the rights-bearing individual citizen.
In effect this literatu re argues that such transnational norms have a sym­
bolic force akin to the dramaturgical scripts posited by symbolic inter­
actionists, shaping not only the practices but even the identities of state
and substate actors (J. W. Meyer et a!. 2000). Thus, for example, in their
overview of the extension of women's suffrage in 133 countries over a cen­
tury (1890-1990) , Ramirez, Soysal, and Shanahan (1997) note the declining
importance of national activists pressing for this opening over time, as a
transnational construction of women as rights-bearing political subjects,
if only in the formal realm, has increasingly come to define what so-called
modern nation-states just do. These observations also highlight the inde­
pendent normative force of modernist narratives of human rights, univer­
salism, and progress in shaping statecraft, narratives to which LGBT activ­
ists and their allies in both Brazil and Mexico have appealed on repeated
occasions in framing their demands.
Bui lding on this literature, I explore how an evolving transnational
construction of sexual rights and a growing body of national legislation
on LGBT rights around the world have influenced Brazilian and Mexican
activists' strategies in engaging the state as well as the state's response
to them ( Petchesky 2000, 2003; Sanders 1996; La Violette and Whitworth
1994; Jimenez and Careaga 1995; Girard 2007). Since the UN Human Right s
Convention of Vienna included the word sexuality for the first time in
an international human rights treaty in 1993, an evolving framework has
constructed sexual rights as an extension of freedom of association and
freedom of expression, though always as a negative right linked to freedom
from persecution, not a positive right associated with pleasure and fulfill­
ment (Petchesky 1999; Berlin 1958) . Most recently, in 2006, after a Brazilian
4 Introduction

resolution on sexual orientation at the UN Human Rights Commission was

withdrawn, a group of international legal scholars, diplomats, and activists
gathered in Indonesia to produce the Yogyaka rta Principles, defining the
parameters for the application of existing universal human rights stan­
dards to cases involving "sexual orientation" and "gender identity." While
these efforts have yet to achieve the incorporation of these categories into a
UN human rights accord, both the international debates they have inspired
and a growing precedent of legislation on sexual rights in various countries
have undoubtedly strengthened the hand of those activists pressing for
similar changes nationally.
For instance, the Citizens Commission on Studies against Discrimina­
tion was established by President Vicente Fox of Mexico to draft a proposal
for a federal antidiscrimination law, which was approved by the congress
in 2003. In its final report the commission cited legislation around the
world that similarly contemplated sexual orientation while stressing the
embedded nature of this imperative within a broader transnational field:
"The fight against discrimination in Mexico cannot ignore that vast discus­
sion in what we might call 'the international public sphere,' which includes
both agreements by government organizations and demands generated
by non-governmental organizations" (Comision Ciudadana de Estudios
Contra Ia Discriminacion 2001 : 39). Of course the formal recognition of
sexual rights at the national level in Brazil and Mexico must be read in
the context of the regional convergence on liberal democratic frameworks,
writ large, with which the history of LGBT activism is intertwined. The
transnational trends relevant in this discussion, in other words, are taking
place at two significant and interrelated levels, reflecting both countries'
participation in a transnational project of liberal modernity.
As in any cultural terrain, however, transnational norms are born of
power and contested, and three qualifications should be made to the ap­
parent unity suggested by this framework so far. The first concerns its prin­
cipal challenger. Against the universalist liberal paradigm reflected in these
norms, coalitions have mobilized internationally and nationally in the name
of gendered constructions of "tradition." In the 1990s, for instance, the
Vatican Pontifical Family Council organized a series of meetings in Latin
America between pious lawmakers and religious clerics, encouraging the
former to defend the "family" and combat the so-called "culture of death"
in their respective legislatures. In a doctrinal letter issued in 2000 the Vati­
can decried the growing recognition around the world of "de facto unions,"
attributing it to a relativistic ideology of gender that found fertile ground
in the individualism promoted by "radical neoliberalism."2 That same year
the Holy See produced a document later disseminated to Church leaders
around the world indicating that the Church would not recognize the new
gender of Catholics who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery.3 In an-
 Hybrid Modernities, Modern Sexualities 5

other letter three years later, the Holy See specifically condemned efforts
to promote legal recognition of "homosexual unions," again instructing
politicians around the world to take heed and block them.4 Similar con­
cerns were raised at the third World Congress of the Family in Mexico City
in 2004, which brought together not only Catholics but Evangelicals and
other conservative Church leaders and political sympathizers, a meeting
closed by President Fox himself in what many activists in the country con­
demned as a significant blow to the country's historic secularism.5 From
a broader structural perspective, Partha Chatterjee (1993) has pointed to
the central cleavage in the world today between capital and community,
a cleavage often reinscribed symbolically by pitting liberal universalism
against national or religious particularism.6 Not surprisingly, in both Bra­
zil and Mexico political opposition to LGBT activists' efforts has primarily
mobilized around the banners of "nation" and "tradition" and been spear­
headed by religious sectors.
Second, without denying the hegemonic weight that an evolving trans­
national construction of sexual rights has had on both activism and state­
craft, beneath that level, the transnational arena is a much more hetero­
geneous terrain. The anthropologist Nestor Garcia Canclini (1995a) has
argued that we need not regard the global system in the singular, positing
the existence of multiple global communities of"interpretive consumers" of
symbolic practices. Such communities are "imagined" in ways that can ob­
scure asymmetries in power among participants who may never meet, but
the implication is a certain identification across national boundaries, con­
stituted by the consumption of shared repertoires, themselves understood
as plural (Anderson 1991). Reading consumption broadly and expanding
the notion of community to encompass production, communication, and
other forms of participation, I extend these insights to different· sectors
within heterogeneous social movement fields participating in the global
system in different ways, though overlapping and competing (Armstrong
2002). In this regard, for example, I underscore how rival sectors in early
movements in Brazil and Mexico drew on Marxist, liberationist, and liberal
strands of modernity, and transnational repertoires associated with each,
to frame sexual politics in very different ways. One of the central changes
in both countries during the 198os was a paradigm shift from homosexual
liberation to homosexual rights. This move found parallels in other parts
of the world and coincided with the d ecli n i ng streng th of the Marxist left
as a global alternative and the demobilizing impact of the debt crisis on
Latin America. At stake in this shift was a transformation in activists' goals
and tactics entailing a greater prioritization of state-directed efforts and a
narrowing of their agendas from transforming broader relations of power
in society and gaining social acceptance to an emphasis on legally enforced
tolerance. In the course of the 1980s currents emerged advocating such a
6 Introduction

turn within both social movement fields, though initially stronger in Brazil
given a more propitious institutional context to pursue a state-directed
strategy.
These observations, I should note, build on a growing academic lit­
erature on the transnational dimensions of social movements, which has
tended to privilege the place of international institutions and interstate
agreements, focusing on how transnational activists have contested their
boundaries and how these in turn have strengthened activists' position
at the national level (Sikkink 1993; Brysk 1996; Keck and Sikkink 1998;
Yashar 1996; Kriesberg 1997; ]. McCarthy 1997; Smith 1997, 2004; Merry
2oo6). Recognizing heterogeneity within national social movement fields
.

and competing "dissident globalizations" at the transnational level, I be­

lieve, permits a more nuanced and critical understanding of changes in
contemporary social movement activism (Sandoval 2002). The regional
convergence on liberal democratic regimes, the transnational construction
of sexual rights, and the decline of the Marxist left as an alternative global
community have undoubtedly fostered common trends in sexual politics
in both countries over time, albeit, in a sense, refracted across national
boundaries. By positing these changes not as the response of so-called
unitary rational actors - a tacit assumption in much of this literature ­
but as the outcome of processes of compet i tion, negotiation, and accom­
modation within heterogeneous social movement fields, I am essentially
stressing processes of selection and conformity to institutionalized norms
shaping sexual politics that are changing concurrently at the national and
transnational levels. This approach arguably uncovers levels of politics ob­
scured by such simplifying assumptions while avoiding the reification of
evolving institutional arrangements and their effects as politically neutral
or rational.
Finally, by positing this framework I do not mean to suggest that LGBT
activism is the same in Brazil and Mexico. Indeed much of my discus­
sion in this work emphasizes difference. Nor do I mean to suggest that
national activists are strictly consumers of a global model. Again, be­
yond the (re}interpretive dimension of consuming transnational practices
noted above, they have also participated in the production of transnational
repertoires. Indeed, the Brazilian government and NGOs in particular have
been at the forefront of defining certain transnational practices in sexual
politics. Margaret Keck and Katherine Sikkink (1998 : 33) have justifiably
criticized world polity theorists for framing NGOs not as actors but as " 'en­
actors' of world cultural norms." I would counter, however, that the rela­
tionship between the "injunction to perform" such norms and activists'
stretching their boundaries is both more tense and more fluid than this
opposition would allow (Yudice 2005 ) . My purpose, then, is to explore
how activists have navigated and at times stretched the boundaries of
 Hybrid Modernities, Modern Sexualities 7

constraints changing at the national and transnational levels, which must

be read in the context of a broader regional convergence on both liberal
democratic frameworks and neoliberal structural adjustment policies in
the late twentieth century.
I would further note that this comparison is viable largely because of
cer tain significant parallels in the two nations' histories, which might not
be shared by other countries, including a similar position on the semipe­
riphery of the global system, the parallel emergence of two of the oldest
and strongest LGBT movements in Latin America, and a long history of
liberalism embraced as a political ideology by elite sectors in both coun­
tries. Given these historic roots, both polities have long been embedded in
and variably imprinted by an evolving project of liberal modernity that is
concurrently national and transnational in nature. All of this said, recent
developments in the transnational system have shaped activists' strate­
gies in two related ways: through their mediated impact on the broader
political system, including on potential allies like the partisan left, and by
transforming the movements themselves.

H Y B R I D MO D E R N I T I E S

Scholars exploring national expressions o f the· project o f liberal moder­

nity, particularly in postcolonial settings, however, have cautioned against
reading transnational political and symbolic practices as directly trans­
latable across national lines, emphasizing their selective appropriation by
national actors, their hybrid reinvention in local settings, and the unequal
access to such practices experienced by different sectors of society (Ap­
padurai 1996; Chatterjee 1993, 1998; Garcia Canclini 1993, 1995a, 1995b; Gar­
cia Canclini et al. 1993; Schwarz 1977, 1992; Beverley 1999; Mignolo 2000).
Similarly, much of the existing research on sexualities in Latin America
has highlighted the differential penetration in society of so-called mod­
ern sexual identities, particularly as they cross regional racial, ethnic, and
,

class lines. Whether constructed through scientific-medical discourses

(homosexual; heterosexual) or political ones (gay; lesbian), identities
structured around sexual object choice, the gender one desires, compete
and interweave with other forms of organizing, understanding, and per­
haps (or perhaps not) identifying through sexualities ( Fry 1982; Lacombe
2oo6; Perlongher 1987; Green 1999a; Parker 1995, 1999; Daniel and Parker
1993; Santiago 2002; Heilborn 1996; Carrier 1985; Lumsden 1991; Garcia
Garcia et al. 1991; Carrillo 1999, 2002; Ponce Jimenez, Lopez Castro, and
Rodriguez Ruiz 2004; Pecheny 2005). The parallels in these debates are
no, accident. They speak to how an evolving project of modernity has been
linked to particular constructions of sexualities and call for an analysis of
transnational practices that takes into account their reinscription and em-
8 Introduction

beddedness in local settings ( Parker 1999; Cruz-Malave and Manalansan

2002a; Manalansan 2006; Patton 2002; Santiago 2002; Altman 1995, 1996;
Adam, Duyvendak, and Krouwel 1999a; Drucker 1996). In other words, if
evolving transnational norms have fostered common trends in Brazil and
Mexico at the levels of both LG BT activism and statecraft, these trends
have been refracted in multiple ways across both national and subnational
boundaries, such as region, race, and class.

Refractions across National Boundaries

For Ji.irgen Habermas the political public sphere forms wherever private
individuals gather as free citizens to formulate public opinion in relation to
the state. As publics they mediate between the state and society by holding
the state accountable via the principle of "publicity," requiring it to make
information visible for critical scrutiny, and by transmitting the "public
interest" to the state through the parliamentary institutions of represen­
tative democracy ( Habermas 1974, 1996a, 1998; Benhabib 1992; Hohendahl
1992; Fraser 1994). We might think of the public sphere as multilayered,
encompassing a number of different fi elds - the mass media and political
party systems, for example - where public opinion can coalesce to exert
a force on statecraft. Each of these fields comprises both a cultural di­
mension - interaction based on commonly understood though not un­
contested identities, norms, expectations, and discursive practices - and
a structural dimension constraining this interaction, which varies across
time and place.
Starting in the late 1970s LGBT activists in Brazil and Mexico began
entering these fields, seeking to reinscribe the representation of identities
within them, the permissions and prohibitions they implied, and thus the
boundaries of public representation and practice. While I focus primarily
on the partisan and parliamentary fields, we could imagine other fields
where activists also entered: the mass media, the feminist movement, and
the medical community, among others, each with a different language and
institutional imperatives variably constraining the boundaries of represen­
tation and constituting identities in somewhat different ways.
When activists in both countries began approaching the legislative field,
for instance, the terms of their entry were selective and conditional. Entry
implied a negotiation over audience calculations between two kinds of rep­
resentatives, social movement activists and political party militants, each
with different audiences and goals in mind. In both countries the primary
barri er to entry was the stigma attached to homosexual identities among
political elites, who had long determined how they could be represented in
public discourse and by whom : as potential criminals by criminologists in
police manuals, for instance, but not as citizens meriting participation. But
 Hybrid Modernities, Modern Sexualities 9

the terms of this entry were not the same, in part because the institutions
structuring publicity in the public sphere were different. These different
terms of entry have in turn variably shaped activists' efforts in three related
ways: in the timing of their turn toward the legislative field, in the nature
of the alliances that they brought to bear on it, and in the discourses they
deployed, including their framing of collective identities.
Quite early on Brazilian activists found discrete doorways into the elec­
toral and legislative fields, forging ties with individual lawmakers across
party lines and cultivating an important relationship with the Workers
Party. These early inroads were in part facilitated by Brazil's unusual elec­
toral institutions, which encourage candidates to craft appeals to rela­
tively narrow audiences and tend to undermine party discipline, particu­
larly among parties of the right and center (Ames 2001; Mainwaring 1995,
1999). In Mexico activists facing much higher barriers to entry, even with
the erosion of seven decades of hegemonic party rule, have tended to rely
on broader coalitions in civil s oc iety, particul arly with feminists, and a
narrower, though more shallow alignment with the partisan left. These dif­
ferences in the political coalitions brought to bear on the state have been
reflected in the construction of collective political identities and even in
the substance of activists' state-directed claims. While Brazilian activists
have tended to embrace a relatively identitarian discourse in their state­
directed efforts, positing a well-bounded, rights-bearing homosexual com­
munity as a minority group among others, Mexican activists have tended
to construct collective politica l identities around such banners as "sexual
diversity," which permit the articulation of broader legislative coalitions
around their demands. On one level these differences reflect the hybrid
nature of activists' engagement with the tr�nsnational field, as they draw
selectively on a shared transnational repertoire, responding to contextual
imperatives and constraints. On another level they speak to the conten­
tion that liberalism atomizes representat i o n by channeling demands into
narrowly identitarian frames, suggesting that more attention is needed to
understand where, why, and how this might come to be the case (Oxhorn
1998; Chalmers, Martin, and Piester 1997; Duggan 1994, 2003; Young 1995,
1996; Yudice 2005) .

From National to Subnational Boundaries

Theorizing on Latin American expressions of a transnational liberal mo­
dernity has often underscored its central contradiction: that its emancipa­
tory promises of democratic inclusion, universal rights, rational enlight­
emnent, and progress have historically come packaged with the enormous
physical and symbolic violence associated with colonial and capitalist ex­
pansion (Dussel 1995; Mignolo 2ooo; Beverley 1999; Schwarz 1995; Esca-
10 Introduction

lante Gonzalbo 2005; Ortiz 2003; Martin- Barbero 2003; Ianni 2003; Yudice
2005). This contradiction - not only in Latin America but elsewhere - is
structured and to some extent obscured by the dual logic organizing power
under liberal democracies in the public and private spheres. Long-standing
Marxist and feminist critiques of liberal citizenship have underscored the
fundamental tensions between the principles of egalitarianism, rational­
ized individualism, and universal citizenship governing the public sphere
and the persistence of hierarchies of class and status in the private sphere,
pointing to the many ways the two levels of power intersect (Pateman 1983;
Phillips 1993; Bickford 1999; Young 1995; Beltran Pedreira 1998; Beetham
1992; Benhabib 1992; Fraser 1994; Inverarity 1980). Class and status funda­
mentally determine how the parameters of the public are defined as well
as access to it. And de jure expressions of formal equality and universal
citizenship are routinely negated in practice by relations of power in the
private sphere. Thus while the boundaries of the public sphere can and
have been contested and expanded - for instance, through the extension of
civil and political rights to women and so-called minorities - political rep­
resentation within it is neither guaranteed nor guaranteed to be effective.
Such limitations of full _citizenship and other liberal institutions have
been at the heart of recent debates on Latin American politics in the wake
of democratic transitions. Political scientists have developed literally hun­
dreds of "diminished subtypes" of democracy - "democracies with adjec­
tives" (D. Collier and Levitsky 1997) - to understand their shortfalls vis-a­
vis models in advanced capitalist countries (Mainwaring 1999; Lamounier
1994; Weffort 1993; Shugart and Carey 1992; Shugart and Mainwaring 1997;
O'Donnell 1994; Linz 1990; Karl 1990). Particularly given the increasingly
visible plutocratic practices and influence peddling of, say, the George W.
Bush administration in the United States, the prevailing assumption that
Latin American democracies represent deviant cases in relation to pre­
sumably pure models of the core, I believe, is both politically and theoreti­
cally problematic. My premise, rather, is that such intersections between
public and private power, while variably constituted, are built into the dual
logic structuring power under liberal democratic regimes and should be
critically examined across the board.
This said, the international order between core and periphery has his­
torically structured the nature of these intersections in distinct ways. In
a seminal essay in Brazilian cultural criticism, the literary critic Roberto
Schwarz (1977) has argued that liberal principles amounted to "misplaced
ideas" in the context of Brazil's deeply stratified society and peripheral
slave economy of the nineteenth century. In Europe, according to Haber­
mas (1998), bourgeois public spheres emerged within civil societies in
opposition to absolutist monarchies. And while he bemoans their subse­
quent degeneration, as deliberative publics turn into manipulated masses
 Hybrid Modernities, Modern Sexualities 11

and communicative action is increasingly subsumed by an instrumental

rationality, at least initially liberal principles had a critical dimension.
They constituted a rationalizing force, subordinating the private interest
of rulers to the depersonalized ( public) administrative authority of the
modern state, submitted to the critical oversight of the rising bourgeoisie
through the principle of publicity ( Hohendahl 1979; Yudice 2005; Avritzer
2002 ) .
According to Schwarz, this critical dimension never existed in Brazil,
where independence left colonial structures of authority largely intact.
Here, ruling elites alternatively ignored and instrumentalized liberal prin­
ciples, embracing them primarily as a marker of the status conferred by the
"modern" and a legitimizing frame for continued domination. The state,
far from rationalized, was instead dominated by informal backstage ar­
rangements of private status and favor. And again, while operating in the
core as well, the ideological dimension of liberal principles in mystifying
the intersections of public and private power was much more transparent
in the periphery, where the contradictions between formal egalitarianism
and social inequality, between rationalized universalism and a state per­
meated by status and personal favor are more difficult to conceal (YU.dice
2005; Schwarz 1977, 1992; Avritzer 2002; Faoro 1957) ?
While it is untenable to suggest that the masses have never been the
subject of action in Brazil or elsewhere in the region, Schwarz's top-heavy
account of nineteenth-century liberalism resonates with analyses of con­
temporary Latin American polities underscoring a relatively shallow pene­
tration of the public sphere. These accounts have highlighted both limi­
tations of the rule of law across class, regional, ethnic, and racial lines
and, concomitantly, a stratified citizenship (O'Donnell 1996, 1999; Alva­
rez, Dagnino, and Escobar 1997b; Panizza 1995; Avritzer 2002; Dagnino
1997; Dagnino et al. 1998; Davis 1999; Holston and Caldeira 1998; Weffort
1989; Beverley 1999). Examining the expression of transnational norms in
the Americas, for example, the cultural critic George Yudice (2005) has
suggested that we might consider the rule of law through the prism of
performativity. Imagining multiple "structured fields of force" articulated
with the transnational arena, containing "injunctions to perform" particu­
lar scripts, he suggests that we might conceptualize differences across, and
within, countries in the region in terms of the "performative force of law"
(5). For example, if a transnational injunction to institute antidiscrimina­
tion legislation has shaped both activism and statecraft, as Fox's presiden­
tial commission suggested, we can imagine a breakdown of national laws'
injunction to perform scripts of nondiscrimination as they intersect dif­
ferentially with arrangements of power in the private sphere. Conversely,
we might consider this differential experience of the state from the bot­
tom up through the prism of citizenship, while noting that the everyday
12 Introduction

experience of state for many in the region amounts to encounters with its
security apparatus.
In several interviews I conducted in Brazil, where a discourse of"full citi­
zenship" has gained prominence in public debate since the 198os, activists
reiterated the theme of a cit i zen ship that was partial and in the process
of completion, thanks in part to the movement's work. During a visit to
the country in January 2006, for example, I met with Hanah Suzart, who
had recently cofounded the Rio de Janeiro Transgender Association. Suzart
had initially gotten involved in activism through volunteer work with A 1 os
NGOs in the early 1990s and at the time was working to "promote citizen­
ship" among travesti commercial sex workers. I asked her what she meant
by the term:
Citizenship means walking down the street like you do in London, with no
one pointing at you. Citizenship means being able to go to a bank normally to
open an account. Citizenship means going to a public health clinic and saying,
"Look, I want to register for treatment here but I want my medical record to
have my name, Hanah Suzart." In fact, the Health Ministry already issued
that decision but the health clinics themselves are not aware of it. The clinic
director knows because when the Ministry issued the decision, it went to the
director. But the director didn't inform the woman working there. So then,
you give her your name, she'll say, "No, son, I mean your name as a man." "Jose
Joaquim da Silva Xavier, . but could you please call me Maria Angelica." "No
son, I can't do that -you were born with a man's name, and I have to use your
name as a man." So then the person sits down - she sits quietly with everyone
else. Then when the person calls out "Jose Joaquim da Silva Xavier!" she gets
up. People stare: "He's not a woman. He's not a woman." You experience that
kind of embarrassment. The travesti is always experiencing embarrassment.8

Her response is significant on three levels, which reflect significant trends

in recent activism in Brazil, with some points of resonance in Mexico.
First, in locating citizenship in everyday acts such as walking down
the street (as they do in London) or entering a bank, Suzart moved be­
yond its state-centered liberal formulation as an institutionalized bundle
of rights and duties marking the status of individual membership in the
state. The anthropologist Roberto DaMatta (1987) has argued that beyond
its juridical and political constructions, generally privileged in analyses,
citizenship can be understood in its sociological dimension, as a social
role enacted at various moments in daily life. We might think of these as
everyday intersections of public and private status, which again vary across
and within societies. In this regard scholars have pointed more generally
to efforts by the contemporary Latin American left and social movements
to "deepen democracy" by expanding the parameters of citizenship in ways
that challenge "societal authoritarianism" in the private sphere ( Dagnino
 Hybrid Modernities, Modern Sexualities 13

1997; Alvarez, Dagnino, and Escobar 1997b; Dagnino et al. 1998; Roberts
1998; Rosaldo 1994; Amuchastegui and Rivas 2oo8). The sociologist Mar­
garet Somers (1994b) points out that framing rights and citizenship not
in terms of formal abstractions but within a history and context of social
conflict implies an understanding of them as "free-floating cultural and in­
stitutional resources that must be appropriated and in turn given meaning
only in the practical context of power and social relations . . . . A citizenship
right, like all rights, is not a 'thing'; it is a social practice" (79).
Second, to the extent that Suzart mentioned the state, she spoke of a
series of links, from the federal Health Ministry to the link that gets broken
between the health clinic director and the person at the desk, ultimately
undermining the performative force of the federal policy entirely. These
are the kinds of links that presumably need repair, and indeed many activ­
ists are currently seeking to carve out a new role between the state and
society involving taking laws and policies off paper and pulling them to
the ground. Extending the insights of critical theory to Latin American
polities, the political sociologist Leonardo Avritzer (2002) has argued that
the social movements which have proliferated throughout much of the
region since the 1970s are restructuring the public sphere in fundamental
ways: by reformulating the way claims are made in public discourse in
terms of nonnegotiable human rights; by marking a break with corporatist
(class-based) structures of representation, which historically subordinated
societal demands to state and party bureaucracies; and by playing a new
oversight role critically monitoring and thus rationalizing the state. I con­
sider the possibilities opened by these transformations, as well as their
limitations, in the pages that follow.
Finally, it is worth noting that in referring to the health clinic, Suzart
was essentially contesting processes of subjectification by the state. Both
the attendant's insistence on using Maria Angelica's masculine name, as it
appears on her birth certificate, and the Health Ministry's decree that her
feminine name be used instead represent conflicting practices in the con­
stitution of rationalized gendered subjects, or different ways of "doing gen­
der" (West and Zimmerman 1987). In either case, the administrative appa­
ratus of the modern state is in some sense constructing what it names,
if not in Maria Angelica's self-understanding, then in the situated social
reality she experiences at the clinic and in the biopolitical constitution of
the population to be attended by the public health system more broadly.
According to Michel Foucault, the biopolitics of defining, counting, cal­
culating, subdividing, and managing "populations," an invention of the
eighteenth century, is perhaps the modern liberal state's defining contribu­
tion to the "arts of government," or governmentality ( Foucault 1991, 2003,
2004; Gordon 1991; Burchel1 1991, 1996; Curtis 2002; Dean 2002). His notion
of governmentality shifts our attention from the field of partisan debates
14 Introduction

and ideological competition to the arena of modern bureaucratic admin­

istration, with the advent of neoliberalism, increasingly framed in terms
of a technical ( instrumental) rationality or expert knowledge. In the wake
of the AI DS crisis, however, by inserting a rights-based discourse into this
field, activists in Brazil, and to a lesser extent in Mexico, have been able to
carve out what I call a technocratic alternative to political parties through
their engagement with health ministries and politicization of public health
policy. Indeed I argue not only that activists have been able to stretch the
boundaries of state subjectification but that their achievements through
this route have, in fact, penetrated society more deeply than the results of
their engagement through the democratic path of parliamentary institu­
tions and political parties privileged by theories of the public sphere. This
contestation surrounding processes of state subjectification takes us back
to the question of how LG BT activists' occupatio n of the public sphere
has reverberated in the social mentality, influencing understandings of self
and sexualities at the level of everyday life.

H Y B R I D S E XUA L I T I E S

The historian Enrique Dussel (1995 : 35) has suggested that Latin American
modernities, and indeed European ones as well, preceded the Enlighten­
ment and were fundamentally constituted by the colonial encounter: the
moment when Europe invented the Americas as its first periphery and re­
imagined itself no longer as a particularity bracketed by the Islamic world
but as a presumably universal Western culture: "For the modern ego the
inhabitants of the newly discovered lands never appeared as Other, but
as possessions of the Same to be conquered, colonized, modernized, civi­
lized, as if they were the modern ego's material" (35) . This understanding
of modernity as the other face of colonialism and of the colonial subject
as the constitutive Other of the universal One means that rather than a
discovering (descubrimien to), the encounter, as Dussel describes it, began
a project of "covering over" (encubrimiento), entailing efforts to colonize
the imagination and the lifeworld, including sex, reproduction, and the
family (Gruzinski 1991; Mignolo 2000 ) .
In his study of the Church's imposition of the confession on the Nahuas
of New Spain from the sixteenth century to the eighteenth, the histo­
rian Serge Gruzinski (1989) describes a technology of domination acting
on multiple fields, including the body, sex, work, desires, fantasies, and
dreams. It is perhaps worth recalling Foucault's (1978) suggestion that the
generalized spread of the confession in Europe after the Counterreforma­
tion may have marked the beginning of the West's peculiar injunction to
transform sex into discourse and thus of modernity's invention of sexuality
as a field of power. The call to speak one's thoughts, pleasures, and desires,
 Hybrid Modernities, Modern Sexualities 15

to make them public, and to engage in self-reflection t hrough categories

of thought elaborated by the Church became a techn ology that consti­
tuted subjectivities and normalized sexuality, making it useful, in a sense
dep loyable in a field of power. In his account, howeve r, Gruzinski under­
sco res the multiple frustrations of New Spain's new con fessors. In 1566, he
notes , over 8o percent of adults in the archdiocese of M exico died without
co nfessing. And he tells of Nah ua penitents' frequent reinterpretation of
Chris tian categories, adjusting them to conform to exi st ing beliefs, norms,
and values or even strategically inverting them to pers on al advantage. The
evas ion, stretching, and slippage undermining this now globalized disci­
plinary technology speak, on the one hand, to the exten t of everyday forms
of resistance on the part of colonized subjects, and on the other to a cer­
tain shallowness in practices of subjectification imposed on the Americas
in the Church's civilizing mission (Scott 1985, 1990). Th ey also reflect a long
history of hybridization of Latin American sexualities t hat might be traced
to the present day.9
Much of the social science literature on contempo ra ry Latin American
sexualities has underscored the coexistence of mu l ti p le systems organizing
sexual desires, practices, and self-understandings within the same society,
particularly locating differences across class, regiona l , ethnic, and racial
lines (C. L. Taylor 1986; Almaguer 1993; Carrier 1985, 1 989, 1995; Murray
1992, 1995; Liguori 1995; Cordova Plaza 2003; Carrillo 1 999, 2002; Miano
Borruso 2002, 2003; Parker 1986, 1995; Fry 1982; Perlon gher 1987; MacRae
1990, 1992; Daniel and Parker 1993; Lancaster 1995; H ei l born 1996; Matory
1997; Loyola 2ooo; Facchini 2005a ; Carrara and Ramo s 2005; Citeli 2005) .
Of particular concern in much of this work have bee n the relation and
tensio ns between hegemonic transnational sexual identities constructed
around sexual object choice and much more comp lex and polyvalent
sexual landscapes at the level of everyday life. This hete rogeneity is impor­
tant to keep in mind as the backdrop for the emerge nce of LG BT activism
and political representation.
Without conflating important differences between both movements,
it is perhaps worth outlining certain parallels in thei r histories against a
tra nsnati onal backdrop in order to frame the discuss i o n that follows and
co ntext ualize it within this literature. I should unde rscore that in high­
lighting certain trends within and across movements, I by no means pre­
te nd to o ffer a totalizing account of activism in eithe r country. The scope
of my research -two broad histories of activism in two countries - means
t hat many stories are left out. And while the trends I h ighlight have been
partic ularly significant in shaping the course of activi sm and sexual poli­
ti cs, th ey are consolidating, again, in social movemen t fields marked by
co ntestation and difference.
In both countries indust rialization and urbanizat ion radically trans-
16 Introduction

formed the sexual landscape in the course of the nineteenth century and
the twentieth. Queer men and, within tighter constraints, women appro­
priated bars, parks, plazas, and other public spaces in growing cities, ex­
panding the parameters of increasingly visible and heterogeneous homo­
social subcultures, which by the middle of the twentieth century had given
rise to specialized markets catering exclusively to queer clienteles (Monsi­
vais 2000, 2001, 2003a; Bliss 2001; Macias-Gonzalez 2001; Green 1999a; Sil­
verio Trevisan 2ooo). In both countries state crackdowns on these spaces
played a significant role in fostering organized resistance, as an early les­
bian activist in Mexico City recalls:
The granaderos [riot police] came into the bar [armed with automatic weapons
and tear gas] and began beating people up. I didn't see why. People were drink­
ing coffee, having a drink, just like anyone else. Those of us who managed to
leave saw them loading everyone into police cars. So people who didn't know
each other stood at the street corner and began talking about what happened.
That's where I met a woman named C., and we decided to continue talking
at Sanborns (a nearby restaurant) . . . . And she invited me to a group called
Lesbos [the first organized lesbian group in the country] , in which she and Y.
already participated. It was a consciousness-raising group. 1 0

State policing of violations of "morals and good customs" was nothing new
in either country. But changes at both the national and transnational levels
permitted a shift from informal everyday forms of resistance to dominant
gendered scripts to new forms of organized collective action (Scott 1985,
1990).
Organized homosexual liberation movements emerged in both coun­
tries in the course of the 1970s. Early activists came primarily, though not
entirely, from the urban middle classes, including many leaders with close
ties to universities and artistic and intellectual communities as well as
leftist organizations. While this activism should be read in the context of
national histories, research on both movements has noted that politicized
transnational gay and lesbian identities initially emerged in the context
of urban middle-class homo social subcultures, layin g the foundation for
subsequent organized movements (Lumsden 1991; Green 1999a; MacRae
1990; Perlongher 1987) . Again, recalling Garcia Canclini (1995a), we can
read this in part as a reflection of early activists' participation in a glo bal
community sharin g a transnational repertoire of symbolic practices, in­
cluding sexual scripts, that penetrated societies differentially across re­
gional, racial, ethnic, and class boundaries.
In Mexico City a few intellectuals founded the first homosexual libera­
tion group in the country, the Homosexual Liberation Front ( F L H ) , i n 1971
after Sears Roebuck fired some employees in the city for their homosexu­
ality. In an early interview recalling her production in Mexico City of Matt
 Hybrid Modernities, Modern Sexualities 17

Crowley's The Boys in the Band (1968), the theater director Nancy Ccirde­
nas, a founder of the F LH , recalled, "One year after I translated [the play] ,
serious and significant documents produced by homosexual liberation
fronts in the United States and Great Britain began reaching Mexico. These
works quickly raised the consciousness of a good number of important
Mexican homosexuals." 11 Like other groups to emerge in the decade (Sex­
Pol, 1974; Lesbos, 1977), the F L H met primarily as a consciousness-raising
gro up, maintaining a limited public presence. It was only in 1978 that
gay and lesbian activists participated in their first public marches in the
country. On 26 July the Homosexual Revolutionary Action Front (FHAR),
named for a French homosexual liberation group known for its radical
politics, participated in a march commemorating the Cuban Revolution.
The F HA R was comprised largely of gay men, though it would later include
a few lesbians and a significant number of vestidas. On 2 October it was
joined by Lambda, a group of gay men and lesbians, and the lesbian group
Oikabeth in a second march, marking the tenth anniversary of the govern­
ment massacre of student protestors in Mexico City's Tlatelolco Plaza. In
both marches activists thus marked not only a new public presence but a
clear identification with the left. The three new groups that emerged that
year would spearhead an early wave of activism that would last until the
mid-198os. Groups were also established in Guadalajara and Tijuana at this
time, which remain important nongovernmental organizations today.
In Brazil queer men began establishing social clubs in a few cities be­
fore the military coup, organizing events such as beauty pageants with
transformistas (cross-dressers) and producing periodicals with names like
0 Snob and La Femme. I n 1969, at the height of the hard-liners' power in
the military regime, these clubs attempted to establish the Brazilian Gay
Press Association, holding a conference and electing a president, but the
experiment proved short-lived in light of the repressive political climate
(Green 1999a; Facchini 2005b) . With abertura, the gradual democratic
opening announced by the military government in the late 1970s, efforts to
organize resumed. After unsuccessful attempts to establish a homosexual
student group in Sao Paulo in 1976 and to mobilize a street protest in Rio
de Janeiro in 1977, a group of intellectuals and academics from both cities
established the alternative newspaper Lampiiio da Esquina the following
year. Initially brought together to work on an anthology of Latin Ameri­
can gay fiction by San Francisco's Gay Sunshine Press, the men sought to
continue this collaboration by launching a newspaper that would appeal
not only to homosexuals but to other so-called minorities and women. In
May of that year activists in Sao Paulo also organized Somas, the country's
firs t ho mosexual liberation group. For some months they focused largely
o n the i nternal work of consciousness-raising. Their first public appear­
a n ces came later that year at a lecture in the Pra�a Theater and in a series
18 Introduction

of talks on minorities at the University of Sao Paulo in February 1979 (Mic­

colis 1983; MacRae 1990). It was only after the discussion series that women
entered Somos, forming a lesbian subgroup that would split in 1980 to
form the Lesbian Feminist Group, later renamed the Autonomous Les­
bian Feminist Group, the country's first independent lesbian organization.
By this time the movement had reached an early peak, with over twenty
groups organized in various states.
Beyond some activists' contacts with counterparts in Europe and the
United States, regional linkages were established early on in both move­
ments' histories. Networks articulated by lesbian activists initially at Latin
American and Caribbean feminist and subsequently lesbian feminist con­
ferences are one important example of such ties (Mogrovejo 2oooa; Diaz
Coto 2001; Bunche and Hinojosa 2ooo). Cecilia Riquelme, a founder of the
first lesbian group in Chile who later participated in Brazil's feminist and
Mexico's lesbian movements, recalls the significance of the first workshop
on lesbianism at a regional conference in Peru as follows:
The importance of the Second Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Con­
ference of 1983 is that it was the first time we met to discuss the topic. So there
were a number of firsts - many lesbians came out for the first time - others
first felt the need to organize. And stemming from that conference in 1983,
for instance, Ayuquelen emerges in Chile and the Lesbian Feminist Activist
Group, in Lima, Peru [the first lesbian groups in their respective countries] .
So for me, the importance of these conferences is that they have fostered
organizations. They have fostered learning and the need to coordinate and
articulate ties.12

Both movements experienced a decline beginning in the mid-198os. This

parallel in part had common roots in two external shocks. First, the debt
crisis and early neoliberal structural adjustment policies, particularly in
Mexico, among the first countries in the region to adopt such measures,
cast a pall on activism, as groups and individual activists faced financial
difficulties sustaining their activities. Second, the appearance of AIDS not
only cost the lives of many activists but also fostered a reorientation of
efforts among gay men in particular, who established the first A I D S NGOs
in both countries at this time. In response to the epidemic, new gay men's
groups such as CHamo in Mexico City and Lambda in Sao Paulo, both
established in 1985, began providing community services, establishing a
model of activism that would become increasingly important in the 1990s.
In Brazil a few groups that emerged at this time expanded activism further
into working-class areas, notably Atoba, founded in 1985 in Realengo, a
suburb in the Western Zone of Rio de Janeiro, today the country's second
oldest group. Lesbian activism in Mexico resisted this decline somewhat, in
part due to activists' mobilization for the first Conference of Latin Ameri-
 Hybrid Modernities, Modern Sexualities 19

can and Caribbean Lesbians and the fourth Latin American and Caribbean
Feminist Conference, both held in the country in 1987, as well as their ar­
ticulation with a broader feminist movement.
Since the 1990s both countries have seen a resurgence of activism,
though stronger in Brazil. This was in part due to the fact that A I D S made
homosexuali ty a top i c of public interest and opened new sources of fund­
ing from the state and international financial agencies and foundations.
In Brazil the Health Ministry's National STD /A I D S Program created an
NGO Articulation Unit in 1992 under the terms of a World Bank loan that
would contribute decisively to the movement's growth even as it fostered
the "NGOization" of a number of groups, consolidating a model of pro­
fessionalized activism, with activists often in the role of providin g ser­
vices or brokerin g information (Alvarez 1997; Yudice 2oos; Ramos 2004).
The emergence of several national-level umbrella a ssociati ons, notably the
Brazilian Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Association (ABGLT), founded in
1995, today counting over two hundred groups, is a clear reflection of this
enormous growth, as is the organization of the world's largest LG BT pride
marches in Sao Paulo, surpassing 2 million in 2006. In Mexico the move­
ment's growth since the 1990s has been somewhat more limited, in part
due to the slower course of the country's transition to democracy, with
the P R J losing its majority in the lower house of Con g ress in 1997 and
the presidency in 2000, over a decade after Brazil's return to civilian rule.
While activists had engaged with the state on a few occasions earlier, it
was only in the late 1990s that legislative activism became a top priority.
The movement has also seen a process of N G oization, though again more
limited in part because state funding has been more restricted.
Both movements have also diversified in important respects since the
1990s. Though they were a relatively limited presence in both movements
earlier, autonomous trans organizations emerged in both countries in that
decade ( Klein 1999; Kulick 1998; Zuni ga Reyes 2003). In Brazil the Travesti
and Liberated Association ( AST RAL ) , the first such group in the country,
was established in 1992, mobilizing around H I V1A I D S prevention and
against police violence targetin g travestis. The following year the group
organized the first National Meetin g of Travestis and the Liberated Acting
in the Fi ght against A I os in Rio de Janeiro. Over time the country has seen
a greater diversification of political identities within the trans movement
as well. In 2000 activists organized the National Travesti, Transsexual, and
Transgender Articulation, and five years later the National Transsexual
Collective. In the past few years a few female-to-male transsexual activ­
ists have also entered the public stage. While the Homosexual Revolu­
tionary Action Group, a group of vestidas in Mexico City that grew out of
the F H A R , was active in the early 198os, a new wave of organizing began
with the creation of E O N , Transgender Intelligence in 1996. Since then sev-
20 Introduction

era! new organizations have entered the public stage, including Humana
Naci6n Trans, established in 2005, with representatives in several states,
and a coalition of groups united as the Civic Front for Transsexual and
Transgender Rights, established in 2007 to press for a federal gender iden­
tity law that would allow people to change their name and gender on offi­
cial documents. Outside of Mexico City vestidas have been at the forefront
in a number of local movements, often spearheading mobilization in re­
sponse to police abuse. Overall, however, trans activism has been a weaker
presence in Mexico, in part a reflection of more limited access to resources
for H IV/A I D S prevention.
In both countries activism has also increasingly crossed regional and
class lines, as more groups have been established outside of major cities
and in working-class neighborhoods and suburbs. In Brazil I attended sev­
eral meetings and spoke with activists linked to Atoba as well as the Grupo
28 de Junho, established in 1992 in Novo Igua�u, a largely working-class
suburb outside of Rio de Janeiro, which at the time met in local Workers
Party offices. The participants with whom I spoke underscored a certain
sexual permissiveness in a landscape not structured around fixed sexual
identities and segregated LGBT markets but rather around more fluid
sexual encounters that reflected everyday forms of resistance and negotia­
tion:
[ The gay man here ] makes out [namorar] with a guy on the street or in an
open-air pagode [ popular dance club ] . He goes and hooks up there. Because
it's very easy to have sex with a straight or bisexual man in Brazil. In the
United States and Europe, I think it's more difficult. Things are very divided
there: gay is gay and hetero is hetero. At least that's what I think. Here that
isn't the case. Here everyone has sex with everyone. Here there are married
men - thousands of married men - who go at it at all hours. So a lot of gays
live in that world. They don't go to the gay world. Many gays don't even like
discos. They'd rather go to a straight pagode.13

Existing ethnographic research has underscored a certain fluidity in mple

homosexualities at the level of everyday life in both Brazil and Mexico.
Echoing these comments, this literature has particularly highlighted the
weight of gendered scripts associated with masculinity and femininity and
with the active/passive binary (whether one penetrates or is penetrated in
sexual intercourse) in structuring sexual fields. Particularly locating this
gendered matrix of sexualities among rural and working-class commu­
nities, outside of urban gay and lesbian enclaves, this literature has also
noted extensive homoerotic encounters among men who may not identify
as homosexual, particularly if they play the active role ( Prieur 1998; C. L.
Taylor 1986; Almaguer 1993; Carrier 1985, 1989, 1995; Garcia Garcia et a!.
1991; Liguori 1995; Cordova Plaza 2003; Carrillo 1999, 2002; Parker 1986,
 Hybrid Modernities, Modern Sexualities 21

1995 ; Fry and MacRae 1983; Perlongher 1987; MacRae 1990, 1992; Daniel
an d Parker 1993; Loyola 2ooo; Citeli 2005). Reflecting the gendered nature
of both public space and academic production, relatively little research
has focused on homoerotic desire among Latin American women, most
of which has concentrated on lesbian activism, its most visible expressio n
(Alfarache Lorenzo 2003; Hernandez Guerrero 1997, 2ooo; Hinojosa 1998;
Careaga Perez and Jimenez 1997; Mott 1987; Mogrovejo 1999, 2oooa, 2ooob;
Espinosa Islas 2007; Portinari 1989; Martinho 1997). Emerging historical
and ethnographic research in Brazil, however, has also noted the variable
organi zatio n of women's homosexualities across class lines and the weight
of the masculine/feminine binary in organizing sexual fields, particularly
among working-class wo m en (Lacombe 2oo6; Heilborn 1996; Nogueira
2007).
While often noting a certain sexual permissiveness, working-class LGBT
activists with whom I spoke also reiterated the significance of violence,
including official state violence, in fostering organized mobilization. The
men who founded Atoba, for instance, did so in response to the homopho­
bic hate crime of a common friend. Among their first efforts was to chal­
lenge routine police abuse targeting homosexuals in the area, organizing
an unprecedented meeting with the city's civil police secretary.
In both Brazil and Mexico activists' voices have entered the public sphere
among many others recasting understandings of sexualities and their re­
lation to self. The mass media, migration, tourism, the emergence of so­
called pink markets, and economic restructuring are among other global
processes reshaping this heterogeneous terrain. Against this fragmented
backdrop, activists have recast sexual desire as the basis of identification
and the formulation of rights-based claims ( Parker 1999).
A final point is in order to situate my discussion in this work within a
broader social science literature on sexualities in the region. Reflecting the
relative weight of anthropology in the field, this largely ethnographic re­
search has focused particular attention on how local sexual categories and
self-understandings structure interaction and meanings in sexual fields at
the level of everyday life and on how these landscapes might be changing
in the context of transnational cultural flows. The fields explored in this
lite rature are those of lived, material experience in daily life (C. L. Taylor
19 86; Carrier 1985, 1989, 1995; Prieur 1998; Ponce Jimenez, L6pez Castro,
and Rodriguez Ruiz 1999, 2004; Miano and Giglia 2001; Miano Borruso
2oo3; Nunez Noriega 1999, 2004; C6rdova Plaza 2003; Carrillo 1999, 2002;
List Reyes 2004, 2005; Parker 1986, 1995, 1999; Fry and MacRae 1983; Per­
lo ngher 1987; MacRae 1990, 1992; Mendes-Leite 1993; Daniel and Parker
1993 � Heilborn 1996; Matory 1997; Kulick 1998; Loyola 2ooo; Citeli 2005).
My primary focus, however, is on institutionalized political representa­
tio n in the public sphere, an area, with few exceptions, largely unexplored
22 Introduction

in existing research (Camara da Silva 2002; Facchini 2oosa). While case

studies have been conducted on particular political parties, no research
has systematically examined how party systems have shaped debates on
sexual politics in the region or activists' engagement with the state (Green
2ooo; Mejia 2000).
Clearly a connection between representation, as constructed formally
in the public sphere, and the embodied reenactment of sexual scripts, in­
cluding identitarian frames, in everyday life cannot be assumed. Far from
it. Nor, however, can it be entirely discounted. Indeed the relationship be­
tween the two is a central area to be explored. Judith Butler (1993) has
problematized sharp foundational distinctions between matter and dis­
course and the ontological privileging of the former:
What does it mean to have recourse to materiality, since it is clear from the
start that matter has a history (indeed, more than one) and that the history
of matter is in part determined by the negotiation of sexual difference. We
may seek to return to matter as prior to discourse to ground our claims about
sexual difference only to discover that matter is fully sedimented with dis­
courses on sex and sexuality that prefigure and constrain the uses to which
it can be put . . . . Indeed, if it can be shown that in its constitutive history
this "irreducible" materiality is constructed through a problematic gendered
matrix, then the discursive practice by which matter is rendered irreducible
simultaneously ontologizes and fixes that gendered matrix in its place. And
if the constituted effect of that matrix is taken to be the indisputable ground
of bodily life, then it seems like a genealogy of that matrix is foreclosed from
critical inquiry. (29)

Of course existing research has been centrally concerned with the con­
structedness of local gendered matrices. I would argue, however, that its
methodological privileging of local categories of self-identification, while
offering significant insights about the variable construction of sexualities
and while certainly understandable in terms of a politics resisting the
facile imposition of categories of thought, has at times obscured much
more complex relations between the individual and the social and be tween
the national and the foreign.
Butler's suggestion that the sedimentation of identities does not have
one history but several implies a certain polyvocality in the constitution of
identities. To capture this notion, we might turn to the roots of symbolic
interactionism and George Herbert Mead's (1963) division of the Self be­
tween the I and the Me. The Me, according to Mead, represents the socially
constituted identities we are born into. As the object of these socially im­
posed categories, we are embedded in broader frameworks of power that
limit the practices, or scripts, we can enact through formal or informal
sanctions. I ntersubjectively negotiated and situated symbolic meanings,
 Hybrid Modernities, Modern Sexualities 23

in other words, provide the prism through which we read both our world
and ourselves. But again, there is always slippage. And following Mead, the
[, the subject, can respond to the Me, the object, and potentially even act
on it. Drawing on these notions, I would argue that the Me is constructed
not in a univocal manner but by a multiplicity of (often contradictory) dis­
cursive practices acting on us both by eliciting our desires and through the
disciplinary gaze. I seek to capture this notion by positing that identities
are being constituted and contested simultaneously in multiple and em­
bedded fields and that changes in one field, say at the transnational level,
permit actors to challenge constructions at others. Both the sedimentation
of identities within specific fields, taking place through a series of consti­
tutive exclusions ( Butler 1990, 1993), and those fields' performative force as
they penetrate society differentially must, of course, be read in the context
of power.
 chapter oNe
*
On Sexual Subjects and Public Spheres

On 1 June 1959 Alfredo Cuar6n, of Semiramis Street in Mexico City, di­

rected a letter to President Adolfo Lopez Mateos. In the letter, request­
ing presidential intervention, Cuar6n tells the chief executive of an en­
counter that his twenty-two-year-old son allegedly had with an older man
on Puente de Alvarado Avenue. The letter alleges that the man, Manuel
Rodriguez, offered his son a drink and, upon refusal, threatened him at
knife point to go to his apartment. There Rodriguez allegedly showed him
credentials as an agent of the presidency and threatened to have him jailed
unless he consented to sexual relations. When informed by his son about
the incident, he went to the man's house to investigate: "Several people
informed me that this man is in the habit of taking men into his house,
especially adolescents. He is a degenerate and a perfect corruptor of mi­
nors." To make matters worse, Cuar6n goes on, the man referred to himself
as a " NAT I ONAL G L O RY," on informal speaking terms with all the men in
power, "especially you, Mr. President." The letter concludes with a defense
of masculinity and nation, suggesting that Rodriguez's "licentious habits"
would dishonor any man, especially a respectable man like the president,
and that this was surely not the type of man who should be holding cre­
dentials for such high public office.
The Secretariat of the Presidency filed the case as no. 14890 on 3 June. On
25 June a report was directed to the chief of the Secretariat's Department of
Correspondence and Archives, "as [she had] ordered verbally." The report
indicates that some effort had been made to investigate the case: "One
could say that he [the suspect] is an artist dedicated to painting without
having received any instruction in this art, but with his own abilities, born
of his many trips through Europe and from having lived his life in an artis­
tic environment, since all his relations are part of this circle; and naturally
he must have suffered a very strong sexual exhaustion, particularly given
his current age of between 6o and 65. We can assume that he has become
28 Frames

a diseased element [elemento morboso] , given that he has not lost the vir­
ile tone in his voice." The report describes Rodriguez's house as a meeting
place for "ho·m osexual elements," given that all the rooms are filled with
erotic paintings, most with masculine figures, and that the furniture in the
house is "propitious for orgies." It goes on, however, to question the initial
complaint. First, it notes, Rodriguez is an older man with a weak consti­
tution, probably incapable of threatening a young man. Second, the street
where the incident is said to have taken place was quite busy at the time it
allegedly occurred. Finally, it recommends that a determination be made
on whether to forward the case for further clarification to the appropriate
authorities, on the assumption, that is, that the initial letter was in fact a
pseudonymous complaint, given that the return address, Semiramis Street,
did not exist.1
Manuel Rodriguez Lozano, the target of the complaint, belonged to a
group of writers and artists who emerged in Mexico City in the 1920s and
1930s known as Los Contemporaneos, named for their cultural magazine
(1928-31) , to which he contributed illustrations. Like the writers Salvador
Novo, Xavier Villaurrutia, and others associated with the group, Rodri­
guez Lozano was among the first public figures in Mexico known for his
homosexuality. Though not all of the luminaries associated with the group
were homosexual, they were broadly caricatured as such in the burgeoning
postrevolutionary artistic and literary public spheres. As the cultural critic
Carlos Monsivais has argued, the new public visibility of their "dissident
sexualities," in fact, became possible in the wake of the massive upheavals
of the Mexican Revolution, which loosened societal restrictions and con­
tributed to the expansion of el ambiente, the semiclandestine homosocial
spaces "at the margins" of society described by Novo in his memoirs (Mon­
sivais 1998, 2ooo; I rwin 2003b). Monsivais has also noted the group's am­
biguous relationship to the Revolution. While beholden to its secularizing
impulses and modernizing ruptures with the past, they disdained its cul­
tural nationalism, countering with a "proudly elitist" affirmation of pre­
sumably transcendent European artistic and literary traditions. They also
flouted its cult of masculinity, which enshrined a New Man of unques­
tioned virility and a true love of "the people." In a mural on the walls of the
Secretariat of Public Education Diego Rivera mocked them as effete deca­
dents, as did Jose Clemente Orozco in his mural Los Anales (Monsivais
1998). Rodriguez Lozano gained prominence within the so-called counter­
currents of Mexican painting, opposing Rivera's revolutionary nationalism
with an art that, while also drawing on national themes, strived to be in­
dependent, universal, and above all modern (Garcia Gutierrez 1999; Rodri­
guez Lozano 1960).
Based on the complaint and the report ofthe investigation, questions un­
doubtedly emerge about the veracity of the initial account, and the painter
 Sexual Subjects and Public Spheres 29

had once before been jailed on trumped-up charges (Zamorano Navarro

1998 ) . For the purposes of this discussion, what I would note aboutthese
documents is how they inscribe the artist into multiple fields of represen­
tation and how the practices enforcing sexual stigma in the case straddle a
fairly porous boundary nominally dividing the public and private realms.
At first glance it seems like a straightforward matter: an alleged act of vio­
lence is investigated and dismissed by public officials. But the normalizing
enforcement of sexualities in this case does not start with the investiga­
tion, but with a pseudonymous letter from a private individual. Or does it?
Indeed the initial letter itself (if we are to believe its contents) suggests an
even prior enforcement, alluding to the neighbors' judgments that inscribe
Rodriguez Lozano as a suspicious character and allow the conclusion that
he is "a degenerate and a perfect corruptor of minors." When the public
eye of the investigator follows up on the private accuser's complaint, it
too looks for the telltale signs that populate the private sphere. The art­
work and the furniture (apparently custom-fitted for orgies) elicit a more
technical conclusion, confirming that the suspicious character is in fact
a "homosexual element." The virile tone in his voice permits still greater
technical precision, indicating that the homosexual element is a "diseased
element" as well, alluding to the criminological distinctions made at the
time between innate and acquired homosexuality, presumably reflected in
conformity to or deviance from dominant gender norms.
This chapter encompasses three fairly diverse discussions united by
two analytic concerns raised in this particular case: exploring the dif­
fusely organized construction of homosexual subjectivities - and sexual
stigma - and locating these constructions across the public-private divide.
I begin by examining the trajectory of governmental practices discip lin ­
ing homosexualities through law and po lic ing, suggesting that they were
inscribed in a particularly ambivalent position within this binary, often
passing through the prism of nati o n . I then move from the state to the
formally constituted field of institutionalized interest mediation, the po­
litical public sph ere, examining religious activism in politics through a
comparison of secularizations. Finally I turn to the recent construction of
homosexuality in public opinion research, drawing on the World Values
Surveys. In jurists' and criminologists' contentions regarding a public that
needs defending, in religious activists' efforts to insert biblical precepts
into public debate, and in statistical methods shaping party militants' ap­
proach to the electorate we see the constitution of a public sphere and the
contestation of its boundaries. Again, we can understand this sphere is
multilayered, comprising a number of different fields, each with distinct
discm'6ive parameters and articulations with broader global communities.
In each field sexualities are being constructed in specific ways, distilling a
fluid terrain of desire into universalizing categories of representation. As
30 Frames

in the form of policing, these categories penetrate the private sphere in

different ways.

B E TW E E N P U B L I C A N D P R I VAT E :

LAW, P O L I C I N G , A N D D E S I R E

Homosexual acts have not been illegal in either Brazil or Mexico since
the nineteenth century, though the law meted out harsh punishment for
sodomy in colonial Latin America. On the Iberian Peninsula there were
proscriptions against homoerotic acts since at least the sixth century,
when the Christianized Visigoth King Alarico II called for those who en­
gaged in such acts to be burned at the stake (Perez Canovas 1996) . Under
Spanish colonial rule in the Americas, a number of edicts were applied
in the practice of criminal law as Spanish institutions were transferred
from the metropole. These contained a number of measures that brutally
punished those engaging in homoerotic acts and constituted the princi­
pal foundation of criminal law in Mexico for half a century following its
independence in 1821, though with modifications. The Partidas, applied
to cases of sodomy until at least the 184os, mandated death for those over
fourteen who committed "the sin of lust against nature" (Penyak 1994).
In colonial Brazil book 5 of the Philippine Ordinances, the foundation of
criminal law for much of the period, similarly imposed harsh punishment
for sodomy, condemning men and women found guilty to burning at the
stake, the confiscation of all goods by the Crown, the "incapacitation and
infamy" of their children and grandchildren, and equating sodomy with
crimes against the Crown (of Lesa Magestade) such as treason ( Pierangelli
1980).
Liberal influences in both countries led to decriminalization after inde­
pendence. In Enlightenment distinctions between the public and private
spheres, sexuality was often incorporated into the presumably apolitical
category of the "private." Among the measures instituted by the French
Constituent Assembly of 1791, for instance, was precisely the decriminal­
ization of sodomy, now understood as a private matter (Hekma, Ooster­
huis, and Steakley 1995). Liberal thought also had a significant influence on
important sectors of the nineteenth-century Latin American elite. Indeed
not a single country claimed an alternative tradition upon independence
(Avritzer 2002). In 1830, eight years after independence, Brazil adopted a
new Imperial Penal Code, which decriminalized sodomy, influenced by
the French Penal Code of 1791, the Napoleonic Codes of 1810 and 1819, and
liberal theorists of the time (Green 1999a). In Mexico liberalism became
a rallying cry both for the independence movement and for challenges to
Church authority and privilege, as the division between church and state
 Sexual Subjects and Public Spheres 31

beca me a central social cleavage in the new nation throughout much of

the nineteenth century and early twentieth. Mexico's first Penal Code, ap­
p roved in 1871, similarly eliminated any mention of sodomy.
While private homosexual acts were decriminalized, however, any pub­
lic manifestation was su bj ect to official repression. Laws and police ordi­
nances governing morals and good customs, assaults on decency, public
scandal, corruption of minors, and vagrancy were used to crack down on
those suspected of engaging in such acts in Mexico and Brazil. Indeed,
the legal regulation of sexualities bore striking similarities in each case,
often closely bound to changing understandings of both the public and the
nation. Hence in Mexico's Penal Codes of 1871, 1929, and 1931 the chapter
"Violations of Public Morals and Good Customs" considered obscene two
forms of public representation: the publication or distribution of obscene
materials, progressively expanding state control to new information tech­
nologies, and individual public manifestations deemed obscene, effectively
criminalizing social scripts that departed from prescribed gender norms.
Brazil's penal codes of 1830, 1890, and 1940 similarly defined obscenity in
terms of obscene acts and the distribution of obscene materials.
A few points might be made regarding how the regulation of publ ic
morality inscribed sexualities within the public-private divide. First, the
"violation of public morals" is unusual among so-called sexual crimes be­
cause the passive subject (or victim) of the crime is society at large the
-

public itself- rather than any individual. In other words, for an act to be
read as a crime, publicity was required. Hence the Mexican penal code
explicitly defined an act as public if it was performed in a public arena or
in a private arena when witnessed by at least six people. (In Brazil fifteen
were required. ) Morality, defined la rgely in sexual terms, was thus framed
as a public good even as sexuality as such was excluded from public debate
as a private and a political matter. Such laws inscribed homosexualities in
the symbolic realm of social deviance rather than political marginaliza­
tion. Second, while the issue was removed from the public agenda, public
decency justified exceptions in the basic liberal rights of expression and
association. Mexican laws proscribing violations of public morals, for in­
stance, were founded on Articles 6 and 7 of the constitutions of 1857 and
1917, which, while respectively guaranteeing freedom of expression and
fre edom of the press, stipulated exceptions in cases that violated morality.
Third, while positing, indeed constituting a perhaps questionable consen­
sus on such matters, the requirement of publicity in cases of obscenity also
reaffirmed in principle a sphere of protected autonomy in t h e sym bol ic
realm of the private, an arena that the state could not touch. In practice,
howev� r, the public expressions deemed obscene were often quite broad
and unpredictable, leaving much to the subjective determination of en-
32 Frames

forcing officers. Moreover, given the propensity of police forces in both

countries to overstep the boundaries of their formal authority, such laws
have enabled enormously abusive practices.
But what sort of public good does the regulation of public morality
provide? Rooted in Roman law and Iberian legal traditions, the notion of
decency (pudor) was justified by some theorists based on Christian pre­
cepts and by others as a necessary element for harmonious social life (Diez
Ripolles 1982). For many jurists across the ideological spectrum, pudor was
indeed foundational in nature, based on the perceived threat of unchecked
sexuality and relating directly to the construction and proper functioning
of the nation.
The argument is quite starkly presented in a document authored by
Alfredo Buzaid (1970), the Brazilian justice minister under the hard-line
General Emilio Garrastazu Medici (1969-74). The document explains and
justifies an amendment to the Constitution of 1967 banning publications
deemed contrary to "morals and good customs." It was in fact the first
amendment to the new Constitution, suggesting that the debate about
morality had gained importance for the regime in the interval. Buzaid
traces the notion of pudor to Roman law but its specific sexual connota­
tions to developments in Christian Roman law under Constantine incorpo­
rating sexuality into the juridical arena. He offers two broad justifications
for amending the Constitution. He begins by pointing to purported medi­
cal evidence and examples of foreign legislation as authoritative prece­
dents for safeguarding public morals, indeed citing Mexico's constitutional
stipulation of obscenity as an exception to a free press. His second justifi­
cation is foundational in nature, linking the safeguarding of morals with
the security of the nation. Citing both Lenin and documents produced by
the French student movement, he states, "The struggle for sexual liberty
and the fight against laws repressing pornographic publications obey a
revolutionary plan of action corresponding to the goals of Marxist-Leninist
agitation" (13-14) . Acknowledging existing legal stipulations against ob­
scenity, he justifies elevating the law to the constitutional level in light
of the urgency of the times: "If we were in a normal period, an approved
solution would be necessary and sufficient. But in a time of revolutionary
war, in which the legislator is aware of the threat represented by eroticism,
tolerating publications contrary to morals and good customs means col­
luding with the debasement of youth and the dissolution of the family"
(25). The document goes on to state, "In Brazil, the State intervenes in
the moral domain in the name of Christian principles" (28) and considers
obscenity "as great a violation of n a tional security as war propaganda, the
subversion of order, and prejudices based on religion, class, or race" (6).
Framed through the transnational prism of the national security doc­
trine embraced by military governments in the region and promoted by
 Sexual Subjects and Public Spheres 33

the United States, Buzaid's law posits eroticism as a threat to order and a
potentially destabilizing political force. The political order and indeed the
nation are in turn identified explicitly with so-called Christian principles.
Of particular concern is the protection of family and youth. Together these
two, presumably prepolitical elements of the private sphere are portrayed
as innocent and as remarkably vulnerable to corruption. Their precarious
innocence, moreover, is threatened from abroad by an enemy with inter­
nationalist designs (from France and the Soviet Union, no less), though
embodied in the enemy within (not only within the nation but within the
vulnerable psyche) . In short, Buzaid inscribes proper and improper sexu­
alities within a number of interrelated oppositions, including national and
foreign, ordered and disordered, innocent and corrupt, Christian and God­
less, and even capitalist and socialist. This kind of nationalist inscription
echoed across the political spectrum and sheds light on why the gay and
lesbian voices entering public spheres in the 1970s - like resurgent feminist
movements, as well -were often dismissed as foreign to national traditions
or, alternatively, as signs of a national modernity. More broadly they point
to sexuality as a powerful symbolic realm on which multiple understand­
ings of danger and order are inscribed in regulating social conduct.
In practice, police enforcement of public morals in both countries in­
volved encounters with individual suspects and massive police raids
sweeping through homosocial spaces. These were not the sole targets of
police operations in either country but constituted, alongside sex workers,
the lower classes, and other stigmatized populations, a socially "marginal"
realm inscribed outside the public order where proper police procedures
and the rule of law assumed a relative standing. Here the disciplinary gaze
of policing often involved creative and unpredictable interpretations of
public standards. In a cleanup operation in Rio de Janeiro in the 1950s,
for instance, tight pants and an orange became one measure of decency;
police officials would drop an orange down the pants of a suspect, and if
it did not come out the bottom, the suspect, presumed to be homosexual,
was subject to detention.2 Indeed police raids targeting the growing homo­
social subcultures in both countries often read presumably free association
as itself obscene.
It was a police raid in Mexico in fact that in some sense heralded the
visibility that homosexuality would assume in the twentieth century. On
18 November 1901 police raided a private party on La Paz Street in Mexico
City, arresting forty-one men. The men, nineteen dressed as women, were
dancing in couples and included members of prominent families of the
Porfiriato (1876-1911) , widely rumored to include General Porfirio Diaz's
own son-in-law. After a speedy trial, nineteen were sentenced to hard labor
in Yucatan ; the others, drawing on class privilege, probably purchased their
freedom (Monsivais 2003a). Noting the virtual silence on homosexuality in
34 Frames

the press and letters during the nineteenth century, Carlos Monsivais has
argued that the raid on La Paz Street and the public outcry it elicited in the
press in some sense heralded the beginning of "modern homosexuality" and
"modern homophobia" in Mexico (Monsivais 1998, 2001, 2003a; Buffington
2003; Irwin 2003a).3 Robert Buffington (2003 : 200-201) has noted that the
new public visibility precipitated by the event extended to the penny press
read by the working classes, where satirical attacks on the jotos, "the most
flagrant example of the sexual invert," embodying "the worst feminine
traits in the misogynist cannon," portrayed them as bourgeois decadents
and "harbingers of a false modernity." The mainstream press uniformly
condemned the men captured in the raid as social outcasts, but the liberal
paper El Hijo del Ahuizote noted, "In fact, the Code does not qualify the
forty-ones' depravity as a crime. The violation of morality they committed
was not public and would not have reached scandalous proportions with­
out the police intervention that revealed it." The paper nonetheless stated
that once the case was made public, the state did well in resorting to any
arbitrary measure to "extirpate the disgusting cancer" that had come to
light.4 Again a remarkably vulnerable public order, once disrupted, had to
be restored.
The metaphor of public health expressed by the liberal paper would as­
sume quite literal connotations in both Brazil and Mexico with the grow­
ing influence of positivist criminology and eugenics in the early twenti­
eth century. Shifting the discourse from religious and moral abstractions
to the empirical realm of science, police precincts established specialized
laboratories to develop taxonomies of homosexual personality types which
could serve as public profiles for potential criminals. With modernization
often an underlying concern, science offered the possibility for targeted
interventions to reverse the perceived degeneracy of peripheral nations,
generally read through the prisms of gender, class, and race (Caulfield
2ooo; Stepan 1991).
Already in the first decade of the century, the Mexican criminologist
Carlos Roumagnac (1904) bemoaned scientific indifference to criminality
in the country, where it was particularly urgent given the absence of "re­
pressive and corrective factors" present in other countries to steer the
Mexican people from the antisocial path. Citing Italian criminology as
the inspiration for his anthropological studies of inmates at Bel em Prison,
he noted with particular interest the differences between caballos and
mayates among men (referring to passive and active men) and the prac­
tice of "safism" among women, which, as one inmate explained, "If there
are two or three of us who don't do it in prison, it's a lot" (127).
In a treatise titled "The Antisocial Character of Homosexuals" published
in 1934, Alfonso Millan offere d a scientific tract on the dangers to the pub­
lic ord e r pos e d by male homosexuality, again passing through the prism of
 Sexual Subjects and Public Spheres 35

na tio n. At the time the medical director of the notorious Castaneda Insa ne
Asylum , Millan would subsequently head the Prostitution and Mental Hy­
gi e ne Unit of the Mexican Mental Hygiene League, created in the Secre­
ta ria t of Government in 1938.5 In the text Millan dismisses the dualis m
of body and soul, positing a scientific understanding of man-as-organism
that "excludes any possible discussion of free will" and locates the question
of homosexuality squarely at the juncture of biology and environment.
Given the "primitive" milieu shaping the sexual instinct in Mexico, where
"men are men and women are women," the environment "lacks the so­
ca lled 'refinements' propitious for the development of homosexuality. In
fact, the homosexual is regarded among us with disgust and repugnance
and cannot under any circumstances be the product of the environment."
Millan describes two types of homosexuals: the passive (and pure)
homosexual and those who, chameleon-like, "somewhat exclusive to our
environment," and "without being exactly [a homosexual] , [have] made a
modus vivendi of their practices and customs." Millan attributes the former
type to a disjuncture between chronological age and biological and psycho­
logical development. Outside of Mexico, he notes, this "pure homosexual"
is not without redemption, as his dreamy adolescence can even give rise
to artistic aptitudes and the ideal love of the Greeks. Given the nation's in­
auspicious context for homosexuality, however, this type "is rare and if he
exists, he is found not among our 'intellectual' classes but primarily among
our so-called 'lower' classes." The most common homosexual in Mexico is
a degeneration of this type. Outwardly effeminate and psychologically "a
true hermaphrodite," he combines men's aggressiveness and vanity with
women's duplicity, cunning, and proclivity to gossip. Perhaps alluding to
the luminaries associated with Los Contemporaneos, Millan points with
alarm to the fact that more than a few of these "pseudo-literaries" have
"by some inexplicable or suspicious complacency" come to occupy offi­
cial and academic posts, and he particularly underscores the threat posed
by this type to the proper functioning of modern state bureaucracies and
the manage ment of public affairs. The second type, "not uncommon in
our midst," is comprised of master dissimulators, gifted by nature with an
"extraordinary elasticity" that permits them to look like "real men, even
revolu tiona ries at arms," while lacking a complete masculine instinct. In
light of the danger posed by both of these subjects, Millan calls on the
nat ion's lawmakers to turn to psychiatric experts in regulating the homo­
sexual's social life and to conduct a "social prophylaxis," "no longer from
the antiquated perspective of morality but from the modern concept of
criminology."
• In Brazil, as the historian Sueann Caulfield (2ooo) points out in her
fasci nating research on legal-medical cases involving women's honor in
t he early twentieth century, positivist jurists incorporated and adapted
36 Frames

the Christian notion of pudor into a scientific frame. Given the belief that
men's baser instincts were to some degree irrepressible, "honest women"
were disproportionately assigned the task of safeguarding honor, and
many jurists understood respect for women's virginity as a conquest of
civilization. Caulfield notes the overlap between gendered constructions
of private and public space and ideas about honest and dishonest women.
The "modern woman," however, again posed a threat to this precarious
order. In a tract on assaults on decency, the noted jurist Francisco Viveiros
de Castro (1895) echoed some of these concerns. Explaining his intention
to bring the insights of European learning to factors that were uniquely na­
tional, Viveiros de Castro proposed to explore arguments raised at a recent
congress of criminal anthropology that periods of racial miscegenation
were particularly prone to criminality and corruption and the French soci­
ologist Gustave Le Bon's contention that Brazilians were a "race without
energy, without morality, and without will" (ix-x). In an extensive discus­
sion of tribadism, he attributes the etiology of homoerotic desire among
women to congenital factors, to insanity, or to the corrupting influences
of the environment. In the last category he posits a propensity toward
such desires among prostitutes, given the sexual aberrations demanded of
them by men, and in girls' boarding schools, where the dangers of sexual
corruption exceeded that in boys' schools "given women's essentially affec­
tive nature." He particularly underscores the harmful influences of modern
literature and education, which "removed woman from the silent twilight
of her home, opening unknown horizons, initiating her into the secrets
of vice, awakening indiscreet curiosities, infusing her with emotions, and
soon leaving her spent and blase." The "modern girl," he explains, "is a
complex being without innocence, without decency [pudor] , without shy­
ness, without naivete . . . . From there, the road to Lesbos . . . is not too
far to travel" (235-36; see also Silverio Trevisan 2ooo). Viveiros de Castro
expressed similar concerns with the preservation of the dominant gender
order in his analysis of "hermaphroditism." Contending that the "physical
degeneration" he ascribed to intersexed bodies translated into a "psychic
degeneration," he warned of the social disruptions caused by ambiguities
in gender identities, which, by "falsifying education, also [falsify] senti­
ments and ideas, customs and lifestyles, feminizing men [and] masculin­
izing women" (203-4) .
In 1931 the criminologist Leonidio Ribeiro installed the Laboratory of
Criminal Anthropology in the Civil Police Department of Rio de Janeiro.
Among his first scientific ventures as director of the agency was a research
project encompassing four areas: the pathology of fingerprints, Guarani
Indian blood types, biotypes of criminal Negroes, and endocrinal malfunc­
tioning in cases of male homosexuality. Reflecting an overriding concern
over p e rceived ge ndered and racialized degenerations of the public body,
 Sexual Subjects and Public Spheres 37

the research involved photographing and measuring 195 homosexual men

brought to the laboratory for testing. The results of the study garnered
in ter national recognition, and in 1933 Ribeiro received the Lombroso
Awa rd from the Italian Royal Academy of Medicine (Green 1999a). In a
p reface to the Spanish translation of Ribeiro's work on homosexuality, the
noted Spanish endocrinologist Gregorio Marafion underscored that while
offering a "local vision of the perversion" from the tropics, "the value of his
ob servations were clearly universal," as unlike "normal love," imprinted
by the particularities of culture, homosexuality was so close to the root of
in stinct as to be invariant across time and level of civilization (L. Ribeiro
19 67) .
I n light o f the common trope positing homosexual i dentiti es asso­
ciated with a transnational project of modernity as alien to national tradi­
tions - as well as its echo in recent academic research emphasizing Latin
America's difference from sexual identities structured around sexual object
choice - it is perhaps worth underscoring the fairly long trajectory of such
categorizations at the level of elite discourse. This is not to fall into an es­
sentialist understanding of sexual categories as transhistoric and transcul­
tural. Rather, it points to the fact that elite sectors have long participated
in transnational disciplinary fields constituting particular homosexual
subjects, at times through a hybridization of transnational and popular
discourses, such as the caballos and mayates described by Roumagnac.
Hence, for instance, when Jose Agustin Martinez (1947), the president of
the National Criminology Institute of Rome's affiliate in Cuba and director
of the Revista Penal de Ia Habana, gave a series of lectures on homosexu­
ality in the Mexican Supreme Court and invited his audience to come on a
journey- "We will go in search of these monsters. We will attempt to ex­
tract them from their lairs to dissect them before you" (16) - the road to the
depths of perversity passed through European criminology and sexology,
reflecting a cultural repertoire presumably shared by both Mexican and
Cuban elites. Thus articulated with global communities, variably situated
pa rti cipants in a differentiated legal culture constructed sexual subjectivi­
tie s, introducing them into national public spheres and the practice of
statecraft (Garcia Canclini 1995a).
Mo reover, while it is important to recognize, as much recent literature
has done, that sexual categories and self-understandings as experienced
o n the ground may differ quite markedly from such sexual constructions ­
if a nything , reflecting the historic weakness of elites' hegemonic project ­
th is does not mean that such transnational disciplinary frameworks have
n ot penetrated further, to the extent that identity is constructed in the
te nsion ,between the I and the Me. Indeed I would argue that these under­
sta ndings were merely the discursive legal-rational extension in the public
sp here of the police violence that routinely disciplined gender conformity
38 Frames

in the public square in growing urban centers and that disproportionately

targeted the middle class and poor, a central impetus for the emergence of
homosexual liberation movements.
In 1978 the news magazine Proceso described the operation of police
raids at precisely the time when the movement emerged as a public actor.
In the article, the official spokesman for Mexico City's General Directorate
of Police and Transit admitted that raids were unconstitutional, but stated
that Secret Service commanders nonetheless conducted them because
"there is a permanent order by [Police Chief) General Durazo against va­
grants, criminals, street soccer players, homosexuals, pick pockets, and
any sort of delinquent or crook." According to the spokesman, those taken
in had to prove they made an honest livelihood; otherwise they were sent
before a judge. Police Commander Daniel Salazar Cedillo explained how
raids worked: "It's done the same as always. You get there and you 'load'
everyone in." According to Cedillo, the raids targeted certain areas of the
city, such as the bohemian Zona Rosa neighborhood, which concentrated
a number of homosocial spaces. The article noted that the General Direc­
torate kept a register of those rounded up, with "raid" or "prior record"
marked beside their names so that relatives could identify them; the regis­
ter indicated that General Durazo's order to hold detainees no longer than
forty-eight hours was commonly disregarded.6
In fact very little about policing morality in Mexico went by the books.
Often police made financial arrangements with the tabloid press to ac­
company them on their duties, so that those caught in raids might find
their photographs spread under front-page banner headlines proclaiming
them as "faggots" or other epithets. Furthermore detentions frequently
went unrecorded, serving principally as a pretext for police extortion. The
following testimonies describe a raid in Mexico City that rounded up about
a thousand people on 9 March 1984:
The raid took place between 10 in the evening and 5 in the morning. We were
caught at 2 on Hamburgo St. One van came; it turned the corner. "Run !" But
where? They came after us. One of them told me: "You think I'm going to
let you go because I'm short? We're going because you're wandering around
like a fag," and he hit me. They loaded us in and drove around . . . . At the
precinct, they checked to see if you were drunk. . . . After giving our names
twice, we were taken to the basement in groups of nine, to take your blows.
"That's it! That's for being a mayate!" And they fucked you over. They didn't
take anything from me. I know they took what other people had on them. In
any case, I put my watch and my graduation ring in my shoe . . . . They started
calling names from lists at 6 in the morning . . . . At 7 in the morning, they
changed shifts and no one was called for two hours. Someone told us we were
there for "administrative misdemeanors." This isn't legal. They didn't ask me
 Sexual Subjects and Public Spheres 39

to identify myself. "Sirs, you're going to have to pay a fine of 1,5oo pesos." "The
fine is the same for everyone." There was nothing to do . . . . How many were
the re? Between men and women, easily over a thousand. (Francisco, federal
em ployee)
Are there individual rights or what? Twenty cops chasing you. They caught
drunk people going from bar to bar. They also caught a taxi driver who had
dropped someone off at the "41." And meanwhile, these guys were joking
about everything; they went from one side to another, having fun, whistling,
like they were playing cops and robbers. At first I thought they were just going
after fags, but they weren't . . . . There were so many people that there was no
possible control. . . . I saw three people wounded, including a woman bleed­
ing. The Cuauhtemoc headquarters were a circus . . . . You don't exist at the
headquarters. You never entered and you never left. There's no record. My re­
spects to the vestidas. They're tough ; they're so used to everyone fucking them
over that they don't care. They yelled, "Let us out, fucking assholes ! You bunch
of fags!" and they banged on the doors. They challenged the police, and [the
police] came down on them. Later, one said, "Homosexuals line up here." All
of us looked at each other, very upset. When we saw it was the vestidas who
stepped out, we breathed again. You could hear an AAAH ! of relief. . . . It took
four of them to carry one vestida . . . . The money they charged us was just out­
side. The raid was official but it wasn't legal. You can't be complacent. I admit
that I 'm homosexual, but as far as I know that's not a crime. They didn't beat
us up. We had fun, and in the end nothing happened to us. But it's not about
that but about avoiding humiliation. Or are we going to remain a country of
double-dealing and victims? (Alejandro, age twenty-six) 1

The testimonies highlight th e violence of police procedures in a symbolic

realm at the margins of the publ ic and the way enforcement of public
morality often obscured routine police abuse and private economic inter­
est. They also underscore that as a more visible challenge to dominant
gender norms, trans people have been particularly targeted by state vio­
le nce. This is true not only in Mexico but in Brazil, where the 1970s saw
an increa sin gly visible presence of travestis on the streets of major cities,
re fl ecting the growing commercialization of sex and economic polar iza ­
tion in Brazilian so c i e ty (Green 1999a). Though in the late 1970s, several
travestis were able to obtain writs of habeas corpus in the courts to pro­
tect them from arbitrary arrest and guarantee free transit on the streets,
police officials commonly ignored the documents, even tearing them up
(Silverio Trevisan 2ooo). In an article appearing in a professional police
journal, Police Chief Adail Pereira Ribeiro (1981) characterized travestis as
sociopaths, given their disruption of social norms and the "dichotomy they
p resent" inhabiting both the feminine and masculine worlds, and argued
40 Frames

that despite a unanimous court ruling affirming their right to free transit,
police could nonetheless arrest them for obscenity or assaults on decency.
In both countries, therefore, the inscription of certain populations and
spaces into a symbolic realm denoting a state of except i on to citizenship
has meant that for many, everyday experiences of state amounted to en­
counters with secu rity forces as sexual, gendered , and often racialized sub­
j ects to be contained in order to safeguard the body p ol it ic, th e san ctio ned
pub lic (Agamben 1998 ; Ojakangas 2005).
In Sao Paulo a campaign was launched in 1980 under the name Opera­
tion Cleanup, headed by Police Chief Wilson Richetti, which produced
four thousand arrests in fifteen days. "We must clean the streets of ped­
erasts, potheads, and prostitutes," declared Richetti. In the course of the
operation, reports of torture by police emerged, particularly after a photo­
graph was published in the newsmagazine IstoE showing police trampling
on a travesti during a raid, and the purported suicide of a sex worker who
"jumped" from the second-floor window of a police precinct. The opera­
tion was supported by the Downtown Neighbors and Storeowners Associa­
tion. (The support of such organizations is often a factor in such enforce­
ment campaigns in Mexico as well. ) Underscoring the distinction between
the public and the margins, Richetti defiantly announced that the opera­
tion would stop "when the businessmen and families come to ask me [to
stop] ."8 In response, a coalition was organized among sectors inscribed
outside the boundaries of the public, as sex workers, gay and lesbian activ­
ists, Afro-Brazilian activists, and feminists mobilized a broad-based coali­
tion that eventually stopped the operation and led to unprecedented pub­
lic hearings, forcing Richetti to testify in the state assembly.
In Rio de Janeiro in 1981 the public relations chief of the Military Police
was asked in an interview whether a police roundup of fourteen hundred
people, two hundred of whom were charged, violated basic civil liberties.
He responded, "Perhaps the inconvenience of prison is the lesser evil. So­
ciety is being attacked by 'marginals.' Under these circumstances, the in­
convenience caused by military operations is minimal relative to the so­
cial gains."9 Reflecting the state of exception constituting the margins of
society, numerous cases of sexual assault, torture, and murder of queer
people by police and military officers have been brought to light. As docu­
mented by the Grupo Gay da Bahia, in 41 percent of the 1,260 murders of
queer people between 1963 and 1994 the perpetrator had been identified;
of these cases, police and military officers were responsible for the greatest
number (25.1 percent; Mott 1996 ) .
In law h omo sexualiti es a n d d is rup tions of dominant gender norms thus
came to occupy an a m b iguous position as criminal deviance, a p o s i t i on
that could be legitimately repressed but not politically challenged. This
construction, which posited morality as a public good to be protected by
 Sexual Subjects and Public Spheres 41

the state, was grounded in tac it ly gendered understandings of commu­

nity and n ati on. In policing, the concomitant construction of a symbolic
realm of social deviance at the margins of public order justified exceptions
to citizenship a nd a disregard for basic liberal rights. Within this realm
the boundary between public and private also assumed a relative stand­
ing, permeated by private interests of police officers in the enforcement of
their duties and conditioned by selective enforcement based on the pri­
vate status of the accused. In both Brazil and Mexico such practices would
become a principal rallying cry for homosexual liberation movements
seeking to recast social deviance as political exclusion. In neither country,
however, has this turn gone unchallenged. I turn now to the principal po­
litical voices opposing this move, exploring another area of contestation
surrounding the divide between public and private, the historic separation
of church and state, and its consequences on religious political activism.

P U B L I C A DVO C A C Y O R P R I VAT E FA I T H :

S E X UA L I T Y A N D T H E S E C U LA R S TAT E

Paradoxically the position of religion within liberal precepts shares some

commonalities with the position of sexuality. Indeed the two are not un­
related, as the inscription of sexuality within the sphere of the private was
in part determined by a broader ideological framework distinguishing be­
tween crime, as pertaining to the public realm of the state, and sin, as
pertaining to the private realm of the Church ( Hekma, Oosterhuis, and
Steakley 1995). Both also relate to narratives of universality and equality
shaping liberal notions of citizenship, in principle inscribing the particu­
larities of private faith and sexual practice outside the realm of public
concern. But secularisms, like modernities, have assumed quite different
forms ( Poulat 1990; Levine 1990; Oro and Ureta 2007).
In their seminal account of European party systems, Seymour Martin
Lipset and Stein Rokkan (1967) attributed the emergence and strength of
religious political parties in different countries to historic relations be­
tween rising national leaders and Church authorities playing out in the
course of state formation. For the purposes of my discussion, I would note
three implications of their argument. First, distinct institutional forma­
tions of the secular state are better explained less in terms of abstract prin­
ciples than as outcomes of historic processes of conflict, negotiation, and
accommodation among church and state elites. Second, these outcomes
should be conceived not as static legal frameworks but as sedimentations
of these historic processes at specific critical junctures, if anything estab­
lis hing •the rules of the game for ongoing contestation. Third, the variable
construction of the secular state nonetheless has a decisive impact on the
institutional expression and strength of political appeals to the sacred.
42 Frames

While Lipset and Rokkan point to religious political parties, one might
extend their insights to other forms of collective action. Such differences
are clearly evident in Brazil and Mexico, where the inscription of religion
across the public-private divide took very different forms, with conse­
quences for sexual politics.
In Brazil Catholicism was the official state religion until 1890, shortly
after the old republic replaced the empire. Prior to this the Church's posi­
tion in society was somewhat paradoxical. While enjoying official status
long after independence, its relation to the state was decidedly subordi­
nate (Bruneau 1974, 1981). Both Lisbon and subsequently the Brazilian Im­
perial Crown had the authority to appoint bishops and other high-level
clergy, to vet Church documents before their release in national territory,
and to collect tithes and finance churches as they saw fit. While a papal
arrangement granted Spanish monarchs similar powers in the colonies,
they would become one of the most contentious issues between church
and state in Mexico long after independence (Sinkin 1979; Costeloe 1978;
Morales 2000 ) . The historian Thomas Bruneau (1981) goes so far as to sug­
gest that the Brazilian Church's position was not unlike that of any other
state bureaucracy: a reflection and legacy of their joint colonial endeavor.
On 7 January 1890 the provisional government issued Decree 119A,
which, among other measures, banned state laws favoring a particular
religion, guaranteed freedom of worship for individuals and institutions,
and granted juridical personhood to churches. The question of secular­
ization was retaken in the constituent assembly the following year, when
Brazilian bishops conducted an intensive lobbying effort against measures
contained in previously released drafts of constitutional proposals. This
lobbying bore some fruit, such as a backtracking on prohibitions against
Jesuits (Lustosa 1975). More important, however, the assembly established
a pattern characterized by a pragmatic approach on the part of Church
leaders and negotiations between the Church and state elite. As the bish­
ops wrote in a pastoral letter in 1890 recognizing that secularization might
actually give the Church unprecedented autonomy, "Separation does not
mean hostility or non-recognition, but simply independence" (M. M. Alves
1979: 33) .
Nor had the bishops' prediction of greater autonomy been entirely mis­
placed. The Church's inscription in the private sphere undercut the terms
of its subordination to the state while permitting closer ties to Rome. The
number of dioceses in the country, for instance, grew from just twelve in
1891 to thirty in 1910 to fifty-eight in 1920 ( Bruneau 1981) . It was thus a
much more influential Church, one paradoxically strengthened by laic­
ism, that renegotiated its participation in public life during the conserva­
tive populist regime of Getulio Vargas (1930-45) . As the historian Marcia
Moreira Alves (1979) points out, the reference in the preamble of the Con-
 Sexual Subjects and Public Spheres 43

s titu tion of 1934 framing it "under the protection of God" to some extent
m arked the end of the positivist influence on the matter. Among the mea­
su res also incorporated in that document were civil recognition of reli­
gi ous marriage, permission for spiritual consultation with military forces
and religious instruction in public schools, the prohibition of divorce, and
even state financing of religious institutions when in the "collective (i.e.
public) interest." Except for divorce, legalized in 1977, the constitutions of
194 6, 1967, and 1988, the last currently in force, reaffirmed these conces­
si ons.
The contrast with the framework of secularization in Mexico could not
be greater. Much of the nineteenth century and early twentieth was charac­
terized by the acrimonious struggle surrounding the separation of Church
and state, reflecting the former's relatively greater economic and politi­
cal weight and a more radical liberalism in nineteenth-century Mexico.
Though Bourbon reforms had already curtailed some of its privileges, the
Church emerged from the War of Independence as the strongest institu­
tion in the country, most vividly reflected in its position as landlord and
creditor (Costeloe 1978; Sinkin 1979). According to albeit probably exagger­
ated figures compiled by the liberal finance minister Miguel Lerdo de Te­
jada, the Church owned 21 percent of the total aggregate value of property
in the country in 1857 (Sinkin 1979).
It was the new constitution approved that year that definitively elimi­
nated the status of Catholicism as the official state religion consecrated in
its 1824 predecessor. The new national charter guaranteed religi ous liberty
and granted the state authority to legislate on religious matters (Article
123). However, this was but one step in an ongoing legislative process that
progressively curtailed the political and economic rights of the Church and
the clergy. This process reached an early peak with the Reform Laws of the
18sos and 186os and a second peak with the consecration of a revolution­
ary secular government in the Constitution of 1917. That charter, still in
force, banned religious education (Article 3), monastic orders (Article s),
outdoor religious services (Article 24), and Church ownership of property
(Article 27) . It also limited official recognition to civil marriages, denied
judicial personhood to churches and political rights to the clergy, and pro­
hibited churches and the clergy from criticizing the government in either
p ublic or private settings (Article 130). Notably the modernizing fervor
with which the neoliberal president Carlos Salinas de G ortari (1988-94)
a p proached the reorganization of the M e x i can state also entailed a weak­
e ning of the secular divide in 1992, with changes that permitted rel ig iou s
education in private schools, the establishment of monastic orders, and
Church ownership of property, while extending juridical recognition to
churches ( Loaeza 1996; Blancarte 1994) . Still, Mexico's clearly more radi­
cal project of secularization continues to be manifest in a much stronger
44 Frames

insistence on statecraft based on national doctrine rather than biblical

precepts. The practical impact of these differences is that while religious
mobilization in the public sphere certainly did not cease in either country,
it did assume quite different forms.
These variably situated national actors were also articulated with a
broader global community, and these histories must be read in the context
of certain transnational changes. Two in particular are worth underscor­
ing. First, the encyclical Rerum Novarum, issued by Pope Leo XIII in 1891,
spelled out what continues to be the central guiding document for the
Church's social doctrine. In both polities the document inspired greater
public participation on the part of the faithful through such institutions
as Catholic Action, established in 1929 in Mexico and 1933 in Brazil. Sec­
ond, the Second Vatican Council (1963-65) and the spread of liberation
t heo logy in the region in the 196os reaffirmed the Church's duty to par­
ticipate as a social and political agent, though with a "preferential option
for the poor." In Brazil these developments strengthened what became ar­
guably the most politically progressive Catholic Church in the world while
polarizing its relations with the military government and indirectly paving
the way for political advances by evangelical politicians. In Mexico they
fostered a greater acceptance of liberal institutions and political pluralism
among some sectors of the National Action Party ( PA N ) , though creating
sharp tensions within the party ( Loaeza 2003).
In Mexico the first half of the twentieth century saw acrimonious con­
flicts between state leaders and Church partisans resentful of their exclu­
sion from the political arena, reaching a peak with the Cristero Rebellions,
the Catholic guerrilla wars of the 1920s and 1930s, and with the fascist Na­
tional Sinarchist Union ( U N S ) of the late 1930s and 1940s (Rionda Ramirez
1997; Loaeza 2003; Blancarte 1992). This religious resistance to the state did
not always originate within the Church itself. Beginning in the late 1930s,
for example, a new generation of Church leaders proved more amenable to
reaching an understanding with the state, sometimes coming into conflict
with lay religious movements such as the U N S . Within the partisan arena,
the social cleavage surrounding the secular divide has continued to find
expression in the PA N , founded in 1939, basing its principles largely on
Church social doctrine, as laid out in Rerum Novarum.10
The nature of the PAN 's ties to the Church hierarchy and lay religious
organizations such as Catholic Action has elicited some controversy both
among academics and in public debate. Panistas have long denied organic
ties to the Church or that they represented a "confessional party." In her
overview of the party's evolution, the political scientist Soledad Loaeza
(1999) underscores that it has always contained factions close to Church
teachings and religious lay organizations and others concerned with
establishing a secular party and that these factions' relative strength has
 Sexual Subjects and Public Spheres 45

varied by region and over time. The PAN 's two principal founders already
reflected this tension : Manuel Gomez Morin, who envisioned a secular ve­
h icle, and the party ideologue Efrain Gonzalez Luna, a }a lisco industrialist
an d l ongtime militant of Catholic Action, who crafted much of the party's
ea rly doctrine around Catholic teachings. At its inception, over half of the
party's National Executive Committee were members or former members
of lay religious groups such as Catholic Action. Indeed some have sug­
gested that in light of this presence, the name "National Action" is no co­
incidence ( Mabry 1973). According to Loaeza (1999 : 24), since its inception,
" (the PAN 's] militancy was nourished - and continues to be nourished - by
lay organizations dependent on Catholic authorities, but which did not
have an organic relationship with the Catholic hierarchy." In the decades
spent in the shadows of the P R J , the PAN remained an expressive vehicle
for these currents. In 1987 it became a member of the Christian Demo­
cratic Organization of Latin America and in 1998 of the Christian Demo­
cratic I nternational.
Some argue that the weight of religious currents in the party began to
change with its new electoral focus in the 198os. Much has been made
about the entry of so-called neopanistas at this time, a cadre of new mili­
tants, many linked to business, with a much greater focus on electoral par­
ticipation and some disdain for the doctrinal considerations of the Catho­
lic base. In terms of LGBT rights, however, the impact of these changes has
been limited. In large measure this is due to the fact that many of the mili­
tants entering the party along with this sector are themselves socially con­
servative, though perhaps not as tied to an explicitly Catholic discourse.
Alongside the neopanistas, a ctivi sts linked to conservative right-wing
groups such as Pro-Life, the Human Development Association ( D H IAC ) ,
and the National Feminine Civic Association (A N C I F E M ) have also gained
pro minen ce in the PAN . Hence Luis H. Alvarez's presidency in the party
(1987-93) was supported by a "lasting coalition that included many mem­
bers of parapolitical organizations like the D H IAC , AN C I F E M , Pro-Life, and
Citizens' Action" ( Loaeza 1999 : 515). As president, Alvarez stated, "Popular
Mexica n culture is Christian. And because it emerges from this, it is tied
to it; it is nourished by it and serves it, the inspiration of the men and
wo me n militants in National Action is Christian" ( Loaeza 1999 : 529) . Alva­
rez's successor, Carlos Castillo Peraza (1993-96), deviated little from this
li ne of thought. In his bid for mayor of Mexico City in 1997, for instance,
he p osited an admittedly creative ecological argument against condoms,
su ggesting that in one year those used in Mexico would stack two thou­
sa nd kilometers high, creating a non biodegradable tower of environmen­
ta lly to/{ic latex.11 Even the business associations, such as the Employers
Co n federation of the Mexican Republic (COPARM EX), whose influence in
t he party grew with the entrance of neopanistas, have occasionally echoed
46 Frames

these conservative stances. For instance, in the midst of a 1995 controversy

surrounding the second Lesbian and Gay Cultural Week in the state of
Veracruz, which was held in a cultural center managed by the state gov­
ernment, a protest statement was published in a local newspaper, signed
not only by AN C I F E M , Pro-Life, the Knights of Columbus, the National
Union of Parents of Families, and other organizations but also by the So­
cial Union of Mexican Businessmen, C O PARM EX, and the National Manu­
facturers Association (Canacintra) (Brito 1995).
According to a longtime panista who participated in Vicente Fox's 2000
presidential campaign and founded a group of gay panistas that year - all
men - to mobilize support among gays and lesbians, there has been a sub­
sequent shift in the internal trajectory of militants associated with these
conservative organizations:
Neopanismo comes to launch our first businessmen candidates, like Pancho
[ Francisco] Barrio, to the municipal presidency of Ciudad Juarez, and so on
until the launching of [Manuel] Clouthier in 1988 for the Mexican presidency.
All of them came from business organizations like COPARM EX, like the Busi­
ness Coordination Council. And within these business organizations, they had
relations with AN C I F E M , with DH IAC, with Pro-Life; and when they reached
positions of power for the first time, in popularly elected posts, they brought
these organizations with them.

He noted a later shift, however, whereby those linked to these organiza­

tions have grown closer to old-line militants.12
This said, many panistas are quick to distance themselves publicly from
their reli gi ous conservative base for at least two reaso ns. First, the strong
construction of secularism in Mexican law also proscribes the organiza­
tion of explicitly religious political parties. In practice, while panistas have
often pushed the limits of these formal proscriptions with impunity, they
have nonetheless acted as a sword of Damocles regulating political debate,
on the one hand discouraging public officials from using religious dis­
course as a justification for statecraft and on the other encouraging polic­
ing of these norms by feminists, LG BT activists, and other sectors of civil
society, making defense of the secular state enormously resonant in the
public sphere. Second, explicitly religious pol itica l appeals have also been
constrained by electoral considerations, particularly in light of the fact that
some of the principal accusations leveled against the PAN by its opponents
in recent years revolve precisely around its social conservatism and infor­
mal links with conservative religious groups. Indeed in its ties to Church
teachings and to religious lay organizations, the PAN has faced a dilemma
not unlike what some have noted in the Latin American left's relations to
civil society: that while providing a backbone for the party, the linkage has
also been perceived to limit electoral possibilities (Roberts 1998; Magaloni
 Sexual Subjects and Public Spheres 47

and Moreno 2003). The same tensions between representing a core con­
stituency ( prioritizing an expressive or communicative logic) and repre­
se n ting the most voters possible (prioritizing a strategic or instrumental
logic) seem to be at play.
In light of these considerations, I do not mean to imply that the PA N as a
whole can be reduced to an expression of the Church-state social cleavage.
Clearly it has also drawn on a protest vote against the authoritarian system
instituted by the P R J and become an important expression for business
interests and of regional cleavages, as a northern elite has gained promi­
nence in its ranks. What I do suggest, however, is that one of the ways the
Churc h-state cleavage was organized within the Mexican polity involved
a gravitation of small sectors linked to lay religious organizations - and
later to socially conservative organizations inspired by Church teachings,
though not necessarily explicitly religious in their orientation - toward the
PAN .
Regarding the inclusion of LGBT rights in Mexico's public sphere, among
the principal dilemmas faced by LGBT activists is that their claims often
represent a much higher priority for opponents than for allies. Within the
PA N this has meant that even the few potential allies are generally unlikely
to press the issue very far. I spoke with the director of the party's Secre­
tariat for the Political Promotion of Women, which had organized a dis­
cussion on homosexuality. As she framed it, "In principle, here in the party,
we are more worried about equality between men and women because this
is what reality tells us. And we have seen that when the topic of homo­
sexuals is introduced - not by us, but by someone like a member of these
radical right groups that I mentioned - it blocks the work we are doing
for equality between men and women and we are not able to worry about
other things. If there is any chance that homosexuality will be discussed
there, well, then there shouldn't even be a Women's Institute: it reaches
that level." 13 Former PAN President Diego Fernandez de Cevallos recently
see m ed to confirm these observations, commenting on the possibility of
establis hing quotas for women on the party's candidate lists. Following a
Na tio nal Meeting of PAN Women in March 2002, he stated, "Do I believe in
quotas? Frankly not, because if we start with quotas, we may have to find
quo ta s for fags." Apparently the topic of homosexuality had been raised at
th e discussion table where Fernandez de Cevallos had participated, elicit­
i ng his response: "The day faggotry is institutionalized in the PAN , I'm
leaving." 14
The institutionalization of religious opposition within the Brazilian
p o lity has taken a radically different course, again to a large extent facili­
ta ted by the relatively porous boundary separating Church and state in
th e country. The few attempts to institutionalize a religious party- the
Ch ristian Democratic Party of the 1940s and the present-day Social Chris-
48 Frames

tian Party, for instance - have proven largely inexpressive, admittedly, in a

historically more competitive electoral arena than Mexico's but arguably
also reflecting the relatively limited salience of the Church-state conflict as
a central social cleavage in the country. In fact, rather than concentrating
efforts within a single party, religious activists have historically opted to
focus broadly, across party lines. The Catholic Electoral League, created
by Cardinal Sebastiao Leme in 1932, for instance, adopted this kind of a
strategy. Instructing Catholic voters on the Church's preferred candidates
across party lines based on their positions on such issues as the indissolu­
bility of marriage, the League was responsible for electing several members
to the constituent assemblies of 1934 and 1946.15
Again, the late 196os and 1970s saw a substantial breach between the
Catholic Church, considerably more progressive overall than the Church
in Mexico at the time, and military rulers. As one of the few political actors
maintaining a degree of institutional autonomy and enough legitimacy to
attenuate the full impact of government repression, the Brazilian Catholic
Church became one of the principal actors pressing for democratization
in the country. Indeed along with union militants and leftist activists, the
progressive wing of the Catholic Church would become one of the found­
ing bases of the Workers Party in 1980.
This rift between the state and the Catholic Church paralleled the entry
of evangelical sectors into the political arena. A number of authors have
noted the remarkable growth of evangelical churches within Brazilian so­
ciety as well as their entry into political debate, particularly since the 1980s
(Cunha 1999; A. Fonseca 1997; Freston 1994; M. Machado 1998; Pierucci
1989). The roots of Protestant participation in politics actually go back
a bit further. In May 1932, in part to counter the growing Catholic influ­
ence under the Vargas regime, a group of mostly Presbyterian evangeli­
cal leaders established the Brazilian Evangelical Confederation (C E B ) and
issued a proclamation urging evangelicals to make their voices heard in the
constituent assembly; among other points, they pressed for the "complete
secularization of the state and of public education" in the wake of a de­
cree authorizing religious ( presumably Catholic) education in the public
schools ( Freston 1994). The C E B was closed by the military government
in 1964, only to be revived in 1987, promoted by President Jose Sarney
(1985-89) primarily as a way to funnel bribes to newly elected evangelical
constituent assembly members ( Freston 1994; Pierucci 1989) .
As tensions between the govern me nt and the Catholic Church increased
in the 1970s, the country's military rulers began courting evangelical
l ea ders. Such efforts included recruitment of Protestant leaders for one­
year courses in the Superior Army School beginning in the late 1970s. Sev­
eral evangelical members of the constituent assembly of 1987-88 had at­
tended such courses ( Freston 1994). I n the electoral arena, military leaders
 Sexual Subjects and Public Spheres 49

we re already looking for support among evangelicals for the election in

198 2. In 1981 the Social Democratic Party - the deceptive new name given
to th e ruling Alliance for National Renovation under the new multiparty
syste m - had garnered support among evangelicals in half the Brazilian
sta tes. In Pernambuco that year, for instance, it held a ceremony to affili­
ate forty Protestant pastors and launch two candidacies.16 Ten evangeli­
cal deputies were elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1982 ( Pierucci
198 9).
Evangelicals' big push into the public sphere, however, would come
in the mid-1g8os, with the goal of increasing their influence in the na­
tional constituent assembly. On the eve of the elections of 1986 evangeli­
cal leaders, united as the Evangelical Political Action Group, organized a
meeting in Brasilia attended by representatives from eighteen states to pro­
mote their candidacies. The conclusions of the meeting were included in
a document reflecting a growing effort to approach the legislative arena as
Christians under the slogan "Brother votes for brother." The document af­
firmed evangelicals' interest in increasing their representation in decision­
making circles and characterized their previous political involvement as
"timid" and "alienated," a difficult stance to sustain on biblical grounds.
The document went on to qualify the relationship that evangelical can­
didates should have with political parties, echoing the Catholic Church's
long-standing strategy discussed above: "The New Testament underscores
the importance of the individual over institutions, placing these at his ser­
vice . . . . It thus makes no difference which ideological current predomi­
nates in the country or the party program to which a Christian candidate
belongs. What should be taken into account are the commitments to the
Christian faith and to the duty of communicating the dignity of the life
that God offers the world" ( Evangelical Political Action Group 1986, 22) .
Thirty-four evangelical deputies were elected to the constituent assembly
(Pier ucci 1989 ).
I discuss evangelicals' performance in that assembly in greater detail
later, but it is worth underscoring two points here that have characterized
their political participation more broadly. First, their performance in the
constituent assembly, and in subsequent legislatures, was defined on the
one hand by corporatist efforts seeking, for instance, to garner government
concessions to the media airwaves for religious programming (with con­
siderable success) and on the other precisely by such issues as abortion
and LG BT rights (A. Fonseca 1997). Indeed such debates are what primarily
define evangelical political leaders to their constituents. Hence in a 1999
interview, Bishop Carlos Rodrigues of the Liberal Party, the former head
of the congressional bloc linked to the Universal Church of the Kingdom
of God, the single largest denomination represented among the forty-five
evangelical deputies elected to the Chamber the previous year, explained
50 Frames

his divided loyalty between Church and party largely around these issues:
"I only involve myself in voting with my [evangelical Christian] colleagues
when the bill violates Christian principles. Outside of this, they follow
their parties' indication . . . . With some bills that I classify as having a 'de­
monic origin,' like gay marriage, I am sure that the bloc will unite for its
defeat." 17
Second, the organization of evangelical deputies as a caucus crossing
party lines - in part reflecting Brazil's electoral arrangements, as I elaborate
in later chapters - has meant that these deputies are clearly not as wary
of explicitly grounding their legislative activism on the Bible rather than
national doctrine. While panistas have at times affirmed their Christian
beliefs in condemning homosexuality, the electoral and legal constraints
discussed above have to some extent attenuated the degree of explicitly
religious legislating within the Mexican political arena. It is relatively rare
in Mexico's legislative debate, for instance, to hear the not uncommon
biblical citations used to justify proposals by Brazilian evangelical legis­
lators. Since the constituent assembly, many evangelical churches have in
fact carved out fairly powerful electoral machines, which have given them
important bargaining power in the legislative arena and the executive bu­
reaucracy, though this power tends to be more effective in blocking mea­
sures than advancing their own. In 2002 fifty-five Protestant evangelical
deputies were elected, representing just over 10 percent of the lower house,
though in 2006 this number dropped significantly to thirty-two deputies,
in part due to evangelical lawmakers' broadly publicized involvement in
corruption scandals.18
Three caveats should be mad e rega rd ing Protestant political mobiliza­
tion. First, while the evangelical caucuses that have organized in federal,
state, and local legislatures represent a fairly broad denominational range,
there are some, particularly historic Protestant churches, for whom the
boundary between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Caesar should
be considerably less permeable. It is perhaps worth underscoring the grow­
ing political presence of the Universal Church since the 1990s, particularly
since it has been responsible for a strategic departure from the previous
evangelical disregard for partisan banners, crafting a political alliance with
the previously inexpressive Liberal Party and its reincarnation as the Bra­
zilian Republican Party. Second, while most evangelical politicians have
belonged to parties of the right and center and most have taken conserva­
tive positions on controversial social issues, there are of course differences.
In 1989 evangelicals identified with the left organized the first Meeting of
Evangelicals with Leftist Parties in Campinas, Sao Paulo, several of whom
participated in founding the Progressive Evangelical Movement the follow­
ing year. One of the purposes of the meeting was to initiate a rapproche­
ment with the Workers Party in particular. Oddly enough, however, it was
 Sexual Subjects and Public Spheres 51

n o t th is sector but the electoral machine of the Universal Church that

th e PT chose to court in its curious electoral alliance with the PL in the
2 0 02 pres idential race, also in large part to secure a base among business

in terests. Finally I should note that evangelicals have had variable success
in organizing legislative caucuses. In the federal legislative term of 1998-
2 002 , for instance, the bloc lost considerable cohesiveness compared to

th e previous term, in part due to tensions among denominations, though

aga in, on issues such as civil unions, lawmakers tend to coalesce.
Evangelical politicians' highly visible entry into the Brazilian public
sphere has been accompanied by the relatively quiet, though persistent
involvement of Catholic bishops, who themselves represent a more con­
servative Church leadership than existed in the 1970s, largely due to the
concerted efforts by Pope John Paul II to counter the influence of liberation
theology in the country. In this regard the influential National Council of
Brazilian Bishops has often engaged in both public and behind-the-scenes
lobbying on particular issues. As a policy, the Church does not launch its
own candidates, but since at least the 1970s Catholic leaders have distrib­
uted materials to congregations on the importance of voting and occasion­
ally blacklists of candidates based on such issues as divorce and abortion. 19
Furthermore loosely organized groups of federal legislators sympathetic to
Catholic precepts rather than formally organized caucuses have periodi­
cally consolidated around certain issues, such as abortion and civil unions
(Departamento lntersindical de Assessoria Parlamentar 1997).
In short, the variable inscription of religion within the public-private
divide in Mexico and Brazil has produced differences in both the insti­
tutional expressions of religious interests in the public sphere and the
discursive repertoires they deploy, including the construction of homo­
sexual stigma. In Brazil a history of accommodation between Church and
state elite produced a fairly porous boundary separating the two symbolic
realms. While the limited salience of the Church-state cleavage in the
nineteenth century precluded the emergence of a powerful religious par­
tisan vehicle, it has facilitated churches' active participation in the public
sp here as well as explicit justifications of statecraft based on biblical pre­
cepts rather than national doctrine. In Mexico, on the other hand, while a
considerably stronger construction of secularism has given rise to a strong
party with an important base in religious lay organizations, electoral con­
siderations, legal proscriptions, and secular watchdogs in civil society have
paradoxically increased the costs and hence limited the use of explicitly
religious justifications for statecraft. I noted earlier that jurists constructed
the public as a vulnerable community to be protected from the margins of
so ciety by• a tutelary state. Here different actors, likewise articulated with
t he transnational field, are contesting its boundaries in parallel ways, with
dis tinct implications for sexual politics. I turn now to a third arena where
52 Frames

homosexuality has been inscribed in public discourse, considering that

curious political animal called "public opinion."

H OW D O I LOVE T H E E ? L E T M E C O U N T T H E WAYS

I begin this discussion by problematizing what I want to discuss. A great

deal of scholarship has pointed to the many limitations of survey research.
Critical theorists in particular have underscored how techniques of count­
ing may perversely contribute not to unveiling the preferences of a rational
public but to the management of a mass society and the naturalization of
frameworks of thought (Marcuse 1966; Hacking 1991). Habermas (1998)
has underscored the many contextual factors, particularly the mass media
and public relations industries, shaping what he calls "unpublic opinion,"
cautioning against interpreting it as somehow autonomously constituted.
Indeed, even mainstream social scientists have noted that respondents
may not reply to questions honestly and that even honest answers may
not be good indicators of behavior ( Jackman and Muha 1984; Jackman
1978). Survey responses on the topic of homosexuality in particular, more­
over, must be understood in the context of the much more heterogeneous
and often fluid systems organizing sexual desire in Latin America, which
in daily life may well escape easy categorization through fixed identities
constructed around sexual object choice. With regard to my broader ar­
gument, I posit the figures below, then, not just as an (albeit problematic)
indicator of public opinion but also as yet another political construction of
the public. As such, they reflect one of the principal factors shaping party
militants' audience calculations, increasingly fostering an electoral logic
of vote maximization with which LG BT activists must contend ( Hacking
1991; Habermas 1970).
Several activists I interviewed mentioned the difference between rela­
tions of acceptance and tolerance. As I elaborate in the pages that follow,
it is a question that gained particular salience within LGBT movements in
both Brazil and Mexico precisely as activists started to approach the legis­
lative field. Two questions on homosexuality included in the World Values
Survey, applied periodically in a number of countries worldwide, open a
window onto certain questions at stake in these debates.20 One question,
seeking to gauge levels of social tolerance, presented respondents with a
list of stigmatized groups, asking them to choose those they would reject
as neighbors. As reflected in Table 1, one might conclude that there was
less tolerance for homosexuals in Mexico, particularly in the early 1990s,
when the level of rejection was twice that in Brazil, though this level would
also see a much more significant decline in the following years, show­
ing a twenty-eight-point drop by 2005, compared to a four-point drop in
Brazil.
 Sexual Subjects and Public Spheres 53

TA B L E I .
Tolerance for Homosexual Neighbors
Brazil Mexico
1991 1997 2006 1990 1996 2000 200 5

Wo uld reje ct
ho mosexuals as
neig hbo rs (%) 30. 2 26.3 26. 1 60.2 39·9 44·6 33·0
Wo uld not reject
ho mosexuals as
neighbors (%) 69.8 73·7 73·9 39·8 60. 1 5 5 ·4 67.0
Sa mple size 1 , 782 1 , 1 49 1 , 242 1 , 53 1 1 , 5 10 1 · 53 5 1 ,448
Sources: lnglehart et al. 2003; European Values Study Group and World Values Survey
Association 2004; World Values Survey 2005 Official data File, v. 20090621, 2009.

A second question asked respondents to gauge homosexuality on a scale

of 1 to 10, where 1 indicates that homosexuality is "never justifiable" and 10,
"always justifiable" (Table 2). Unlike the question on homosexual neigh­
bors, which could reflect a degree of tolerance toward a group that some­
one may find unjustifiable, this kind of barometer seeks to offer a more
nuanced understanding of respondents' attitudes and thus of the degree
of social stigmatization.
At first glance it is striking that in all the surveys in both countries,
about a third or more of the respondents answered that homosexuality
was "never justifiable," though the number has fallen significantly in both
countries over the course of the last decade. Still, while the dispersion of
answers between 1 and 5 increased in both countries over time, indicat­
ing marginally greater acceptance of homosexuality, over 6o percent of
respondents in all the surveys nonetheless responded below 5, suggesting
a greater disposition to find homosexuality unjustifiable within a fairly
broad sector of the population and a persistent, broadly based level of
stigmatization. If we consider responses of 6 and over to reflect a tendency
toward acceptance of homosexuality, while positive attitudes appear to in­
crease in both countries over time the figures nonetheless remain rela­
tively l ow: in Brazil, increasing from 10.5 percent to 25.5 percent between
19 91 an d 2oo6; in Mexico, from 10.4 percent to 32.7 percent between 1981
an d 2005.
In b oth countries these figures reflect a considerably greater degree of
stigmatization than might be suspected by the level of tolerance for homo­
sexual neighbors cited above. These disparities might be understood in
terms of the difference between acceptance ·and tolerance. I n other words,
while some may disapprove of homosexuality, they may tolerate homo­
sexuals under certain conditions (as neighbors but not as family, for in-
54 Frames

TA B L E 2 . Homosexuality Is Always/Never Justifiable

Mexico Brazil
1981 1990 1996 2000 2005 1991 1997 2006

Never 72 . 2 53 · 6 53 · 0 48 ·3 3 1 .9 68. 7 5 5 ·0 3 0·7

Justifiable (%)
2 5 ·7 1 0. 3 6.8 2.8 4· 7 3 ·0 4·3 6. 4
3 3·7 7·3 6.2 3· 1 4· 2 3·3 4· 8 5·7
4 2.5 3 ·7 4·3 2 .4 3·5 2 -4 3·2 4·7
5 5 -4 3·8 12.5 1 0.9 1 5 .8 1 1.1 12.5 23 · 3
6 1 .3 7·3 4· 0 3·6 5 ·9 1 .6 3·7 4· 5
7 1 .0 2.5 2. 5 4·3 4· 9 1 .3 2.6 3 ·9
8 1.1 2.2 2.9 3·7 5 ·9 2.1 3· 1 5 ·4
9 o. s 1 .7 1 .0 1 .7 3 ·6 1.1 0.9 2 .4

Always 6. 5 5 ·9 4· 1 1 0. 2 1 2 .4 4-4 8. 5 9 ·3
Justifiable (%)
Don't Know/ 1 .8 2.6 9·0 7· 1 1 .0 1 .4 3·5
No Answer
(%)
Sample size
Sources: Ingle hart e t al. 2003; European Values Study Group and World Values Survey
Association 2004; World Values Survey 2005 Official data File, v. 20090621, 2009.

stance}, perhaps because the salience of homosexual stigma is not particu­

larly great. Scholars and activists alike have pointed to the conditionality of
tolerance as a value structuring debate in the public sphere. One common
qualification of tolerant attitudes in the United States, for instance, is be­
tween a tolerance extended to civil libertarian norms, defined in terms of
the negative liberties of expression and association, but not to other demo­
cratic norms, such as deeper understandings of equality as constructed by
positive liberties, which may imply a greater state role in society (St ra nd
1998). The implication is that the electorate or public opinion may be
issue-specific in its judgments of LG BT rights (or at least perceived as such
by political actors}, for instance, supporting antidi sc ri mi nat ion legislation
as a guarantor of civil liberties but not the po si t ive rights implied by civil
unions. Such differences have found expression in legislative debates in
both countries.
Implicit in this ultimately conditional relationship of tolerance, more­
over, are precisely the asymmetries lying at the heart of many critiques
of the public-private divide. As structured by stigma, such asymmetries
operate on a couple of levels. One level concerns how asymmetric rela-
 Sexual Subjects and Public Spheres 55

ti o ns of power variably regulate permissible practices of stigmatized and

un stig matized alike, in both the arena of formal politics and everyday life.
Seco nd, this imbalance is compounded by an asymmetry in what is at
st ake. As Goffman (1963) suggests, stigma is gene ral ly considerably more
sign ificant for the stigmatized than the unstigmatized, precisely because it
touc hes on so many aspects of daily life. In legislatures this asymmetry is
reflected in the relatively low salience of LGBT rights and in the challenges
that LGBT activists have faced increasing the level of priority of their de­
mands. In public debate the principle of tolerance can paradoxica l ly both
re i n force and o bsc ure the structural inequalities that produce both a sanc­
tioned p u blic that tolerates - conditionally, that is- and the margins to be
tolerated (Jakobsen and Pellegrini 2003).
Again, however, we might read these figures in a slightly different way:
as a construction of pu bl i c opinion rather than a faithful reflection. As
scholars have pointed out, statistical methods -ways of counting and sub­
dividing populations and predicting trends - are technologies that struc­
ture public debate and discourse in particular ways, permitting certain
forms of political intervention ( Hacking 1991). The Brazilian Institute of
Public Opinion and Statistics ( IBO P E ) , the first public opinion research
institute in the country, was established in 1942, incorporating techniques
developed by George Gallup in the United States. Three years later these
techniques were applied for the first time in Brazilian elections (S. Gontijo
1996; Busetto 2003). In Mexico, while survey research had been conducted
earlier, the progressive daily La ]ornada conducted the first national elec­
tion poll only in 1988. This election posed the first serious challenge to the
ruling party's grip on power, marking a crucial turning point in the coun­
try's transition to democracy. As a technique that can be instrumental­
ized to various ends, polling would play an ambiguous roll in that process.
While the newspaper faced financial reprisals by the government, seeking
to suppress the poll's publication, the new Salinas administration, which
entered office under the cloud of widespread electoral fraud, incorporated
pollsters to help market its policies in unprecedented ways. This included
se lling the North American Free Trade Agreement to the public, itself a
si gni ficant impetus to marketing research in the country ( Basafi.ez 1995;
Mor eno 1996) .
Again, a sizable literature o n sexualities in Brazil and Mexico - and in­
deed, elsewhere in Latin America - has presented a more fluid terra in of
sexual desire, identities, and practices at the level of everyday life, below
th e l evel of political representation through public opinion. This suggests
ce rta i n limitations in polling techniques, in part because the applicability,
mea nings, and boundaries of the term homosexual may be more fluid and
co ntextually specific than such questions suggest. Richard Parker (1999 : 5 5)
has noted a "homoerotic undercurrent [ permeating] urban life" in many
56 Frames

Brazilian cities, "though in large part without organizing sharply defined

gay ghettoes or neighborhoods along the lines found in many Anglo­
European societies." In this terrain, he argues, the "watchful eye of so­
cial control in traditional society can thus be transformed into the gaze of
desire and the possibility of seduction in urban settings." Parker describes
everyday forms n ot o nly of resistance but of negoti ati on and resignification
that slip through the cracks of what can be captured in survey data, in part
because the salience and boundaries of terms such as homosexuality may
shift in daily interactions.
This is not to say, however, that such constructions have no impact, even
at the level of everyday life. Indeed for the purposes of the discussion that
follows, I would suggest that the construction of homosexual subjects in
public opinion through such polling techniques is of increasing relevance
to party actors and thus has a real political force in society. The campaign
media coordinator of Vicente Fox's presidential bid in 2000, for instance,
indicated such attention to polling, referring to a controversial television
ad that met with widespread protest by LGBT activists, feminists, and
intellectuals, who ultimately forced it to be pulled:
There was one very important commercial in which [PRJ candidate Francisco]
Labastida appears at a rally with some [male] strippers dancing; and he im­
mediately appears carrying Montiel [the PRJ governor of the state of Mexico],
literally grabbing his behind [Montiel had fallen backwards, and Labastida
caught him.] To these images, we added the text: "What we need is an honest
man; not a creep [mafioso] ." [The word man appeared in large red letters.]
People immediately got the message, and it was so strong that we could only
broadcast it for two days. But based on that commercial, the polls rose.21

In the context of more fluid interactions at the level of everyday life, poll­
ing numbers such as these, and indeed many of the legal battles discussed
in the pages that follow, might be seen as part of a broader process in­
volving the rationalization of sexualities, in some sense fixing and stabi­
lizing sexual identities within specific fields, with variable reverberations
beyond them. Following Max Weber, such techniques distill and transform
a fluid field of sexual desire into a quantifiable and predictable world. With
the growing importance of marketing techniques in party politics in both
countries, we might expect such snapshots of public opinion, however
problematic, to have growing political weight.

C O N C LU S I O N

Iframed the discussion i n this chapter around fairly long histories o f con­
testation over the sexual and gendered parameters of the public to situate
my discussion on activism in the pages that follow within broader histo-
 Sexual Subjects and Public Spheres 57

ri es o f representation. In doing so I also seek to reframe certain prevalent

ass um ptions in contemporary research on sexualities in Latin America,
wh ich have sometimes posited the emergence of politicized LGBT i dent i­
ti es in national pub li c spheres as a radical break with the past, fac i l itated
by the n ove l incorporation of Anglo-European sexual identities. Without
d en y i n g the ways LG BT activism is new, I would nonetheless underscore
its co ntinuities with these broader histories.
Such continuities are worth underscoring, among other reasons, given
the suggestions occasionally raised in this literature that political mobili­
zation around LGBT identities in Latin America represents an alienated
politics or the latest in a long history of colonizing gestures. Scholars have
particularly targeted critiques at how such identities have sometimes re­
produced te l eo l ogi ca l narratives of progress associated with modernity,
dismissing alternative constructions of dissident genders and sexuali­
ties as symptoms of internalized homophobia or vestigial backwaters of
a premodern culture. The literary critic Silviano Santiago (2002 : 18), for
example, has suggested that "American ideas and concepts" of public and
private have translated into an injunction to perform sexual identities pub­
licly in Brazil, instituting a transnational coming-out story as the true test
of liberation, instead calling for "subtler forms of activism" that draw on
the "courageous anonymity of subjectivities in play."
This literature has undoubtedly raised important questions about the
liberatory promises of LG BT activism and revealed important tensions be­
tween formal representation in the public sphere and the multiple forms
of resistance and negotiation around sexualities that take place at the
level of everyday life. While I draw on these insights and explore some of
these limitations in the pages that follow, I reject the occasional reduc­
tion of LGBT politics to a novel U.S. import, an argument paradoxically
very much in keeping with the long national traditions inscribing modern
homosexualities outside of national traditions, discussed above. Rather,
by underscoring these historic continuities I also seek to perform a certain
displacement of these critiques. If, as Santiago suggests, the emergence of
LG BT activism in some sense also reflects a restructuring of the public and
private spheres, then more needs to be done to locate the former within
a broader history of the latter. Having considered some of the principal
fra mes constructing homosexual subjectivities that confronted activists
en tering political arenas, I turn now to how they entered, beginning with
thei r principal partisan ally in each country, the changing left.
 clwpter two
*
Occupying the Partisan Field
First Door on the Left

In the late 1970s leftist parties began broaching debates on homosexuality

in Brazil and Mexico. Whatever the limitations of this opening - and there
were many - the shift marked an important first step in activists' efforts to
occupy the political arena, laying the foundation for their strongest par­
tisan alliances in both polities. It also represented an unexpected turn in
the trajectory of the left in each country, which finally began to address
what for many party militants was arguably the toughest "new left" issue
to incorporate, thus testing the limits of the sector's ideological flexibility.
What made this initial entry into the partisan arena possible? What fac­
tors allowed the stigma attached to homosexuality-within the left, as in
much of society- to be redefined as the product of an expanded under­
standing of politics and thus a topic of legitimate public debate?
To approach these questions, as I suggested in the introduction, I draw
on the notion of fields to frame changing debates within the left. We might
think of a field as a ki n d of social topography that includes the relevant
agents acting within it, institutional structures, and commonly under­
stood, though not uncon tested beliefs expectations social identities, and
, ,

discursive practices. The partisan left encountered by Brazilian and Mexi­

can activists in the 1970s can be regarded as one such field, governed by
commonly understood notions of what and who could and could not be
represented. By the parti sa n left, I am referring to poli ti ca l parties that
either identified as soc i a l i st or grew out of such parties, maintaining a
more equitable d ist ri b u tion of wealth as the central tenet of their political
program. During the 1970s in both countries, the field was largely com­
prised of small, underground organizations and marked by the hegemo ny
of historic communist parties. While these organizations were often deeply
d ivided over particulars, they shared certain normative assumptions and
goals, competed within many of the same spaces ( such as unions ) , and
62 Doorways

thus participated in a sort of ideological community, speaking the same

language, if not entirely in agreement. By addressing the demands of fledg­
ling homosexual liberation movements, leftist parties were representing a
new message before a presumably more receptive audience. The questions
can thus be framed : What factors shaped this new message, and what fac­
tors conditioned the audience?
I do not pretend to address the full range of these organizations in this
chapter; instead I focus on three sets of parties, based on their significance
to homosexual liberation movements in particular or the left more broadly.
First, small Trotskyist parties went first and furthest in addressing the de­
bate in both countries: the Socialist Convergence in Brazil and the Revo­
lutionary Workers Party ( PRT) in Mexico. Both parties established gay and
lesbian commissions and adopted antidiscrimination planks in their pro­
grams, and the P RT passed a resolution unprecedented for any party in the
region defining homosexual liberation as part of a broader revolutionary
project. I also address debates within historic communist parties as a point
of comparison. While neither went as far in addressing the issue -which,
indeed, the Brazilian Communist Party (PC B ) largely ignored - the Mexi­
can Communist Party (PC M ) did open a debate on the topic in its publi­
cations and ultimately passed a resolution on sexuality unprecedented for
any communist party in the region, although its impact proved tenuous.
Finally, I consider early debates in the mass-based leftist parties that
emerged from the fragmented fields of the late 1970s. In Brazil the Workers
Party, established in 1980, brought together a number of leftist organiza­
tions quite soon after the military government's announcement of a gradual
democratic opening, constituting an early alternative to both the Commu­
nist Party and populist experiments. Early on the Workers Party indicated
some openness to debates on homosexual liberation. At its first National
Convention on 27 September 1981 the party leader Luiz Inacio "Lula" da
Silva stated, "We do not accept that homosexuality be treated as an ill­
ness in our party, much less as a police matter. We defend the respect that
these people deserve and invite them to join the greater effort of building
a new society" ( Partido dos Trabalhadores 1998, m ) . The following year the
party included an antidiscrimination plank in its first national program,
and rank-and-file efforts to organize gay and lesbian sectoral organizations
began soon after its foundation. In Mexico, on the other hand, the Party
of the Democratic Revolution (PR D ) reflected the tenuous foothold that
the issue had within the left. Indeed leaders of the nascent party vetoed
a plank condemning discrimination based on sexual orientation, and the
matter was included in national party documents only in 1995.
The discussion in this chapter therefore links activists' initial engage­
ment with political society as well as the course of leftist debates on sexu­
ality to the early development of what some have called a "third generation"
 Occupying the Partisan Field 63

of le ftist organizing in Latin America since the 198os ( Lopez Castellanos

) With the decline of the communist parties that emerged in the early
2 00 1 .

twe ntieth century and the guerrilla movements of the 196os and 1970s, this
new generation, comprised of mass-based parties maintaining one foot in
the parliamentary arena and the other in civil society, has had to contend
with both the crisis of Marxism and statist models of development and the
regional ascendance of neoliberal economic policies in the final decades of
th e twentieth century ( Lopez Castellanos 2001; Ellner 1993; Roberts 1995,
1 998; Castaneda 1993; Dagnino 1997; Keck 1992; Bruhn 1997) . Changing

debates on sexuality, in other words, must be understood through the me­

diated effects of broader transformations in the field occurring nationa lly
and t ra nsn ati onally.
In both Brazil and Mexico authoritarian governments' tinkering with
electoral institutions in the late 1970s altered the political (audience) cal­
culations of leftist parties. Over time the crucial decision to participate
in the electoral game and the new imperative to win votes would replace
their privileging of class with a broader notion of civil society ( Przeworksi
and Sprague 1986; Roberts 1998). This transformation also entailed the
institutionalization of linkages with new social movements, generally
spearheaded by dual militants who straddled this divide. In Europe the
rise of the new left, as expressed in Green Parties, for instance, has been
attributed to the emergence of so-called postmaterialist values among a
postwar generation of youth whose basic material needs had been met by
the Keynesian compromise (Inglehart 1988; Kitschelt 1989 ) . Discounting
the notion that material needs had been superseded in either Brazil or
Mexico - or in advanced capitalist countries, for that matter- the changes
in the left discussed below unquestionably reflected a generational shift in
which middle-class youth played a significant role. This shift found expres­
sion in the growing importance of students as leftist cadres and in broad
countercultural movements that challenged many prevailing understand­
ings in the field. At the same time participation in a broader global com­
munity associated with international Marxism allowed variably situated
national actors to contest the boundaries of representation in new ways.
In short, the field of left party politics in each country can be regarded
as a "negotiated order," embedded in changing institutional, societal, and
transnational settings ( Fine 1993; Strauss 1982).

H O M O S E X U A L S T I G M A A N D R E VO LU T I O N

In early 1979 the newly founded cultural commission o f the Brazilian Com­
mittee for Amnesty's (CBA ) Paris section, an organization of Brazilian po­
litical exiles, sought to begin a series of discussions on so-called minority
concerns, which were receiving increasing attention in Brazil's alternative
64 Doorways

press and within the burgeoning left and civil society. Herbert Daniel,
a commission member who had participated in the armed insurrection
against the military regime and who would subsequently become one of
Brazil's most important A I D S activists, justified starting with the topic in
part because, "The other topics already [had] some penetration in [the]
left; they [were] already discussed." 1 Furthermore the Brazilian govern­
ment had recently taken action against the gay and lesbian newspaper
Lampiiio da Esquina, filing charges against it in August 1978 under Decree
1077 of the Press Law, concerning violations against "morals and public de­
cency" (MacRae 1990). In fact the C BA itself had recently proven to be less
than open regarding the matter, having rejected an offer for a fundraising
concert by a duo of Brazilian singers gaining popularity in the city because
of their homosexuality (Gabeira 1981). Daniel justified the debate by link­
ing homosexual liberation to broader concerns of the left: "It is necessary
to discuss homosexuality in order to understand prejudice; not to discuss
prejudice in order to understand homosexuality."2 The coordinators of the
C BA discussed the cultural commission's proposal and roundly rejected it.
Their justifications ranged from open hostility-we should not be "pro­
moting" homosexuality, or homosexuality is a vice - to the more diplo­
matic: this issue serves to divide, not unite us. Ultimately Daniel and other
commission members, particularly members of the C BA women's group,
organized the meeting, though not officially in the C BA's name.
The controversy was in some ways illustrative of the status of homo­
sexual liberation within the Brazilian left at the time, albeit across the
Atlantic. Generally incorporated under the broad banner of "minority
rights," the matter nonetheless remained particularly stigmatized. Indeed
it was often alternatively framed alongside abortion, the legalization of
marijuana, and sex work within the category of"cursed issues" (temas mal­
ditos) , united both by the political heat they elicited and by an underlying
concern regarding control over the body. The two bases for rejecting the
conference, that it was immoral and divisive, represented and continue to
represent activists' primary challenges inserting their demands into par­
tisan debate: overcoming personally held stigmatizing understandings of
homosexuality (of potential allies as well as avowed opponents) and estab­
lishing their demands' priority in light of their perceived political costs.
In raising debates with the partisan left in both countries, activists en­
countered a number of arguments to block their efforts. Many of these
reflected prejudices present in society more broadly - i.e., understandings
of homosexuality as a vice or an illness - but others were framed within
discourses specific to much of the left at the time. Homosexual stigma
itself was often discussed in Marxist terms as a produ ct of capitalist deca­
dence and a bourgeois form of sexuality. Implicit in this construction was
 Occupying the Partisan Field 65

th e notion of foreignness: the counterpart to conservative representations

of ho mosexuality as foreign to national traditions, though read through a
p rism of leftist nationalism that emphasized the culturally colonized na­
tu re of a deviant national bourgeoisie.
Such arguments were already present among Mexico's leftist intellectual
circles in the 1930s. In 1930 a group of revolutionary artists asked the gov­
ernment to fire several officials, stating in their petition, "We are against
homosexuality, imitated in the manner of the current French bourgeoi­
sie . . . . The government should not maintain those of dubious psychologi­
cal conditions in its ministries" (quoted in Monsivais 1998, 24). Over four
decades later a militant of the Marxist Workers League, a Maoist organi­
zation, extended the argument: "Homosexuality is a social problem pro­
duced by the decomposition of capitalist society. Homosexuality would
not exist under socialism except as a question of biology." 3 A militant in
the October 8 Revolutionary Movement elaborated a similar argument in
Brazil, suggesting that homosexuality was the product of a societal oppres­
sion that "diverted sexual impulses toward objects that were not their true
ones." The militant went on to suggest that homosexuals' self-absorption
made it difficult for them to adapt to socialized labor, pointing to the re­
cent exodus from Cuba of a number of homosexuals in the Marie) boatlift
as evidence and suggesting that socialism would pave the way for correct­
ing these tendencies (Okita 1980) .4
Beyond the question of political representation in the abstract, prevail­
ing constructions of sexuality in the Marxist left of the 196os and 1970s in
both countries were inscribed on the bodies of revolutionary cadres, disci­
plining the boundaries of masculinity and femininity at the concrete level
of everyday life. Upon his return to Brazil, for instance, Herbert Daniel
recalled his experience in the guerrilla movement prior to his exile:
I cannot even say that I was a homosexual when I was a guerrilla. I gave up
my most intimate feelings so as not to disturb the "great social revolution."
Homosexuality, menstruation, insanity, or hesitation were problems that
could not obstruct the proper development of the struggle. They were all in­
cluded in the chapter "limitations for a guerrilla." Like all problems, the solu­
tion was not to have them. That is why I spent seven years in complete sexual
abstinence. The guerrilla movement led me to complete chastity. I enjoyed a
completely abstract body, the body of a saint and a guerrilla. 5

For lesbian party militants, such constraints were compounded by the

gendering of these fields, reflected in the much higher number of male
cadres in the leadership and rank and file as well as in the common rele­
gation of women to secondary and supportive roles. An activist with the
Mexican Communist Party recalls:
66 Doorways

Women militants? Well, the women militants in political parties were almost
always the wives of the male militants. At congresses, women almost always
did the domestic work. They made sandwiches. In other words, the party be­
came an extension of the household. And it's important to understand that
confinement to domestic work has always been the cornerstone of women's
oppression. In that sense, parties were an extension of this marginalization.
There were few women participating politically in the debates. - I got di­
rectly involved in labor organizing . . . . But when I realized I was a lesbian, I
began questioning my entire political activism, because I didn't fit in with the
feminists or the left, since the left considered lesbianism an aberration and
feminists were afraid that lesbians would make them lesbian too. So I realized
I had to become active in a lesbian group, which is when I joined Oikabeth.6

Many early gay and lesbian activists in both Brazil and Mexico had a his­
tory of participation in student groups and leftist organizations where they
had confronted such barriers. Moreover, the disciplining of the body re­
flected in these statements was itself invisible as a political question within
the left, as in much of society. Central to the transformation of leftist dis­
course on both sexuality and gender was a resignification of the body and
everyday life as eminently political terrains.
In addition to explicitly homophobic dismissals of homosexuality, the
broader ideological privileging of class as the pivotal social cleavage driv­
ing history and of the proletariat as the key historic agent was similarly
posited as a reason not to take it up. For some this meant that repres­
sion of homosexuality would disappear with the end of class conflict; for
others that homosexuality itself would. In this regard, however, the topic
was incorporated alongside a range of other issues, including many raised
by feminists and Afro-Brazilian activists, into the category of culture or
the superstructure. Compounding this dismissal was the widespread per­
ception within the left that such movements were largely constituted by
middle-class activists and that channeling political energy and resources in
this direction would strategically be a distraction from and even an impedi­
ment to mobilizing the working class. For many, these specific struggles
could only weaken forces in the general (class) struggle. In this regard, a
parallel might be drawn between Marxist inscriptions of sexuality in the
realm of the superstructure and liberals' subsuming sexuality in the realm
of the private; both moves effectively dismiss the matter from the realm of
legitimate political action ( Hekma, Oosterhuis, and Steakley 1995).

T H E B A L LO T A N D T H E S I C K L E

Thus the field o f leftist parties in the 1970s was i n many ways a hostile
terrain for the debates on homosexual liberation being raised for the
 Occupying the Partisan Field 67

firs t t ime within its ranks. Not only did most militants share stigmatiz­
i ng u nderstandings of homosexuality present in society, but strongly held
i deol ogical precepts precluded the legitimacy of challenging this resistance
pol it ically. Both fields, however, were themselves undergoing considerable
ch a nge, in part due to authoritarian governments' tinkering with electoral
i nstitutions to channel discontent. Outside of populist or nationalist left­
ist currents, such as the Brazilian Labor Party during the Second Repub­
l ic (1945-64) and progressive currents linked to the ruling P R J in Mexico,
com munist parties originally linked to the Third International (the P C B
an d t he P C M ) had historically dominated the field. Institutional changes
in the late 1970s, however, posed new challenges to this ideological hege­
mony, with consequences for who and what the left would represent.
The question of electoral participation had been a point of contention
within the Brazilian left for some time. Even before the military coup,
the PC B's aspiration for legal registration and support for alliances with
nationalist sectors of the bourgeoisie had splintered the party, leading to
the establishment of the Communist Party of Brazil in 1962 (Santana 2001;
Konder 1980). The coup itself prompted further schisms. For many who
would leave the party, inspired by the Cuban model to take up arms, the
defeat of the progressive forces that had articulated around the ousted gov­
ernment of Joao Goulart confirmed the folly of a peaceful path to social­
ism, once more revealing the ruling classes' willingness to veto the demo­
cratic rules of the game if demands for even limited structural change went
too far.
In the wake of important opposition victories in the gubernatorial elec­
tions of 1965, the new regime issued Institutional Act No. 2 and Comple­
mentary Act No. 4, dissolving all existing political parties and laying the
basis for a two-party system. The new system would in principle permit
the state to administer controlled elections, with the Brazilian Democratic
Movement ( M D B ) in the role of "responsible opposition" to the military's
Alliance for National Renovation (M. H. M. Alves 1985). This electoral
manipulation occurred alongside the incarceration, torture, murder, and
fo rced exile of thousands of leftist militants and sympathizers around the
coun try. State repression intensified with Institutional Act No. 5, issued
in D ecember 1968 in the wake of growing social protests, particularly by
stu de nts, and precipitated by the perceived outrage to military manhood
ma de in a speech by a young M: DB congressman, Marcio Moreira Alves,
ca lli ng on Brazilian women to deny sexual favors to soldiers under the
ban ner "Operation Lysistrata." The "coup within a coup" represented by
t he measure granted the executive unlimited powers to close Congress, re­
move judges and other officials, suspend habeas corpus, and try suspected
su bve rsives in military courts. The new government installed in power the
most hard-line sectors of the military and heralded the most repressive
68 Doorways

period of the military regime. With the effective decimation of the guer­
rilla movements by the mid-1970s, the electoral game became one of the
few remaining channels for political protest, as a bipartisan system de­
signed to manage the opposition paradoxically turned every election into
a plebiscite on military rule (Alvarez 1990). In the 1970s electoral gains by
the M O B proved crucial in eroding the military's grip on power, prompting
a series of measures to control its losses. In 1979 it reestablished a multi­
party system in a move designed to divide an increasingly united opposi­
tion.
For the P C B , already weakened by state repression and internal divi­
sions, the multiparty system proved to be the straw that broke the camel's
back. At the time, the party was operating clandestinely within the M O B,
maintaining a tactical alliance as part of a broad democratic front strategy.
The practical implementation of this strategy implied a subordination of
autonomous actions by the left to those of the broader democratic opposi­
tion organized around the M O B and later the Brazilian Democratic Move­
ment Party, its successor under the multiparty system. Hence while the
P C B supported a multiparty system in principle, it cautioned against orga­
nizing autonomous opposition parties too soon, arguing that such a move
would be divisive and might provoke a military backlash (Santana 2001).
The strategy would in fact pave the way for the party's undoing, as its
hegemony within the left slipped away to sectors linked to independent
union organizers in Sao Paulo's A B C Industrial District, led by Lula, and
their project of building a workers' party. Among the sectors linked to this
project were several Trotskyist groups, including the Socialist Convergence,
created in 1978 precisely with the hope of forging a mass-based party on
the left? Among other points, the Socialist Convergence would stand out
among the many small leftist groups to emerge in the late 1970s for its
participation in the homosexual liberation movement in Sao Paulo. With
the establishment of the Workers Party in 1980, the Socialist Convergence
entered as an organized current, though retaining considerable autonomy
in practice. The Socialist Convergence and the Workers Party represented
practically the extent of the partisan left's opening to the homosexual lib­
eration movement at the time.
As in Brazil, for much of the 196os and 1970s the left in Mexico comprised
small, fragmented organizations lacking legal recognition. But violent gov­
ernment crackdowns on civil society in 1968 and 1971 - part of an ongoing
dirty war against the left - and an election in 1976 in which the P R J 's presi­
dential candidate ran unopposed further eroded the ru li n g party's dubious
c la ims to democratic credentials, prompting a number of electoral reforms
to strengthen the opposition's formal representation. The Federal Law for
Political Organizations and Electoral Processes of 1977 marked an impor­
tant turning point for the left, easing not only registration requirements
 Occupying the Partisan Field 69

TA B L E 3. Time line of Leftist Alliance Building in Mexico

Yea r All iances

1 977 Mexican Communist Party ( PC M ) obtains legal registration, which it

lost in 1946.

1 981 United Socialist Party of Mexico ( P S u M ) founded, bringing together

the P C M and other leftist groups, including the Popular Action
Movement and the Party of the Mexican People.
1 987 Mexican Socialist Party ( P M S ) founded, bringing together the P S U M
a n d the Mexican Workers Party.
National Democratic Front ( F D N ) mobilizes around Cuauhtemoc
Cirdenas's presidential candidacy, uniting the dissident Democratic
Current of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party ( P R I ) , the P M S ,
and other parties and social movements.
1989 Party of the Democratic Revolution founded, emerging from the F D N .

to formalize political parties but also requirements for winning represen­

tative posts in the legislature and federal funding. As a result, by the mid-
198os Mexico's political arena stood out as having the greatest number of
legally registered leftist parties in Latin America (Carr 1992).8
For gay and l esbia n activists in the country these electoral changes
had two significant consequences. First, the P RT, clearly the movement's
staunchest partisan ally, obtained its legal registration, paving the way for
the movement's first electoral alliance (see chapter 3). Second, the changes
gave further impetus to the electoral turn of the P C M , which obtained
its legal registration in 1977, beginning a process of alliance building that
eventually gave rise to the mass-based PRD (Table 3).9 In November 1981
the PCM joined four other organizations to create the United Socialist Party
of Mexico (PSU M ) ; in 1987, it forged another alliance to create the Mexican
Socialist Party ( P M S ) . That same year the P M S withdrew its presidential
candidate, the labor leader Heberto Castillo, to join the National Demo­
cratic Front ( F D N ) , which had coalesced around the candidate Cuauhte­
moc Cirdenas and the dissident Democratic Current that followed him
when he left the P R J . The F D N consolidated as the PRD in 1989.
In short, changes in electoral i nst itu t ions in both pol it ies substantia lly
reorganized the field in which leftist parties debated and competed, with
two important outcomes for debates on sexuality. First, these changes al­
lowe d t he emergence of new, lega lly registered parties whose precepts de­
parted from those of historic communist parties and were thus somewhat
less resi�ttant to addressing identity-based and sexual politics. Second,
new electoral opportunities for the left altered the audience calculations
o f many party militants, to some extent e roding the position of the worker
70 Doorways

as ideas began to change regarding who and what the sector should rep­
resent. As more actors began competing on the left, albeit initially less for
votes than for potential cadres, so too did the opportunities for new de­
bates to be raised within the field. Over time hegemony in the field would
shift to mass-based parties (the PT and the PRO ) that defined themselves
by keeping one foot in the electoral arena and another in civil society. The
fact that the two most orthodox currents in Brazil at the time, the P C B and
the PC do B, remained outside the former, which also incorporated the So­
cialist Convergence and other factions less resistant to addressing identity­
based claims, would also contribute to its relatively greater openness to
these debates.

F O R EV E R Y O U N G : R E S I G N I F Y I N G R EVO LU T I O N

If institutional tinkering by the state opened new opportunities for activ­

ists, the real push for change came from outside, reflecting both fields' em­
beddedness in broader societies. As in much of the world during the 196os
and 1970s, young people in Mexico and Brazil began calling for change as
a generational shift in beliefs and values began taking root, particularly
among middle-class youth. This generational shift ultimately found ex­
pression within the partisan left as well, paving the way for its opening to
homosexual liberation.
There are two related strands of this story. Drawing on transnational
cultural repertoires, youth countercultures in both countries began chal­
lenging prevailing constructions of nationhood of the populist and devel­
opmentalist eras through culturally hybrid reinventions and ultimately pre­
vailing understandings of the political within the left as well. Young people
also spearheaded a cycle of social movement protest that encompassed the
student movement and the subsequent rise of a number of identity-based
social movements, including the homosexual liberation movement. In the
196os and 1970s student mobilization rose in both countries, in part a re­
flection of a growing urban middle class that had benefited from the earlier
developmentalist economic model. In Mexico, for instance, the number of
institutions of higher learning more than doubled, from 83 in 1966 to 196
in 1976. Between 1971 and 1976 enrollment rose by 104.7 percent in public
institutions of higher learning and by 71.3 percent in private (De Ia Garza,
Ejea, and Macias 1986). Likewise in Brazil the number of candidates taking
college entrance exams grew at three times the pace of the population in
the first three years of the military regime (1964-66; M. M. Alves 1993).
In 1967 alone the number jumped by 48 percent, and only 38 percent of
the total number of candidates were admitted (Skidmore 1988). Over time
what began as a movement focused on sector-specific concerns such as
greater access to universities would come to spearhead calls for democratic
 Occupying the Partisan Field 71

and revolutionary change (M. M. Alves 1993). While the two expressions
were distinct and the left and student activists often dismissed both the
c ounterculture and identity-based social movements as expressions of a
cu lturally alienated middle class, the concerns being raised in the latter
u lti mately found expression in the partisan left as well.
With regard to debates on homosexual liberation, this gen eratio nal shift
expanded opportunities to open the field in two ways. On the one hand,
it c reated a new political language that co n tested mean i n gs h isto rica lly
ascribed to the nation, politics, the body, gender, and everyday life. Evolv­
i n g homoerotic subcultures in major cities, some now organizing around
politicized gay and lesbian identities, participated in these broader pro­
cesses of cultural transformation. On the other hand, if many early gay and
lesbian activists came out of leftist and student organizing, leftist part i es
in tur n came to see emerging social movements, particularly students, as
an increasingly important base of po ten tia l cadres and to vie for their sup­
port. In short, both the actors in the field and the language they spoke
were changing in both countries.
In Brazil the counterculture of the late 196os and 1970s came to be
known as the desbunde (dropout) , as thousands of young people, particu­
larly from the middle class, began exploring mystical traditions, personal
liberation, and psychedelic drugs. Its emergence coincided with both the
retrenchment of the most hard-line sectors of the military and the offi­
cial nationalism associated with the country's so-called economic miracle
(1968-73), a period of double-digit average economic growth financed
largely by international lending agencies and foreign investment that took
advantage of the repression of labor and political dissent (M. H. M. Alves
1985) . The sensibility that developed among young people at this time was
most clearly identified with the movement Tropicalia. Finding in spi ration
in the hybridizing impulses of Brazil's modernist movement of the 1920s,
the Tropicalists took up the poet Oswald de Andrade's call to cannibalize
foreign technologies and cultural produ c ts to prod uce an art that wa s bot h
l oca l ly inscribed and cosmopolitan (Dunn 2001 : 74) . Dismissed by some as
the product of alienated youth, the movement produced an a nt iautho ri­
tarian language that fragmented prevailing notions of national identity,
belying its illusions of prosperity and unity and uncovering the multiple
margins it denied.
Part and parcel of this language was a celebration of sexual freedom. The
si nge r-songwriters Caetano Veloso and Gilberta Gil and other artists asso­
ciated with the movement blurred the lines of prescribed gender roles as
they challenged official constructions of nationhood. When Maria Betha­
nia an� Gal Costa allowed themselves to be photographed kissing after
a concert, other female vocalists followed suit (Silverio Trevisan 2000 ) .
Appearing on stage in heavy makeup and extravagant costumes, the the-
72 Doorways

ater troo p Dzi Croquetes, the rock start Ney Matogrosso, and other artists
pushed a gender-bending ambiguity still further. The military's announce­
ment of a political decompression (distensiio) in the mid-1970s and a grad­
ual democratic opening (abertura) later in the decade gave further impe­
tus to this cultural and sexual contestation.
Needless to say, growing gay and lesbian subcultures in major urban
centers were an important expression of these broader cultural transfor­
mations. The Argentine anthropologist, writer, and activist Nestor Per­
longher (1987 : 82) described the changes he saw in Sao Paulo during his
exile there:
Here we find the clear emergence of the gay as a character. This happens
around 1974 . . . . It happened before the appearance of a gay movement per
se. In fact, it was all mixed, the movement was contentious and the gay went
along for the ride. Nestor Pestana Street was a particular meeting point for
contentious-gay people. Independently, there was already another focal
point, the Largo do Arouche, which was also beginning to be gay. . . . For this
entire period, there is a very clear class division. All of these places: Nestor
Pestana, the Largo do Arouche, were frequented by people from the middle
class . . . . The important thing was that at the time, the people giving cues to
the middle class gay world were the intellectual theater vanguard. They would
ultimately impose the gayjgay standard. Already in the early 1970s, the bichaf
bofe standard begins to weaken through the ideology beginning to be fostered
by the people involved in theater. In the 196os, the bicha was a woman, and
the bofe was a man. Later in the 1970s, this scheme began to be questioned.

Perlongher thus underscores t he complex and evolving interdependence

between public space, sexual identity, sexual politics, market forces, and
class. Sp ace he suggests, is both a geographic and cultural product, selec­
,

tively used, or consumed, by specific communities, marked by class, in a

process that also transforms them, reconstituting understandings of self
and sexuality and laying the foundation for an explicitly contentious poli­
tics.10 Reflecting this broader cultural transformation, it was these recon­
figured identities that ultimately found their way into the partisan left,
from the outside in.
This said, the partisan left and even its student sympathizers often re­
sponded to these cultural developments with hostility, as they departed
from prevailing understandings in the field about the content and goals of
politics. In one well-known incident at the third International Song Festival
in Sao Paulo in 1968 leftist students booed Caetano Veloso's performance
of his song "Forbidding Is Forbidden" ("E Proibido Proibir"), prompting his
challenge to the audience from stage: "You are the ones who want to have
a revolution? You understand nothing!" The literary critic Heloisa Buarque
de Hollanda (1980 : 61) attributes the Tropicalist movement's challenge to
 Occupying the Partisan Field 73

t h e Ma rxist left (also reflected in other aspects of the youth countercul­

t ure) in part to the movement's skepticism about the left's focus on seizing
t h e s tate - a debate reflected within the homosexual liberation movement
a s well, as I discuss in the next chapter- and in part to its focus on a poli­
ti cs of everyday life rather than long-term structural change: "Tropicalism
begins with a concern for the here and now; it begins to conceive of the
n eed to revolutionize the body and behavior, breaking with the serious
to ne a nd the lack of flexibility of prevailing political practices."
In an interview published in 1979 in Lampiiio da Esquina, the former
guerrilla and leftist intellectual Fernando Gabeira framed the homosexual
liberation movement's contribution to the Marxist left along quite similar
lines: "If a person is thinking about his sexual happiness, he cannot wait 70
years to have an orgasm after the left has a revolution . . . . The homosexual
posits the question of happiness here and now, you see? . . . Because [the
left] never formulated a sexual politics, it ended up adopting the bour­
geoisie's sexual politics. I believe that the women's and the homosexual
movements are of considerable importance in the sense that they bring a
sexual politics of the left onto the stage." 1 1
In fact despite the rejection of many in leftist parties, the calls for a re­
newed understanding of politics did not fall universally on deaf ears; in­
deed these cultural shifts ultimately found some space within the partisan
left as well. For instance, Gabeira himself, who had attained considerable
renown in the sector through his participation in the kidnapping of U.S.
Ambassador Charles Elbrick in 1969, returned from exile to capture the
attention of young people and the left once more, raising eyebrows when
he wore a notoriously skimpy bathing suit to the beach, which some saw as
less than masculine, and raising debates within the sector on gender and
sexuality. At the time Gabeira framed this dialogue explicitly as a synthesis
between the institutional Marxist left and the youth counterculture:
My personal reflection is that the transformation that took place since 1968
marked a division between two basic groups. On the one hand, there was
the group that joined the urban guerrillas, which placed any possibility of
liberation in the context of social transformations. There was no individual
liberation that did not depend on a prior transformation of society. On the
other side was another current, which was the hippie movement and a sector
of the middle class, seeking individual liberation, ignoring all social transfor­
mations; in other words, framing the question of liberation more as a personal
conquest than as a project to transform society at any given moment . . . I be­
.

lieve that now, in the 1980s, there is the possibility of establishing a synthesis
between the two visions.12
Despite the resistance of many within the field, the counterculture had
se tthe stage for such a synthesis, however l imited. For some leftist mili-
74 Doorways

tants abertura came to mean challenging authority in all its expressions,

including sexual. In her ultimately unsuccessful bid for the Sao Paulo City
Council in 1982, for instance, the sociologist Caterina Koltai (Workers
Party) called on citizens to question all forms of authority, including pre­
scribed sexual roles, in a pamphlet provocatively titled " D I S O B EY ": " D i s ­
O B EY the order that love i s permitted only with persons o f the opposite
sex and that you must participate in stoning all who are 'different.' 'Any
form of love is valid."' 13 When the controversy sparked by the pamphlet
led to its banning by electoral authorities, Koltai's response suggested that
beyond and before any strategic debate, the incorporation of such issues
within the field involved a broader reinscription of the boundaries of the
political: "The banning of ' D I S O B EY ' serves to illustrate the substance of
my program. I believe that the power oppressing us in society is not just
what is visible - the Army, the Police, employers, and the Ministries, which
are closed to us - but also less visible but no less powerful expressions:
moral and cultural expressions." 14
At about the same time in Mexico young people were similarly setting
the stage for changes in the left. Perhaps the most notable expression of
the generational challenge brewing in the country was the development
of M ex ican rock-and-roll and the counterculture that grew around it as an
arena of cultural resistance, initially among urban middle-class youth but
subsequently among working-class youth as well. True, Mexican roqueros
did not go as far as the Tropicalists in blurring the lines of prevailing sexual
norms in their lyrics and on stage. But the counterculture they fostered di­
rectly challenged prevailing notions of morals and good customs and was
likewise met with dismissal as an expression of cultural alienation. At its
peak, the massive Avandaro rock concert of 1971, sometimes referred to as
"Mexico's Woodstock," brought together tens of thousands of young people
and united critics across the political spectrum against them. Among the
chorus Carlos Monsivais called the event "one of the great moments of
mental colonialism in the Third World" (quoted in Agustin 2007 : 88). The
cultural historian Jose Agustin, however, has underscored something pro­
foundly "national" in the hybrid cultural expressions created by the so­
called jipitecas, or Aztec hippies, noting, for instance, the challenge posed
in the context of Mexico's racism by the identification with indigenous
communities - through clothing, crafts, and the consumption of sacred
plants - of growing sectors of urban youth who were increasingly dark­
skinned and poor: "Only at the peak of the muralist movement of the 1930s
had something similar happened, though on a much smaller scale, when
groups of nationalist intellectuals followed the Diego-and-Frida fashion
and expressed their admiration for Indians" (77) .
Notably both t he counterculture and increasingly visible queer urban
subcultures often confronted similar discursive dismissals by the state and
 Occupying the Partisan Field 75

the state-aligned press, reflecting their parallel challenge to a hermetic and

implicitly gendered understanding of traditional nationhood. In 1968, for
instance, the weekly magazine Jueves de Excelsior lamented the erosion of
prescribed gender roles fostered by the hippies: "The men do everything
possible to look like women: their long hair, their tight pants, and even
the ir way of walking. The women, in contrast, cut their hair short, wear
trousers, use sweaters, and really, really do look like men" ( quoted in Zolov
199 9 : 134) . These parallel responses went beyond the level of discourse. The
youth counterculture and queer subcultures confronted quite similar prac­
tices of state repression as well, including frequent police raids, unsub­
stantiated charges of vagrancy and violations of public decency, and the
not infrequent violations of basic civil liberties by specialized police units
effectively charged with enforcing prescribed cultural norms in the public
square. This linkage between state crackdowns on youth, the enforcement
of public morality, and prevailing constructions of nation was noted by
Monsivais:
Since the decade of the 19 sos, when young people -with the appearance of
"rebels without causes" - asserted themselves as a separate species, raids began
which located imminent guilt in appearances. Throughout the sixties, young
people with long hair and the air of fugitives-from-catechism are caught in the
provinces and the capital, shaved, and submitted to all kinds of mistreatment.
A war is literally unleashed on youth to make them pay for their free customs
and disrespect for traditions in an operation that is clearly law enforcement's
response to moral indignation, the series of assaults bringing the anger of
the good consciences in power to fruition. Every police officer who insults,
beats, shaves, and extorts, does so certain that the Highest Authorities would
support the action to save Mexico from the jipitecas. After the strategy of
nationalist vindication against the denationalized "children of Avandaro," the
assaults become institutionalized. In the last ten years, the ritual is flawless:
young people are randomly stopped in groups or alone; marijuana is found
(or more often deposited) on them; they are fined and chastised with ethical
smugness. Sometimes the victims' parents complain. There is never any re­
sponse. The authorities pretend to know nothing.1 5

These parallel experiences o f state repression in the name of public order

would not only give strong impetus to an organized homosexual li beration
movement, but form the basis fo r a common front between youth and gay
and lesbian activists.
In fact despite the dismissal by many in the left in both countries, a new
generation of cadres, including many participating directly in social move­
ments, .created spaces where these demands resonated. It is of course no
coincidence that the parties that went first and furthest in these debates
in each polity emerged from universities in the context of the electoral
76 Doorways

changes discussed above. As late as the mid-198os 70 percent of PRT cadres

were under thirty, despite the party's efforts to diversify its base.16 One
1982 evaluation by the Socialist Convergence attributed most of its growth
and 90 percent of existing cadres to the student movement of the 1970s.17
And, tellingly, after the group's leadership made a strategic decision that
year to shift its focus from students to workers, its participation in the
homosexual liberation movement effectively stopped as it turned to a dif­
ferent audience.
Like these Trotskyist parties, the debate on homosexual liberation within
the PC M , however limited, owed much to the party's strong base in univer­
sities. In fact the protest movements of 1968 had contributed considerably
to the party's membership, in the wake of a slump under the autocratic
leadership of Dionicio Encina (1940-60) . The P C M historian Barry Carr
(1985 : 210) notes these newcomers' impact in fostering greater pluralism
within the party: "The events of 1968, in particular, left an indelible im­
pression on the party. Apart from delivering the coup de grace to what
remained of the progressive appeal of the ideology of the Mexican Revolu­
tion, the 1968 movement and its bloody repression brought into the PCM a
whole generation of young people, students, intellectuals, and others with
varying styles of anti-capitalist critique."
The participation of P C M youth in gay and lesbian rallies scandalized a
sector of the party known as the 26 of July Cell. In 1979 the group issued
a statement attributing this "perversion" to imperialism's attacks on tra­
ditional sexual mores and effects on the national bourgeoisie and to re­
visionist tendencies promoted by "young nihilists" seeking to advance "free
love" and establish "promiscuous communities" ( Bartra 2ooo). In prepara­
tion for the nineteenth congress, where the party adopted a resolution on
sexuality that was unprecedented for any communist party in the region,
the National Youth Commission issued a statement condemning police
repression against young people and homosexuals.18 In the party's sub­
sequent avatars, until and including the PRO, the youth sector was often
an isolated voice raising the issue. Such was the case, for instance, at the
second PS u M congress in 1983, where the party rejected the youth platform
due to its engagement with sexual politics, including an acknowledgment
of sexual pleasure as a basic human attribute and a repudiation of police
raids targeting "sexual minorities," as well as a resolution by the women's
sector defining the party as feminist. Indeed the topic of homosexuality
reentered the P R O national platform as part of the youth plank only at its
third national congress in 1995.19
The student sector, while numerically the most significant, was not the
only organized expression of a younger generation of cadres in the field
raising such concerns at the time. In both Mexico and Brazil left party mili­
tants established linkages with several identity-based social movements,
 Occupying the Partisan Field 77

in cluding the homosexual liberation movement, calling for an expansion

i n the left's agenda. Organized women's commissions in particular played
a si gnificant role by first introducing discussions on gender relations and
pa t riarc hy into partisan debates, and often as allies. Beyond support for
s pecific demands, however, the broader significance of this turn is that a
group of new collective actors emerged within the field, pressing in chorus
for a new logic of sectoral representation of identity-based groups. This
logic, rooted in the notion of dual militancy and in a sense extending the
left's historic approach to labor unions, was designed to establish institu­
tionalized links between the field of the partisan left and growing sectors
of civil society organizing around identity. While the gay and lesbian sector
did not represent a priority for parties, limited not only by the barriers of
stigma discussed above but also by the absence of a visible mass constitu­
ency, activists were able to take advantage of this broader transformation
in the boundaries of l egitimate representation in the field to push the en­
velope.

T RA N S F O R M AT I O N S I N A G LO BA L C O M M U N I TY

To this end, activists and their allies also found tools in the international
arena, where debates in a global community associated with international
Marxism in the 196os and 1970s expanded a discursive repertoire on which
they could draw to appeal to changing audiences nationally (Garcia Can­
clini 1995a). Along these lines the United Secretariat of the IV Interna­
tional, the Trotskyist current to which the P RT belonged, promoted a
global discussion on women's liberation among its sections, leading to the
adoption of a resolution on the issue in 1979. The resolution framed the
fight against sexism as a necessary component of a broader revolutionary
project, noting the importance of the patriarchal family for the reproduc­
tion and socialization of class relations within capitalism and the subor­
dination of women. It concluded that women's liberation could not be
reduced to class and that women need not wait for a revolution to advance
th e fight against sexism. It also referred in passing to homosexual libera­
tio n, calling for the elimination of laws criminalizing homosexuality and
of discrimination more broadly.20 Not surprisingly, when a small group of
PRT militants began discussing the idea of establishing a homosexual work
commission, their founding document cited the precedent of the IV Inter­
national (while also noting its distance ) : "We have taken the initiative of
this political work, departing from the experiences - ofwhich, incidentally,
we know little - of the IV International." Likewise in 1983, when the party's
Central Cp mmittee approved a resolution on homosexual liberation, un­
precedented at the time for any party in Latin America, it noted the roots
of this position in the crisis of Marxism in the 196os and the subsequent
78 Doorways

development of the IV International as "the first [international] Marxist

organization not only to understand but to adopt the liberation of women
and sexual liberation as an intrinsic part of the socialist revolution."21
Like the PRT, the Socialist Convergence in Brazil belonged to an interna­
tional Trotskyist current that defined itself in part in opposition to old-line
communist parties. Its international current, led by the Argentine Trotsky­
ist leader Nahuel Moreno, however, tended to adopt a more workerist ori­
entation than the United Secretariat, which was more critical of identity­
based movements. Perhaps the most important international influence on
the debate within the Socialist Convergence was the central role played by
a party militant with a history of activism in both the gay liberation move­
ment and the new left in the United States, who proposed the creation of
the party's Gay Faction ( F G C S ) and wrote many of its subsequent docu­
ments.
Other developments in international Marxism, such as the advent of
Eurocommunism, similarly influenced national debates, particularly in the
PC M 's more limited opening to homosexual liberation.22 The PCM had long
stood out in the region for its degree of independence from Moscow, a
point underscored in its having been the only communist party in the re­
gion to condemn the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. By the late
1970s the party had divided into three informal factions. The group most
identified with Eurocommunism was aligned with its longtime general
secretary, Arnoldo Martinez Verdugo, and linked to the new party maga­
zine, El Machete. Against this line were the so-called dinosaurs, or old-line
Stalinists, and the renovadores ("renewers" ) , a relatively recent generation
of party militants who, while advocating greater internal democracy, also
tended to defend a workerist orientation for the party and to dismiss the
project being advanced through El Machete as elitist and dispersing.
It was through El Machete that the topic of homosexuality was initially
raised in the party. The first salvo in this effort was a controversial inter­
view put together by the party militant and theater director Jose Ramon
Enriquez and the leading intellectual Carlos Monsivais. The interview,
planned as an effort to open debate about sexual politics in the party, ap­
peared in the first issue of the magazine in May 1980. In it Monsivais criti­
cized the Mexican left's historic treatment of sexuality: ''The left in Mexico
is composed of Mexicans. This brutal and strict truism speaks first to a
homophobic education; to hate and fear of the different; and to the feel­
ing of instant superiority over the 'queers' (raros), the 'others.' If the left
has for decades shown no greater sensibility toward feminism, ultimately
a mass cause, one could expect nothing but what happened vis-a-vis a mi­
nority that is made invisible: mockery, incomprehension, and repugnance
at even raising the issue."23 Several subsequent issues of the magazine in­
cluded other articles on homosexual liberation. The former editor of El
 Occupying the Partisan Field 79

Ma c h ete and public intellectual Roger Bartra recalls the sector's position in
t he pa rty: "Within the Communist Party, it consolidates into a very strong
pos iti on, very influential, to the point of being able to release a magazine
like El Machete, which openly defended positions that generated consider­
a ble sca ndal. In other words, we were a strong group, but in the minority:
a ve ry strong minority and with the support of part of the leadership."24
The current's influence reached its peak in the many changes instituted
at t h e nineteenth congress in 1981, which included the party's resolution
on sexu ality. The resolution, unprecedented for any communist party in
th e reg ion, stated that there was no such thing as a "normal" sexuality and
no dis tinction between "bourgeois" and "proletariat" sexualities, although
it fell far short of the P RT's position, essentially inscribing sexuality as
a private matter. Enriquez recalled the resolution as a strong break with
orthodoxy that reflected conflicts surrounding sexuality taking place in
communist circles concurrently nationally and transnationally:
The major problem was homosexuality as a form of bourgeois deviance: that
is to say, the position of the Cuban Communist Party. In other words, this
thesis marked a break with the Cuban Communist Party, not to mention the
Soviet Union . . . . Since 1968, the party realized that it had to open up to Mexi­
can society and that it could not continue following the absurd lines of the
Soviet or Cuban Communist Parties. The major break between the PCM and
the Soviet Communist Party came with Afghanistan. And of course, the PCM
was not alone. There was already Eurocommunism. So in some sense, the PCM
is sympathetic with Eurocommunism. It is starting to look for ways to engage
in a real politics, not just a testimonial or completely marginal politics.l 5

As Enriquez suggests, this break was no doubt facilitated because the

positions being advanced by the current linked to El Machete (and the
transnational frames they deployed) resonated with the party's new elec­
toral direction, its moving away from a "testimonial or completely mar­
gi nal p olitics." The sector was thus at least initially strengthened by the
ele cto ral reforms discussed above. In this context, addressing homosexual
li berati on seemed not only to make sense but to mark a symbolic break
wit h the past. According to Bartra, "One of the goals was to change the
party's orientation; to transform it from an old-style communist party to,
one might say, a reformist, social democratic party. From a party with a
structure befitting a clandestine apparatus dedicated to one social class to
a party of public opinion and the masses. And within this, we also wanted a
pos iti on that sought greater plurality and the acceptance of differences."26
I n th is sense Eurocommunism provided a useful backdrop for a coalition
�e ek ing �o break down historic conceptions of the party as representing
Interests defined strictly by class and to press for a new understanding of
what and whom the left should represent.
Bo Doorways

If the transnational field provided resources and symbolic capital,

however, its weight ultimately depended on the strength and position of
national-level forces seeking change. Tellingly, the faction sympathetic to
Eurocommunism in the P C B was relatively weak, lacking broad support
among the leadership and undoubtedly hampered by the party's con­
tinued existence as an informal organization until 1985 and by the emer­
gence of the Workers Party in the meantime as an electoral alternative.27
A fairly small faction, which critics disparagingly labeled the PC I , standing
not for the Italian Communist Party but for the Communist Party of Ipa­
nema, alluding to its middle-class base, was similarly pressing the party to
address issues of culture and gender.28 Given this less than auspicious con­
text, however, the issue of homosexuality in particular seemed to test the
limits of change. In 1984 the newsmagazine IstoE reported that a recent
motion presented at the Sao Paulo state party congress calling on the P C B
t o focus more attention o n sexuality, behavior, and morality was rejected
after a particularly heated debate. The article went on to note the influence
of Eurocommunism among some party sectors, particularly its impact on
the youth sector and its manifestations in the youth supplement of the
party journal, but stipulated that on the question of homosexuality, even
reformers assumed a gradualist stance.29
Even in the P C M , moreover, the foothold gained by the sector linked to
El Machete proved tenuous in the course of alliance building that led to the
foundation of the mass-based P R D , as the left's new electoral turn proved
to be a double-edged sword. During the 1980s this current faced repeated
setbacks, reflecting generally more conservative stances by nationalist left­
ist currents entering these alliances and a growing concern over electoral
calculations as appeals to the voter increasingly overrode commitments
to civil society. These setbacks were reflected in the fate of El Machete
itself, which was vetoed with the establishment of the P SU M in 1981, and
in the defeat of the youth plank at the party's second congress in 1983.30
By 1987 the (now reconstituted) P M S had again seen some opening on the
matter. The party's presidential candidate, Herberto Castillo, and his chal­
lenger for the nomination both spoke out in favor of gay and lesbi�n rights.
Moreover an antidiscrimination plank contemplating sexual orientation
was included in the twelve-point program that the party presented to the
Democratic Current in negotiating Castillo's withdrawal from the race and
the party's support for Cirdenas. Once more, however, the topic reflected
the limits of ideological flexibility for more cautious nationalist leftist cur­
rents, this time represented by former P R J leaders, who vetoed the topic
after heated negotiations.31 Indeed Cardenas himself commented to a
group of intellectuals that he would not touch the topic of A I D S , closely
associated with homosexuality in public discourse, until after the election
because the Mexican people were too conservative and it would cost too
 Occupying the Partisan Field 81

m any votes ( Lumsden 1991). In this regard and unlike the Workers Party,
th e P R D was born with a clear refusal to address activists' concerns.
Beyond the transnational circulation of discourses, the return of politi­
ca l exil es to Brazil after passage of the amnesty law in 1979 contributed not
only to resurgent social movements but to shifting debates in the partisan
)eft (Alvarez 1990; Green 1994). In Rio de Janeiro, for instance, a small
g roup of former political exiles, several of whom would participate in the
foundation of the country's Green Party in 1985, began raising debates on
sexuality within state party offices. In 1983 Herbert Daniel, a participant in
the group, organized a discussion on homosexuality in the party as one of
a series of debates on the "cursed issues." Liszt Vieira, another former exile
and participant in the group, elected state deputy in 1982, recalls how his
experience abroad influenced his campaign's embrace of sexual politics:
First, I came with new ideas from the previous two years that had changed
my way of thinking, the fact that I had been living in France and in contact
with these ideas. I was influenced and brought ideas that were new at the time
because political parties did not discuss them. They did not consider them a
political topic . . . . The first reason [for positing these topics] had to do with
my new political education. It also in a sense reflected a certain influence by
Foucault, with the discussion of micro-power, the questions of relations of
power in society- not in the state [but] in social relations.32

In an intergenerational dialogue between returned exiles and young activ­

ists, one young woman described the particular resonance of such concep­
tual innovations as follows: "When Gabeira returned, he brought back a
new discourse. But he was important because those things were already
here in people's heads. He was an important force precisely because he
came from another generation and was at the same time able to be so close
to what we were feeling and thinking." 33

A G E N T S OF C H A N G E

So far I have focused largely o n contextual factors paving the way for the
partisan left's opening to homosexual liberation. Such changes did not
occur by osmosis, however, particularly given the low salience of the issue
fo r many, the strong resistance of others, and the absence of an easily iden­
ti fia ble mass constituency of cadres or voters. In light of these hurdles,
activists both inside and outside parties have had to forge coalitions strong
enough to press their case.
In the case of the P C M and its subsequent avatars, until very recently
i n clu ding the P R D, these coalitions relied on sympathetic militants within
Part ies, such as the youth sector and the pol i t i c a l current linked to El Ma­
chete. Through contacts and pressure from a fairly small number of indi-
82 Doorways

vidual gay and lesbian party militants and outside activists, these sectors
incorporated planks on homosexual liberation, in part because they reso­
nated symbolically with broader aspirations regarding the direction of
parties, as a symbolic marker of democratic pluralism, or as a break with
orthodoxy. This approach, however, contributed to activists' limited and
episodic contact with parties, and reliance on allies often proved insuffi­
cient in maintaining a somewhat tenuous foothold.
More often - in the cases of the P RT, the Socialist Convergence, the
Workers Party, and recently the P R O - activists have sought to press de­
bates in parties through specialized LGBT sectoral organizations. While
such party bodies have included lesbian activists and a few trans activists,
they have historically been dominated by gay men, reflecting the male
domination of the partisan field more generally. Lesbian party militants in
particular have consequently often focused their political participation on
other channels, such as women's sectors. As one Workers Party militant
recalled:
In 1992, we decided to form [an LGBT nucleus] in the PT [Workers Party],
to try to make the party discuss [the topic] . In a party that claims to defend
minorities, to fight for the question of rights, we decided to introduce this
question into the party. And it was very difficult because of the party's for­
mation - because of the country's history, which is very machista, prejudiced,
and conservative - things in the party were not that different . . . . There was
a time I left the m.icleus - I don't recall when - it was because we had a gay
group. All the members were men. There was only one woman, myself, and
the discussion focused very much on men's issues.34

The Homosexual Work Commission was established in the P RT in 1978,

and the Gay Faction in the Socialist Convergence the following year, both
with a dual agenda of raising awareness of homosexual liberation in the
party and a socialist agenda in the movement. Similar efforts to create
homosexual nuclei began in the Workers Party in the early 198os, though
early efforts proved short-lived due to difficulties mobilizing LGBT activ­
ists within the party, until a lasting nucleus was established in Sao Paulo
in 1992. In 2001 the party went a step further, creating a national LG BT
setorial (sector organization) under the wing of its Popular Movement Sec­
retariat, ostensibly to give LGBT party militants a greater voice in defining
its sector-specific program. Activists in Mexico have historically main­
tained a more episodic and superficial relation with the PRD, in part for
reasons noted above. Another reason may have been the party's decision,
after early debates on how to institutionalize its relations with civil society,
to privilege a model of "external candidacies" - opening candidate slots
to independent activists - over dual militancy to safeguard social move­
ments' autonomy ( Bruhn 1997). Until recently activists' relations with the
 Occupying the Partisan Field 83

pa rty were marked largely by appeals for external candidacies on the eve
o f ele ctions. In 2005, however, the P R O National Council unanimously ap­
proved the creation of its Sexual Diversity Commission.
While arguably reflecting and reinforcing a relatively greater openness in
th ese parties, such sectoral organizations also have potential drawbacks. In
the early 1980s dual militants sparked considerable tensions among activ­
is ts in both countries, prompting accusations that they were trying to co­
o pt fled gling movements. Moreover the institutional containment of sec­
to ral demands has also tended to ghettoize discussions of sexuality. This
prob lem was noted in an internal P RT bulletin that pointed to considerable
confusion in the party regarding its work in the homosexual sector and
to the fact that the majority of regional party offices had not addressed
the issue because they lacked a sectoral representative to take charge of
it.35 This potential containment is not strictly associated with LGBT de­
mands but is in a sense rooted in the organization of sectoral representa­
tion more broadly. As a former PT Secretary of Popular Movements noted,
"The setorial is a party body- this is our big battle . . . a sort of synthesis
to elaborate party policies for that sector. Now in some setoriais, we are
able to achieve this. But the dynamics of the legislature and the executives
makes it very difficult and in most cases very conflictive . . . because there
is practically no relationship." 36
These comments point to a paradoxical dilemma: such sectoral organi­
zations have consolidated in the P R O and Workers Party at a time when the
left's electoral reorientation has increasingly undercut their importance. In
the Workers Party, for example, the growing importance of electoral cal­
culations was dramatically reflected when party leaders vetoed Fernando
Gabeira's candidacy as Lula's running mate in 1989, as a member of the
national executive committee at the time recalls: "The main resistance
was because his image was very closely linked with the gay movement,
though he never participated in it formally. But the entire debate he pro­
moted left that image. There were many who said, we oppose discrimina­
ti on but cannot place someone seen as belonging to the gay movement as
vi ce pre sident; it will spark resistance by the electorate . . . . In the case of
the PT leadership, I recall that several explicitly rejected Gabeira for that
rea so n." 37 This transformation speaks to the broader reorientation of the
le ft fo ste red by its electoral turn, discussed above, as electoral calculations
have increasingly overridden appeals to its base, whether defined by class
or a broader appeal to civil society. A longtime Workers Party militant and
fede ral deputy noted the declining importance of sectoral bodies in this
co n text: "The organizational conception of the party that led to the idea
of th e nuclet is very much linked to the idea of a militant party - a party
of m ilitants who meet every day. This is not the PT. The PT has a militant
base and a much larger base of sympathi z ers friends, and voters. It's a
,
84 Doorways

mass-based party. And what is a nucleus? The nucleus is the old commu­
nist party cell. It comes from a Leninist notion of organization. That's why
it didn't work." 38 At most such bodies have come to exert a conjunctural
influence during elections, and in Brazil in particular its members have
sometimes played an important backstage role as legislative aides with
allied lawmakers. Notably, however, since Lula's election to the presidency
in 2002, his administration has largely sidelined the LGBT setorial in the
formulation and implementation of policy, instead dealing directly with
outside N G O s. In Mexico the new PRD commission was able to include an
LGBT plank in the party's electoral program of 2006 and obtain a desig­
nated LGBT slot on its candidate lists, through which the first openly gay
man was elected to the federal chamber. Its more sustained life remains to
be seen.

C O N C LU S I O N S

Soon after homosexual liberation movements entered the public sphere

in Brazil and Mexico activists both within and outside political part ies
began articulating linkages between movement and party. In this chapter I
sought to trace certain factors that opened these first doorways into formal
politics. On the one hand, I noted an expansion in the discursive reperto ire
available to activists, fostered by youth countercultures, new social move­
ments, and international leftist debates. On the other, I underscored the
changing composition of the field brought about by changes in electoral
institutions and a new generation of cadres. Departing from understand­
ings of parties as unitary rational actors or even as arenas of conflict among
factions whose identities and interests can be assumed a priori, I framed
them as a negotiated order where meanings are challenged and identi­
ties change, bringing together an institutional and cultural analysis ( Fine
1993; Strauss 1982). By stressing these parties' embeddedness in changing
fields at the national and transnational levels, I have sought to highlight
micro-level processes of contestation over meaning occurring both inside
and outside parties and the relationship between them. This sociological
dimension is often ignored in the party literature, contributing to change
from the bottom up and outside in. My approach offers certain advantages
for our understanding of both the left and sexual politics in the context of
globalization.
To explain the Latin American left's turn from the worker to civil society,
some scholars have particularly highlighted the weakening of labor as a re­
sult of the debt crisis and the implantation of neoliberal structural reforms
(Ellner 1993; Roberts 1998) . By locating the agents of change, the changing
discursive repertoires available to them, and the shifting contexts in which
they acted, I suggest that the process in fact began sooner, at least in Brazil
 Occupying the Partisan Field 85

a n d M exico, and that it might be characterized as more demand-driven

t ha n su pply-driven from the perspective of political parties. That is, even in
where labor was gaining considerable momentum at the time, the
Braz i l ,
arr i valof newcomers with new demands in the field, parti cularly youth,
cou l d not be entirely ignored. These changes moreover were often pressed
t h rough micro-level forms of activism often overlooked in the party lit­
erature . It is doubtful, for instance, that the PCM resolution on sexuality
would have passed had it not been for the prior discussions raised within
the party through El Machete. By extension, I have also implied that the
expan sion of the left's agenda beyond the central cleavage of class had as
much to do with the developmentalist model of the 1950s and 196os (and
its discontents) than with the neoliberal model of the 198os and 1990s, and
indeed that it is more closely linked to changes in political institutions
than to economic models.
With regard to sexual po li ti cs in particular, by locating national debates
within a broader global community associated with international Marxism,
a dissident gl ob a l i z ati o n , I have posited the transnational arena as a plural
terrain, though certainly marked by power, in which competing projects
were reinscribing sexualities in different ways (Sandoval 2002). Beyond ap­
proaches that posit the global system in the singular or that note how na­
tional activists draw on transnational repertoires to bolster their demands
(Hardt and Negri 2ooo; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Yashar 1996; Tarrow 1998),
I have sought to underscore how local imperatives and constraints shape
the selection, effectiveness, and often hybrid resignification of particular
frames, such as Eurocommunism, as variably situated national actors craft
their appeals to specific and shifting audiences. In both Brazil and Mexico
transnational frames reinscribing the body, sexuality, and the political in­
fl uenced youth countercultures challenging dominant constructions of
nationhood; homoerotic subcultures recasting sexual identities and ulti­
mate ly left party militants crafting new appeals that resonated with spe­
cific, more receptive audiences.
Again, I do not mean to reduce activists' engagement with the left in
ei ther country to merely a reflection ( or importation) of transnational
scripts. Rather, to some extent blurring the line between the national and
foreig n, the discussion above speaks to how such scripts may interweave
at spe cific moments in local debates. These intersections take multiple
fo r ms, ranging from the circulation of discourses on sexualities and the
e mbo died experience of exiles to the mediated effects of a broader regional
convergence on democratic institutional arrangements, which fundamen­
tally transformed the left in both polities in parallel ways. Needless to say,
Wit h the decline of international Marxism, the growing weight of a trans­
n ati o na l notion o f sexual rights as an extension of liberal discourse, and
the gradu a l transformation of the mass-based leftist parties noted a bove ,
86 Doorways

the position of this global community too has changed, both nationally
and transnationally. But an understanding of these shifts as taking place
in a contested and polyvalent terrain prevents our reifying the growing im­
portance of a liberal discourse in both countries, discussed in subsequent
chapters, as teleologically predetermined or politically neutral.
Finally and very concretely, this chapter has laid out certain parallels
in the political development of early homosexual liberation movements.
In both polities small Trotskyist parties opened activists' first doorways
into the arena of formal polities, in some sense laying the foundations
for lasting (though conflictual) alliances with the mass-based parties that
emerged in the 1980s. In the next chapter I turn to activists' next door­
way, their first experiments in electoral activism, which paved the way for
starkly different directions in both movements' relations with political
society.
 *
The Limits of Liberaliz ation
Entering the Electoral Field

In the midterm elections of 1979, for the first time in Mexico's history, an
aspiring politician sought to run as a homosexual candidate. Affirming
a "right-wing ideology, though in accord with the banners of democracy
and social justice of the PR I ," Victor Amezcua Fragoso, the manager of
the transvestite theater troop Les Femmes, sought a spot on the ruling
party's candidate lists for federal deputy, and with none other than the
actress and pop icon Veronica Castro as his running mate.1 Who would
have thought?
This question - "who would have thought?" - was raised in a cartoon
about Amezcua's precandidacy titled "That's All We Need," the first frame
of which is reproduced in the figure below. Under the heading "The fags
want to join the P R I ," the comic depicts a feminized Victor Amezcua in­
forming a woman behind a typewriter, "I want a bone . . . I mean, to belong
to the party," alluding both to his homosexuality and to the country's po­
litical corruption. To the left, a bee named Pica Pica tells us, "No one can
complain that Mexico is not internationalizing," finding echo to the right:
" Here, as in other countries around the world, effeminates are already cate­
go rically demanding their rights, and in none other than our magna politi­
ca l ins titution, the P R J : Who would have thought !"
The cartoon raises two related sets of questions of broader concern in
this work, linking changing sexualities in the country with a transnational
proj ect of liberal modernity. The fi rst set of questions concerns our under­
sta n ding of sexual politics in the context of globalization. In this regard,
t he image echoes constructions of homosexualities as foreign to national
tradit ion or as products of an alienated bourgeoisie, while at the same time,
alb eit with some irony, positing their political representation as a marker
of sta tus. Amezcua's entry into the public sphere, it seems to suggest,
mea ns that Mexico has "already" joined the progressive march of history,
88 Doorways

�caPICJl
'" £N
SOIP_
I- - �
��ANA V1llA I PE RICLES

Ana Villa Guion, Monos: Pericles, "Pica Pica en Solo Eso nos Faltaba ','' 9 January 1979,
Centro de Informacion y Documentacion de los Homosexuales en Mexico "Ignacio
Alvarez." Archivo Hist6rico del Movimiento Homosexual en Mexico, 1978-1982,
edited by Marinella M iano Borruso, Juan Jacobo Hernandez Chavez, and Juan Javier
Gutierrez Marmolejo ( Mexico City: C O N AC U LTA- I N A H , Colectivo Sol, S.A., C O N A CYT,

y Publicaciones Digitales D G S C A , U N A M , 2004).

marking its symbolic presence in a community of modern nations. How

did such constructions of the national and the foreign, of the backward
and the modern, shape the course of gay and lesbian activism in Mexico?
The same might be asked about Brazil. How did activists challenge or per­
haps even draw on these constructions in advancing their demands, and at
what cost? A second and related set of questions concerns how the prism
of sexual politics contributes to our understanding of liberal modernity. In
this regard, it is worth noting that the bee's dismissive gaze is directed not
just at the notion of a homosexual candidate but also at the dubious demo­
cratic ritual being enacted in the race. The discussion below thus explores
how early gay and lesbian electoral activism in each country casts light on
the limitations of transnational norms associated with this project.
Amezcua, notably, did not obtain the candidacy he sought. Pica Pica,
in other words, was exaggerating the openness of Mexico's electoral field
at the time. Moreover gay and lesbian activists by and large rejected his
efforts, not only because he was a businessman (and capitalist) without
a history in the movement but because he sought to run on the ruling
party ticket, and like most autonomous actors in civil society, activists
repudiated the P R J . It was only three years later, in the presidential and
congressional races of 1982, that the homosexual liberation movement in
Mexico engaged in its first major effort to enter the electoral field. And not
by mere coincidence, in Brazil's legislative and gubernatorial race that year,
activists were also making their electoral debut. So in 1982, four years after
they emerged a s p ub l i c a cto rs , o rga ni zed movements i n both countries
embarked on their first electoral experiments, i n authoritarian contexts.
 The Limits of Liberalization 89

As the first broad-based engagement with the arena of formal politics,

t h os e elections would establish important precedents for future activism
i n e ach country. They would also mark an early fork in the road in each
movem ent's relationship with the state and political parties, as despite
cer tain parallels discussed in chapter 2 and below, two quite different elec­
to ral strategies ultimately coalesced. In Mexico activists built on early ties
wit h the partisan left, embracing a tight electoral alliance with the P RT.
M ob ili zing around gay and lesbian candidates launched by the movement,
th ey embraced what was essentially a strategy of cultural politics, taking
a dvan tage of the electoral arena to reinscribe the boundaries of political
debate in the public square. In Brazil, on the other hand, most activists
ultimately eschewed such a close alignment with any single party, as an
interest group strategy began taking shape. Reflecting a surprising will­
ingness to approach candidates across party lines and regardless of their
sexual orientation, activists embraced a state-directed strategy that they
then pursued in state and local legislatures after the race. Both strategies
came together through processes marked as much by conflict as by con­
sensus revolving around the nature and potential costs of electoral partici­
pation. These conflicts reflected a broad skepticism toward the promises
offered by the gradual political opening in each country. Indeed even the
strongest proponents of each electoral turn fully understood its limita­
tions.
In this chapter I explore how activists navigated the possibilities and
limitations opened by the electoral arena that year, asking why such dif­
ferent paths were taken so soon and how each course reflected the variable
convergence of both national and transnational factors. In both countries
the electoral strategies that coalesced in 1982 emerged within heteroge­
neous social movement fields through processes marked by considerable
tension (Armstrong 2002). Ultimately prevailing strategies reflected their
principal advocates' relative strength and influence within these fields.
Their position, however, was not fortuitous but was shaped by broader
transitions from authoritarian rule and the nature of democratic opposi­
tion movements mobilizing against it in each country. It was also strength­
e ned by their participation in different global communities, essentially re­
flecting variable imprints on globalization.

C O M I N G OUT A N D I N TO E L E C T I O N S

I n bo th Brazil and Mexico the election in 1982 was a watershed moment in

th e trajectory of gay and lesbian politics, setting many precedents for later
el ec to ral a,ctivism, and in Brazil for pressing a legislative strategy remark­
ab ly early in the movement's history. In Mexico the principal vehicle for
e lecto ral participation that year was an alliance with the P RT and the ere-
90 Doorways

ation of a gay and lesbian commission to support the party and its gay and
lesbian candidates. On 27 January 1982 activists from Mexico City's princi­
pal gay and lesbian groups held a press conference declaring their support
for the PRT presidential candidate Rosario Ibarra de Piedra and urging gay
and lesbian citizens to vote.2 The first woman to run for the office in the
country, Ibarra, whose son had been "disappeared" by the government in
its dirty war against the left, had since founded the country's first human
rights organization and coordinated its first human rights coalition, the
National Front against Repression.
On 20 February the newly founded Rosario Ibarra Lesbian and Homo­
sexual Support Committee ( C L HA R I ) organized a meeting to discuss the
election at the Hotel Galeria Plaza, attended by about 150 activists.3 The
Committee would launch six activists as candidates for federal deputy with
the PRT : three for the post and three as running mates. Two tickets ran in
Mexico City and the other in Guadalajara, with one man and one woman
on each.4 The activists involved in C L H A R I had no illusions about their
chances of victory. They approached the election as a stage for political
theater and a source of symbolic capital, to increase the movement's visi­
bility and mobilize support. With a platform calling for an end to police
vio l ence , to the sexual harassment and rape of gays and lesbians, to media
sensationalism; respect for constitutional rights of expression and associa­
tion; and for a sex education free of sexism, electoral act ivi t ies that year
focused largely on campaign rallies and pub li c protests as tools for com­
munity organi z i ng. After several dozen thugs armed with clubs, reportedly
encouraged by local police, violently attacked the rally organized to launch
the candidacies in Mexico Park in Mexico City, for instance, activists mo­
bilized support among sectors of the left, unions, and intellectuals and
organized a much larger rally attended by several hundred supporters the
following week.5 In a subsequent assessment of C L H A R I , Max Mejia, one
of its principal architects, a candidate, and a dual militant in Lambda and
the PRT, cited among its achievements the establishment of new gay and
lesbian groups in Nogales and Monclova as well as Mexico City; the orga­
nization of the first gay and lesbian public marches and the first Gay Cul­
tural Week in Guadalajara; support from leftist sectors following the attack
on the rally at Mexico Park; and activists' first experiment in mobilizing a
nationwide campaign.6
The story in Brazil was quite different. While the Workers Party was
clearly more receptive to their demands, most activists rejected such a
close alignment with any single party, approaching candidates to some
extent regardless of party affiliation or sexual orientation. Visibility was
certainly a desired windfall, but the strategy also sought political leaders'
commitment to certain demands after the race. It was carried out through
local efforts and what essentially became an informal nationwide network.
 The Limits of Liberalization 91

A t the local level the three main groups in Sao Paulo - the Autonomous
Le sb ian Feminist Group (GALF), SomosjSao Paulo, and Outra Coisa ­
app roved a joint strategy, resolving not to support any candidate or party in
the election in order to preserve the movement's autonomy, and to present
all the parties with a list of demands. Later they organized a debate on
ho mosexuality and feminism, attended by candidates across party lines.
Rio de Janeiro's two main groups, Aue and SomosjRio de Janeiro, likewise
presented a list of demands to candidates, regardless of party affiliation.
Activists in Joao Pessoa, Paraiba, invited candidates from the Brazilian
Democratic Movement Party ( P M D B ) , the Social Democratic Party ( Pos ) ,
and the Workers Party to a similar debate, though only representatives of
the Workers Party attended. In Salvador the Grupo Gay da Bahia ( G G B ) ,
founded i n 1980 - today Brazil's oldest surviving gay group and one o f its
most important - directed a questionnaire to mayoral candidates across
party lines and met with candidates from the Workers Party and P M D B . Its
founder, the anthropologist Luiz Mott, spoke at a rally organized by Lula,
then a gubernatorial candidate in Sao Paulo; it was the first time a gay
activist was invited to participate at such an event?
Two tools became important in loosely coordinating these efforts. The
first was a questionnaire that was sent to all the political parties, calling
on them to take a stand on homosexuality. Ultimately the Workers Party
was the only party to respond to the request, having included an antidis­
crimination plank in its national program. The second was a petition that
the GGB had begun circulating the previous year at the annual conference
of the Brazilian Society for Scientific Progress, which activists in several
cities circulated among candidates before the election. The petition called
on the federal government to suspend the application in Brazil of Para­
graph 302.0 of the World Health Organization's International Classifica­
tio n of Diseases, which at the time still categorized homosexuality under
the rubric of "Deviance and Sexual Disorders." Almost as an afterthought,
it also called for a constitutional guarantee to protect citizens from dis­
crimination based on "sexual option." The petition thus laid the founda­
tion for the movement's two principal legislative campaigns of the 198os.
In short, while Mexican activists pursued a new left strategy that empha­
sized community organizing and visibility in the public square, Brazilian
activists approached the election more along the lines of a liberal interest
group, pressing specific demands of the state. In neither country, however,
did activists universally embrace either strategy.

Engagement or Autonomy: Mapping the Social Movement Field

'

As a number of scholars have p o i n te d out, the a n a lytic category of "social

movement" can be deceptively unifying, encompassing quite distinct in-
92 Doorways

stitutional forms of organization, ranging from the work of independent

activists and volunteer-based groups to well-staffed and externally financed
nongovernmental organizations, and often obscuring strategic and ideo­
logical differences as well as differential access to resources and relations
of power within a given social movement (Melucci 1985, 1996; Rucht 1996;
Chalmers, Martin, and Piester 1997) . The concept of "field" offers one
useful way to take this internal heterogeneity into account (Armstrong
2002). Setting aside the simplifying assumptions of rationalist approaches,
which generally assume social movement actors' identities and interests to
be unitary and given, such an approach allows a more critical understand­
ing of the processes and tensions giving rise to prevailing strategies.
Along with gend er, the question of party alliances became one of the
primary cleavages dividing movements in both countries in the early 198os.
The dispute pitted dual militants linked to small Trotskyist parties, the
P RT's Homosexual Work Commission in Mexico and the Gay Faction of
the Socialist Convergence in Brazil, against activists rallying around the
banner of movement autonomy, variably defined. Within both social
movement fields, dual militants advocated a socialist and feminist orien­
tation and a broader commitment to the "general struggle." More specifi­
cally they pressed for the creation of nationwide umbrella organizations
within movements and alliances with other leftist sectors. Such proposals
in some sense reflected a united front strategy borrowed from the parti­
san left as well as the sector's vanguardist orientation, with its emphasis
on consciousness raising through community organizing, both nationally
and transnationally. While dual militants may indeed have shared their
parties' long-term goal of seizing the state for revolutionary change, they
also shared a short-term focus on social mobilization as a necessary first
step, which in the case of gay and lesbian liberation translated into an em­
phasis on visibility. It was not just any visibility, however, but a visibility
that clearly marked the movement's identification with other oppressed
groups and radical structural change.
In Mexico City, for instance, while certainly not alone within the move­
ment, both the P RT in general and Homosexual Work Commission dual
militants in particular, most of whom were also active in Lambda, pro­
moted gay and lesbian activists' participation in progressive umbrella
organizations such as the National Front for the Liberation and Rights of
Women, a feminist coalition, and the National Front against Repression,
both created in 1979. Within the movement activists promoted alliances
through the creation of common fronts, such as the short-lived Front for
Lesbian and Homosexual Civil and Political Rights. In a 1983 document the
Homosexual Work Commission called the Front its top priority within the
movement: "Precisely because it is through this Front . . . that we can inter-
 The Limits of Liberalization 93

cede for the adoption of a feminist-socialist perspective in the [ Homo­

sexual Liberation Movement] ." 8 Of course C LH A R I itself was the most
extensive effort to encourage ties among activists and across progressive
se ctors through visibility and community organizing.
Autonomists' rejection of dual militants in both countries revolved
aro und both the style and substance of what they advocated, in other
words around the closely related questions of how and what the gay and
lesbian liberation movement should represent, and how these might be
com promised by alliances with political parties. Regarding how it repre­
sents, many activists who emphasized a disruption of social disciplines as a
strategy for liberation saw leftist activists' proposals as a bureaucratization
and containment of liberation politics that undermined this effort. Draw­
ing on feminist critiques, many lesbian activists in particular regarded
party politics as merely an extension of the state, inevitably tainted by the
hierarchical structures of patriarchal authority. Regarding what it repre­
sents, the debate revolved largely around the trade-offs entailed by alli­
ances: the extent to which activists should commit to issues that many did
not see as directly relevant to sexual politics as well as the sometimes ex­
tensive sacrifices that potential allies often demanded in the movement's
own agenda, particularly in terms of visibility. In Sao Paulo, the stronghold
of both the Socialist Convergence and the Workers Party, and Mexico City
this conflict between Trotskyist dual militants and autonomists bitterly
divided both movements.
Despite these disputes there were certain underlying assumptions on
which both sectors agreed. First, both tended to prioritize a cultural poli­
tics of visibility in the public square over state-directed effo rts, although
differences arose over the content of that politics, again reflecting a com­
mon skepticism toward existing state structures. Second, while autono­
mists generally resisted a close alliance with the partisan left, most were
nonetheless relatively sympathetic with its broader goals and tenets and
more suspicious of parties of the right and center. In Brazil a third sec­
tor - indeed, a few activists - emerged that challenged both of these as­
sumptions. On the one hand, they posited the importance of approaching
the state and political elite, particularly given the limited resources of a
relatively small movement. On the other, they regarded partisan alliances
more instrumentally than ideologically, as a vehicle ·to press an identity­
specific, state-directed agenda.
Two activists in particular played a significant role in advancing this
app roach: the G G B 's founder, Luiz Mott, and Joao Antonio Mascarenhas, a
lawyer and independent activist originally from Rio Grande do Sui but re­
si ding i,n Rio de Janeiro. One of the principal architects of the movement's
sta te-directed strategy during the decade, he was in part responsible for
94 Doorways

coordinating electoral efforts among activists nationwide and giving them

institutional continuity afterward. In 1982 he described his efforts to co­
ordinate this network in a letter to a Norwegian activist:
I elaborated a very ambitious and time-consuming plan that I am carrying
out. First, I translate the most important news I find in the newspapers I re­
ceive (Gay News, Le Gai Pied, Fuori!, The Body Politic), and I forward them to
the eight [most active] gay groups, as some material I receive from European
friends. Second, in long letters and long-distance calls, I discuss the goals I
think most meaningful for the Brazilian Gay Liberation and I say how I sup­
pose they can be attained, and what I imagine [are] the best tactics to employ.
Third, I try to act as a cheerleader and a catalyst also to infuse them [with]
hope and enthusiasm. Fourth, I strive to form a national gay circuit. To do
this, the bits of news I receive from a group I send to others to foster a sense
of belonging; besides, when I write to a group, I mail copies of my letter to the
others, so all examine the same subject almost simultaneously.9

Both Mascarenhas and Mott maintained relatively close ties with their
counterparts abroad, particularly European activists linked to what was
then the International Gay Association, founded in 1978, a point to which
I return below, but also with counterparts in several other countries in
Latin America.10
Beneath the E:' lectoral strategies that came to prevail that year, it is im­
portant to keep in mind that alternative directions were not only thinkable
but debated and even tried. In Mexico, beyond the differences discussed so
far, one might ask more pointedly why activists made little effort to court
the most important party on the left, the P S U M , given the inroads made
into the P C M and its retention of the thesis on sexuality in its program.
In fact the P S U M militant Jose Ramon Enriquez posed this very question
at the Gay and Lesbian Cultural Week in Mexico City that year, caution­
ing against too close an alignment with any single party and prompting
considerable debate among activists.U At the same time Braulio Peralta,
a journalist with the progressive newspaper Uno mas Uno who had par­
ticipated in the early years of activism and maintained close ties with the
movement, published a series of interviews with members of various po­
litical parties regarding their positions on feminism and homosexuality,
suggesting that such initiatives were at least possible, if not embraced by
most activists.
Likewise a few activists in Sao Paulo linked to the Workers Party did
participate in the reelection bid of State Assemblyman Joao Baptista Breda
(Workers Party; formerly M oB ) . After coming out during his term, making
him perhaps the first openly gay legislator in Latin America, Breda had
become a strong supporter of the movement, calling unprecedented pub­
lic hearings in response to Operation Cleanup, a series of massive police
 The Limits of Liberalization 95

raids targeting homosexuals and other so-called marginal populations in

the city. Running on the slogan "Pleasure for Everyone," Breda's campaign
could certainly have proven an effective vehicle for the kind of symbolic
politics taking place in Mexico, though it never fostered the kind of broad­
based mobilization represented by C L HA R I Y Indeed on this point Mas­
carenhas, who joined the Workers Party due to its stance on homosexual
li be ration, disagreed with paulista activists' resolution on autonomy, ar­
guing that their refusal even to endorse Breda reflected a basic misunder­
standing of the tit-for-tat nature of electoral politics under representative
de mocracies, a division that underscores the heterogeneous perspectives
of activists working together in the election.13
In short, each electoral strategy that came to prevail can be read as the
product of negotiation and conflict surrounding the true site of power, the
mean i ng of liberation, and the possibilities and costs opened by a p proach ­
ing the state. In Brazil activists rallying around the banner of autonomy
and generally quite skeptical about the efficacy of state-directed efforts
worked with activists who stressed the importance of such efforts, giving
them geographic scope. In Mexico some activists embraced the strategy
proposed by dual militants, while others bitterly opposed it, all paradoxi­
cally claiming the banner of autonomy. By mapping each field and setting
aside rationalist assumptions positing movement identities and interests
in the singular, the central question in this chapter can thus be reframed:
What factors shaped the relative influence of competing rationalities - or
alternatively, of competing desires - allowing quite different electoral di­
rections to prevail?

I N S T I T U T I O N , O P P O RT U N I T Y, A N D AU D I E N C E

Activists' entry into the electoral field implied a meeting o f two institution­
alized expressions of political representation: social movements and po­
litical parties. Each contended differently with the stigma attached to gay
and lesbian identities, given its different composition, audience, and ends.
Party actors had the upper hand in these alliances, given their privileged
position in the public sphere, but electoral institutions variably organized
how they appealed to the electorate by selecting or limiting their audience,
thus opening discrete doorways for activists. Where a harmonization of
audience calculations was possible, particular strategies of representation
became possible as well. In other words, the variable institutionalization of
p ublicity (or audience) in the public sphere opened different opportunities
for activists to contest the boundaries of representation. These doorways
were not • neutral, however, but selective, �trengthening the hand of par­
ticular currents within the social movement fields discussed above and
reinforcing the deployment of certain performative scripts. For activists, in
96 Doorways

other words, the decision to participate implied entering a new discursive

terrain and changes in how they too represented.
Any consideration of the different electoral paths taken in 1982 must
therefore first note the obvious differences in the electoral arenas them­
selves. Most important, while formal democratization in both countries
would proceed through a piecemeal tinkering with electoral institutions
in response to opposition gains, in 1982 this process had clearly proceeded
further in Brazil, where the military government had replaced the bipar­
tisan system in response to a united opposition's mounting effectiveness
in eroding its hold on power through electoral gains. While Mexico's au­
thoritarian leadership responded to the social uprisings of the 196os and
1970s by opening greater electoral space to channel discontent, this pro­
cess would gain significant momentum only after the challenge posed by
Cuauhtemoc Cirdenas and the National Democratic Front in 1988. In 1982
the PRI -dominated hegemonic party system was only beginning to erode;
beyond the rotation of elites linked to the ruling party, the function of
elections was still largely a ritual performance of the regime's claims to
democratic standing.14
On the surface it would seem that this difference between Mexico's
hegemonic party system and Brazil's relatively more competitive electoral
arena might explain the different electoral strategies adopted that year.
With more parties competing for votes in Brazil, more alliances became
possible. Notably, however, at the level of political parties as institutions,
the electoral inroads made by activists in each country in the end proved
somewhat similar. Addressed programmatically only by the Workers Party
in Brazil and the P RT and P S U M in Mexico, the issue of homosexuality
ultimately maintained the foothold in the left discussed in chapter 2, and
despite Brazilian activists' considerable efforts to elicit programmatic
statements of support from other parties, particularly the PM D B , they ulti­
mately overestimated openness to an issue perceived to carry high political
costs. This parallel undoubtedly in part reflected the electorally marginal
position shared by the newly registered leftist parties that alone incorpo­
rated the topic into their programs. As much as any electoral calculation,
scholars have noted that such a position tends to strengthen so-called
party ideologues within parties - those advocating what might be thought
of as a more "expressive" party identity, or electoral adherence to a party's
core principles and social base - over electoral strategists, for whom such
principles are secondary to a "strategic" identity that seeks to maximize
votes and thus appeal to the broadest possible audience ( Przeworski and
Sprague 1986; Kitschelt 1989). In assessing the influence of electoral insti­
tutions, therefore, these parallels suggest we must look beyond the level
of party systems, writ large. In each country specific institutional mecha-
 The Limits of Liberalization 97

TA B L E 4· Brazilian Candidate Support for the Movement, 1982

Public Signed Private Known to be
Su pport statements petition statement homosexual
Workers Party (PT) 17 0 2
Bra zilian Democratic
Movement Party ( P M D B ) 10
De mocratic Labor Party
( PDT) 4 9 1
Bra zilian Labor Party
(PTB) 0 2 1 0
Social Democratic Party
(PDS) 2 0 0 1

nisms opened discrete doorways for activists by narrowing the audience

that acted as gatekeeper into the electoral field. I first consider one such
doorway in Brazil.
If most Brazilian parties steered clear of activists' demands, a number
of candidates across party lines did not. After the election Mascarenhas
compiled an extensive, though probably incomplete list of candidates who
in one way or another supported the movement during the election, draw­
ing on his contacts with politicians and activists throughout the country.
In a subsequent analysis he divided the candidates into four categories:
(1) those who made public statements supporting homosexual rights in the
media or in campaign materials; (2) those who signed the petition against
Paragraph 302.0 of the International Classification of Diseases but were
not as public in their support during their campaign; (3) those who did not
sign the petition but expressed support in private; and (4) those who were
known to be homosexual, though not necessarily supportive of movement
demands. Compared to only one candidate who raised the issue in 1979,
there were fifty-one candidates in 1982, forty-nine of whom were known to
have expressed some degree of support for the movement and sixteen of
who m were ultimately elected. Table 4 reflects these totals.15
Several points might be made about these figures. The first concerns the
categorization itself, which is structured precisely around candidates' vari­
able concerns over the perceived audience costs attached to homosexual
stigma. Recognizing that public support presented a challenge for candi­
dates and hence for the movement, the categorization nonetheless also
recognized even private and informal expressions of support as a potential
doorway into the state. Second, given most parties' reticence to address
the issue, a surprising number of candidates emerged, even on the right
and center, indicating some support. The P M D B in particular followed the
g8 Doorways

Workers Party in the number of candidates who did so publicly. Despite

limited inroads at the party level, therefore, the candidate level tells an­
other story.
A central factor shaping the surprising emergence of candidates across
party lines so soon in the movement's electoral trajectory was Brazil's fairly
unusual electoral system, combining proportional representation with
open candidate lists and single districts with large magnitudes.16 This sys­
tem has contributed in two related ways to the strategy of alliance politics
discussed above. First, Brazilian candidates compete as much with fellow
party members as they do with candidates from other parties, often run­
ning against literally hundreds of competitors (Mainwaring 1995) . This in­
tense competition with fellow party members encourages specialization
within parties as candidates seek to carve out bailiwicks, or narrow cohorts
of voters, which can be cultivated either along geographic lines or around
particular issues (Ames 2001). This incentive to specialize selects and nar­
rows the slice of the electorate (the audience) to whom candidates seek to
appeal.
Second, a correlate of this observation is that Brazil's electoral structure
tends to reduce party discipline during elections. If candidates direct their
message to relatively specialized sectors of the electorate, political parties
are arguably interested in diversifying these audiences to accumulate the
most votes. Among parties of the right and center in particular it often
seems that the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing in
Brazilian elections. How else can one explain that as early as 1982, while
prominent PDS candidates in Sao Paulo were speaking out against the
movement and its program pledged to safeguard the family by protecting
morals and good customs, the party was also staging burlesque shows in
the Pra�a da Republica, a popular cruising area for queer men in the city, in
an effort to court their vote? 17 As Luiz Mott succinctly assessed in an inter­
view, "Parties were always mere fa�ades without an objective or unani­
mous position. So there were very likely conservative parties in which one
party official may have taken an indifferent or homophobic stance while
other party members signed the petition and supported our struggle." 18
Paradoxically scholars have strongly criticized this lack of party discipline
for encouraging clientelistic practices in the country (Mainwaring 1995,
1999; Carey 1997) . Activists promoting an institutional direction, however,
clearly found an early friend in party indiscipline, turning it to their advan­
tage to establish a foothold in the state and among political elites.
Two parallel mechanisms are worth noting in Mexico, though both
would prove more important in subsequent races. The electoral reform
of 1977 established a low threshold for parties to obtain legal registration,
federal funding, and legislative seats, over the years varying between 1 . 5
 The Limits of Liberalization 99

and 2 . 0 percent of the vote. This effectively created an incentive for smaller
pa rt ie s to appeal to a relatively narrow audience, pursuing a satisficing
ra th e r than maximizing electoral logic. While less important in 1982, given
an overriding disdain for the electoral game by large sectors of the PRT,
th e incentive for small left parties to meet this threshold would signifi­
c a ntly shape activists' subsequent electoral alliances. Also, beginning in
1963 electoral reforms established a mixed system using proportional and
majoritarian representation with closed lists. Beginning in the late 1990s
M ex ican activists' long-standing strategy of launching strictly symbolic
ca n didacies with the left, a precedent set by C L H AR I , would finally gain a
foothold in the state with the election of gay and lesbian activists to legisla­
tive posts. In every instance closed proportional representation candidate
lists determined electoral success by permitting activists to make their case
for a favorable spot on candidate lists to a relatively narrow audience of
party leaders rather than appealing to the electorate at large.
The three institutional arrangements mentioned here - Brazil's open
candidate lists with single districts, and Mexico's low threshold for party
registration and funding and closed candidate lists - all provided discrete
doorways into the electoral field by limiting the audience to whom activ­
ists needed to appeal and hence insulating representation from the per­
ceived costs attached to their demands. While offering activists their first
place at the electoral table, these mechanisms encouraged not only p ar­
ticipation but pa rt icular directions, acting as selection mechanisms within
the social movement fields discussed above. Indeed the lasting precedents
in electoral strategies set by both races speak to the sedimentation of par­
ticular scripts, and particular desires, through this kind of formal institu­
tionalization. In Mexico, moreover, the significance of launching activist
candidates has also been reinforced by leftist parties' institutionalization
of external candidacies, opening candidate slots to non-party members
to build alliances with civil society. In this case the arrangement has been
a face-saving device for activists, marking their autonomy before a social
movement base.

S O C I A L M OV E M E N T S I N N AT I O NA L

A N D T RA N S N AT I O N A L F I E L D S

A t m ost, institutions offered possible doorways. Activists clearly sought

n ot on ly to push these d oorways open but to press the limits of represen­
tation once inside. Within and around these institutions, less formalized
sc rip ts came into play, deployed from the bottom up and outside in. Like
t he partisan left, the electoral arena became a kind of negotiated order,
wh ere variably situated activists and party militants contended over the
wo Doorways

boundaries of representation. Each movement's embeddedness in broader

fields at the national and transnational levels provided discursive bridges
between the two while reinforcing certain electoral directions.

Gay and Lesbian Liberation and Democracy Movements

I suggested that C LH A R I was possible because broader sectors of the social
movement field in Mexico, including many autonomists, embraced a Marx­
ist orientation and were thus more receptive to the strategies posited by
dual militants. This relatively greater receptivity was no accident. Rather,
it reflected significant differences in broader fields within which respective
movements were embedded, specifically in broader opposition alliances
pressing for democratic change.
In Mexico the P R I 's authoritarian hold on power was opposed on the
right by the PAN and on the left by a relatively marginalized community of
progressive sectors, including left party militants, social movement activ­
ists, progressive journalists, and intellectuals. Beyond the fact that the PAN
was an unlikely ally for gay and lesbian activists given its roots in Catho­
lic lay organizations and its conservative base, the divided opposition re­
inforced the tight-knit though internally diverse ideological community
on the left within which debates on sexuality and gender emerged in the
country, particularly in the capital. In Brazil, on the other hand, the right­
wing military regime was opposed by a larger, more ideologically diverse,
though more politically unified democratic front encompassing sectors
ranging from Marxists to centrist liberals and even old-line political bosses;
while many gay and lesbian activists, including many autonomists, iden­
tified with the left, the movement overall reflected this relatively greater
ideological heterogeneity. These differences were compounded by Mexico's
political centralization. That is, while there were groups not only within
but outside Mexico City that did not raise the banners of socialism and
radical change, the country's political centralization was also reflected in
the relatively greater political weight of the major groups organizing in
the capital and of the closely knit leftist community in which they par­
ticipated. In both cases the embeddedness of the social movement fields
within these variably constituted opposition alliances was to some extent
reflected in shared terms of debate and ideological precepts, suggesting
cultural reverberations of party politics that exceed the narrow confines of
partisan competition.
Beyond prevailing electoral strategies that year, any number of examples
might be cited as reflections of the left's relatively greater influence in
Mexico at the time. The three major groups from the first wave of activism
in Mexico City, for instance - Lambda, Oikabeth, and even the most radi­
cally autonomist Homosexual Revolutionary Action Front- all included
 The Limits of Liberalization 101

exp licit critiques of capitalism or avowals of socialism in their statements of

p rin ciples. While some Brazilian groups noted the importance of alliances
with other oppressed sectors, they tended not to do so within an explicitly
M arxist frame. Indeed Mexican activists' first two public marches, com­
me morating the Cuban Revolution and the student massacre in Tlatelolco
S q uare, already marked this affinity with the left. In 1980 the second Gay
an d Lesbian Pride March, which drew between five thousand and seven
th o usand participants, a high-water mark in this early phase of mobili­
zation, likewise rallied around a call for "Socialism without Sexism." Un­
like a proposal by Socialist Convergence dual militants to march alongside
striking workers at the May Day rally in Sao Paulo's ABC industrial district
that same year, which was narrowly defeated at the first Meeting of Bra­
zilian Homosexuals, these public expressions sparked relatively little con­
troversy.19 Even the discussion and reading circles organized by the major
groups in Mexico City, where debates on the theories of Wilhelm Reich
and Herbert Marcuse were not uncommon, more clearly reflected Marxist
influences than their Brazilian counterparts, where discussions tended to
focus more on matters of identity, discrimination, and self-esteem.
Within lesbian movements in particular such differences were also evi­
dent, in part reflecting activists' variable articulations within broader femi­
nist movements. In Brazil the new multiparty system had produced deep
divisions among feminists as well (Soares 1998; Alvarez 1990; Goldberg­
Salinas 1997). This was starkly manifest at the second Congress of Pauli­
sta Women in March 1980, attended by the lesbian feminist subgroup
of Somas, the first organized lesbian presence at such an event. Sharp
divisions emerged at the congress between feminist groups underscor­
ing women's "specific" concerns, ranging from reproductive rights and
day care to violence against women and women's health, and women's
groups linked to leftist factions calling for greater attention to the "general
struggle." The latter took over several discussion groups, steering debates
toward partisan agendas, and women linked to Catholic groups, with parti­
san allies, packed meetings and derailed discussions on reproductive rights
and abortion. The rancorous conflicts brought proceedings to a temporary
sta n dstill on the second day of the congress and ultimately undermined
e ffo rts to produce a joint plan of action. Several organizations, including
the le sbian subgroup, called an emergency meeting that produced a reso­
lutio n repudiating the "antifeminist tendencies" present at the congress
a nd the partisan manipulation of the event.20 Similar divisions emerged
the following month at the first Meeting of Brazilian Homosexuals, where
several founding members of Somas split over the question of autonomy,
even as �he lesbian subgroup split to establish the country's first autono­
mous lesbian organization.
In a document titled ''Autonomy: A Question Always on the Agenda,"
102 Doorways

GALF activists cited parties' divisive impact on both the gay and lesbian
liberation and feminist movements in rejecting partisan politics and
defending the importance of autonomy, adding, "Our belief in a self­
managed society stems, above all, from our complete disillusionment with
the 'socialism' of which we have news today."21 Interestingly, on the eve
of the election the French philosopher Felix Guattari, traveling in Brazil,
met with gay and lesbian activists at GALF offices, as one of the group's
founders later recalled : "Guattari surprised everyone, saying he was im­
pressed by the PT (Workers Party) and posited the need to create some
kind of articulation between molecular struggles (alternative groups, for
instance) and molar ones ( parties, for instance) . . . . Another surprising
statement by Guattari was his praise of a French homosexual group whose
principal work focused on studying laws that discriminate against bichas,
efforts of a reformist nature that many Brazilian militants consider to be
of absolutely no value."22
While such critiques of traditional party politics certainly found echoes
within Mexico's lesbian movement, there was also a much stronger Marxist
current, even among autonomists. Yan Maria Yaoyolotl Castro, an influen­
tial leader of this current and the founder of several early groups, says:
I want to underscore that almost all the leaders of both the lesbian and homo­
sexual movements - almost all of them - came from the left and worked with
the left . . . . At first, Oikabeth did not establish relations with Trotskyism,
though it did later with the Trotskyist lesbians in Lambda, who were with the
PRT. From the start, Oikabeth defined itself as socialist and established an
informal dialogue with some Communist Party cadres and cells, though we
had reservations, as the party had already entered the electoral game, which
we questioned. We also spoke with Maoist organizations, which completely
rejected us, though we were able to participate in various support committees
for national liberation struggles in Latin America, like Chile, Argentina, Nica­
ragua, and El Salvador, where we were "tolerated" despite being lesbians.23

The Marxist orientation of a significant sector of Oikabeth ultimately di­

vided the group, with several activists leaving to form the short-lived So­
cialist Lesbians and then the Lesbian Feminist Marxist-Leninist Seminar.
The Seminar would spearhead the mobilization of a group of seamstresses
displaced by the earthquake in Mexico City in 1985, organizing twenty­
four-hour vigils to prevent the company's removing equipment without
paying their wages, efforts that eventually led to the establishment of the
"19th of September" National Garment Workers Union. Outside the capi­
tal this current also found expression in the Morelos Lesbian Commune,
founded in 1982. A unique experiment in the country, the short-lived com­
mune organized events that drew significant participation of working­
class women from surrounding states, though it was ultimately disbanded
 The Limits of Liberalization 103

whe n local officials informed its leaders of an impending order of arrest for
a ll eged guerrilla activity.24
A factor that perhaps reinforced this orientation was the PRT's signifi­
c a nt role in the feminist movement and the fact that the heterofeminists
who went furthest in articulating ties with gay and lesbian activists had
close ties to the party. Worth noting in this regard is the role of the Au­
tonomous University Women's Group (GAM U ) , established in 1978, which
inclu ded several party members and would become one of the largest and
mo st influential feminist groups in Mexico City during a period of general
demobilization in the early 198os. Several G A M U members participated
at the annual Meetings of Lesbians and Feminists held between 1978 and
1980, and the group itself organized the third. These articulations among
lesbian feminists, institutionalist sectors of the feminist movement, and
revolutionary parties set the stage for the central role that lesbian activists
and feminists more broadly would play in state-directed LGBT activism
in the country, as all turned increasing attention toward the electoral and
parliamentary fields in the course of democratization (see chapter s).
For dual militants in Mexico this meant a more receptive audience to
a proposed electoral alliance with the PRT, even among autonomists par­
ticipating in C L H A R I . This responsiveness in part reflected the greater
salience of a Marxist discourse in the movement overall and the relative
prioritization of a shared symbolic logic of representation that was more
about "presenting who we really are" (or would like to be) for the purposes
of community organizing than about gaining a foothold in the state. As a
human rights activist whose son had been "disappeared" by the govern­
ment, Rosario Ibarra's own candidacy was itself an exercise in symbolic
politics, a performative contradiction of the democratic pretense being
enacted in the race. Indeed I would argue not only that this shared logic
of symbolic representation reflected the movement's embeddedness in the
left and a common understanding of electoral politics fundamentally as
a form of protest rather than a means of influencing policy, but also that
it helps to explain activists' embrace of the PRT, even to the exclusion of
ot her leftist parties less forthcoming in their support, as alliances had to
be thick with ideological consistency, not thin with conjunctural strategy.
In Brazil the movement's embeddedness within a broader democratic
fro nt permitted an altogether different electoral approach, which facili­
tated building bridges that could cross a broader political spectrum. Per­
haps the most important discursive doorway into electoral politics that
year was the banner of "minority rights," which had gained a new political
currency in the context of abertura. In civil society the trope reflected the
resurgen<!e of a number of identity-based movements. SomosjSao Paulo
itself made its first public debut at the first Week of Minorities organized
by the Universi ty of Sao Paulo in February 1979 ( M iccolis 1983 ; MacRae
104 Doorways

1990). Notably, however, while the frame would gain political salience
over the course of the decade, sectors of the movement sharply criticized
its implications. In an article on the event at the university published
in Lampiiio da Esquina, the paulista activist Joao Silverio Trevisan, who
would spearhead autonomists' rejection of the partisan left, argued that
the term reified dichotomies such as primary/secondary, general/specific,
and economicjcultural used by parties (particularly on the left) to dismiss
so-called minority demands and dissociate them from broader systems of
privilege and power in which so-called majorities were also implicated.25
In a talk at the Brazilian Society for Scientific Progress, activists with Aue
in Rio de Janeiro similarly contended that the term minority was used to
contain and depoliticize demands not expressed in terms of class.26
At the level of party politics the discourse of minority rights stemmed
from the reemergence of various sectors of civil society, notably youth and
student movements, and their engagement with the M O B following the
elections in 1974. In 1978 the party launched a number of social move­
ment activists as candidates in urban areas, most of whom were elected (Sa
Motta 1997; Cardoso 1981). Notably, while neither the M O B, much less the
military's A R E N A , referred to minorities or women in their national plat­
forms in 1978, four of the five parties competing in 1982 did so, reflecting
a new trope in the political discourse of democratizationP Party actors
generally excluded homosexuals as a particularly stigmatized category, yet
the language of minority rights provided a basis from which activists could
push the envelope. In analyzing the candidacies that supported the move­
ment's agenda that year, Mascarenhas thus summarized:
One [candidate supportive of homosexual rights] in 1978, and 49, or 51, in
1982. Does this mean that the movement grew 49, or 51, times in 4 years? Of
course not. What happened was an awakening to the existence, and particu­
larly to the electoral value, of homosexuals: an awakening that politicians saw
could be "made respectable" if they were careful (and to my knowledge, all of
them were) to underscore that they were concerned with oppressed minority
groups in general; that is- and in this order - "women, blacks, Indians, and
homosexuals." In any case, there was progress in my view. Before, we were not
even mentioned "at the end of the line."28

In short, social movement fields in both Mexico and Brazil participated

within broader progressive alliances pushing for democratization in each
country. The different composition of these alliances variably shaped the
course of each movement by constituting distinct cultural terrains. In Bra­
zil a cross-class a n d i d eo l o gica l ly heterogeneous alliance opp o s i n g m ilitary
rule and in Mexico a re l at ively margin a li z ed community to the left of the
erstwhile populist PRI saw themselves reflected in each movement's elec­
toral direction. At one level, this embeddedness conditioned the terms o f
 The Limits of Liberalization 105

d e ba te within social movement .fields themselves, strengthening particular

c ur re nts. At another, it opened discursive bridges between movement and
pa rty, permitting activists to push the bou ndaries of who and what could
b e represented in the electoral field, t hou gh in very different ways.

Glob al Communities and Transnational Repertoires

So cial movement fields were embedded not only in national opposition
movements pressing for democratic change but in a broader field at the
transnational level, where competing global communities were also de­
bating gender and sexuality. Earlier I noted contacts between Brazilian
activists pressing a state-directed approach and activists in Europe. Here I
discuss these contacts in more detail, drawing relevant comparisons with
Mexico. Again, the deployment of transnational practices should not be
read as a mere replication of foreign ideas but with attention to the vari­
able selection of particular practices and their hybridization in local set­
tings (Appadurai 1996; Chatterjee 1997, 1998; Garcia Canclini 1995a, 1995b).
Moreover, for the purposes of this discussion, it is important to keep in
mind that the dynamics of globalization at work were occurring at two
significant and interrelated levels. If certain strategies of identity pol it ics,
or performative scripts, were c rossing national boundaries, these develop­
ments must be read in the context of a broader regional convergence on
liberal democratic institutional frameworks, writ large. One should be at­
tentive to the uses, transformation, and limitations of transnational prac­
tices in national settings at both levels.
In both countries LG BT activism emerged in the course of formal demo­
cratic transitions. In different ways the electoral processes under way in
1982 were thus constrained not just by institutional shortfalls - electoral
fraud, for instance - but by the relatively shallow penetration of lib eral
democratic institutions more generally, given their embeddedness in
highly skewed arrangements of power in the private sphere (O'Donnell
1 999 ; Weffort 1989; DaMatta 1987; Avritzer 2002 ) . Indeed perhaps one
of the most remarkable aspects o f early gay and lesbian activism in both
countries was that activists were fully aware of these limitations but were
nonetheless able to take advantage of the institutional opportunities avail­
able to them, if at times for strictly symbolic ends.
Interestingly the possibilities and limitations of the liberal democratic
in stitutions being implanted in Brazil were addressed quite explicitly by
o n e of the chief architects of the movement's state-directed approach. At
a round the time of the election of 1 9 82, Mascarenhas responded directly
to the assertion that the experiences of gay and lesbian movements in ad­
vanced capitalist countries were irrelevant to Brazil, given its vastly dif­
fe rent socioeconomic reality. He countered that those making such ar-
106 Doorways

guments were forgetting the crucial reality of class in Brazil, which made
those experiences relevant, at least for some. Recalling historic arguments
about "dual societies" in the country, he posited two important distinc­
tions between the roughly 10 percent of the population comprising the
middle and upper class and the rest of society.
First, he noted differences at the level of sexual identity itself. In an
article prepared for the third annual International Gay Association Confer­
ence in 1981 entitled "The Third World and the Gay Liberation Movement,"
Mascarenhas addressed differences in the organization of sexual practices
in the country and the variable identities, prohibitions, and permissions
attached to them across class lines:
Prejudices against homosexuals are a middle-class phenomenon in Brazil.
The upper class does not care about them, and the working class's sexual be­
havior, at least in large cities, is completely different. Very often, single urban
workers are bisexual, and maintain a very masculine demeanor. When they
have homosexual relations, with some frequency, they play both roles, but
they do not think that this way of behaving makes them homosexuals. For
them, homosexuals are those who have an effeminate demeanor. I would say
that Brazilian workers have a truly revolutionary lifestyle . . . . For them, sex is
something that you do and appreciate; not something to discuss. It therefore
makes no sense for them to join gay liberation . . . . The only people in Brazil
who might therefore be interested in the movement come from the middle
class, those who suffer deeply from stigma and whose income allows them to
face the problem politically.29

The Brazilian middle class, he went on to argue, shared more in com­

mon with the European middle class than the regions' respective working
classes, and it was precisely consumption of this shared cultural reper­
toire that made the latter's experiences relevant. But class divisions cut
across more than sexual identity. In Mascarenhas's view, they cut across
the very model of liberal democracy taking root in the nation, where the
specter of a dual society again emerged. The roughly go percent of Bra­
zilians who were working class and poor, he wrote an activist in England,
"do not bother with existing laws, as they (see) them - and correctly - as
products of a world they do not share. Sad but true." 30
The middle and upper classes' participation in the project of liberal
modernity, whatever its limitations, also explained the strategic relevance
of an international toolkit in 1982. Noting the elite origins of the coun­
try's political leaders, Mascarenhas underscored two strategic uses of this
shared repertoire in appealing to them, both precisely targeting the per­
ceived audience costs attached to movement demands. First, international
experiences offered the symbolic security of precedent: "For Brazilian poli­
ticians, homosexuality is at best a delicate matter; at worse, a burning one.
 The Limits of Liberalization 107

Th ey fear mainly to be ridiculed for endorsing gay rights, and they feel re­
li eved when they see they are not supposed to do anything new, as before
th e m , Oslo, Strasbourg, and Paris took the initiative." Second, he argued,
Bra zilian political elites' subordinate participation in a transnational lib­
eral project laid the groundwork for an effective counterstigmatizing dis­
co ur se: "These people are quite aware of human rights, even when they do
not like to hear about them, and they do not like to be considered back­
ward. For this bracket, Europe is very important as they suffer what we call
'cultural colonialism,' and of course Brazilian gays must take advantage of
thi s." 31
Many activists at the time would no doubt have balked at such an assess­
ment of the movement's limitations, and indeed a number of questions
can be raised about Mascarenhas's arguments. Undoubtedly he underesti­
mated the sexual stigma experienced outside the middle class, if some­
ti m es organized around different constructions of sexualities, and class
divisions were reflected within the movement at the time. Indeed, the first
group established in the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan area, the Gay Affir­
mation and Action Group, was based in the Baixada Fulminense, a poor
region on the outskirts of the city, and its members were largely poor,
Afro-Brazilian lesbians (Miccolis 1983). And the two main groups in the
city at the time of the election, Aue and Somas-Rio de Janeiro, met in
the northern and southern zones of the city and reflected the working­
and middle-class populations of each, respectively. Likewise, whatever the
undeniable limitations of the country's formal democratic institutions,
the results of the movement's state-directed efforts (like other aspects of
Brazilian democracy) have in some instances penetrated beyond the 10
percent Mascarenhas envisioned. Still, it is worth underscoring that one
of the principal architects of the movement's state-directed strategy in
the 198os understood the contextual limitations of the formal democratic
model being implanted in the country and thus of his own efforts, and its
symbolic appeal as rooted in a transnational project of liberal modernity,
which could be turned to the movement's advantage by playing on the
political elite's aspirations to the status it conferred.
A number of examples might be cited of how Brazilian activists drew
on the international arena, most notably the two principal tools employed
i n the election of 1982. The questionnaire that was distributed to political
parties was adapted from a global survey being conducted by the Interna­
ti on al Gay Association, which Mascarenhas had received from the Scottish
Ho mosexual Rights Group.32 According to Luiz Matt, his idea to circu­
la te a petition against Paragraph 302.0 among political leaders and other
e lite sectqrs was inspired by the early German homosexual movement's
campaign against Paragraph 175 of the Prussian Criminal Code outlawing
homosexuality: "I thought we should follow the same strategy that the
108 Doorways

German homosexual movement used when it fought against Paragraph 175

of the Prussian Criminal Code - so that was the strategy. They were able
to obtain the support of several intellectuals of the time. Freud himself,
Tolstoy, Rilke, and other personalities supported them, so I thought that
political parties were important, whether they were on the left or the right,
especially since we lived in a dictatorship." 33 The same year Mott began
circulating the petition, the Council of Europe approved Resolution 756,
calling on the W H O to eliminate its stipulation pathologizing homosexu­
ality, news of which was circulated in the course of the campaign. When
the Federal Medical Council finally passed a resolution suspending the
paragraph's application in the country in 1985, Mascarenhas noted that
Brazil followed the precedent set by Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Swe­
den in this ruling.34 Indeed experiences in advanced capitalist democra­
cies offered a model of how to understand and engage political parties as
well. Thus in another letter Mascarenhas responded to a SomosjSao Paulo
leader's repudiation of a fellow activist's joining the (reformist) PM D B : ·�
I see it, even for tactical reasons, we should hope that Brazilian bichas vote
for more than one party, as we would thus have more congressmen seek­
ing to please us. This, in fact, is what happens in the United States (where
there are gay associations in the Democratic Party and gay associations in
the Republican Party) ; in Great Britain ( Labour and Conservative Parties) ;
and i n Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Spain."35 The statement
is noteworthy not only because it justifies a strategy of crossing party lines
against more left-leaning sectors of the movement but because it grounds
a specific political rationality in a transnational model, in effect affirming
the identitarian, rights-based approach of a liberal interest group.
In the case of the petition in particular, activists sold it to politicians
at times precisely as a symbolic marker of liberal modernity, echoing its
narrative of progress reflected in the cartoon discussed earlier. In this re­
gard, it is worth citing activists' efforts in the next (indirect presidential)
election in 1985 to seek P M D B presidential candidate Tancredo Neves's
signature. In a letter petitioning a P M.D B federal deputy to intervene with
Neves to this end, Mott posited support for the movement as a safe way to
present a progressive public face, given the constraints he faced in chal­
lenging the military, the United States, and the Church in the delicate
political game of democratization: "By making a statement against dis­
crimination toward homosexuals, former Governor Tancredo Neves will be
showing that he is an enlightened statesman, concerned about the human
rights of an oppressed and stigmatized minority. . . . Such a stance will
be considered liberal, modern, and by some, even daring." 36 Moreover, as
Mascarenhas noted in a similar letter to another politician, the petition
set a relatively low bar (in terms of audience costs) for such claims to lib-
 The Limits of Liberalization 109

era! enlightenment: "He would present himself as slightly modern ( mo­

derninho] by declaring his opposition to prejudices against homosexuals.
H e would not - of course - refer approvingly to homosexuality, but only
e xpre ss himself against the injustices to which homosexuals fall victim
as a result of prejudice. In short, he would follow Lula's example; nothing
m ore or less. By taking such an action, Tancredo would be 'progressive,'
'ma non troppo."' 37 The efforts to obtain Neves's support ultimately proved
un successful; activists managed to include a question on Paragraph 302.0
in a press interview with Neves, but the candidate adroitly avoided it. Their
careful framing of homosexuality as a symbolic marker of liberal enlight­
enment speaks to their strategic resignification of homosexuality against
a transnational backdrop as activists approached the state and to their
particular care in helping party actors manage their audience calculations
as they negotiated their terms of entry.
With regard to Mexico, the important difference in each movement's
relationship with the transnational field has less to do with the question
of access to international repertoires and more to do with what was selec­
tively drawn and how it was transformed and applied. While perhaps not
drawing as consistently or consciously from it in the race in 1982, at least
some Mexican activists maintained ties with the international arena and
were certainly aware of what gay and lesbian liberation movements were
doing overseas. Both the discussion in chapter 2 and the parallels between
dual militants in each polity noted above reflect the backdrop of evolving
debates on homosexuality within a global community associated with the
international left. In this regard, C L H A R I too built on activists' participa­
tion in embedded fields at both the national and transnational levels. A
feminist and former P RT Central Committee member recalls the impor­
tance of the IV International in pressing for an opening to debates on gen­
der and sexuality in the party:
The International was a very important factor in our achieving a feminist
position in the party as a party [and in) achieving a position in favor of gay
liberation as a party. And this has to do with two things. It is not only the
ideological strength of the International, and its importance as a reference
point, but the fact that large sections of the International, like the SWP [So­
cialist Workers Party) , like the French Section - those two in particular . . .
had mass women's movements going on [in their countries], which we did not
have. And honestly, if you can't respond to a mass movement, you're pretty
dead in the water as politicians in very simple terms; even just opportunistic
ter ms . . . . We didn't have that bottom up push that said: look, you asshole,
you might think this isn't important but we have fifty women outside scream­
i ng, so yo� better listen. We didn't have that. We had the International, which
the [Communist Party] didn't have.38
no Doorways

In other words, while Brazilian activists found useful tools in advanced

capitalist democracies that they could use to appeal to the normative
aspirations of a political elite across party lines, in Mexico, where activ­
ists participated within a tight-knit community more narrowly identified
with the international left, an entirely different set of tools and discourses
gained salience. We can imagine currents within movements participating
in overlapping though competing global communities that were framing
sexual politics in different ways, particularly before the fall of the Berlin
Wall, and selection mechanisms at the national level determining their
relative influence and thus the relative salience of specific political and
symbolic practices, shaping variable imprints on globalization.

C O N C LU S I O N : T H E ROA D NOT TA K E N

Politically the elections o f 1982 marked a fork i n the road in each move­
ment's relationship with the state and political parties. Brazilian activists
promptly embarked on a long trajectory of legislative activism after the
race; their counterparts in Mexico remained relatively marginalized from
political society for over a decade. In both countries the electoral strategies
that came to prevail that year set a number of precedents for future races.
In this regard, we might think of the electoral field as offering activists a
finite repertoire of strategic options, or performative scripts, such as run­
ning for office, seeking commitments from candidates or party leaders,
endorsing or campaigning for candidates or parties, organizing debates,
and even abstention and other forms of protest (J. McCarthy, Smith, and
Zald 1996). Not frozen in time or uncontested, this repertoire constitutes
a kind of transnational vocabulary associated with liberal democratic poli­
tics that both legitimizes and channels certain forms of political agency
at the national level. The language was in some sense set, in other words,
before activists even approached the field, grounded in contested norms
at the transnational level, though refracted across national boundaries.
Activists in both countries have at one time or another employed most of
these tactics, but the precedents set in each country in 1982 continue to
cast long shadows, reinforced by institutional constraints and by activists'
accumulated political learning and acquired expectations.
Hence in Mexico, despite a few efforts, such as the Pink Vote Campaign
of 1994, which unsuccessfully sought statements of support from presi­
dential and some legislative candidates across party lines, activists have
continued to focus electoral efforts primarily on launching "external" can­
didates from the movement, generally with small parties on the left. In
1997 this strategy took a new turn when Patria Jimenez was elected the
first openly lesbian federal deputy in Latin America, running with the P R D.
Jimenez, a former C L H A R I candidate, attained her position on the P R D
 The Limits of Liberalization 111

c a n di date lists through its electoral alliance with her own party, once more
t he P R T. The election of other gay and lesbian candidates in 2000 and 2006
has further reinforced this electoral approach. Trans activists have likewise
p ri or itized this strategy since the consolidation of a trans movement in the
m id -199os, beginning with the candidacy for federal deputy of the activist
Am ara nta Gomez Regalado, from Juchitan, Oaxaca, in 2003 with the small
l eft pa rty Mexico Posible. It is a strategy that has at times incurred signifi­
ca n t political costs. While fostering a sporadic relationship with poli tical
parties, revolving around electoral cycles, it has also created serious rifts
within the movement, due in part to activists' competition over limited ac­
cess to parties' candidate lists and in part to the much higher expectations
raised by the symbolic (and identitarian) logic of representation literally
embodied by LGBT candidates.
Conversely Brazilian activists have continued to prioritize building net­
works of allied candidates across party lines and regardless of sexual ori­
entation. This is not to say, of course, that activists in the country have not
run for office, but these efforts have generally represented individual and
localized initiatives. Worth noting for its mobilization of activist support
in Rio de Janeiro is Herbert Daniel's bid for state deputy in 1986 on the
Workers Party ticket, and for the vice presidency as Fernando Gabeira's
running mate on the Green Party ticket three years later. In 1996 the Bra­
zilian Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Association (AB G LT) organized the
first broad-based national effort to launch LGBT candidates. That initiative
arose at a workshop at the seventeenth International Lesbian and Gay As­
sociation Conference in Rio de Janeiro the previous year. After the confer­
ence the A B G LT organized a Gay and Lesbian Political Forum at a meeting
of potential candidates in Salvador, Bahia. Those attending concluded that
allie d candidates, while important, did not constitute a priority, setting
th e stage for a marked shift in the movement's historic approach to elec­
tio ns.39
The results, however, proved disappointing. The only LGBT candidate
ele cted that year was Katia Tapeti, a travesti running on the conservative
Liberal Front Party ticket in a small town in the northern state of Piaui.
Tapeti came from an important political family in the region and did not
ru n on a platform of LGBT rights or participate in the A B G LT campaign.
A couple of years after that experiment, several LG BT militants with the
Workers Party in the state of Sao Paulo met informally to assess the re­
su lts:

We saw the following problem : a homosexual candidacy cannot b e limited

just to tJle idea of having a homosexual become visible. It has to have other
goals. One of them is to help build the movement. In a political campaign, you
hold dialogues with lots of people; and that can all generate an organizational
112 Doorways

windfall for the movement . . . . So our evaluation of the 1996 candidacies was
very negative, and when we met in 1998 we raised the following question: visi­
bility is not just having a public face. You have to show something more; show
proposals representing a platform to fight against discrimination. Second, we
also determined that in certain cases - and the experience of Marta Suplicy's
term was very eloquent in this light - we can also have allied candidates. Just
because a person is heterosexual does not mean she/he cannot defend homo­
sexual demands.40

There are ways that institutions shape the desires, rationalities, and strate­
gies of political actors. Just as Mexico's electoral field has reinforced certain
performative scripts, the systematic electoral losses accrued by Brazilian
activists over the years have tended to strengthen a reliance on allied can­
didacies.
A couple of points are worth making regarding the societal embedded­
ness of the fields being navigated. At best, my analysis in this chapter sug­
gests a role for formal democratic institutions, even when ineffective in
terms of their own purported ends. It is a symbolic role that the parti­
san opposition in both countries clearly used to its advantage in gradually
eroding the legitimacy of authoritarian regimes, as the literature on de­
mocratization in the region has widely documented. My analysis points to
a parallel and embedded process at the level of social movement activism
and an incipient LGBT politics: to the extent that elections in regime tran­
sitions still defined the symbolic boundaries of legitimate public debate,
these boundaries could still be contested. At the same time, however, the
analysis points not only to possibilities but more important to limitations.
In this regard, whatever qualifications one might make to Mascarenhas's
arguments about the class constraints on the democratic institutions
taking root in Brazil, there is a sizable literature from various corners sug­
gesting that it contains more than a grain of truth. The political scien­
tist Guillermo O'Donnell (1999) has suggested that democracies might be
"mapped" on an imagined topography using the criterion of citizenship,
with one color signifying full enjoyment of the rights of citizenship and an­
other that these rights exist only on paper. Extending his discussion to so­
cial movement activism, the above speaks to how activists' state-directed
efforts are, perhaps not surprisingly, conditioned by these maps.
 *
Advancing Homosexual Citizenship
Brazil's Early Turn to Legislatures

By the early twenty-first century, two priorities lay at the top of LGBT
activists' legislative agendas in Brazil and Mexico: legislation banning
discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and state recognition of
civil unions between same-sex couples. While legislative agendas in each
country went beyond these demands without obscuring real differences
in their efforts to advance them, the two priorities nonetheless reflected
a politics concurrently national and transnational in nature, mirroring
legislative demands advanced in a number of other countries and the
international arena. In this regard they reflect activists' participation in
an evolving international field, sharing a transnational repertoire that not
only included common discursive strategies but also prioritized certain
demands of the state.
Indeed at the state level both demands have been translated, and trans­
lated differentially, into an evolving body of transnational accords and na­
tio nal legislation regulating states' relations with their citizens in the area
of sex uality ( Petchesky 2ooo; Sanders 1996; La Violette and Whitworth
1994) . Thus the Citizens Commission on Studies against Discrimination
( Co misi6n Ciudadana de Estudios contra Ia Discriminaci6n 2001 : 107),
es ta blis hed by Mexican President Vicente Fox to propose a federal anti­
discri mination law, underscored the two demands' differential progress
glo ba lly: "Most commonly, one finds clauses in constitutions or in law
pro hibi ting discrimination for sexual orientation or preference. The legal
recog nition of civil unions has been a recent contribution to this area, al­
t h o ugh in the majority of cases, the same rights as heterosexual marriage
are n ot yet granted." Reflecting, as Petchesky (1999) has argued, a stronger
t rans natiooal consensus on the construction of sexual rights as negative
li berties, implying freedom from abuse or persecution rather than the
Po si tive liberties implied in the freedom to form a union, this differential
n6 Pathways

penetration, perhaps not surprisingly, is also evident in Brazil and Mexico,

speaking to both polities' embeddedness in an evolving, though contested
transnational field, comprising a growing body of rationalized norms de­
fining what so-called modern nation-states just do (J. Meyer, Boli, and
Thomas 1987; J. W. Meyer et al. 1997, 2ooo; J. W. Meyer and Jepperson 2ooo;
Soysal 1994). In this regard, common trends in LGBT legislative activism
cannot be separated from a broader regional convergence on liberal demo­
cratic institutional frameworks, writ large.
Notably, however, although broad transnational developments have fos­
tered certain trends toward unity, I concluded chapter 3 in a very different
place. The elections of 1982 marked a clear fork in the road in Brazilian
and Mexican activists' relationship with state and partisan arenas, per­
haps most evident in the legislative courses that each movement would
take. While Brazilian activists promptly embarked on a long trajectory of
legislative efforts, Mexican activists, facing much higher barriers to entry,
remained largely sidelined from the formal political arena for over a de­
cade. This and the following chapter focus on legislative activism in Bra­
zil and Mexico, respectively, in a sense telling the story of variations on a
transnational theme. In neither chapter do I seek to explain the success
or failure of specific lobbying effoits or directly engage the literature on
policyrnaking. Instead my objective is to explore how activists have navi­
gated distinct trajectories of formal democratization at the national level,
against the transnational backdrop of an evolving construction of sexual
rights. While liberalism has shaped the inscription of a rationalized sexu­
ality into formal politics in similar ways, prevailing legislative strategies in
each country can be seen as hybrid constructs. This hybridity is reflected
in the coalitions that activists have mobilized and the principal discourses
they have deployed, including the framing of collective political identities
to press their case.
Quite soon after the election in 1982, Brazilian activists began forging
alliances with individual lawmakers, primarily with the Workers Party
but across party lines, facilitated by the institutional arrangements noted
earlier. Appealing to individual lawmakers framing their mission around
human rights and the representation of "minorities," activists have tended
to rely on discursive strategies that, in effect, constitute a well-bounded,
rights-bearing community of "homosexual citizens" as a minority grou p
among others. In 2003 these atomized alliances produced a cross-party
Caucus on LGBT Citizenship in the federal Congress, unparalleled in th e
hemisphere, which by 2007 included 16 senators and 199 deputies, or nea rly
40 percent of the lower house.1 Mexican activists, on the other hand, have
had to rely considerably more on broad networks of alliances with other
se ctors of civil society, notably feminists, to open more resistant door­
ways into the legislative field. In contrast to identitarian frames such as the
 Advancing Homosexual Citizenship 117

tro pe of homosexual citizenship, legislative activism in Mexico has tended

to pri oriti ze broader frames such as sexual diversity, which permit the ar­
ti cul ation of various sectors around movement demands. While the roots
o f t his strategy can be traced to the progressive community that developed
to th e left of the ruling party, its continued salience reflects higher barriers
to e ntry into the legislative field, even after the erosion of hegemonic party
r ul e, conditioned by a system of fewer and more disciplined parties and by
th e often lukewarm support of the PRD.
These differences are by no means trivial. Theoretically they speak to
how the terms of liberal modernity, here involving the transnational circu­
lati on of sexual scripts and their incorporation into statecraft, have evolved
an d loosened across national boundaries, responding to local imperatives
and constraints (Appadurai 1996). Moreover in light of the criticism that
liberal politics atomizes representation into narrowly defined interest
groups, the differences discussed in these chapters, while recognizing this
te nd e ncy, suggest that this outcome need not be the case (Oxhorn 1998;
Chalmers, Martin, and Piester 1997; Duggan 1994, 2003; Young 1995, 1996;
Yodice 2oos) .
In keeping with my earlier discussion, I locate these differences a t the
interplay between representation and audience, as shaped by institutional
arrangements and contested by discursive frames. Again, I use the notion
of fields to explore both the formal and informal terms of activists' entry.
This understanding is informed by political scientists who have moved
from a strict focus on formal institutions in exploring statecraft to consider
so-called informal institutions that may complement, compete with, and
even undermine the former (O'Donnell 1996; Levitsky 2001; Helmke and
Levitsky 2003) and by scholars moving in the other direction, who under­
score the symbolic dimension of formal institutions themselves, particu­
larly their legitimizing and normalizing force (J. W. Meyer and Rowan 1991;
Frie dland and Alford 1991; Mitchell 1991; Bourdieu 1994) . In blurring the
bou ndaries between the formal and informal, these literatures permit an
un derstanding of how informal constructions of gender and sexual stigma
may intersect with formal statecraft, and vice versa.
Each chapter begins with an account of activists' negotiated terms of
entry into the legislative field. On the one hand I examine debates among
lawmakers, particularly noting a confrontation between the inscription of
sexu ality within broader master narratives associated with liberal univer­
sali sm and opposition to these efforts, generally spearheaded by pol i tical
acto rs with religious ties. On the other I trace a parallel shift in both move­
ments from a discourse of sexual liberation to a defense of LGBT rights.
I then proceed in each chapter to offer a more critical assessment of the
societal embeddedness of l iberal norms, underscoring their l imitations
and variable significance as legal frameworks of formal equality intersect
nB Pathways

with asymmetric relations of power in the private sphere. Indeed in Brazil,

I argue, activists' initial legislative campaigns represented a kind of trickle­
down approach to symbolic capital, a wager that changes in the symbolic
meanings ascribed to stigmatized identities at the top would eventually
have broader reverberations in society. More recently activists have sought,
with varying success, to carve out a new role as intermediaries between the
state and society involving taking laws off paper and pulling them to the
ground. This role, I should note, is not unique to LG BT activists. Drawing
on critical theory, scholars have argued, perhaps too optimistically, that
this new intermediary role by social movements in Latin America more
broadly is restructuring the public sphere in ways that promise greater
depth in democratic practice (Avritzer 2002; Avritzer and Costa 2006).
Neither chapter pretends to give a full account of legislative activism,
much less activism, in either country. I focus instead on the two principal
demands noted above, while referring to other legislative efforts to high­
light particular trends.

AU D I E N C E CA LC U LAT I O N S A N D I N S T I T U T I O NA L F I LT E R S :

E N T E R I N G T H E L E G I S LAT I V E F I E L D

By 2007 Brazil had a n impressive body of legislation o n sexual orientation

by global standards. At least one hundred municipalities and twelve of its
twenty-six states as well as the Federal District had some form of legisla­
tion protecting their citizens from discrimination based on sexual orienta­
tion, and one state (Rio de Janeiro) and five cities had some form of legis­
lation recognizing the same-sex partnerships of public sector employees?
At the federal level proposed antidiscrimination amendments had been
defeated twice. The introduction of another such proposal and of a civil
unions bill in the federal chamber, announced at the annual International
Lesbian and Gay Association Conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1995, fostered
extensive national public debate on the matter, contributing to the noto­
riety of its author, longtime ally Marta Suplicy (Workers Party), and her
election as mayor of the country's largest city, Sao Paulo, in 2000. Moreover
the establishment of cross-party caucuses on free sexual expression in the
federal and several state legislatures as well as activists' increasingly effec­
tive use of courts speak to a kind of institutional deepening that built on
earlier, largely symbolic victories. How did it happen? What permitted this
early and remarkably successful entry into the legislative field?
Part of the answer lies in the institutions discussed earlier. I noted that
Brazil's unusual electoral arrangements have encouraged candidates to run
for office by carving out bailiwicks, or relatively narrow slices of the elec­
torate, while undermining party discipline, particularly in parties of the
 Advancing Homosexual Citizenship 119

r i g ht and center (Ames 2001) . In practice these arrangements also tend to

p ro d uce a deeply fragmented Congress; twenty-one parties, for instance,
wo n some representation in the Chamber of Deputies elected in 2006.
A n alysts have further noted that these institutions encourage individual
law makers, once elected, to engage in pork barrel politics and narrowly
l ocal appeals to their constituents (Ames 2001; Mainwaring 1995, 1997,
199 9) . This is often all the more true at the state and municipal levels, com­
p oun ded by the weakness of local legislatures compared to the executive
branch, as they evolved under military rule (B. Fontes 1995). Perhaps the
clearest indicator of the lack of ideological consistency in Brazilian legis­
latures is the extraordinary number of lawmakers switching parties during
their terms. In just two years (1999-2000) federal deputies changed parties
a whopping 152 times, with many doing so more than once.3 The question
of party discipline in legislatures has elicited more controversy. Some have
suggested that countervailing mechanisms such as party leaders' ability
to negotiate backroom deals on legislation through the college of leaders
(colegio dos lideres) and close ranks ( fechar questiio) within their parties
can effectively discipline voting along party lines ( Figueiredo and Limongi
2001; Rodrigues 1996) . While activists' allies and opponents have occasion­
ally turned these mechanisms to their advantage, party leaders generally
enforce discipline on matters of programmatic concern, and Brazilian
parties have by and large steered clear of LGBT rights in their programs.
Indeed despite the Workers Party's programmatic support, even its con­
gressional leadership does not enforce discipline on so-called moral issues,
an explicit allowance for private belief in public debate.
For LG BT activists these arrangements allowed an early entry into the
legislative field by permitting surprisingly early inroads into parties of the
right and center and by giving rise to sympathetic lawmakers throughout
the country, across party lines but disproportionately with the Workers
Party, defining their constituencies around identity-based minority groups
and human rights. As one former Sao Paulo city councilman with the
Workers Party told me, "My mandate was always defined by sectors: blacks,
t he disa bled, gays. . . . I campaigned raising this banner, the banner of
hu man rights, as a central question in my campaign."4 Beyond sponsoring
bi lls, these allies have participated directly in movement activities, occa­
si on ally extending financial and logistical support, and acted as intermedi­
aries with executive branch officials. In light of the assertion reiterated by
severa l activists I interviewed that "gays don't vote for gays in Brazil just as
blac ks don't vote for blacks," lawmakers' ability to carve out bailiwicks by
agg regating so-called minority sectors has allowed activists to pool forces
a n d cultivate 'a growing, if historically atomized network of alliances at the
municipal, state, and federal leveis.
120 Pathways

The First Steps

Activists began building this network in their two principal legislative cam­
paigns of the 198os, both of which in some sense grew out of the petition
circulated among candidates in the race in 1982. Shortly after that election
activists began approaching state and municipal lawmakers throughout
the country, asking them to introduce nonbinding motions calling on the
federal government to take action on the petition's two demands: suspen­
sion of the WHO stipulation categorizing homosexuality as a sexual dis­
order and an antidiscrimination amendment contemplating sexual orien­
tation in the constitution.
As a starting point for legislative activism, these nonbinding motions
were entirely symbolic, but the campaign paved the way for future ac­
complishments in two ways. First, it began to change an informal sexual
culture in the legislative field, where a lawmaker's presenting such a pro­
posal could itself be read as a marker of homosexuality. The possible taint
of homosexual stigma could undermine potential alliances, thus enforc­
ing informal (and often unrecognized) gendered scripts in the practice
of statecraft. For instance, Ruth Escobar, an actress and feminist activist
whose theater in Sao Paulo had become an important arena of opposition
to the military regime in the context of abertura and who was elected state
deputy in 1982 on the P M D B ticket, was bitterly attacked by her colleagues
after presenting such a motion: "I saw [a reaction] in the Assembly. When
I spoke of homosexuality, they would say, that's Ruth Escobar's thing. They
even said that I was a lesbian. I used to say, if I were, I would be, although
I'm not. The taboos were very strong at that time." 5 Like many of these
early legislative allies, Escobar herself represented a new cadre of feminist
lawmakers, many of whom had entered partisan politics in 1982, during
intense party competition for the support of women's organizations (Alva­
rez 1990). In fact, while comprising about 20 percent of the assemblies
that passed such motions, women introduced half of them, suggesting that
the queering of the public sphere was to some extent intertwined with its
feminization.6
Second, because roll call votes were generally not taken on these mo­
tions, so that the position demanded of lawmakers - that homosexuals
were not mentally ill -was not only minimal but also not very public, they
offered a good vehicle to establish the first symbolic precedents in legisl a­
tion and to test the waters of political support across party lines, as activ­
ists circulated the petition prior to a motion's presentation as "a sort of
Gallup Poll on prejudices based on sexual orientation."7 Table 5 reflects a
rough breakdown of partisan support in the seven city councils and three
state assemblies that passed such motions by the time the Federal Medical
 Advancing Homosexual Citizenship 121

'fA B L E 5 · Support for Motions against Paragraph 302.0, 1984

L e gislat i ve Total
bodY
PMDB PDS PDT PT PTB support

Rio d e J a n e iro so% ( 1 6) 1 4% ( 2 1 ) 1 00% (2 4 ) 100% (2.) 57% (7) s8%

Assem bly
sao Pa ulo 64% (42.) 2 7% (22) 1 00% (9) 1 8% ( 1 1 ) 5 2%
Assemb ly
BA Assembly' 73% (2.3) 22% ( 40) 3 8%
Sa o Pa u l o , S P 73 % ( 1 5 ) 66% (6) 100% (5) 7 1 % ( 7) 7 5%
p0m p eia, S P 75% (4) 1 0o% ( s ) so% ( 2 ) 81%
F l or ia n o p o l i s , 100% (IJ) 3 7% (8) 76%
sc
Pt. Alegre, 90% ( 1 1 ) 3 0% ( 1 0) 72% ( 1 1 ) 1 00% ( 1 ) 66%
RGS
M ac e i o , A L • 100% ( 13) 37% (8) 76%
Olinda, PE 73% ( 16) 1 0o% ( s ) 63%
Salvador, BA So% (2.6) 8 s % (7) 81%

Sources : Luiz Mott, "Politicos e Discrimina<;ao," Salvador, 3 1 August 1984, G G B Archive; Joao An­
tonio Mascarenhas to Olinda City Councilman Alvaro Ribeiro ( P M D B ) , 6 August 1984, no. 161/84,
A E L/ U N I C A M P ; Joao Antonio Mascarenhas to Luiz Mott, 26 December 1983, no. 371/83, A E L/ U N I ­
CA M P.
Note: The number of lawmakers from each party is in parentheses. The party of the motion's
author is in bold.
• For information on the Bahia State Assembly and Macei6, A L , see chap. 4, note 8.

Council suspended the W H O paragraph on 9 February 1985, with the party

of the motion's author highlighted in bold.8
While reflecting more support on the left (Workers Party [ PT 1 and Demo­
cratic Labor Party [PDT)) than on the right ( Brazilian Labor Party [PTB 1
and Social Democratic Party [Pos)), the figures nonetheless show surpris­
ing advances across party lines. Reflecting the party's ties to emerging so­
cial movements in the context of abertura, lawmakers with the catch-all
Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PM D B ) presented over two-thirds
of the motions and strongly backed them in several bodies. Moreover the
regional variation of the inroads into the right-wing military government's
Pos suggests that activists' early gamble to cross party lines was paying off,
in part due to the lack of ideological consistency of the right in particular,
e sp ecially at the local level.
This said, it would be a mistake to read too much support into these
figures, which as much as anything reflected the motions' relatively low
sa lience for most lawmakers. Former state deputy Liszt Vieira (Workers
Party), who presented the first such motion in the Rio de Janeiro Assembly,
122 Pathways

recalled his colleagues' calculations on the matter: "For [the other depu­
ties] it was not an important question. They would not win anything by
it, but they would also not lose anything . . . . It was more a personal ques­
tion. They didn't consider it a partisan question, so some signed because
they agreed with the repudiation motion; others didn't because they dis­
agreed. And others signed just because: it didn't affect their lives. They
signed because they were colleagues."9 The paradoxical implication is that
the combination of lax party discipline and the relatively low salience of
the matter, given the low audience costs and benefits at stake, permitted
activists' early successes. Whatever the limitations, however, these efforts
established a symbolic framework that activists could later use to their
advantage, while providing a vehicle to establish early contacts in the legis­
lative field. At the time, activists framed the campaign as a two-pronged,
incremental strategy to approach lawmakers "in cities where [they had]
relations with people and easy access to state assemblies or city councils"
and to establish their first contacts at the federal level.10 By the time they
embarked on their second major legislative campaign seeking an antidis­
crimination amendment in the constituent assembly of 1987-88, they had
compiled a list of thirty-six members who had indicated some degree of
support for the movement in election campaigns or public statements
(eight) or by signing the petition (twenty-eight)Y

The Constituent Assembly

Two groups founded in 1985 spearheaded this second campaign, both com­
prised largely, though not entirely of gay men: Triangulo Rosa, established
in Rio de Janeiro by Joao Antonio Mascarenhas, and Lambda, founded in
the offices of Sao Paulo City Councilwoman Irede Cardoso (Workers Party),
another feminist turned lawmaker, by party militants, former Somos activ­
ists, and members of an H IV fA I D S support group. Before turning to pro­
ceedings in the assembly, however, I should note certain changes in the
movement itself, in part reflecting the impact of two transnational devel­
opments: the debt crisis and A I D S .
The social anthropologist Jane Galvao (2ooo) has underscored the Bra­
zilian media's crucial role as the first source to circulate knowledges about
the epidemic, even before the first cases of A I D S were reported in the coun­
try. Narratives that reflected the media's structural ties with U.S.-based
wire services thus constructed A I D S as a "gay plague," essentially affecting
homosexuals in Europe and the United States. While the first cases re­
ported in Brazil prompted a partial remapping in public discourse - A I D S ,
"known worldwide as the 'gay cancer,' has really reached Brazil," announced
the jornal do Brasil in 1983 - the fact that they involved middle- and upper­
class gay men reinforced its close identification with homosexuality and
 Advancing Homosexual Citizenship 123

affl uence (Galvao 2ooo). I discuss the relationship of LGBT activism and
H IV/ A I D S prevention further in chapter 6; for now, I highlight its effects
on the movement on the eve of the constituent assembly. As was the case
in a number of other countries, including Mexico, gay groups such as the
G G B in Salvador and the Grupo Outra Coisa in Sao Paulo spearheaded civil
society's initial response to the epidemic, even as the need for informa­
tion and services reinforced an imperative to engage with the state. At the
same time, there was initially some ambivalence within many groups over
whether to address H IV for fear of reinforcing its equation with homosexu­
ality. In this regard the establishment of the first A I D S NGOs in the mid-
198os may have fostered a certain specialization, whether consciously or
unconsciously, as the new A I D S movement de-emphasized identity-based
policies at a time when this ambivalence within gay groups may have re­
inforced an identity-centered, rights-based focus (Terto 1997) . 12
By the time of the constituent assembly the movement overall had also
shrunk considerably. The economic recession that struck Brazil with the
start of the regional debt crisis in 1982 made it difficult for many groups
and activists to sustain their activities. In 1983 alone, a year that began with
the government signing a letter of intent with the International Mone­
tary Fund, inflation soared to an unprecedented 211 percent, the economy
shrank by a record 5 percent, and employment in the Rio de Janeiro and
Sao Paulo metropolitan areas was down 15 percent compared to 1978 levels
(Skidmore 1988). Moreover, as the anthropologist Regina Facchini (2005b)
and the historian James Green (1999b) have observed, the transition to
formal democracy itself paradoxically may have demobilized many, par­
ticularly more militant and countercultural early groups, which found it
difficult to sustain their activities without the obvious target of an authori­
tarian regime. According to G G B documents, just six groups remained in
the country in 1985, including only one autonomous lesbian organization,
G A LF ( Facchini 2005b).
For its part, GALF was not particularly involved in legislative efforts at
this time, reflecting a certain distancing from both the heterofeminist and
gay movements. In an overview of the group's history, one of its founders
and longtime leaders recalled a decision to refocus scarce time and re­
sources on the creation of spaces for the specific discussion of lesbian
identities and concerns:
Like almost all lesbian groups that are starting to organize, we tended to con­
sider our existence impossible outside of both the Homosexual Movement
and, principally, the Feminist Movement. We confused possible alliances with
the group's own objectives, forgetting that the two groups in question have
different priorities than the Lesbian Movement . . . . The G A L F of this phase
(1985-89] was characterized by work primarily with lesbians, organized or
124 Pathways

Party Support (in percentage) for Amendment Banning

TA B L E 6.
Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation, 28 January 1988
Orientation/Party Seats Support Oppose Abstain Absent

Left PC do B 5 1 00 0 0 0
PCB 3 1 00 0 0 0
PT 16 1 00 0 0 0
Center left PSB 3 1 00 0 0 0
PDT 25 6o 28 4 8
Center PMDB 3 00 26 52 2 20
Center right PTB 21 9 67 0 24
PDC 6 0 83 0 17
Right PL 7 14 86 0 0
PFL 1 34 4 77 2 17
PDS 37 8 68 8 16
Other 2 0 so 0 so
Total 559 23 57 2 18

Note: The category "Other" includes the Workers Renewal Party and the Brazilian
Municipalist Party, each holding one seat.

unorganized. While we still attended feminist events, we stopped participat­

ing in their organization, saving as much time as possible for our own activi­
ties Y

This position of greater autonomy from not just the heterofeminist move­
ment but partisan politics marked a contrast with developments in the
lesbian movement in Mexico at the time, as I elaborate in the next chap­
ter. Moreover while lesbian and more recently some trans activists have
certainly played a significant role in legislative activism in Brazil since the
movement's resurgence in the 1990s, the public face of the LGBT move­
ment in these efforts, as reflected in this chapter, is, tellingly, still predomi­
nantly G.
If activists approaching the constituent assembly could count on a grow­
ing network of sympathetic lawmakers who could open discrete doorways
into the legislative field, the reinscription of homosexuality in law required
garnering broader (if more shallow) support and overcoming opposition.
And if the combination of low salience and lax party discipline had proven
useful in pressing symbolic motions at the local level, the story at the fed­
eral level was somewhat different. Table 6 shows the vote on the antidis­
crimination amendment that failed to pass in the constituent assembly,
with parties appearing roughly, from top to bottom, along a left-to-right
continuum (Mascarenhas 1 998; Mainwaring 1 997) .
While treatment a t the federal and constitutional levels clearly raised
the salience of the matter, it would be a stretch to say that sexual orien-
 Advancing Homosexual Citizenship 125

tation had suddenly become a primary concern for most legislators. The
a mendment's author and former Workers Party president Jose Genoino re­
ca lled, "In the constituent assembly, that topic was still treated marginally;
it was still secondary." 1 4 Although not a central matter in the overall pro­
ceedings, it did become a central concern for some. As I noted earlier, the
assembly saw the debut of an evangelical caucus in the federal Congress
which included thirty-four members, making it the fourth largest bloc of
votes in the body after the P M D B , the P D S , and the conservative Liberal
Front Party ( P F L ) , though it ultimately split between conservatives and
progressives. 1 5 Religious lawmakers were thus able to take advantage of
the remarkably porous boundary separating Church and state, public and
private, in the country to engage in statecraft explicitly based on biblical
precepts rather than national doctrine.
The tone of evangelical participation in the proceedings was set by An­
tonio de Jesus's ( P M D B , Assemblies of God, Goias) successful proposal to
require the presence of the Bible at every session. Evangelical deputies out­
spokenly spearheaded opposition to what Deputy Daso Coimbra ( P M D B .
Congregational Church, Rio d e Janeiro) called the "faggot amendment,"
not only in debates but staging massive protests against it in the chamber
(Pierucci 1989). Notably, while the Catholic Church participated exten­
sively in the proceedings, it did not, as an institution, actively oppose (or
support) the amendment, perhaps reflecting its understanding of antidis­
crimination in terms of negative liberties, through a human rights frame.
I n a document entitled "For a New Constitutional Order," for instance,
Catholic bishops approved an agenda for the assembly which among other
things repudiated torture and all forms of discrimination. The Church's
rel atively low profile on the matter would mark a contrast not only to Evan­
gelical opposition but to its own, more outspoken stance against abortion
in t he proceedings and against same-sex partnerships years later. 1 6
In contrast, Deputy Salatiel Carvalho ( P F L , Assemblies of God, Pernam­
buco) summarized the evangelicals' position on sexual orientation as fol­
lows: "Evangelicals do not want homosexuals to have equal rights because
the majority of society does not want it" (quoted in Pierucci 1989 : n2). The
combined force of rel igious bigotry and majoritarian power implied in the
statement came together to defeat the amendment. But what brought the
two together? What made this force effective? The institutionalization of
party militants' audience calculations provides part of the answer. First,
paradoxically the very electoral arrangements that permitted activists' early
entry into the legislative field by encouraging lawmakers to cater their
appeals to relatively narrow constituencies proved to be a double-edged
sword, aiiQwing similar appeals on the basis of religion.17 Once elected, to
define themselves as (mostly) men of God to their constituents, in addition
to corporate perks such as church access to the airwaves, religious law-
126 Pathways

makers seiz ed precisely on so-called moral issues. For these conservative

watchdogs, in other words, the amendment was of the utmost salience.
Con sequ ently, as the sociologist Antonio Pierucci (1989) has argued, we
see the rise of a new form of conservatism in the transition from military
rule in Brazil, crafting its stands before its constituents primarily in oppo­
sition to feminism and gay and lesbian liberation.
But evangelical deputies would not have been able to defeat the amend­
ment on their own. Clearly, at one level, they mobilized the latent preju­
dices of any number of silent, if less pious colleagues. Still, the relatively
disciplined party opposition reflected in the vote must take into account
another institutional imperative. Given the tendency of the country's elec­
toral arrangements to fragment representation and undermine discipline,
unity often requires informal practices of horse trading and backroom
deals. Such bargaining over pork is in fact the glue that binds party disci­
pline and legislative majorities in the Brazilian Congress (Ames 2001).
In the constituent assembly the twenty-six conservative members of the
evangelical caucus joined a much larger bloc, comprising 52 percent of
the assembly under the somewhat deceptive banner of the Centrao ( Big
Center). The Centrao, backed by President Jose Sarney, united behind a
broad array of conservative socioeconomic stances, such as the land reform
proposal promoted by the landowners association, which ultimately pre­
vailed. Within the alliance religious lawmakers drove such hard bargains
over pork and corporate perks that other leaders of the bloc complained
about it publicly in the press.18 Given the centrality of so-called moral
issues in defining evangelical lawmakers to their constituents, a similar dy­
namic was undoubtedly at play. While not recalling the specifics surround­
ing the amendment itself, former federal deputy Roberto Jefferson (PTB,
Rio de Janeiro) - at the time a member of the Centrao who voted against
it - suggested a parallel to the proceedings on abortion: " [The evangelical
deputies) were part of the Centrao because they were more conservative.
And there was a very strong socialist movement in the constituent assem­
bly. They helped us resist socialism in the constituent assembly. . . . They
were completely against abortion. And the Centrao went along with them
on that. It closed ranks with them around that. It was a trade." 1 9 Indeed
when the amendment went to the floor for a vote, Deputy Bonifacio de An­
drada (PDS, Minas Gerais) suggested as much: "In the name of the Centrao,
we want to state our position, which, indeed, the illustrious Evangelicals
vehemently defended in our group. Mr. President, our position is to vote
against it; to vote NO on this amendment."20 In the final vote 211 of the 317
votes opposing the amendment were from members of the Centrao; only
14 of its members voted for it, out of a total of 130 favorable votes (Mas­
carenhas 1998).
More broadly, the developments in the assembly suggest the curious
 Advancing Homosexual Citizenship 127

p osition of legislative proposals such as antidiscrimination, which are not

of programmatic concern and which are of variable salience to different
lawmakers, often constituting ideal bargaining chips in informal backstage
horse trading. A number of activists with whom I spoke mentioned with
so me resignation an expectation that their demands would almost inevi­
tably become a bargaining chip (moeda de troca) in debates both within
and among parties. It is worth noting, however, that this position has not
al w ays worked to activists' disadvantage; at times it has actually facilitated
passage of LG BT rights legislation. In November 2006, for example, shortly
after Lula's reelection, the Chamber of Deputies approved an LG BT rights
bill for the first time in history through such a broke red agreement among
party leaders, adding sexual orientation and, also for the first time, gen­
der identity to an existing law criminalizing racial discrimination. As of
this writing, the bill is under consideration in the Senate. While activists
have not always been able to count on such arrangements, which indeed
have more often worked against them, they do point to certain possibili­
ties opened by the relatively low salience of such proposals for many, even
conservative lawmakers, and by the ambivalent position of sexuality as
still somehow a private, not a political category of programmatic concern
within the legislative field.
After their efforts in the constituent assembly in 1987-88 failed, activists
proceeded to push for similar measures at the state and municipal levels.2 1
By the early 1990s at least seventy municipal organic laws and three state
constitutions included such stipulations. Like the campaign against the
W H O paragraph, these efforts were able to take advantage of lax discipline
in local legislative practice. Indeed to a certain extent the proliferation of
such measures reflected a similar informality in local statecraft, as many
cities merely copied their documents from larger metropoles, to activists'
subsequent surprise. Also like the earlier campaign, these stipulations
were entirely symbolic, lacking regulations to enforce them. In this regard
they can be seen as part of activists' long-term project to build a symbolic
fra mework and a kind of wager that changes in the symbolic meanings at­
tac hed to homosexuality in law would eventually have broader reverbera­
tio ns in society.
Since the late 1990s activists have begun a new round of legislative activ­
ism around antidiscrimination, which involves pressing for enforceable
legislation as well as the creation of legal advisory offices to take these laws
off paper. To be effective, ordinary laws and regulations are needed that
stipulate penalties in cases of discrimination. Yet even with the passage
of such laws, executive decrees are sometimes needed to regulate (regla­
mentar) th.em. Executives are generally given a few months to stipulate
procedures to put laws into effect when the Jaws do not do so themselves,
as is often the case. And whether out of institutional inefficacy or what
128 Pathways

amounts to an informal veto, activists have sometimes had to fight execu­

tives to issue decrees on existing laws.22 In Rio de Janeiro, for instance,
it took activists over a year and a half to press Governor Anthony Garo­
tinho (Brazilian Socialist Party), an evangelical populist, to regulate an
antidiscrimination law approved in February 2000, mounting a campaign
that took advantage of homophobic remarks made by the governor on a
television program to press for action. The implication is that proposing
a Jaw and lobbying for its passage is in many ways only the beginning of
legislative activism, which involves a much longer process of taking laws
off paper and pulling them to the ground.

The Case for Civil Unions

Until the mid 1 990s the legal recognition of same-sex part ne rsh ips did not
-

represent a top priority for most activists, nor was there a broad consensus
behind the demand. The G G B was undoubtedly the strongest early advo­
cate, calling not for civil unions but for gay marriage in an article published
in its bulletin in 1983, and the five groups attending the second Meeting of
Brazilian Homosexuals in Salvador the following year, all from the North­
east, passed a resolution making a similar call. Mascarenhas rejected the
G G B 's call on strategic grounds, arguing that marriage was a "trap" set by
religious and conservative forces to derail the movement's entire agenda.
On more ideological grounds, Somos activists in Sao Paulo published an
article rejecting informal same-sex weddings rumored to be taking place
in the city as a pastiche of heterosexual ma rriage, with the bicha doing the
housework and the bofe earning a living. Somos instead called for the cre­
ation of "a dream that is really ours and not borrowed from heterosexuals
to hide our sexuality." After the election of opposition Governor Franco
Montoro, gay and lesbian activists from the city presented the new ad­
ministration a list of demands which, while not framed in terms of legally
recognized unions, included the "right to cohabitation, child custody and
adoption, regardless of sexual orientation."23
By the time civil unions had r ise n to the top of activists' agenda, the
movement itself had experienced a significant resurgence, to a large extent
due to an infusion of resources for H IV prevention work. The number of
groups attending national meetings, for instance, grew from six, at the fifth
Brazilian Meeting of Homosexuals in 1991, to eleven at the sixth meeting
the following year, to twenty-one at the seventh meeting in 1993 ( Facchini
2005b). In 1994 gay activists in Rio de Janeiro and Bahia held public com­
mitment ceremonies to put the topic of civil unions on the public agenda.24
The following year, at the eighth Brazilian Meeting of Gays, Lesbians, and
Travestis in Curitiba, attended by eighty-four groups, activists approved a
resolution that the movement would press for civil unions as opposed to
 Advancing Homosexual Citizenship 129

marriage. That same year, Workers Party deputy Marta Suplicy introduced
a bill to legalize civil unions between same-sex couples (later reframed as
registered civil partnerships [ P e R ] ) in the Chamber of Deputies, arguing
that, like Brazil's legalization of divorce in 1977, the proposal was designed
to start a discussion in the Congress that would probably take years. Since
then the Brazilian Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Travesti, and Transsexual As­
sociation (AB G LT), a national umbrella organization also created at the
meeting in Curitiba, has spearheaded lobbying efforts on Suplicy's bill.
In 1997 the A B G LT established three legislative priorities in its biannual
plan: (1) legalizing the P C R , (2) enacting antidiscrimination laws, and (3)
eliminating the antisodomy stipulation in the military codeP In 2004 the
A B G LT created the Aliadas Project as a special lobbying arm to press its
legislative priorities.
Because a vote on the P C R bill has been blocked repeatedly, it is difficult
to gauge where parties stand on the issue. Opposition has undoubtedly
been strengthened by its salience as public sp ecta cle and by the added
voice of the Catholic Chu rc h which became much more outspoken than
,

on antidiscrimination. In November 1996 the special commission estab­

lished to discuss the P C R in the Chamber approved the proposal in a vote
of eleven to five. Of the five voting against it, four belonged to the evangeli­
cal caucus, and one was linked to the Catholic Charismatic Renewal Move­
ment, now the fastest growing sector of the Brazilian Catholic Church.
Since then, religious sectors have successfully blocked a vote on the bill on
several occasions. In 1997, for instance, religious leaders across denomina­
tions worked in concert with conservative Catholic and evangelical depu­
ties to derail the measure, staging a protest rally at the Congress that vastly
outnumbered the presence of activists and their supporters and present­
ing a petition against it with over 12o,ooo signatures.26 In 2001 Catholic
and evangelical churches again joined forces to derail another scheduled
vote. In a letter to federal lawmakers repudiating civil unions as a violation
of natural law, the National Council of Brazilian Bishops cited the letter
against de facto unions issued by the Vatican the previous year, again re­
flecting a conflict playing out among competing global communities con­
currently nationally and transnationally.
When I spoke with Roberto Jefferson, then PTB leader in the Chamber
of Deputies and rapporteur of the PC R bill, he reiterated that divisions in
the right and center on these matters fall primarily alo ng rel igio us lines.
He recalled these rivalries within his own party, though they were not di­
rectly related to the bill : "There were eleven evangelicals in the PTB at the
beginning of this legislature. They even tried to impose conduct on us in
the leadership. We reacted as a majority, and the most radical and fanatic
ones left the PTB. They tried to take over the party leadership by electing
an evangelical leader, but we didn't let them."27 Proving that politics makes
130 Pathways

strange bedfellows when it comes to Brazilian parties, the evangelicals who

left, linked to the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, migrated to
the Liberal Party, which would later join the governing coalition, achieving
the vice presidency, with the ascent of the Workers Party.
It is notable that despite what appeared to be a very favorable con­
stellation of forces for activists pressing for the P C R , with the ascent of a
Workers Party administration in 2002 and the creation of the cross-party
Caucus on Free Sexual Expression the following year (later renamed the
Caucus on LGBT Citizenship), the bill has seen no movement since Lula
took office. This is all the more striking given the considerable legislative
powers of the president, who by sending a bill to Congress with a petition
of"urgency" can put it to a vote immediately, crowding out other proposals
(Mainwaring 1997) . Activists have justifiably argued that both President
Fernando Henrique Cardoso and later Lula avowed their support for the
demand and could easily have put the bill to a vote but failed to do so. Part
of the reason has to do with the party's own significant base in the Catho­
lic Church, though both activists and Workers Party militants indicated
that this pressure tends to come from the top hierarchy more than from
grassroots sectors in the party. In 1994, for example, pressure from Church
leaders successfully vetoed a plank on civil unions (as well as another on
abortion) in the party's national program.28 I asked a legislative aide to
the coordinator of the Caucus why, given this apparently favorable con­
stellation of forces, so little had been accomplished under Lula in terms of
legislation. In addition to the corruption scandals that rocked the admin­
istration, slowing most legislative action, she pointed to the ruling party's
imperative to craft broad coalitions in a fragmented and undisciplined
Congress: " (The circumstances] would seem favorable, right? Because the
administration is from the left, but its articulations are with the far right.
[Its congressional base] is conservative. It's the PL [ Liberal Party] . The vice
president is from the P L . Then he changed parties - he changed and cre­
ated the Brazilian Republican Party [ P R B ]. But we know that the P R B is
really the Universal Church."29
Toward the end of Lula's first term, several national leaders in the move­
ment began to question the P C R as a legislative priority. Several activists
with whom I spoke in 2006 cited, among other reasons for this shift, the
bill's having been "distorted" in the course of legislative proceedings,
for instance, through the inclusion of a stipulation banning adoption.
More important, many suggested that the proposal had been superseded
through the judiciary, a track less prone to the political calculations and
pressures surrounding stigma. Since the mid-1990s a growing body of
jurisprudence has recognized a number of rights, arguably reflecting an
institutional deepening of the earlier, largely symbolic victories discussed
above. In 1998, for instance, the Supreme Justice Tribunal in Brasilia ruled
 Advancing Homosexual Citizenship 131

i n s upport of inheritance rights, and in another case overturned a lower

court's decision to throw out a woman's testimony because she was a les­
bian, in effect ruling that discrimination based on sexual orientation was
u n constitutionaP0 Among the most important cases, brought by a group
call ed Nuances from Rio Grande do Sui, was a class action suit that forced
th e National Social Security Institute to recognize same-sex partnerships.
Other decisions have recognized rights in the areas of adoption, immi­
gration, and child custody as well as the rights of transsexuals to change
th eir name and gender on official documents (Vianna and Lacerda 2004;
Vianna and Carrara 2007; R. Rios 2om; J. Lopes 2003). Organizations such
as the Homosexual Defense Office in Sao Paulo and the legal branch of
Grupo Arco- i ris in Rio de Janeiro have played an important role in pressing
such cases. In March 2004 Rio Grande do Sui became the first state in the
country to create a civil registry for same-sex couples, facilitating the rec­
ognition of rights in the areas of child custody, insurance, inheritance, and
pension benefits. Again, this decision came not through the state legisla­
ture, which in fact lacks the power to legislate civil law, but from a ruling
by the state's chief magistrate in response to a petition filed by the public
prosecutor in charge of human rights. Hence while a civil unions bill has
languished in the Chamber of Deputies for over a decade, a growing body
of jurisprudence has recognized many benefits, building on increasing na­
tional and international precedent.

S EXUAL R I G HTS A N D H O M O S EXUAL C I T I Z E N S H I P

I N R E G I M E T RA N S I T I O N

My discussion s o far has focused o n institutional arrangements that

opened doorways into the legislative field and that have shaped the po­
lit ical deployment and force of homosexual stigma within it. In keeping
with earlier discussions, however, activists did not enter the field empty­
handed but came equipped with a repertoire of discursive strategies that
have become increasingly resonant over time. This discursive repertoire,
associated with liberal modernity, was shared, though activists drew on it
selectively, again suggesting the hybrid nature of political developments
both national and transnational in nature. In this regard, the growing reso­
nance of tropes deployed speaks both to the movement's embeddedness in
a broader civil society changing in the course of democratization and to the
political society's aspirations to membership in a community of "modern"
li b eral democratic states. By extension these observations imply that the
la nguage spoken in the legislative field was also powerfully predetermined
and that if activists came with certain tools to press the boundaries of rep­
resentation, entry also involved processes of selection and negotiation that
would fundamentally transform the social movement field itself.
132 Pathways

Appeals to the Universal

From the movement's inception, appeals framing sexual rights as an ex­
tension of both universal human rights and liberal citizenship formed an
important strand in activists' discourse, though their prominence would
increase in the context of the constituent assembly, where they were linked
to the notion of full citizenship as well as a strategic recasting of the col­
lective political identities represented by activists. In the transition from
military rule and particularly in the context of the assembly, the discourse
of full citizenship gained enormous resonance in public debate, embraced
by numerous sectors of civil society mobilizing around the process. Prior
to the assembly, for example, the National Women's Rights Council orga­
nized a series of debates with women's organizations around the coun­
try and a national meeting in Brasilia, which produced the "Letter of the
Brazilian Woman to Constituent Assemblypersons." The letter, which in­
cluded an antidiscrimination amendment contemplating sexual orienta­
tion among its demands, likewise framed its broader goal as women's full
exercise of citizenship ( Pandjiarjian 2oo6; Goldberg-Salinas 1997; Alvarez
1990). Indeed, the president of the constituent assembly, Ulysses Gui­
maraes, framed the overall proceedings as an effort to turn Brazilians into
"citizens" (Weffort 1992).
One might consider the arguments for the antidiscrimination amend­
ment laid out by Luiz Mott in a letter directed to assembly members. Mott
cited several pieces of the symbolic framework achieved by activists to date:
the Federal Medical Council's decision to suspend the W H O paragraph;
the petition, which also called for the amendment, ultimately signed by
358 elected politicians; the symbolic motions passed by state and local
assemblies, again reiterating the demand; and the support of numerous
professional associations. He also pointed to existing international prece­
dent: legislation in Quebec and Ontario and the Norwegian and Dutch
penal codes, framing the amendment as a step toward the consolidation
of universal human rights standards in BraziJ.31 For his part, Jose Genoino
echoed a number of these arguments when he defended the amendment
on the floor. Opening by citing Canadian Justice Minister John Crosbie's
call for the inclusion of a similar stipulation in Canadian federal law as
well as concrete instances of discrimination in Brazil, Genoino concluded ,
"Let us not consecrate a constitution that reflects medieval values, values
of prejudice, and values of discrimination. If we want to open this consti­
tution to the 21st century, Mr. President, let us inscribe this right, a right
of citizenship involving people's different options regarding sexual orien­
tation." 32
I mplicit in these arguments is a central narrative of progress associated
with liberal modernity involving the universalization of citizenship. As sec-
 Advancing Homosexual Citizenship 133

ro rs of civil society progressively gain access to the public sphere, the story
go es - for instance through the extension of political rights to women,
fo r mer slaves, illiterates, or other disenfranchised groups - the construc­
tio n of citizenship becomes increasingly universalized and abstracted from
th e contingency of particular identities, if only formally ( Inverarity 1980;
Marshall 1992). For Habermas (1981, 1991, 1996a, 1996b), indeed, the pos­
s ib ility of institutionalizing the conditions necessary for this process to
reach fruition offers hope that an incomplete project of modernity can
atte nuate its built-in contradictions.
Beyond the institutional dynamics discussed above, the incipient na­
ture of the transnational precedents in sexual rights cited by activists also
provided the backdrop for the defeat of these arguments. Speaking for the
evangelical caucus, Deputy Costa Ferreira ( P F L , Assemblies of God, Ma­
ranhao) was thus able to cite the absence of any national charter in the
world that included such a stipulation on sexual orientation (while citing
his own international precedent - "other countries" like Sodom and Go­
morra -warning that the curse of God could befall Brazil were the amend­
ment passed). With the evolution of precedent on antidiscrimination, both
internationally and nationally, however, charges of illiberalism, intolerance,
and backwardness have become increasingly effective counterstigmatizing
discourses over time.33 Hence the author of the 2001 antidiscrimination
law in the state of Sao Paulo recalled his colleagues' response to the pro­
posal as follows: "In general, what I can say is that there was a lot of mock­
ery of that bill, there was joking. But when the time came, no one wanted
the onus of vetoing an antidiscrimination bill . . . . While the bill elicited
laughter, mockery, et cetera, no one wanted the onus of being against it."34
In other words, regardless of privately held prejudices, the symbolic weight
of precedent - in some sense, of language itself- had come to matter and
informally shape the course of statecraft in the field.
Asked the best way to approve a similar law in the Sao Paulo City Council,
a legislative aide and lesbian activist with the Workers Party LGBT setorial
underscored the importance of articulating linkages between civil society
and the various party blocs in the legislature and framing the message in
a way that resonates: "I think the best way is to go to the commissions and
the blo cs to discuss the question of rights, the question of citizenship, the
i ndividu al who pays taxes and provides a public service." 35 Indeed this was
o ne of the central discursive strategies adopted by A B G LT Secretary Gen­
era l Toni Reis at the public hearings held by the special commission ap­
poin ted to consider the P C R . With Mott, one of two gay activists called to
testify, Reis stressed that 10 percent of Brazilians were homosexual (draw­
i ng on Alfred Kinsey's figures) and pay taxes, vote, and perform other civic
du ties and that the PC R represented nothing more or less than the equal
rights of citizenship.36
134 Pathways

In his testimony Mott expanded on this theme, offering numerous argu­

ments for the proposal. Grounding the P C R in broader frames of universal
citizenship and equal access to the public sphere, he likewise argued that
homosexuals represented 10 percent of the Brazilian population and there­
fore merit respect, and that there was no justification for excluding homo­
sexuals from the rights every citizen enjoys. Interestingly he further argued
that, symbolically, recognition of these rights would confer respectability
on homosexuals, countering stereotypes portraying them as promiscuous
and lacking emotional stability. These normalizing implications suggest
the concomitant exclusion of other expressions of sexual desire and forms
of conjugality implied by homosexuals' symbolic incorporation into the
public sphere through the P C R , albeit through a universalizing frame.
Linking the recognition of homosexual citizens as respectable monoga­
mous couples to broader transnational trends, Mott suggested that Brazil
should mirror itself after the "civilized countries of the First World," while
cautioning that it should not repeat its history as the last country in the
world to abolish slavery. Making explicit what is often implicit in narratives
of progress and modernization, he stressed the inevitability of registered
partnerships, noting that by failing to approve the measure, Brazil would
be fighting the forward march of history.37

Reframing the Particular

If at one level activists and their supporters drew on universalist frames

such as full citizenship and respect for human rights standards, at another,
related level there was a shift in activists' framing of homosexual identity
and the movement itself, largely in response to the broader imperatives of
engagement with the state in the transition from military rule. Theoreti­
cally this development is notable not only as a reflection of liberal demo­
cratic politics but also for what it suggests about the constitution of collec­
tive identities and political subjects and the (often tacitly) negotiated terms
of entry into particular fields of representation. Along similar lines, Jeffrey
Weeks (1995) has attributed the salience of the trope of "sexual minorities"
in LGBT politics in the United States to its resonance with a master fram e
established by the civil rights movement. More broadly, Mary Bernstein
(1997) has underscored differences in the construction of expressive and
strategic identities, the latter deployed to enter and advance claims within
specific fields. These observations echo symbolic interactionists' insights
into the strategic management of "self" as well as Habermas's concern over
the tensions between communicative and instrumental rationalities in th e
public sphere. They also point to how a discursive reinvention of homo­
sexual identities as liberal subjects - quite different from homosexuals
as revolutionary subjects - went hand-in-hand with a broader transition
 Advancing Homosexual Citizenship 135

roward liberal institutional arrangements, writ large. Along these lines, in

the context of the constituent assembly, activists made two strategic moves
th at also marked an important moment of transition for the movement
overall, both constituting the homosexual community as a well-delineated,
r igh ts-bearing minority group.
First, prior to the constituent assembly, eleven of the thirteen existing
g ro ups in the country met to debate how antidiscrimination should be
framed in the constitution. In consultation with the Association of Anthro­
pologists and other intellectuals, they resolved that the demand should be
fra med around sexual orientation rather than sexual preference or option,
which activists had sometimes used in the past (Camara da Silva 1993,
2002 ) . The grounds for the decision expressed in movement documents
at the time was that "sexual orientation" best captured the "homosexual/
heterosexual/bisexual" categories - "the only types of sexual identity and
behavior exhibited by human beings," according to one document - and
benefited from the symbolic capital of the social sciences, thus offering a
"neutral terrain." Sexual "o ption" and "preference," in contrast, implied a
certain choice and fluidity in identity categories that could potentially be
misread (Camara da Silva 1993. 2002 ) . Politically the move constituted a
fixed and clearly bounded, rights b earing co mm unity meriting represen­
-

tation through a legitimizing scientific frame.38

The second and related move was a discursive shift from "homosexual
liberation" to "homosexual rights," a reframing of the movement's agenda
that was clearly an extension of the interest group politics and the focus
on the public sphere discussed in chapter 3 · The strategic basis for the
shift was expressed in a letter by an activist with Lambda: "We would like
to explain that after a broad debate, the existing groups in Brazil agreed
no longer to call themselves Homosexual Liberation Groups, because the
heterosexual society around us was misinterpreting this term. It was thus
agreed that existing groups belong to the Brazilian Movement for the De­
fe nse of Homosexual Rights. The word 'liberation' was often used against
the movement itself." 39 The move was prompted by an article in Mensa­
geiro da Paz, a newspaper published by the Assemblies of God, decrying
ac tivists' effort to promote licentious "homosexual liberation" in the con­
sti tutio n, but it also reflected a broader reconceptualization of the move­
me nt's goals and politics.
In a document sent in the midst of the constituent assembly to fellow
ac tivists entitled "We Dozed Off, Comrades," Mascarenhas argued that this
move was merited both because "homosexual liberation" could potentially
evo ke "a carte blanche for any homosexual behavior" (in other words, it
wo uld represent the wrong message) and because "homosexual liberation "
i mplied a "highly personal process" through which a person accepts him­
self or herself without guilt or trauma, something "absolutely impossible "
136 Pathways

for any group to achieve.40 In effect, entry into the legislative field shifted
the objective from acceptance to legally enforced tolerance.
Interestingly the document also suggests that "homosexual liberation"
was somehow a "misplaced idea" in Brazil (Schwarz 1977) : "In newspapers,
books, and documents, many of us got used to reading 'gay liberation
group,' 'gay liberation movement' when such organizations had not yet ap­
peared in Brazil. From the start, we understood exactly what they meant,
and it never occurred to us to question the appropriateness of these ex­
pressions in a foreign language . . . . Only now - better late than never - did
we realize that the above-cited terms are inadequate as well as politically
costly." This comment is interesting both for what it says and for what it
doesn't. In noting the inappropriateness of a discursive frame drawn from
an international repertoire, Mascarenhas was clearly not abdicating trans­
national discursive strategies. Indeed he remained one of their staunchest
advocates. Rather, he was arguing that this particular transnational frame
was not a good fit, given the imperatives of the broader national polity.
In other words, a process of selection was needed in drawing from such a
repertoire that was attuned to contextual settings and potential errors in
translation.
But why was it "only now" and "better late than never" that activists
woke up to this potential pitfall? Was the problem really their naivete? Had
they really dozed off for nearly a decade since the movement's emergence?
Probably not. If anything, it was arguably the "only now" that had changed
in the transition from military rule to a liberal polity. And while certain
frames might have been effective for activists approaching the revolution­
ary left earlier in the decade, the new focus on the legislative field called
for a discursive reinscription of the movement and of the community it
sought to represent. Or perhaps there is a more apt reading of Mascaren­
has's point, setting aside the notion of a unitary actor implied by the "we"
who had dozed off. If, as I suggested earlier, we can regard the LGBT so­
cial movement field as a heterogeneous terrain within which different cur­
rents, each participating in transnational and national fields in different
ways, negotiated and contested both who should be represented and how,
then the discursive shift discussed here arguably reflected not only chang­
ing ideas but the changing balance among these currents in the context of
the broader regime transition.
The implication is that not everyone embraced this shift and that such
differences might cast light on processes underlying the consolidation
of a legislative strategy in the context of evolving national and transna­
tional fields. In a document titled "The Crisis of Somos," for instance, the
few remaining members of what had once been the country's largest and
most important group regretted the movement's legislative turn: "Homo­
sexual discourse, which began as 'liberationist,' is becoming normalizing.
 Advancing Homosexual Citizenship 137

G ay groups are serving as agencies of normalization, in which bichas are

co ming to assume a homosexual identity and to I NT E G RAT E into the sys­
tem . Today, the politics of affirmation is R E FO R M I ST [defending U LT RA­
M 1 N 1 M A L points, such as the suspension of (World Health Organization

In te rnational Classification ofDiseases, Paragraph 302.0) - which does not

h urt anyone - or directly R EACT I O NA RY ones like homosexual marriage
(G G B ) ] ."41 The crisis mentioned in the document was economic as well as
political, presaging the deep crisis in which the social movement field, and
the country overall, would be plunged in the course of the 198os and ar­
guably pointing to a further dynamic shifting the balance of forces within
it. While much of the movement's base weakened, lobbying required the
dedication of a relatively small number of activists who, in some sense,
stood above the fray. At the third Meeting of Brazilian Homosexuals in
1989 in Rio de Janeiro, attended by six groups, tensions surrounding these
developments at the height of the crisis emerged in the passage of a reso­
lution criticizing the movement's excessive partisanship and centralization
on a small number of decision makers.42 In this context the advances made
in the course of the decade permitted an identitarian rights-based strategy
to consolidate.

T H E L I M I T S OF L I B E RA L I S M , O R , A T R I C K L E - D OW N

T H E O RY O F S Y M B O L I C CA P I TA L

In light of my earlier discussion regarding the limits of liberal institutions,

it is worth underscoring that these same limitations lay precisely at the
heart of these early debates regarding the legislative turn. Early opponents
of the direction stressed not only the normalizing move in the shift to
"homosexual citizenship" but also that a "virtual equality" in the public
sphere would sidestep the question of relations of power in society (Vaid
19 95) . Notably, even advocates of this turn were well aware of its limita­
tions. Indeed I would argue that early legislative efforts can be regarded as
a strategy of cultural politics directed toward the political elite and a wager
that changes, even strictly symbolic changes, in the meanings attached to
ho mosexuality at the top would eventually have broader reverberations in
so ciety.
The terms of this debate were reflected in an interesting exchange in
1982 between GALF activists and Joao Antonio Mascarenhas. The exchange
co n cerned Mascarenhas's proposal that a lesbian congresswoman from
Norway visit Brazil to increase lesbian visibility in the country. Activists
with GALF rejected the proposal, arguing that it would misrepresent what
the movement stood for: "In principle, our concern is the fact that she
belongs to a conservative party, which could give the impression that the
Brazilian Homosexual Movement is moving in the same reformist direc-
138 Pathways

tion as our European brothers and sisters . . . . In other words, that we are
only interested in fighting against di.scrimination and in being tolerated by
heterosexuals, without a broader questioning of the repressive structures
of the society we live in." In resisting the "reformist direction" hailing from
Europe, GALF activists were noting the limitations of state-directed activ­
ism and the move from "acceptance" to "tolerance" implied by a rights­
based discourse.
Mascarenhas's reply to GALF was equally revealing. He began by affirm­
ing the value of tolerance and stressing the movement's inability to force
people to accept homosexuality; in other words, he countered by noting
the limitations of a cultural politics of the private sphere. Law, however,
might eventually have an impact even at that level as well : "Whether you
like it or not, the law contributes to changing the population's way of see­
ing and acting in general. In 15 or 20 years, the residents of Norway, with­
out realizing it, will accept gay rights as something natural, not subject to
discussion. In my ignorance, I believe that legislation not only enforces tol­
erance (in countries where laws automatically 'stick') , but in the medium
and long term it fosters favorable conditions for acceptance of homosexu­
ality."43
Two points might be made about this curious rebuttal. The first con­
cerns the parenthetical caveat: the reference to countries where laws actu­
ally "stick," which presumably did not include Brazil. Actual enforcement
of tolerance, in other words, wa s a questionable proposition and perhaps
even a secondary consideration. The second point refers to the broader
chan ges promised by legislation, not as effective regulation but as a sym­
bolic field. Symbolic changes at the top, Mascarenhas seemed to suggest,
would eventually, if imperceptibly, trickle down.
The skepticism expressed by some activists regarding the broader effects
of these laws was not entirely misplaced, but neither was the expectation
of future repercussions from early symbolic achievements. In recent years,
as I noted above, activists have pressed in various ways to build on these
accomplishments, and a kind of institutional deepening has taken place
that speaks to real changes in the meanings attached to LGBT identities,
as manifest, for instance, in the numerous recent court decisions cited
above and in the remarkable growth of the movement itself. This said, real
limitations in the effectiveness of legislation undoubtedly persist. When I
asked Luiz Mott about the relative disuse of antidiscrimination measures,
he laughed and said, "You can even use this phrase at the beginning of the
chapter: 'In Brazil, there are laws that stick and laws that don't."'44
In the course of my fieldwork I was unable to find any statistics indicat­
ing the use of antidiscrimination laws involving sexual orientation. Most
activists with whom I spoke pointed to various court decisions which
have built on this framework in recent years, while recognizing that anti-
 Advancing Homosexual Citizenship 139

7· Cases of Racial Discrimination Registered at State Justice Tribunals,

TA B L E

2o0 1-2002
Sta te " Number of cases

Acre 2
Amazonas 2
Ba h ia 10
Goias 9
Mato Grosso
Minas Gerais 216
Paraiba 45
Pernambuco 0
Rio de Janeiro 2
Rio Grande do Norte 0
Rio Grande do Sui 12
Sao Paulo 31
Santa Catarina 1 26
Source: lvair Augusto Alves dos Santos, special advisor with the Special Human Rights
Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic, "A populac;ao negra e o acesso a justic;a,"
undated mimeograph in author's possession.
•The survey indicates that no information is available for Brazil's other fourteen federal
entities.

discrimination laws themselves remain, for the most part, unused. The
closest indication of this sort I could find was a survey of cases involving
racial discrimination registered with State Justice Tribunals in 2001-2002,
compiled by the National Council against Discrimination, reproduced in
Table 7· While discrimination based on sexual orientation and discrimi­
nation based on race are clearly not the same, certain parallels might be
drawn regarding what these figures suggest about the relationship between
law and society.
Two points might be made about these figures. The first involves the
st riki ng disuse of such laws in much of the country where discrimination
is m uch more common, if often veiled. In 2004 the Center for Sexuality
and Human Rights, a research institute based at the State University of
Rio de Janeiro, conducted a survey of 247 women and 382 men attending
the city's LGBT Pride March that year. Of those not identifying as hetero­
sexual, 64.8 percent reported having experienced some form of discrimi­
nation, 54·4 percent verbal aggression or threats, 18.7 percent physical as­
sault, and 5.6 percent sexual violence. Tellingly, other than the civil unions
bill, which has received broader press coverage, 72 percent of those attend­
ing the march, an event organized by the movement, indicated that they
did not know of any LG B T rights legislation (Carrara and Ramos 2005) .
The second point regards the disparities in the use o f antidiscrimination
140 Pathways

legislation reflected among states, for instance the much higher number
of cases in Minas Gerais and Santa Catarina. When I asked the special
advisor of the Special Human Rights Secretariat, who provided this infor­
mation, about it, he explained that the states with the greatest number of
cases were those where N G O s were most actively promoting their use.45
While certainly meriting further research, the comment is itself interest­
ing as it speaks to the emerging role of social movements (in this case,
Afro-Brazilian activists) in pulling laws to the ground or holding the state
accountable, which some have framed as a fundamentally democratizing
restructuring of the public sphere in the region (Avritzer 2002; Avritzer
and Costa 2oo6). By 2007 the National STD/A I D S Program was funding
forty-seven legal advisory centers and the National Human Rights Secre­
tariat was funding forty-five reference centers, offering legal and psycho­
logical services through LGBT NGOs or state offices around the country in
an effort to bring access to legislation closer to the ground. The disparities
among states, however, also reflect very real limitations in delegating this
role to organizations which, without discounting activists' best efforts, are
limited in resources and geographic scope.
Another official with the Human Rights Secretariat attributed the lim­
ited penetration of these laws in part to access, as conditioned by bound­
aries of race and class:
It is not just with homosexuals that the law remains only on paper; the same
thing happens with regard to blacks . . . . People do not know about the laws
because the homosexuals in the movement are those who were able to break
the educational barriers, who were able to break economic barriers, who have
a certain level of education and a certain income. The homosexual who is in
. the periphery, the poor black homosexual ; he doesn't know about these laws;
he doesn't know these laws exist; he doesn't know what road to take to ensure
his rights. Sometimes he doesn't even know he has them.46

I do not want to imply that the movement today is an e ssenti ally elite
enterprise or to d ismiss the importance of id entity-based challenges to
power through a kind of reductive economism. Rather, my critique is more
pointedly directed at the relation between law - and thus legislative activ­
ism - and society. In other words, while activists have successfully entered
the legislative field in the country, this success in many ways has bee n both
predetermined by a language that limits what activists can ask for and cir­
cumscribed by its differential penetration in the private sphere.
Moreover I would again underscore that the trends in state-directed
activism I am discussing are emerging within a heterogeneous social move­
ment field marked by contestation and difference and that in recent years
mobilization has increasingly crossed regional, racial, and class bound­
aries. I spoke with a Workers Party militant with the party's Rio de Janeiro
 Advancing Homosexual Citizenship 141

LG BT setorial who told me about his activism with seven other homo­

se xual men, who came to occupy the leadership of his favela's neighbor­
h ood association. The association had initially organized in local Workers
Party offices in response to extrajudicial executions of local residents by
police under the governorship of Antonio Chagas Freitas (1977-83):
In that respect, I knew I was different than other people. My sexual rela­
tions were no longer with women but with men. Then something happened
and I started becoming conscious of class. I began to see that we were being
massacred in the favela because we were black, because we were favelados,
because we didn't have money, because we were excluded &om society. And
that is the discussion that we took to the community. That's where I became
aware of what it means to be homosexual in a favela, what it means to be a
black homosexual, a homosexual with no money, a homosexual who is not in
the organized groups.

I asked him to elaborate:

If we go down the street, if some people think something or other in a dis­
criminatory way, it's even worse in the favela. Because in the favela, we live
with the movement of drugs, we live with the parallel power of drug traf­
fickers, we live with police who are bandits, we live with the father who's an
alcoholic. We live with the question of hunger. We live with a lot of things in
the favela in greater proportion than people down here. So while someone
here might complain that he can't get into a restaurant, the homosexual in
the favela doesn't even conceive of the possibility of entering the restaurant to
fight. First of all, because he doesn't have any money. He has no access. Even
because he's black, entering a restaurant is a doubly discriminatory situation.
And he already brings the stigma of being &om the favela down here . . . . I
think the work people are doing is valid and there's been some progress. No
one can deny that . . . . But the movement is not focused on the question of
favelas, and that has to be stated.47

These statements speak to the racialized and class-based differences in

the experience ofbeing both "homosexual" and "c itizen " in the country. The
point is not that the diverse sexual landscapes ofJavelas and poor suburbs
are necessarily more homophobic than those of middle- and upper-class
neighborhoods. A sizable literature, in fact, has noted a certain openness
to homoerotic desire in spaces associated with the popular classes as well
as Afro-Brazilian culture ( Lacombe 2006; Green 1999a; Parker 1999). Afro­
B razilian religions, for instance, tend to be much more accepting of such
desire than Catholic and evangelical churches, whose privileged access to
the political.public sphere itself speaks to an underlying Eurocentrism in
the project of modernity.48 Rather, recalling critiques of liberal identity
politics formulated by feminists of color, lesbian feminists, and queer theo-
142 Pathways

rists in the United States, these statements speak to how sexual, racialized,
class-based, and gendered axes of power intersect in the production of
subjectivities and social constraints (Collins 2002 ; Butler 1990, 1993, 2ooo;
hooks 1990; Grewal 1998; Moraga and Anzaldua 1983; Manalansan 2oo6;
Guzman 2006). As Manalo Guzman has noted, these critiques have moved
beyond a kind of additive model of vectors of oppression, which presume
that an identity category can "yield its totality" in a given social order,
understanding a black homosexual, for instance, to be "doubly discrimi­
nated" against. Rather, theorists have recently underscored how categories
that appear to be separable are in fact "articulated through one another"
in qualitatively complex ways that cannot be so readily disentangled. Given
liberalism's tendency to disaggregate such categories in the definition of
collective interests, this shift underscores the very real limitations - and
indeed a certain symbolic violence - in the construction of the political
identities privileged in the liberal public sphere, which come to be ab­
stracted from and generalized across a much more heterogeneous terrain
in ways that obscure their articulations with and through other axes of
power (Butler 2ooo).
Within the movement critiques have also emerged underscoring these
limitations, in particular calling for a coalitional politics with other sectors
of civil society as a way to address them. Thus in 1998 the group Nuances
from Rio Grande do Sui, long a leading dissident voice among activists,
called for a "break with the established logic of insisting on one's par­
ticular question as the most effective way to win political space," rejecting
this "minority" approach for risking "self-isolation."49 Groups such as the
Lesbian Collective of Rio de Janeiro (co LE RJ ) and Minas de Cor in Sao
Paulo have mobilized working-class, mostly Afro-Brazilian lesbians to ar­
ticulate critiques of racism, sexism, and heterosexism within and across
movements. As one leader of the Grupo 28 de Junho, established in 1992 in
Novo lguac;u, a largely working-class city outside of Rio de Janeiro, stated:
I think gay groups in Brazil are very corporatist and we need to move be­
yond that. Not worrying just about the question of sexual orientation . . . . Be­
cause beyond prejudice and homophobia, we are victims of unemployment,
we are victims of homelessness. The majority of groups have a very elitist
vision. I think that our greater struggle is not just prejudice. It is prejudice and
homophobia. But the fight against homophobia passes through the political
struggle to change prejudicial, capitalist, racist, and homophobic structures,
though the majority of groups are not interested in doing that. 5 0

As an example of this kind of work, he pointed to the group's recent col­

laborative effort with a local neighborhood association to offer courses
on taking college entrance exams and its involvement in the Citizenship,
Work, and Land Forum of Novo Iguac;u. Even within the A B G LT, which is
 Advancing Homosexual Citizenship 143

at the forefront of state-directed activism today, these questions are being

debated. At its second congress in 2007 the association passed a resolu­
ti on to the effect that the movement should stop gazing at its navel and
build more linkages with Afro-Brazilian, feminist, and union activists.5 1
My argument in this chapter is not that such articulations never happen in
Bra zil, but that state-directed, particularly legislative activism has tended
to deactivate them through discursive parameters that are powerfully pre­
determined, with reverberations beyond the arena of formal politics. In
this regard these critiques speak not only to how the political identities
on which rights-based claims are made in the liberal public sphere can be
constructed around the experiences of a few, but also to the possibilities of
a critical engagement that could perhaps transcend these limitations.

CO N C LU S I O N S

I began this chapter with a discussion o f the transnational backd ro p of

an evolving construction of sexual rights. Notably, for some years now the
Brazilian government has played a central role on several fronts in push­
ing their boundaries. In 1995 it supported efforts, albeit unsuccessful, to
include stipulations contemplating "sexual orientation" in the Platform
of Action at the Beijing Conference on Women, and again in 2001 at the
Durban Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia,
and Related Intolerance. Brazilian activists had participated in the exten­
sive preparatory meetings for the Durban Conference, achieving the inclu­
sion of such measures in the Brazilian proposal, and played a particularly
visible role at the conference itself (Girard 2007) . While that proposal too
did not succeed, it did establish a precedent for the Lula administration's
introduction of a resolution on human rights and sexual orientation at the
UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva in 2003, though Brazil withdrew
it two years later.
At the regional level the Brazilian government has also introduced dis­
cussions on sexual orientation and gender identity in the Common Mar­
ket of the South (Mercosul) , the trade bloc created in 1991, which, to a
cert ain extent, has come to position itself as a counterbalancing force to
U.S.- led efforts to promote a Free Trade Area of the Americas. In 2006, at
t he Brazilian government's initiative and as a result of activists' pressure,
a seminar on sexuality and gender identity and expression was organized
at the fifth Meeting of High Level Authorities in Human Rights of Merco­
sul and Associated States, attended by representatives from Brazil, Argen­
ti na, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, and
Ch ile, as �ell as four gay activists, all men, representing the A B G LT, which
created an arm for international advocacy work. 52 As a result of that meet­
i ng, a follow-up seminar was held the following year that produced a docu-
144 Pathways

ment calling on member states to eliminate any discriminatory legislation

against LGBT citizens; to promote antidiscrimination policies in areas such
as health, work, and education; to establish legal frameworks recognizing
same-sex partnerships; and to pass laws that permit trans people to change
their name and gender on official documents and ensure free public access
to treatments and sex reassignment surgeries for those who want them. 53
Activists now participating in the Network of LG BT Organizations of Mer­
cosul hope this regional initiative will provide the basis for a stronger, con­
certed effort to promote discussions at the U N . In 2008 the Organization
of American States approved a resolution on human rights, sexual orien­
tation, and gender identity, again presented by the Brazilian government.
These developments undoubtedly speak to the Brazilian movement's
growing strength in recent years and arguably reflect a further outcome of
the symbolic framework constructed over the course of decades, now re­
fracted back onto the international field. This said, however, the fate of the
Brazilian resolution at the UN Human Rights Commission is telling and
speaks to some of the broader dilemmas also raised in this chapter. At the
UN the resolution encountered the strong opposition of a coalition uniting
the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Vatican, and a number of
mostly U.S.-based conservative Christian N G O s, with the support of the
Bush administration.54 This coalition of the pious succeeded in repeatedly
postponing any discussion on the matter, and after a threat from the Orga­
nization of the Islamic Conference that the resolution might affect trade
relations with Brazil, the government withdrew it.
Observers of the proceedings have offered several explanations for the
resolution's defeat. For one, Brazilian diplomats introduced it after virtu­
ally no consultation with activists or potential allies, who were then forced
to scramble to articulate support. For another, the women's health advo­
cate Franr;:oise Girard (2007) has noted certain tensions surrounding its
narrow framing. For example, the resolution made no reference to bodily
integrity or the right to control matters related to sexuality, which had
been debated at prior UN fora; gender identity was also excluded, appar­
ently due to Ireland's opposition, limiting the resolution to terms of sexual
orientation; and divisions emerged between LG BT groups and feminists,
who sought a resolution that would promote a broader understanding of
sexual health and rights across the board. Girard suggests that the narrow
antidiscrimination approach may have failed to transcend understandings
of sexualities prevailing outside the West, thus finding little resonance in
some countries; as a Brazilian diplomat participating in the proceedings
suggested, "We never thought about identity politics, how that would work
for Africa. We discovered a lot of things we didn't know!" (quoted in Girard
2007 : 3so) . (It is worth questioning the location of this "outside" in Africa,
given the limitations of these identity categories in Brazil itself.) Finally
 Advancing Homosexual Citizenship 145

a n d perhaps most important, the Brazilian government's withdrawal of the

p ro posal on the eve of a trade conference under economic pressure points
to la rger contradictions in the transnational project ofliberal modernity, as
s ed uctive promises of political equality are routinely trumped by economic
co nsi derations, not only in the private sphere but in the arena of formal
p olit ics itself. As a Human Rights Watch report noted, "Sexuality at the
United Nations had finally graduated to the kind of issue that economic
ti es could hang on." 55 These transnational trends, however, form only a
backdrop, refracted in multiple ways across both national and subnational
bou ndaries. I turn now from Brazil to Mexico to explore these themes in
comparative perspective.
 *
Life at the M argins
Coalition Building and Sexual Diversity
in the Mexican Legislature

A couple of years before Mascarenhas was cautioning his colleagues about

the dangers of dozing off, Max Mejia, a former Lambda activist and one of
the principal architects of C L H A R I , was positing quite a similar argument
in Mexico City. In an article written in 1985 - appearing, oddly enough, in
the P RT magazine La Batalla, presumably aimed at the party's revolution­
ary cadres - Mejia bid farewell to the "chimerical and impassioned decla­
rations of the (movement's) early years." Rejecting the reformist label also
leveled against state-directed activists in Brazil, he concluded that, instead
of "realizing our desires for full liberation here and now, what we have
gained is a space for social tolerance and remarkable ground to discuss our
rights," likewise positing the need to embrace a civil rights discourse. 1
The parallel emergence of this current of thought within the social
movement field in Mexico is worth noting because, among other rea­
sons, it appeared well before activists began approaching the country's
lawmakers and thus under considerably different circumstances than in
Brazil. Despite very real limitations set by the P R J 's continued dominance
of legislatures, Mejia offered two justifications for a strategic shift in th is
direction, again speaking to the movement's embeddedness in broa der
national and transnational fields. At the transnational level, he located the
move within a broader reorientation among gay and lesbian movements
worldwide: "As we see, the trend among homosexuals [at that level] is to
confront legislation although not as an end in itself but with the idea of
politicizing all the violations of individual rights kept in the dark." Rec all­
ing the largely symbolic objectives being pursued in Brazil at the time ,
Mej ia thus stressed the symbolic resonance of a rights-based discourse
and the symbolic capital offered by legislatures. At the national level, he
 Life at the Margins 147

no ted , while "perhaps to the disappointment of certain militants in love

wi th marginality," the move would also allow activists to appeal to broader
sect ors of the public, including homosexuals, and thus stake out a place in
a larger civil society.
Given the limited opportunities to pursue such a route, the emergence of
th is line of thought in the movement, albeit weaker than in Brazil, points to
th e mediated impact of broader changes in the community of social move­
me nt activists, journalists, party militants, and other sympathetic allies
mo bilizing to the left of the P R J , within which the movement emerged
an d was embedded. After all, even then, three years before Cuauhtemoc
Cirde nas's presidential bid dealt the first decisive blow to P R J hegemony,
piecemeal tinkering with electoral arrangements was already fostering a
broader reorientation toward existing democratic institutions, whatever
their limitations, by the opposition, including both the left in general and
the PRT itself.
Legislative activism, however, would not rise to the top of the move­
ment's agenda for a decade. The election in 1997 of the lesbian activist
Patria Jimenez to the Chamber of Deputies and the first Forum on Sexual
Diversity and Human Rights in the Federal District Legislative Assembly
(ALD F ) in 1998 marked a symbolic turning point in activists' relations
with the legislative field. Since then Jimenez was able to eliminate the
one explicitly discriminatory stipulation in Mexican law, which doubled
the penalties for corruption of minors in cases involving homosexuality. It
has been in the A L D F, however, that legislative debates on sexual diversity
have gone furthest. Proposals for both an antidiscrimination law and civil
unions were raised through the Campaign for Women's Access to Justice,
which brought together over forty-five mostly feminist organizations to in­
fluence Mexico City's legal codes. In 1999 the A L D F passed the first antidis­
crimination law in the country, which included sexual orientation. Similar
criminal laws were later passed in several other states. In 2003 legislation
was passed at the federal level, an achievement that, as of this writing, has
eluded Brazilian activists.2 If these developments reflected a broad consen­
sus on antidiscrimination, the legal recognition of same-sex couples has
met much stronger resistance, including from activists' purported ally, the
P R o, reflecting transnational trends in the construction of sexual rights
al so evident in Brazil. After the presidential election of 2006, however, the
lega lization of cohabitation societies in the Federal District, offering legal
recognition to same-sex couples, gave a significant impetus to the debate,
fol lowed within months by the speedy passage of a similar law in Coahuila,
di sc ussion of similar measures in several other states, and the legalization
i n 2009 of same-sex marriage in Mexico City, the first city in the region to
recognize it.1
148 Pathways � I
But again, my discussion in this chapter is framed not around policy
outcomes but strategies. How were activists and their allies able to do
what they did, and how do the negotiated terms of entry into the legis­
lative field reflect broader political dynamics surrounding the contesta­
tion of stigma at both the national and transnational levels, particularly
in contrast to Brazil? As I suggested earlier, in light of higher barriers to
entry legislative activism in Mexico has tended to rely considerably more
,

on broad coalitions in civil society built in the shadows of the P R I , par­

ticularly with feminists, as well as on discursive strategies that permit
the articulation of broad coalitions, even in the construction of collective
political identities. These differences speak to how a rationalized inscrip ­
tion of sexuality within a transnational paradigm of liberal universalism
has become refracted, or hybridized, across national boundaries as actors
draw selectively on a shared repertoire in response to local imperatives and
constraints. They also suggest that the tendency of liberal institutions to
atomize representation into narrow identitarian frames does not always
hold and can be powerfully determined by questions of access. To under­
stand these differences, I explore how legislative strategies responded to
the interaction between representation and audience, as conditioned by
institutional arrangements and contested by discursive frames. I then con­
sider the limitations of these formal constructions as they intersect with
everyday life, comparing activists' experiences in Mexico City and the state
of Veracruz.

O N C E M O R E : AU D I E N C E , I N S T I T U T I O N ,

A N D R E P R E S E N TAT I O N

Institutionalist scholars working o n questions o f policymaking might

begin the story of legislative activism in Mexico in 1997. That year marked
an undeniable change in both the political opportunities opened to activ­
ists and the country's legislative life more generally. It was no coincidence,
after all, that a lesbian activist was elected for the first time that year, ma rk­
ing a new page in the movement's long-standing electoral strategy of activ­
ists running as candidates on the left. Indeed the P R D overall fared wel l
in a historic election that also put an end to the P R I 's absolute maj ority
in the lower chamber. Moreover its longtime leader Cuauhtemoc Ci rde­
nas became the mayor of Mexico City in the first election to the post, a nd
the party captured an absolute majority in the A L D F, which was gra nted
expanded legislative powers (Peschard 1997). These changes were clea rly
central to activists' sustained entry into the legislative field in subsequen t
years, but to understand the consolidation of activists' prevailing strate­
gies - in other words, how they came to be represented in the legislative
field, not just why or when - a broader historical perspective is required .
 Life at the Margins 149

open ing Doorways in the Shadow of the PR I

T his other story might pick up where I left it earlier: in 1982, which not
o n ly marked gay and lesbian activists' entry into electoral politics but also
p arad oxically announced their relative marginalization from the state and
pa rty arenas for at least a decade. During this time Mexican activists, like
t h eir counterparts in Brazil, faced the economic impact of the debt crisis.
I n de ed, that year's election of President Miguel de Ia Madrid heralded a
n ew era of draconian orthodox economic policies earlier than in Brazil,
lead ing to a 30 percent drop in average real wages over the next four years
and to zero growth in the economy during his term (Kaufman 1990). As in
B ra zil and indeed much of the world, not only would this new economic
model target organized labor as an impediment to "progress" and foster
a greater concentration of wealth at the top, but it would radically recon­
figure the organization of civil society more broadly, sectors of which also
suffered a precipitous decline during the decade.
In terms of the gay and lesbian liberation movement, this trend was re­
flected in the disappearance of the major groups mobilizing in the capital
during its early peak as well as in declining numbers of participants at an­
nual gay and lesbian pride marches. And, tellingly, while a group of activ­
ists did protest the Cardenista alliance's veto of sexual orientation from its
antidiscrimination plank in 1988, the movement overall was remarkably
absent at this crucial turning point in the nation's political history, as two
of its leaders noted at the time:
While the entire country is mobilizing to defend the vote and reject corpo­
ratism, authoritarianism, and P R J thievery . . . homosexuals are debating in
their immobility, in an atmosphere of disillusionment, apathy, disaffection,
fear, and frustration . . . . The majority of groups have A I D s -ified [sidificado],
and a discourse of death prevails within them. At the same time, what little
gay work remains is in the Federal District, Guadalajara, and Tijuana, and the
groups and people doing it are forced to overcome countless obstacles and
limitations to remain afloat.4

Whi le this declining mobilization at the base paralleled developments

i n B razil, institutional arrangements in Mexico did not offer similar door­
ways i nto the legislative field. According to the political scientist Soledad
Loae za (1999), the conceptual framework embodied in the organization of
the public sphere in Mexico under P R J hegemony and guiding its piece­
meal electoral reforms was that of a nation represented by one vast ma­
j or ity with a number of smaller parties representing minorities. In the
co urse of.formal democratization in the country, the high barriers to entry
re p resented by this changing framework were compounded both by activ­
ists ' marginalization from the consolidation of the mass-based P R D and
150 Pathways

by the leading role of the PA N, a conservative party with a religious base,

in the process. More generally, the fewer the major parties competing fo r
the "average voter" in a polity, the more likely they are to construct p o ­
litically safe messages that appeal to as broad a sector of the electorate
as possible, avoiding controversy (Downs 1957) . Compared to Brazil, i n a
context with relatively fewer and generally more disciplined major parties,
this interaction between representation and audience has undoubtedly
also compounded the greater difficulties faced by activists in pressing thei r
demands, even after the erosion of P R I hegemony, particularly in the PRo.
Finally, in contrast to Brazilian lawmakers' catering to their localized baili­
wicks, scholars have cited the lack of consecutive reelection for legislative
posts in Mexico as another factor diminishing representatives' responsive­
ness to their electoral base, as lawmakers often prove more beholden to
the party leaders who will determine their next job (Weldon 1997; Ugalde
2000). Consequently Mexican activists have had to rely much more on
broad coalitions constructed outside the party arena to press open more
resistant doorways into the legislative field.
I argued earlier that debates on gender and sexuality in Mexico City in
particular emerged within a tightly knit, albeit heterogeneous, community
to the left of the ruling party. Networks of leftist party militants, progres­
sive intellectuals and journal ists, feminists, LGBT activists, and other social
movement actors, while certainly not free of tensions, nonetheless shared
a political position in the shadow of the P R I and to some extent a com­
mon lang u age. And just as the youth sector played a central role raising
debates on homosexuality within the partisan left, the feminist movement
has been a crucial ally opening doorways into legislatures.
Lesbian feminists began advancing debates on sexuality within the femi­
nist movement since its resurgence in the 1970s. The first collective public
statement by lesbian activists in the country, "The Declaration of Mexican
Lesbians," was issued in the context of the first United Nations Global Con­
ference on Women, held in Mexico City in 1975. The statement resp ond ed
to the national press's widespread condemnation of a call for greater atten­
tion to the topic at the parallel N G O conference raised by a student activist
from Australia. "What are the lesbians doing here and what are they asking
for?" asked the newspaper Excelsior. "Do they now hope to inscribe their
pathology in the Human Rights Charter? Are they by chance deman din g
the pathetic right to boast about their sexual aberration? . . . They have
discredited this Conference and distorted the true goals of women's eman ­
cipation" (quoted in Bunche and Hinojosa 2000 :4). In response Nan cy
Cirdenas, a founder of the Homosexual Liberation Front four years ea rli er,
held a press conference where she read the Declaration, condemning rou­
tine repression of homosexuals in the country by police and organize d a
meeting of national and international activists at her home (Mogrovej o
 Life at the Margins 151

2 0 0 oa ) . An international lesbian caucus was subsequently organized at

th e event, as were several workshops on lesbianism that were particularly
we ll a ttended. "Not only were these workshops the first time lesbianism
wa s discussed openly in Mexico," recalls an activist who attended. "They
al so o pened the only space at the Tribune [the parallel conference] for
wo men to discuss the topic of sexuality" (quoted in Bunche and Hinojosa
2ooo : s- 6).
Within the feminist movement, however, activists advancing these de­
bates confronted strong resistance by many afraid of being tainted by the
stigm a attached to lesbian identity, as a founder of the country's first les­
b ian group recalls: "We decided to create the first lesbian group, Lesbos, in
1977, within the first alliance of feminist groups, the National Coalition of
Women. Several feminists in the Coalition, however, told us informally not
to propose creating the group in the coalition because Mexico was not pre­
pared for it; because if society already strongly attacked feminists - even
labeling them 'lesbians' - then Lesbos's presence would harm the feminist
movement. That's why we created the group outside the coalition though
we continued working with it on a personal basis." 5
In the 1980s activists routinely confronted dismissal of their concerns
as divisive, dangerous, or secondary within left-leaning feminist coalitions
that gradually began turning their attention to the state. Though the Na­
tional Front for the Liberation and Rights of Women, for instance, per­
mitted Oikabeth and Lambda to join after heated debate, prompting the
exit of two organizations, it did not incorporate sexual liberation into its
platform because of the divisions it sparked among its members (Dash­
ner Monk 1994). Assessing its own participation in the feminist coalition,
which would lead an unprecedented though unsuccessful campaign to
support a P � M -sponsored bill to legalize abortion, Lambda's Committee
against Repression noted, "For a long time, we have kept our own demands
si lent and mobilized exclusively around campaigns that do not necessarily
me ntion lesbians and homosexuals. This error is no news, as the Group's
Feminist Work Committee has also referred to it."6
Le sbian feminists made this marginalization a central dispute at the
first Conference of Latin American and Caribbean Lesbians and the fourth
Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Conference, both held in Mexico
i n 1987. In 1990 they presented documents challenging persistent hetero­
sexist attitudes in the feminist movement at the founding conference of the
Federa l District Feminist Coordinating Board. The Board had begun mobi­
li zi ng to elect women and press a feminist agenda in the following year's
el ect ion, now with heightened expectations of the electoral game in the
Wa ke of ,C uauhtemoc Cirdenas's recent blow to PRJ hegemony? The three
c e n tral planks adopted by the feminist coa l ition reflected a major break­
t hrough: voluntary motherhood, combating violence against women, and
152 Pathways

free sexual option ( Hinojosa 1998). Symbolically, if not always in practice,

the move marked the new priority oflesbian feminists' concerns within the
broader feminist movement's state-directed agenda.
This alliance proved particularly important in light of the higher barriers
to entry into the legislative field. In this regard, feminists offered party
actors a larger and more visible constituency and a certain cover fro m
the stigma attached to LGBT identities. Its importance was clearly dem­
onstrated in the Campaign for Women's Access to Justice, but that cam­
paign too built on earlier precedents. In 1989, after a scandal implicated
members of the personal escort of a top-ranking official with the Attorney
General's Office in nineteen cases of rape, the Chamber of Deputies Justice
Commission called a public forum on sex crimes, where over one hundred
representatives of Civil society, including gay and lesbian activists, testified.
Several proposals made at the session were implemented, first through
executive decree and then through the efforts of a special multiparty com­
mission, which some point to as the first time Mexican congresswomen
mobilized along gender lines (Gonzalez Ascencio 1993-94) . These changes
included increased penalties for rape, the elimination of references to
women's "chastity and honor" in stipulations on sexual assault (estupro),
and the substitution of "sexual abuse" for "assault on decency" (atentado
al pudor) in the criminal code (Gonzalez Ascencio 1993-94; Azzolini 1991;
Juarez Palafox 1989).
Not long after that effort, the assembly in Mexico City instituted a series
of reforms in 1992-93, including the creation of a Human Rights Com­
mission and the replacement of the Police and Good Governance Bylaws,
which regulate police conduct, with a new document that stipulated that
no one could be persecuted on the basis of sexual orientation, among other
categories, establishing the first such protection in the country. These
efforts were in part a response to Operativo Union, yet another series of
massive police raids targeting youth and other so-called marginal popu­
lations in the city.8 I spoke with the former president of the P R O , Amalia
Garcia, who, as chairwoman of the assembly's Public Safety Commission
had spearheaded that effort and the earlier campaign in the Chamber of
Deputies. She recalled that several groups had contacted her about these
raids, which were quite widespread at the time: "There were a lot of police
involved. In truth, it was a policy by the capital police themselves, the au­
thorities. They promoted them and saw them as a kind of duty. They were
also linked to corruption and extortion." The inclusion of "sexual orien­
tation" sparked "enormous controversy" in the assembly. In the end, she
directly and repeatedly pressed Federal District Regent Manuel Camach o
Solis on this point, who ultimately allowed the change.9
Significantly, in both of these campaigns activists were able to pres s
a legislative agenda, albeit a limited one, even before the erosion of PR I
 Life at the Margins 153

h egemony. They did so through a network of leftist opposition parties

a nd sectors of civil society, particularly feminists, acting, as Garcia would
l a ter frame it, like a broad pressure group collectively lobbying the ruling
p a rty.10 In this regard the Campaign for Women's Access to Justice merely
extended an existing strategy developed in the shadows of the P R I .
The significance o f this articulation with the feminist movement in
p ssing LGBT legislative proposals has also been reflected in the cen­
re
tral role played by lesbian feminists elected to legislative office. In 1997
Patria Jimenez was elected the first openly lesbian federal deputy in Latin
America, obtaining a favorable spot on the P R D candidate lists through its
electoral alliance with her own party, the P RT. Among her selling points as
an external candidate was that she herself was seen to embody this kind
of coalitional politics, as Garcia recalled: "When we proposed Patria, I was
the alliance secretary of the National Executive Committee, and when we
had to make a decision about external candidates, I thought that she com­
bined a number of qualities . . . . It was important that it be Patria for those
characteristics: that she was from the left, that she was a woman, and that
she represented the lesbian movement." 11
In 2000 another lesbian activist, Enoe Uranga, was elected deputy to the
A L D F, running with the recently created Social Democratic Party ( P D S ) ,
which had made feminism and sexual diversity the centerpiece o f its
campaign and launched several "sexual diversity" candidates throughout
the country. The party's embrace of gender and sexuality stemmed from
its electoral alliance with Diversa, a feminist political association, which
included an LGBT collective, established by Patricia Mercado, herself a
former head of the P RT women's section. 1 2 For the party as a whole, which
ran (unsuccessfully) in the hope of garnering the 2 percent of the vote
needed to obtain its legal registration, the agenda once again involved ap­
peals to modernity, specifically the need to distinguish itself as a "modern"
leftist party from the mass-based P R D , as Mercado recalls: "A campaign
with this kind of topic is really a proposal by a modern left, which is just
like the others if it ignores these issues. It's this kind of topic that distin­
g uis hes one left from another." 1 3 Uranga's election through this alliance
again reflected the extent to which important sectors of the feminist move­
ment had incorporated sexual diversity as a priority concern in their state­
dire cted agenda, opening discrete doorways into the legislative field.
The kind of coalitional politics that have come to characterize LGBT
leg islative activism in Mexico goes beyond an articulation with feminists.
As in Brazil, the H IV/AI DS epidemic transformed activists' relationship
wit h the state, though in somewhat different ways. In Mexico too initial
repo rts often read the epidemic through narratives of economic develop­
ment, as an illness of the First World. In 1985, for example, the president
of the Mexican Medical Association reassured the public that the virus
154 Pathways

would cause less damage in Mexico than in developed countries like the
United States because the population's greater exposure to diseases had
increased its "natural defenses." That same year, drawing on stigmatiz­
ing transnational discourses locating the illness within clearly bounded
"high-risk groups," a doctor at the General Hospital in Mexico City echoed,
"There is nothing to worry about. The Mexican population does not belong
to the high-risk groups [and] has practically no chance of contracting the
infection" (quoted in Mejia 1988 : 31-32) . For people (once again) inscribed
outside the boundaries of nation, the public response often involved call s
for containment of potentially dangerous populations. In 1985 in Mexico
City, for example, the director of infectious diseases of the Secretariat of
Health announced an emergency plan to prevent the virus's spread in the
Zona Rosa and the principal tourist sites in the nation, involving "severe
measures of hygiene" targeting gay venues and "submitting homosexuals
to medical studies." Later that year Health Secretary Guillermo Sober6n
Acevedo admitted that in some cities, such as Ciudad Juarez, controlling
A I D S had become a pretext for raids to round up homosexuals (Mejia
1988 : 33-34) .
I f the epidemic reinforced stigmatization and prompted incidents of
state repression, the purportedly politically neutral frame of public health
also opened limited opportunities for gay activists to articulate linkages
with the state. In 1987 the Grupo Orgullo Homosexual de Liberaci6n
(GO H L) of Guadalajara organized a conference on A I D S that included the
participation of the Jalisco state government's director of medical services,
the first time a state official attended an event organized by the movement.
That same year G O H L activists participated in a round-table discussion
organized by the P R J , the first time the ruling party had extended such
an invitation (Navarro Ballesteros 1988). Also that year activists in Mexico
City were invited to testify on reforms of the General Health Law, which,
among other measures, would establish the parameters for the National
A I D S Council; it was the first time the federal Congress had opened su ch a
space. 1 4
In Mexico, as in Brazil, as I elaborate in the next chapter, the impact
of the epidemic on activists' relations with the state has been more im­
portant in opening a technocratic alternative to political part ies throu gh
health sector bureaucracie s than in opening doorways into legisla tu res .
This said, given an LG BT movement with fewer resources than Brazil's an d
facing higher barriers of entry into the state, groups mobilizing primarily
around the banners of H IV/A I D S prevention and sexual health have also
had a higher profile in efforts to press a "sexual diversity" agenda. With in
the Campaign for Women's Access to Justice, for instance, the organizat io n
that spearheaded the discussion on sexuality, introducing antidiscrimina­
tion as a priority and pressing strongly for civil unions was Letra s, an N G O
 Life at the Margins 155

th at itself reflects this history of cross-sectoral activism. Founded in 1990

by the A I DS activist Francisco Galvan, initially as the monthly supplement
Sociedad y Sida in the newspaper El Nacional, the project drew on a coterie
of journalists participating in efforts to democratize the country's state­
aligned media and was strongly backed by noted leftist intellectuals such
as Carlos Monsivais. In 1995 the supplement moved to the influential daily
La jornada, now rebaptized Letra s and reinstituted as an NGO. Among the
most active organizations in the country mobilizing around LGBT rights,
t he three S's referred to in its name -health (salud ), sexuality, and A I DS
(sida) - speak to its broader agenda and to how the banners of H IV/A I DS
prevention and sexual health have permitted articulations across social
sectors. In many places, particularly smaller towns and cities outside the
capital, groups mobilized around these banners are often the first, if not
the only voices discussing sexual rights. An activist with Xochiquetzal, the
first such organization established in Xalapa, Veracruz, explained:
[Our] discourse is more institutional. You don't hear us saying, "We, as gay
men, support gay and lesbian rights." It's not like that. It's "Xochiquetzal, as a
group promoting sexual and reproductive health and sexual and reproductive
rights, states - ." . . . For me, it's a different way of approaching the question,
like a human rights group declaring its support for indigenous rights and gay
and lesbian rights as well. . . . As a gay man, I think it's an important strategy,
as it lets you open spaces that would otherwise be much more difficult to
enter. . . . But also, personally, I'm interested in questions of sexual and repro­
ductive health that go beyond the question of being gay or not. 1 5

More broadly a similar strategy has involved the creation and deploy­
ment of cross-sectoral networks, such as D E MYSEX (the Democracy and
Sexuality Network), founded in 1996 initially to work in the area of sex
education, which would bring together over 250 groups in 22 states (in­
cluding the Federal District) . The National Coordinator of D E MYSEX, Jose
Aguilar, explained how it works: "If there's a problem in the area of abor­
ti on, the sex education groups come forward, the H IV/A I D S groups come
forward; and we're all there. If there's a problem around sexual diversity,
the women's groups come forward, the sexual education groups come for­
ward. That's the idea: to strengthen everyone without each losing her or his
sp eci ficity." 16 In short, largely out of necessity to press open a state more
i nu red to appeals by civil society than Brazil's, activists have made pooling
forces a practice that seems to buck predi c t ion s that liberalism will splinter
representation into narrowly identitarian frames. One might imagine that
such a coalitional politics could be sustained under conditions of greater
o p en ne!\s, though without a critical engagement, as I elaborate below, ac­
cess does seem to foster atomization.
156 Pathways

Ma Non Troppo: Con testing Stigma in the Legislative Field

If, on the margins of the hegemonic party system, LG BT activists were able
to craft alliances that facilitated access into the legislative field, contest­
ing the boundaries of representation once inside required gaining broader
support and overcoming opposition. By the time legislative activism rose to
the top of the movement's agenda in the late 1990s, opposition to antidis­
crimination stipulations based on sexual orientation - against the trans­
national backdrop of an evolving construction of sexual rights - had be­
come increasingly difficult to sustain, even by the PAN, despite its religious
base, in light of the electoral imperatives of a mass-based, well-disciplined
party. The story of civil unions, which entered legislative debate at about
the same time, has been quite different, encountering stiff opposition, not
only from opponents but from purported allies, echoing developments in
Brazil. For militants with all the major parties, the demand implied a bal­
ancing act between representing a stigmatized group perceived to carry
electoral costs and facing the counterstigmatizing force of charges of illib­
eralism, intolerance, or backwardness.
Both issues were raised at the first Legislative Forum on Sexual Diver­
sity and Human Rights in 1998, an event organized by P R O Deputy David
Sanchez Camacho that brought together over seventy organizations, in­
cluding not only LGBT groups but A I DS N GOs, human rights groups, and
feminist organizationsP After the forum the Campaign for Women's Ac­
cess to Justice introduced both demands into formal legislative debate, as
the A L O F took up the task of producing new criminal and civil codes for
Mexico City. The campaign was launched after a few feminist activists,
initially called by the Federal District government's Women's Program to
discuss possible proposals for the criminal code, called on other organi­
zations to reach a comprehensive proposal for the entire code. The coali­
tion also established five priority areas: voluntary motherhood, victim's
rights, the rights of children and adolescents, combating domestic vio­
lence, and antidiscrimination, the last introduced subsequently by Letra s,
which played a leading role in the campaign. Throughout the proceedings
activists met with lawmakers across party lines, but particularly with the
P R O , given its absolute majority in the assembly. Antidiscrimination was
clearly not the most salient matter on the agenda and so passed with lim­
ited opposition. Instead, panista lawmakers, the Church, and conserva­
tive groups such as Pro-Life focused opposition on abortion, which PRO
lawmakers themselves preferred to avoid so close to the 2000 election .
Campaign activists ultimately reached an informal agreement with P R O
lawmakers t o delay the question o f abortion until after the election for the
sake of moving forward in the other areas.18
In light of my discussion in chapter 4 on Brazil's religious lawmakers, it
 Life at the Margins 157

is wo rth addressing the position of the PAN in more detail, given its infor­
rn a l ti es to religious and conservative groups. I spoke with Margarita Zavala

s e v e ral years before she became First Lady of Mexico when her husband,
Fe l i pe Calderon, won his hotly contested election to the presidency in 2006.
1 asked her about her term as PAN 's secretary for the political promotion
of women and the party's position on sexual diversity. "It [sexual diversity]
ha sn't been discussed except that we obviously oppose discrimination in
ge neral,'' she told me, suggesting the extent to which antidiscrimination
ha d become commonplace across party lines, at least in public discourse.
S h e also recalled a fairly unusual meeting with activists to discuss LGBT
issues organized by her predecessor in the secretariat, attended by about
twe nty party militants: "The idea was to listen . . . . It was questions, all of
our questions - that was the agreement we made -we asked them in order
to obtain information, to see what they thought. And we were not going to
introduce our personal convictions. We were not going to discuss them, or
to treat someone one way or another. And I think it was a good meeting,
because ultimately one governs for everyone . . . . I did feel that that there
was a lack of clarity from activists; that one was for marriage and another
against it. There was no clarity in what they proposed." Asked whether the
PAN would support civil unions, she suggested that there were other pri­
orities and that this point would be divisive.19
In the context of the reform proceedings in the A L D F, the PAN 's female
deputies also organized a meeting with activists, as one of them recalled:
We had never considered - because the party is not interested in sexual pref­
erence -we had never considered gays, lesbians, and homosexuals. So we
said, fine, we have to say that they are people too and deserve respect without
demanding a certain sexual preference to enter a given establishment . . . .
[While the PAN did not take an official position on antidiscrimination as a
party] it did establish a position whereby all the legislators had to address
the issue, and no one was scandalized. As usual, they think that the issue is
going to scandalize us in the PAN ; that we're moralist, prudish, or God knows
what.2°

Again echoing a fairly broad consensus on antidiscrimination at the level

o f p ublic discourse, the added qualification that the party is often misper­
ceived as prudish or backward - reiterated by most PAN members with
who m I spoke - arguably speaks to informal norms regulating, if nothing
else, the "presentation of ( partisan) self" in Mexico and thus to the insti­
tutionalization of audience calculations.
Earlier I noted existing tensions within the PAN between electoral im­
peratives -1nd the demands of its religious and socially conservative sectors,
in a sense between an expressive and a strategic logic of representation
( Kitschelt 1989). In this regard the reiterated concern over being mistaken
158 Pathways

as prudish or backward speaks to the effectiveness of the counterstigma­

tizing frames routinely deployed against panistas by their political oppo­
nents, reinforced by the electoral imperatives facing a large and disciplined
party seeking to appeal to a broad cross-section of voters. Unlike Brazil's
religious lawmakers, with their tailored appeals to their bailiwicks, the re­
sult is a certain reticence to engage publicly in explicitly religious or homo­
phobic discourse in statecraft. This is by no means to suggest that the PAN
is a champion of LGBT rights. Indeed with the erosion of the PRo's abso­
lute majority in the A L D F in 2000, a strengthened PAN tried to backtrack
on several stipulations in the new criminal code, including the specific
categories in the antidiscrimination law, an effort that quietly failed.21 I do
suggest, however, that to the extent that informal norms regulating lan­
guage and thus practice within the legislative field matter, these tensions
may open surprising opportunities for activists.
A case in point is the country's second state law banning discrimination
based on sexual orientation, adopted in 2001 in Aguascalientes. Surpris­
ingly the law was passed in a state where the PAN held the governorship
and sixteen of the twenty-seven seats in the legislature. It was not that
PAN politicians were particularly amenable to demands by LGBT activists.
Rather, the initiative was passed in the wake of a controversy involving
statements by a municipal official in the state capital that elicited wide­
spread national protests, not only prompting the demand but magnifying
its salience to state officials.22 The root of the controversy was a sign placed
at the entrance of local public baths banning the entry of dogs and homo­
sexuals. The controversy reached panista municipal authorities when the
municipal regulations director stated that the city had authorized the sign,
something he later denied, but not without adding that were he heading
the government, he would fire any homosexual to protect morals and good
customs.23 The ensuing outcry involved local LGBT and A I D S groups and
activists, intellectuals, and journalists at the national level, reflecting a re­
markable ability to mobilize broad networks effectively in the deployment
of counterstigmatizing frames. In response the mayor, the governor, and
even PAN President Luis Felipe Bravo Mena distanced themselves from the
official's statements. Church leaders also chimed in on the debate. The
spokesman for the Aguascalientes Diocese explained that he supported
the ban on homosexuals but thought the sign "inopportune" because it
stigmatized and politicized the Church and the PAN .2 4 The controversy
eventually led to meetings between local activists and municipal and state
officials and ultimately to the state law's passage under the unlikely aus­
pices of the PAN . The public face presented in the legislative field, however,
did not automatically translate into backstage practice. Despite the law,
or perhaps because of it, authorities responded with a series of sweep-
 Life at the Margins 159

in g raids of gay bars in the state capital, arresting a number of people on

ch a rges of prostitution.25
At the federal level Vicente Fox expressed his support for an antidis­
cr i mination law that included sexual preferences, among other categories,
d urin g his campaign and at his inauguration. The topic had become par­
ti c ularly salient during the electoral campaign after the performance of
th e PDS candidate Gilberto Rincon Gallardo in the first presidential de­
ba te, which highlighted questions of discrimination, gender, and sexu­
ality and received widespread press coverage. Fox appointed Gallardo to
hea d the Citizens Commission on Studies against Discrimination to pro­
po se a federal law.26 The first significant change at the federal level, how­
ever, occurred at the constitutional level, before the commission intro­
duced its proposal. In closed-door meetings in the Senate to approve a
reform of the country's laws on indigenous communities - an attempt to
push through measures in response to the San Andres Agreements in the
Chiapas conflict, ultimately repudiated by the Zapatista National Libera­
tion Army ( E Z LN ) - Senator Leticia Ochoa ( P R D ) proposed the introduc­
tion of "sexual orientation" as well as a stipulation that the state should
take steps to enforce antidiscrimination, basing her argument on the presi­
dential commission's work and international standards. Speaking for the
PAN , Senate President Diego Fernandez de Cevallos rejected the proposal,
arguing that the government should not "promote" conduct that many
find objectionable; presumably referring to homosexuality, not tolerance.
As a result Mexico has the curious distinction of having perhaps the only
national charter in the world to protect its citizens on the basis of their
(half-spoken) "preferences."27 Such hesitation behind closed doors was
not repeated when the commission's proposed federal law was introduced
into open debate. In 2003 the Chamber of Deputies approved the antidis­
crimination law unanimously, heralded by representatives from all parties
as a significant step in the consolidation of Mexico's democratic political
cu lture.
If in the context of the country's institutional arrangement after the ero­
sion ofpR J hegemony and of evolving transnational norms supporting anti­
discrimination, opposition on this point has been relatively constrained;
the same has not been true of civil unions. This demand too was first raised
by the Campaign for Women's Access to Justice, coming to occupy a simi­
lar place in debates on the civil code as that of abortion in debates on the
criminal code. Specifically campaign activists sought to change the cate­
gory "concubinage" in the existing code to "de facto unions" and to leave
th e terminology gender-neutral. In light of impending elections, however,
the P R D l�adership in the A L D F refused even to introduce such a proposal
fo rmally.
160 Pathways

In 2001 Enoe Uranga introduced a bill on "cohabitation societies." While

generally resorting to dissimulated tactics, PAN opposition to the bill was
adamant. Prior to a scheduled vote in a special session in July 2002, PAN
deputies organized a press conference for the Families Network, where
representatives of conservative groups, including Pro-Life and the Na­
tional Feminine Civic Association, repudiated the bill. One PAN deputy at
the conference rejected the creation of alternatives to marriage that carry
"traces of a deviant pathology." While denying that any Church lobbying
had taken place on the matter, which would be illegal in Mexico, another
PAN deputy expressed his party's respect for the statements made against
the bill by Mexico City's conservative cardinal Norberta Rivera "on a per­
sonal basis."28 In the end, all the parties agreed that the bill was ready to be
put to a vote in a special session/9 but at the last minute, in a clear move
to oppose the bill without doing so on the record, the PAN introduced a
motion to suspend the vote on technical rather than substantive grounds,
which was narrowly approved by thirty-one votes to thirty. Beyond the
technical objections raised by the PAN that day, Uranga assessed the dis­
simulated nature of its opposition more broadly:
The PAN is very smart in how it conducts its politics. The PAN opposes [the
bill) but offers no arguments. You can trace the opposition to cohabitation
societies, and the most backward ones are always from the P R J . The PAN has
not appeared with us in any televised debate except one, at the last minute.
And, you will see, there is no substantive discourse; no argument. They do
not engage in debate. What the PAN wants is to vote against it but to go
unnoticed, without taking a position on the topic because it fears the youth
vote. So they are clearly against us but they will clearly not discuss it. The word
"homosexual" does not even pass their lips.30

In preparing for the session, it should be noted, supporters of the bill

called on the P R J leadership in the A L O F to allow the party's deputies, who
were divided on the bill, to vote their conscience while seeking enforce­
ment of party discipline by PRO leaders, reflecting some skepticism regard­
ing their purported ally. Nor was this skepticism unfounded. In another
effort to derail the proposal without opposing it publicly, P R O lawmakers
began quietly fleeing the chamber minutes before the debate. While activ­
ists had packed the room with allies, including intellectuals of influence in
the party, literally to block their exit, three P R O lawmakers did manage to
escape. Hence while those remaining opposed the PAN motion, the votes
fell one short of those needed to defeat it. For its part, the P R J closed ranks
in support of the motion, with one defection.31
The PRo's contradictory stance in these early proceedings reflected
the imperative seen by some in the party to present a public face that, to
borrow a phrase, is "progressive m a non troppo," particularly in light of
 Life at the Margins 161

t h e presidential aspirations of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who was

t h e m ayor of Mexico City at that time. Stressing the role of party currents
li n ked to Lopez Obrador, Uranga recalled, "The Federal District govern­
m en t placed strong impediments to achieving the law. There have been
exp licit requests by the P R O not to present the law for a vote." 32 Nor was
th is the last time the P R O helped block the bill through dissimulated tac­
ti c s. On the last day of legislative sessions in April 2003, P R O lawmakers
h elp ed derail another vote, again fleeing minutes before with PAN and P R I
co lleag ues t o undermine a quorum.33 And in the following legislature the
pa rty's reticence emerged once more. In December 2003, shortly before
another scheduled vote, Lopez Obrador stepped directly into the fray in
a move that divided the party, arguing that the bill was too important for
the legislature and should be put to a popular referendum, a move later
echoed by the party's leader in the assembly, effectively blocking the bill
behind the public face of direct democracy.34
In November 2006, however- not long after Lopez Obrador's narrow
and hotly disputed defeat and now absent the electoral calculations that
had overtaken his party - the proposal was finally approved in a new
legislature in a vote of forty-three to seventeen, with five abstentions. All
panista deputies opposed the bill, after another motion they introduced
to suspend the vote, again on technical grounds, was defeated. Support­
ing the proposal were deputies with the Social Democratic Parliamentary
Coalition (of small left parties), thirty-three of the thirty-four P R O majority
present (with one abstention), and the four remaining deputies with the
considerably debilitated P R I . In light of the broader theoretical concerns
of this book, it is perhaps worth mentioning that activists' lobbying efforts
had extended to the international left, including contacts with Socialist
International officials in order to press the P R I and PRO, both members,
to support the law.35
Given the historic weight of the former ruling party, which first included
a plank on respect for sexual diversity and protections on the basis of
sexual preference in its platform in 2000, it is worth considering the roots
of this position and the extent to which it has translated into legislative
action. Interestingly, despite LGBT activists' relative marginalization from
the elections in 1988, resulting changes in the party paved the way for
these inroads over a decade later. The Cardenista challenge that year shook
the party's foundations, prompting its leaders to institute a number of re­
forms to shore up sectors of the public they saw as threatened. Central to
these efforts was a reorganization of the National Confederation of Popu­
lar Organizations (C N O P ) , which, with the worker and peasant sections,
was one o.f the ruling party's three main institutions of sectoral representa­
ti on. Angelica Luna y Parra, a party leader in charge of this reorganization,
recalls:
162 Pathways

When Luis Donaldo Colosio arrived in the P R I [as party president] in 1988,
he invited me to participate in the party's popular sector with a very clear
mission: how could we link, renew, and reinvigorate the party's relationship
with the [sector of] society without a party. We created a plan initially called
"social movement support." . . . The principal objective was to link the party to
society, to outside social movements, to their causes, and to take them up as a
political responsibility. This i mplied everything from our basic documents to
renewing the platform, particularly from the legislative standpoint, which re­
quires contact with society, especially on all these topics we handle . . . which
I call the minor major issues?6

Among the transformations in the C N O P was the creation of a Vulnerable

Groups Secretariat, designed to incorporate, to say the least, an eclect ic
array of social sectors, including people with disabilities, people with H IV 1
A I D S , street children, senior citizens, and sex workers. It is perhaps worth
noting the parallel use of the "vulnerable groups" category in transnational
discourse to refer to a similar array of marginalized populations, including
people with H I V, and how an initial concern with H IV I A I D S paved the way
for the P R J 's subsequent discussions on sexual diversity.
It was within this broader rubric of "vulnerable groups" that the party
first formally addressed the topic. The incorporation of sexual diversity
in the electoral platform of 2000 was arranged by the feminist ally Marta
de Ia Lama, who had organized a "vulnerable groups" table, inviting A I DS
and gay activists to participate. Notably no major party outside the left in
Brazil has taken such a step. The P R J 's support, however, is limited and
likewise conditioned by the management of stigma. One of the few priistas
to support the movement's efforts openly, de Ia Lama framed the party 's
position on gender issues more broadly: "It's curious. I always say that the
PRD, for instance, says more than it does and that we do more than we say."
Regarding sexual diversity in particular, she noted, "If you ask them [th e
P R I ] , they will not say they are against it, but they also won't come out an d
say they are supportive.'' 37 A party official linked to the Vulnerable Groups
Secretariat put it more bluntly: "With gays and sex workers, the party tri ed
to bring them in, but under wraps . . . . People don't accept them yet. So if
the PRJ sides with gays, then the P R J is a party of fags [putos ] . And instead
of winning, it loses. Therefore in order not to have the gays on our back
either, it calls on them to hold discussions, but under the table and very
discretely." 38
I n terms of legislative action, activists see the party as divided. In fluen­
tial party leaders such as Luna y Parra are regarded as potential allies in a
party with conservative tendencies. Still, beyond the support for cohab ita­
tion societies by the few remaining P R J deputies in Mexico City, it is wo rth
noting that the party introduced the second such proposal approve d i n
 Life at the Margins 163

the coun try, in the northern state of Coahuila, in November 2006, where
i t s til l h eld the governorship and an absolute majority in the legislature.
The par ty's support for the bill in part reflected the strong backing by the
gove r n o r and perhaps the fact that its principal opposition in the state has
e m e rge d on the right.39

T H E C I RC U LAT I O N OF D I S C O U R S E S :
COAL I T I O N S AN D C O L L E CT IVE I D E N T I T I E S

C o mpared t o Brazil, therefore, higher institutionalized barriers t o entry

in to the legislative field, even with the erosion of P R J hegemony, are re­
fl ec te d in a later and more limited production of legislation and in activ­
ists' gre ater reliance on broad coalitions with other sectors of civil society
to press open more resistant doorways. Again, however, activists did not
enter the field empty-handed but with a repertoire of discursive strategies
to contest the boundaries of representation demarcated by stigma. As in
Brazil, the terms of entry were negotiated, the language predetermined in
important ways, and required the crafting of a collective political identity
on which to base demands. While drawing on a shared liberal paradigm,
however, the prevailing frames deployed by activists in Mexico were not
identical to those employed in Brazil, but resonated with the particularities
of Mexico's history and social context, including the nature of the coali­
tions themselves. In other words, as Appadurai (1996) has argued, while
the master narratives of liberal modernity have gained transnational force
and maintain a certain internal coherence, this coherence has evolved and
loosened across national boundaries as different keywords have gained
particular salience in different contexts.
"How much fear; how much fear of the future and of hope; how much
fear, ulti mately, of love; how much Church there is in this assembly, in this
precinct where the Constitution separated Church and State; beliefs and
fears against reason and human rights," began Enoe Uranga when contest­
i ng the first effort to derail a vote on cohabitation societies, framing the
attack on secularism as one on the rule of law, modernity, and universal
hu man rights.40 Just as the discourse of full citizenship gained a particular
sa lie nce i n Brazil in the context of the constituent assembly of 1987-88 and
�as been broadly adopted and expanded by activists since then, activists
�n Mexico have consistently raised the banner of the secular state, with
tt s i nj u nction to purge religious particularism from statecraft. Two points
ab out the discourse's significance are worth noting.
Fi rst, of course, the frame resonates strongly with the country's history of
�nti c lericalis!D and has gained particular salience with the Church's grow­
tog p olitical involvement since the 1990s and the political ascent of the
PA N . While all three major parties have in one way or another courted the
164 Pathways

Church, the P R I and the P R D have often raised the banner of secularism
against the current ruling party, suggesting a promising discursive bridge.
After consulting representatives of the government and civil society, the
U N High Commissioner on Human Rights in Mexico underscored the cen­
tral importance of this frame in a report published in 2003 : "The greatest
concerns expressed regarded the enforcement and preservation of the lay
state, which has been fundamental for the advances attained by Mexican
women in the areas of sexual and reproductive rights; of their right to a
free, lay, and compulsory education ; of the right to work, equal liberti es,
and family rights; and to a life without violence."41
In contrast, while activists in Brazil have, of course, raised questions
challenging the routine appeals to the Bible in statecraft, this discourse
by no means carries the same weight or mobilizing capacity as it does
in Mexico, particularly in building bridges to potential party allies. Then
chairman of the Chamber of Deputies Human Rights Commission, Marcos
Rolim (Workers Party, Rio Grande do Sui) , attributed the discourse's lack
of resonance in the legislature to the historic permeability of the public­
private divide and the hegemonic weight of religious forces in defining the
terms of public debate in the country:
The notion of a republic is a recent idea in Brazil. We never consolidated a
typically republican idea. The very incidence of corruption in Brazil, for in­
stance, is very much linked to the patrimonial character of the Brazilian state,
in which people administer the public arena as if it were something private,
and this idea of a lay state never took root in the popular consciousness . . . . In
the political world, there is fear of the Church's reaction. The Catholic Church
is very strong, and evangelical churches are growing a lot now. So politicians
are frightened of churches' reactions. They are afraid that taking such a stance
could imply electoral costs.42

Second, if the resonance of the frame is clearly rooted in Mexico's history

of church-state separation, it also provides a discursive trope that perm its
the articulation of various sectors. In light of recent encroachments on
secularism, for instance, activists established the Front to Strengthen Lay
Culture to speak in the name of over two hundred organizations nation­
wide.43 In this regard, growing out of a history of coalition building to
enter a more hermetic legislative field, the banner of secularism also offers
a basis for constructing collective political identities around questi ons of
gender and sexuality, writ large - in effect, a discursive extension of the p o­
litical alliances discussed above. Again, such constructions mark a notabl e
difference from the relatively well-bounded identitarian discourses pre­
vailing in legislative activism in Brazil.
Nor is the secular state the only basis for such collective identification .
A particularly telling development in the course of the movement is the
 Life at the Margins 165

wi de spread embrace of a discourse of sexual diversity precisely at the first

L eg islative Forum noted above. The lesbian activist Claudia Hinojosa,
i nvolved in its planning, recalls the decision to adopt the term and the
broader considerations behind it:
1 remember some flirting with a discourse on diversity when I returned from
the U.S. in 1998. I remember that they invited activists to the first forum. At
first, it was called the Forum against Discrimination for Sexual Orientation.
1 opposed the name - that's something else I don't like, that we use the term
"sexual orientation" to discuss homosexuality, a term taken from the manuals
of psychopathology. . . . We are beginning to use the language of "diversity"
in a globalized world in which diversity has become a cultural value. So you
bring it to the terrain of sexuality and start speaking of "sexual diversity" to
conceptualize and legitimize our sexual experience, although many still gravi­
tate to the paradigm of compulsory heterosexuality. In other words, hetero­
sexuality remains the norm, and the "diverse ones" are still the queers. The
challenge now is to continue decentering heterosexuality so that diversity
comprises everything.44

Several points might be made about these observations. First, "sexual

diversity" adapts a discourse from an evolving transnational repertoire
prevailing at a given moment, in this regard also reflecting the timing of
activists' entry into the legislative field. And, indeed, while early in my
fieldwork (1999-2002) it was a trope I heard everywhere in Mexico and
nowhere in Brazil - tellingly, for instance, a similar though smaller forum
was held in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies in 1999, under the banner
Seminar on Human Rights and Homosexual Citizenship - my return to
Brazil in 2006 found activists using it increasingly, though still not as much
and in different ways (see chapter 6).
While reflecting transnational developments, the greater weight and
ea rli er use of the trope in Mexico also speak to broader trends in the na­
tio nal polity and the movement's own trajectory. In terms of the broader
polity, "sexual diversity" builds on and resonates with a discursive frame
introduced into public debate by the indigenous movement, which fun­
damentally challenged long-standing official constructions of Mexico as a
mestizo nation, in the singular. Before addressing sexuality, for instance,
t he P R O included a section called "Equality in Diversity" in its 1993 pro­
gram, recognizing the country's multicultural and multilingual charac­
te r.45 The following year, Cardenas made a statement regarding respect
for diversity in "sexual preferences," religions, and cultures: the first time
a p residential candidate with a mass-based party alluded to the topic.46
T he inclu!lion of sexual preferences in the P R I platform is similarly framed
Within a broader call for tolerance of a plurality of cultural and sexual ex­
pressions.
166 Pathways

At the same time, the discourse also builds on a relatively strong current
within the movement itself that has rejected the construction of clea rly
bounded sexual identities and that can be traced to the Homosexual Revo­
lutionary Action Front ( F H A R ) . In an interview in 1993, when asked ab ou t
the role of the "gay community" in the broader political turn toward civil
and human rights in the country, for example, F HAR founder, Juan Jacobo
Hernandez, challenged the very existence of a "gay community" while re­
jecting the homosexualizing or heterosexualizing constructions of ide n­
tity in the singular that it implied, suggesting a greater fluidity and pl u­
rality in the sexual terrain: "Were we to articulate a proposal, it should
not be centered on homosexual exclusivity but on anyone's homosexual
life-experiences - not just those who identify as homosexual or gay - in
their right to exist and express themselves socially in a way that is accept­
able."47
Finally, strategically, like secularism, sexual diversity - in principle, a
frame that incorporates everyone - likewise permits the construction of
broad collective political identities that can be brought to bear on the
legislative field. In this regard, the contrast between such broad collective
frames and the more identitarian strategies prevailing in Brazil has also
been reflected in the substance of the principal laws on which debates on
civil unions have centered in each country. Delinking the notion of affec­
tive partnership not only from heterosexuality but from sexuality in gen­
eral, cohabitation societies are open not only to same-sex couples but to
any two people meeting certain requirements "who have a desire to share
a common life based on true ties of human solidarity, mutual understand­
ing, and affective atta c hment." Indeed, early drafts of the bill included a
second category permitting the incorporation of more than two people,
thus recognizing a much broader array of household structures outside
of traditional marriage, although the possibility was ultimately dropped
in negotiations with the P R I .4 8 When Federal Deputy Roberto Jefferson
introduced a similar alternative of "sol idarity pacts" in Brazil, in order, as
he put it, "to take sexuality out of the discussion," activists rejected it for
sacrificing LG BT visibility.49
Likewise, while LGBT activists in Mexico, as in Brazil, have spearheaded
legislative efforts on the matter, they also created the Citizens Cohabitation
Societies Network, comprised of over six hundred organizations, including
feminist and human rights groups, also counting on the collaboration of
intellectuals and academics to exert pressure.50 Again, this is not to suggest
that Brazilian activists lack allies. Prominent intellectuals, celebrities, an d
several organizations, including union confederations, human rights an d
feminist organizations, and A I o s N G O s, have issued statements in suppo rt
of registered civil partnerships, and the Feminist Research and Advisory
 Life at the Margins 167

Group ( C F E M EA ) , the country's principal feminist federal lobbying orga­

niz ation, has offered activists logistical support. 51 The principal difference
i nvolves the organic nature of these alliances and the collective political
i d entities structured around them, reflected in the proposals themselves.
H ence activists in Mexico framed their effort as a recognition of nontradi­
ti on al families, writ large, for instance citing figures from the National
Po pulation Council indicating that over 30 percent of the country's house­
h olds in 1997 were not comprised of nuclear families and that nearly 20
percent were headed by women. Beyond recognizing more expansive pos­
sib ilities of family formations and affective ties, such framing strategically
allows the articulation of various sectors around the demand.52
This said, while arguably offering a more inclusive counterpart to tra­
ditional constructions of family, cohabitation societies may amount to a
mere detour on the road to marriage, which, by eliminating heterosexual
privilege in family law, resonates more strongly with liberal master nar­
ratives of universal citizenship and equal access. I have argued that the
coalitional politics behind cohabitation societies in part responded to bar­
riers of entry into legislatures. Perhaps reflecting greater access over time,
while the activists I interviewed in my early fieldwork were all careful to
stress they had no interest in marriage, recent developments have put the
issue squarely on the agenda. In informal discussions, members of the P R D
Sexual Diversity Commission of the Federal District cited Spain's legal­
ization of same-sex marriage among the reasons for the shift, suggesting
both that stronger international precedent permitted activists to set their
sights higher and that "higher" means marriage. In 2006, the Commission
issued a list of demands that included the substitution of "two persons"
for "a man and a woman" in the definition of civil marriage.53 In 2008, P R D
deputies introduced a bill to this end in the A L D F, which passed in Decem­
ber 2009, in a vote of thirty-nine ( P R D and Workers Party) to twenty ( PAN ;
Mexican Green Ecological Party; and two priistas), with five abstentions
(P R I ) . The arduous debates on cohabitation societies undoubtedly paved
th e way for the relatively speedy passage of same-sex marriage, as did sup­
port by the new P R D Mayor Marcelo Ebrard.

F R O M N AT I O N A L TO S U B N AT I O N A L B O U N DA R I E S

A s in Brazil, the effective implementation o f antidiscrimination legislation

in Mexico has to date been so mewhat limited. The country's first such law,
in the Federal District, remained unused from its passage in 2000 through
20 02. In 2003 the first complaint was filed, involving class-based discrimi­
na tion (undoubtedly also reflecting a problematically individualizing re­
sp onse to �lass inequalities) . The number of cases grew to ten in 2004,
168 Pathways

twenty-nine in 2005, and forty-five in 2006. Although the numbers su g­

gest a growing societal awareness of the law over time, the fact that o n ly
eleven complaints have been filed involving sexual orientation betwee n
2000 and May 2007 and that none of these proceeded to trial undersco res
the limitations of a resource that for many remains out of reach. 54 By com ­
parison, in a survey conducted by the National Council for the Preventio n
of Discrimination ( C O NA P R E D ) , over 70 percent of respondents identi­
fied as homosexual indicated that they do not experience equal treatment
under the law, and 57 percent stated that they had experienced discrimina­
tion within the previous year.55 CONA P R E D itself was instituted under the
federal antidiscrimination law to disseminate information about existing
legislation and foster what several activists termed a "culture of denuncia­
tion" (cultura de denuncia), an effort to take laws off paper and pull the m
to the level of everyday life.
At the first Legislative Forum in Mexico City, Rafael Manrique and Juan
Jacobo Hernandez, both early leaders of the FHAR and its later offshoot,
Colectivo Sol, extended the argument to gay marriage: "We believe the
beneficiaries of any legislation in support of gay marriage will only bene­
fit a very small portion of homosexual men in the Federal District: those
whose gay identity is assumed openly by themselves, their families, and
their close social network; and even among these, many do not and will
never live with a partner, or they may have a partner without being inter­
ested in marriage; or they may be polygamous and therefore also uninter­
ested in marriage" (Hernandez and Manrique 1999 : 172) . A large body of
feminist literature has underscored the gendered nature and limitations
of purportedly neutral state institutions, including universal constructions
of citizenship ( Bickford 1999; Phillips 1996a, 1996b; Waylen 2ooo; Young
1995). While undoubtedly a step toward eliminating heterosexual privilege
from family law, civil unions too imply processes of exclusion, in a sense
generalizing a construction of the homosexual as a sexual subject tha t re­
flects a particular experience among multiple homosexualities.
I have suggeste� that these limitations are to a large extent set a priori,
conditioned by the discursive and structural constraints of the public
sphere. Given the positive rights associated with cohabitation societies and
the relatively low costs involved in access to them, it is perhaps not surpris­
ing that they have found a deeper expression in society than antidiscrim i­
nation legislation, activists' other principal demand. In a city with ove r
8.7 million residents, however, the numbers remain small. By 9 Novem ­
ber 2008, two years after their legalization, sn couples had entered such
unions, of which 55 percent were male couples; 42 percent, female couples ;
and 3 percent, couples of the opposite sex.56 It remains to be seen wheth er
the symbolic capital of marriage, or the greater rights it confers (including,
for instance, adoption) will elicit greater demand. Nonetheless, if, as I ar-
 Life at the Margins 169

gued earlier, racialized, gendered, regional, and class boundaries condition

bo th access to and the meaning of evolving transnational constructions
o f s exual rights in Brazil, it is not surprising that the same holds true in
M e xico, as Hernandez and Manrique suggested at the forum.
In this regard, their argument points more broadly to the possibility
o f sli ppage and even tensions between the rationalized sexual subjects
bein g formally constructed and represented in law and sexual experiences
and self-understandings at the level of everyday life. Again, a fairly exten­
sive anthropological literature on Mexico, Brazil, and elsewhere in Latin
A merica has underscored how the organization of identities, power, an d
desire in local sexual fields may depart substantially from transnational
sexual categories ass ociated with the project of modernity. Such differ­
ences are present both within and across particular locations, including
within Mexico City. But to get a sense of how organized collective action
might emerge outside the capital, I spent several weeks conducting re­
search in the state of Veracruz, which saw the emergence in the 1990s
of groups mobilizing around sexual rights in several cities, generally in
response to state repression. Veracruz is the third most populous federal
entity in the country after the state of Mexico and the Federal District.
With a large rural sector that permits the persistence of long-standing
practices of clientelism and graft, it remains a P R I stronghold, although
the PAN has been gaining strength in recent years, overtaking the P R D as
the main opposition party.
The anthropologists Patricia Ponce Jimenez, Martha Lopez Castro, and
Juan Fernando Rodriguez Ruiz (2004 : 116) describe a certain permissive­
ness at popular gatherings in Boca del Cielo, a fishing town on the coast of
Veracruz, in a passage worth citing at some length:
It is worth mentioning the attitude at gatherings attended by chatas - that
is how men who maintain homoerotic relations are called and call them­
selves there -as part of these spaces where everything is permitted, as they
are part of the collective game. They are moments of popular celebration, in
which socially established norms can be transgressed. The chotos are invited
to weddings, quinceiiera celebrations, or birthday parties; they are from Boca
del Cielo, they were born there, people know their parents and grandparents,
saw them grow up; they are friends who have a right to participate in the town
celebrations.
They share the evening with any family, and as the night proceeds, they
gradually become more effeminate. They start flirting with the sons, hus­
bands, and brothers of the women at the table. [The women] joke, laugh, and
concede their men in good humor; the husbands call the chatas by their femi­
nine name, send kisses, and promise nights of passion; the chatas, for their
part, make eye contact and send signals flirtatiously. The men and women
170 Pathways

from surrounding tables also participate. Today is a day of festivities, and

dreaming and playing collectively are permitted . . . .
Yes, the local society prefers the traditional hegemonic heterosexual model :
manjwoman, but it is also true that this kind of acceptance of homoerotic re­
lations speaks to a freer treatment of sexuality, of greater permissiveness of
the different, of a certain social participation of homoeroticism, and finally,
of a public opinion that is not governed by fixed and rigid norms, but more
flexible ones, which tend to adapt to different circumstances and to take into
account others' specific situation, expecting the same respect for their own
person and actions.

The authors describe a sexual field not free of asymmetric relations of

power structured around gender and sexuality but offering tactics of resis­
tance and negotiation that allow people a certain fluidity in navigating the
terrain, in part operating as "tacit subjects," through what remains unsaid
( Decena 2008).
Less has been written about women's sexualities in the state, but a lim­
ited literature suggests that while patriarchal gender roles do structure
sexual and social relations, there is a certain acceptance of practices that
break with hegemonic norms, rooted in an understanding of women's
sexuality as something natural (Cordova Plaza 2007) . Researchers in the
central and coastal regions of the state, for example, found a certain ac­
ceptance of married women having lovers, at times with their husband's
knowledge, and of exchanging sex for money or favors without entailing
the stigma of prostitution, conditioned on whether a husband is fulfilling
his duties as both economic provider and sexual partner and on whether
a woman is meeting a social ideal of a good mother ( Ponce Jimenez 1994,
2002; Cordova Plaza 1993, 2007) . In his research on male homosexualities
in coastal villages, Hernandez Meijueiro (1998) noted a certain tolerance
of female homosexualities as well, though again much more research is
needed in the area.
In this context, as a man from Boca del Cielo in his late teens explained,
this kind of politics of everyday life may seem preferable to contestation
through the formal mechanisms of political and civil s oc iety :
The homosexuals in Boca are not organized, we know that there is a group in
[the port of] Veracruz called Claroscuro that fights for their rights, but I, for
instance, am not interested in whether people find out what we are or not, I
don't care, but to go out and protest seems a lack of respect for the values and
principles of the family. . . . I think the homosexuals in Veracruz have every
right to organize . They want to feel accepted, but here, we are happy with the
little we have gained, we believe we are accepted by society. We do not have to
unite to fight for acceptance because of what I told you, they know us since we
were children, and they know who we are. There is a certain labeling [senala-
 Life at the Margins 171

mien to] . a certain rejection, but we can live our homosexuality without being
locked away or in a corner. . . . There's a certain tolerance. (quoted in Ponce
Jimenez, Lopez Castro, and Rodriguez Ruiz 1999 : 10-n)

Without transposing the problematic dichotomy between the changing

modern and the presumably static traditional onto the sexual field, we can
imagine a number of processes of hybridization, from market forces to mi­
gration flows, interweaving transnational sexual categories and discourses
through such local fields in different ways. State constructions of sexual
subjects and rights-based discourses by LGBT activists and political parties
comprise part of this much more complex terrain.
Juan Carlos Hernandez Meijueiro, the former director of Xochiquetzal
in Xalapa, Veracruz, described these changes in the fishing villages of the
state:
They told me that I was not a mayate or a chota. To them, chatas should be
feminine. If they're vestidas, all the better. . . . They would call us gays from
the city. We don't do things that way here. Here, if you're masculine, you get to
penetrate. You don't let them grab your ass. You get to give orders; you get to
beat the gay up because he didn't prepare your food . . . . So the concept of the
urban, modern gay - I would say North American and European- is breaking
a cultural equilibrium to which sexual diversity had adjusted. I'm not saying it
is good or bad. Breaking with machismo is good. Breaking with homophobia
is good. But at the same time it's breaking with tactics of resistance that at
least permitted bisexuality in adolescence. Now with the modern, that's not
allowed.57

Suggesting the possibility of a disconnect between formalized strategies

of contestation through social movements and a more informal politics of
everyday life, Meijueiro's observations bring into focus a debate surround­
ing the globalization of sexualities, which has challenged the embrace of
a transnational identity politics, often casting activists as agents of nor­
malization. Without denying the hegemonic place of transnational LG BT
identity categories in framing sexual politics in the public sphere, I would
underscore the importance of closer attention to its changin g structures.
Changes that may appear unrelated to the lived experience of sexuality in
daily life, such as the destabilization of political arrangements by greater
ele ctoral competition, can indirectly transform local sexual fields. In Vera­
cruz, I noticed that LGBT activism did not prosper in places where it found
n o resonance, and where it did find resonance, it was often mobilized de­
fe nsively by activists, around conjunctural circumstances in response to
state repression. In places where it did not consolidate, moreover, sexual
politics was often spearheaded by groups such as Xochiquetzal mobilizing
around H IV/A I DS and sexual health, which tend to be more attuned to
172 Pathways

the limits of hegemonic identity categories, as one activist with the group
explained:
We should not reproduce the strategies of the Federal District. In the South­
east [of Mexico], because of its significant rural areas, for example, gay culture
has not taken root. It exists in large cities. There is a gay culture in Xalapa,
but it does not include all of us in the state. There are many other ways to live
one's homosexuality in the state and the region, and it is important to recog­
nize that. When homosexual identity combines with indigenous identity, for
example, that does not happen in the Federal District, Monterrey or Guada­
lajara. Our cultural roots are different. For me, the cultural values around
sexuality of the Totonaca culture are very important. The sexual culture is
freer here than in other parts of the country. These are resources that we can
take advantage of in organizing to defend gay and lesbian rights. . . . They
are factors that favor this project, like an opportunity linked to the cultural
context. 58

An organized LGBT movement has nonetheless consolidated in the

state, beginning with the creation of Nuevo Lenguaje Siglo XXI in the Port
of Veracruz in 1992. The organization, comprised largely of middle-class
gay men, though subsequently including a few vestidas, began as a discus­
sion group. In 1994, after obtaining its legal registration, it began organiz­
ing gay and lesbian cultural weeks, confronting considerable opposition
by panista municipal authorities, religious sectors, and right-wing groups
(Brito 1995) .59 As in Mexico City, state constructions of sexual subjects
began intersecting with everyday life not as a result of activists' rights­
based claims makin g but with practices of state repression. Juan Carvajal, a
gay activist who participated in the organization of the cultural weeks and
later in the foundation ofClaroscuro Gay, also in the Port, in 1997, recalled
how the ascent of the PAN and a more competitive electoral arena dis­
rupted tacit understandings with state authorities: "There was an unsigned
agreement with the P R J , which is the party in power: you don't talk abo ut
me and I won't touch you. That's how the culture operated here." Against
the backdrop of increasingly visible homosocial spaces in the city - though
not confined to a commercial gay and lesbian enclave - the situation with
state authorities worsened after the election of Governor Patricio Chirinos
Calero ( P R J , 1992-98) , who had been politically attacked during the cam ­
paign with insinuations that he was homosexual :
When Patricio Chirinos Calero was [a gubernatorial] candidate, they con­
ducted a press campaign [against him] . Zamora Park is synonymous with
cruising here. It's known as a gay cruising area. So a local paper published a
cartoon of a "gay rally" in Zamora Park - something that did not exist at that
time - carrying signs saying ''All Patricios support Chirinos."60 . . . The man
 Life at the Margins 173

took the hit as a candidate without reacting, but once he became governor,
one of his first acts was to deploy a squadron of public security agents from
Zamora Park to the bus terminal with the pretext of fighting vandalism. Their
mission was to hit, harass, and jail anyone in the area after 10 p.m. You asked
me how the movement emerged here. That's how. It's these circumstances of
persecution, repression, and harassment. There were beatings, arrests, and
raids. This forced all these [homosocial] activities, which had been growing
a lot, to go underground. We also started getting word about how the PAN
operated in Monterrey, in Baja California, after coming to power in Yucatan,
and we started getting worried when the PAN began gaining strength. Patricio
Chirinos was hitting so hard, that many of us decided to leave. Some went
to Mexico City; others to Xalapa; I went to Tampico. I was there a few years
and returned for the last two years of the Chirinos administration. When I
returned, there was already a gay group called Nuevo Lenguaje Siglo XXI.6 1

Unlike in Mexico City, these practices of subjectification by the state

often blur the lines among homosexuals, vestidas, and sex workers, cre­
ating a common sexual landscape of stigmatized groups, as an activist
from the Port described: "Now what's curious is that I feel like there is a
lot of sleeping around in Veracruz. Everyone is screwing up to their ears.
But there's no consciousness about my position as a homosexual. In fact,
the word is taboo, because normally when you say 'homosexual; people
think travesti. A travesti who sells her body and works as a prostitute.
That's what people understand by homosexual. So a man who is willing to
go to bed with another man is not identified that way."62 This constitution
of sexual and gendered subjects, probably fostered by the greater public
visibility of vestidas and the territorialization of adjacent and overlapping
landscapes of dissident sexualities, has also been reflected in official dis­
course and action. Hence in 1998 the councilwoman in charge of health,
ecology, and public assistance in the city of Veracruz ( P R I ) discussed the
possibility of establishing a red light district to regulate the more than
eighteen hundred prostitutes and homosexuals she identified as residing
in the city.63 Similarly in 2001 newly elected panista mayors of the twin
cities ofVeracruz and Boca del Rio announced the Crusade to Clean Up the
Locality, the former declaring a "no-holds-barred war against homosexuals
and prostitutes" to combat the city's image of"immorality." Prior to taking
o ffice, Mayor Jose Ramon Gutierrez de Velasco of Veracruz had met with
rep resentatives of the National Union of Parents and Families, the Na­
tio nal Feminine Civic Association, the Legionnaires of Christ, the National
Manufacturers Association, and other conservative business and religious
groups, who demanded that he take action against "immoral" activities
in the city's tourist districts in order to improve its image. Discussing the
ca mpaign in an interview, Gutierrez de Velasco rejected the notion that
174 Pathways

he was prudish [mocha], explaining: "I consider myself a modern mayor.

If we extend tolerance to gay night clubs, it's because I'm open-minded." 64
The statement is noteworthy as it points to a process of normalization
that simultaneously sanctions certain dissident expressions of gender and
sexuality while repressing others. The driving forces in this case seem to
be an incipient "pink market" and the state's repressive apparatus. I n re­
sponse to the raids, vestidas, sex workers, and gay activists organized a
protest with over two hundred people who occupied the city hall, even­
tually forcing municipal authorities to the table and to halt the raids .65
Officials frequently justify such "clean-up" operations, often taking place
against a backdrop of routine arrangements of kickbacks and abuse be­
tween police officials and male and female sex workers, on the basis of
public health and AI os prevention. The most publicized cases involve PAN
officials, although such measures are not restricted to that party.
In 1998, for instance, PAN municipal officials in the small town of Car­
del issued a regulation instructing bars and nightclubs to deny service to
"homosexuals dressed as women," justifying the ban as a public health
measure to control prostitution, in turn prompting the creation of a group
called Orgullo Gay.66 Rafael Leon, the group's leader, recalled, "We had no
experience, but with certain documents we had -we had certain maga­
zines - that's more or less how we found out how to organize a gay move­
ment."67 The group held a series of meetings to plan a major protest for
May Day, which drew over 250 people: "Since [Cardell is on the route to
a major tourist point, people were very used to seeing gays here. Gays get
along with everyone here. So there was a great deal of solidarity. And with
these circumstances of not letting us into bars, people said, 'That's crazy,
why are they doing that?"' The May Day rally culminated with protesters
holding a sit-down strike in front of the municipal palace and blockading
the federal highway connecting Xalapa and the Port, ultimately forcing the
mayor to hold a public meeting and eventually to back down on enforcing
the regulation.68
Similarly in 1999 PAN officials in Cordoba launched an operation to
"clean Cordoba of the scourge," targeting sex workers and homosexuals.
The operation was sparked by publicized reports that three sex workers
had tested positive for H IV, prompting health officials in the city to an­
nounce the need to control "sex workers and homosexuals."69 One traves ti
sex worker caught up in the raids and subsequently involved in the mobi­
lization against police abuse recalled, "Since we were on the streets, eve ry­
thing, of course, came down on us. So they started arresting us and ask­
ing us for papers [periodic H IV test results, which, when required, are in
themselves a violation of Mexico's official norm on A I D S , which stipulates
that tests should be voluntary and confidential] . But even if we had papers,
they would still bother us. So we had to go stage a protest; we had to talk
 Life at the Margins 175

with an official with the Workers Party. They held me and some of my com­
panions for thirty-six hours, incommunicado and without the right to post
ba il."70 The conflict received statewide and national attention and sparked
t h e mobilization of a network of social movement actors in the areas of
A I o s , LG BT rights, and the rights of sex workers, who staged the Forum to
Combat AI os to call attention to what was happening. In the end a reso­
lu tion was reached not so much through this forum as through an infor­
mal arrangement between sex workers and besieged authorities revolving
around (illegal) mandatory H IV exams.71 Notably the initial contact with
the Workers Party also prompted an initiative to organize a gay group in
the city.72 The short-lived nature of this effort, while reflecting the difficul­
ties in sustaining mobilization, also arguably speaks to how transnational
LG BT identities privileged in the public sphere can be strategically appro­
priated and deployed around conjunctural circumstances in response to
state repression, even in places where their roots at the level of everyday
life may not be so deep. Perhaps not surprisingly, as these examples reflect,
official constructions lumping homosexual men, vestidas, sex workers, and
people with H IV/A I D S in a common landscape of sexual and gendered
stigma "at the margins of the public" have been countered by collective re­
sistance - no longer at the level of everyday life, but through mechanisms
of formal contestation - bringing these groups together. At the same time,
while there is one lesbian organization in the state, Fortaleza de Ia Luna,
which has established a home for seniors and a historical archive, lesbian
activism is generally a fairly weak presence in formal politics.
At the level of legislation, the priista governor of the state introduced a
new criminal code in 2002 that included an antidiscrimination stipulation
contemplating sexual orientation. Legislative activism had been put on the
agenda through the country's second Legislative Forum on Sexual Diver­
sity, held in the state assembly two years earlier and sponsored, remark­
ably, by the PAN.73 The substantive discussions at the forum also reflected
the composition of this alliance, focusing largely on antidiscrimination
and the regulation of sex work.74
These coalitions arguably represent a parallel though different kind of
al lia nce than those prevailing in Mexico City, while still falling under the
rubric of sexual diversity. According to Juan Carvajal, "That's something we
wanted to address: the topic of sex work within sexual diversity, precisely
be ca use by diversity, we mean not just preferences and identity but also
labor preference. That's why we included sex work, and also because it
was a priority at the time due to all the violations experienced by homo­
sexual sex workers, who joined forces with women sex workers to become
stronger.''7 � The converse of this close collaboration between sex workers,
vestidas, and A I D S and gay activists is the relative distancing from vestidas
that one finds in Mexico City on the part of a gay and lesbian movement
176 Pathways

which over the years has enjoyed a relatively greater degree of social tol­
erance. Even a few middle-class transgender activists with whom I spoke
emphasized the importance of combating the stigmatizing association
with sex work. One of the few activists in the capital working with trans
sex workers underscored the relative exclusion of their agenda from that
pressed by most gay and lesbian activists, the frequent exclusion of vesti­
das from gay bars and other venues in the city, and the lack of support on
the part ofthe movement's purported ally, the PRD, whose government has
itself conducted periodic raids targeting sex workers and is currently press­
ing for a "civics law" that would require periodic mandatory H I V testing of
sex workers, again in violation of Mexico's official norm on A I D S .76 While
the rubric of sexual diversity presumably encompasses all of these cate­
gories � a potential borne out by the variable constitution of these coali­
tions organizing under the banner - these differences also suggest that the
cohesiveness of these heterogeneous alliances might depend strongly on
access and on how many steps an identity falls from the dominant norm.

C O N C LU S I O N S

In 2006 a coalition o f groups united under the banner o f the Sexual­

Gendered Dissidence, framed as a challenge to the potentially commodi­
fying and depoliticizing implications of the new transnational valorization
of diversity. The coalition united radical student groups, polyamorists, ves­
tidas, and sex workers from various regions in solidarity with the Other
Campaign, Ia otra campana, called by Subcomandante Marcos. In a series
of campaign stops throughout the country, including meetings with rep­
resentatives of the Dissidence, Marcos, now running as Delegate Zero, re­
jected capitalis m , electoral politics, and all the major parties, including
the mass-based parliamentary expression of the left, the P R D , which until
shortly before its razor-thin and hotly contested loss to the PAN appeared
the odds-on favorite to win.77 Since appearing on the national stage in 1994
with the takeover of several municipalities in the state of Chiapas, Marcos
and the Zapatista National Liberation Army have embraced a defense of
dissident sexualities and gender expressions as part of a broad opposition
coalition among subaltern sectors. In 1999, for instance, Marco s sent a
message to the twenty-first LGBT Pride March in Mexico City: "What do
lesbians, homosexuals, transsexuals and bisexuals have to be ashamed of?
Let those who rob and kill with impunity be ashamed: the government ! Let
those who persecute the different be ashamed !"78
I mention the Other Campaign of 2006 as it speaks to certain dilemma s
raised in this chapter. "No longer marginal" was the promise offered by
a civil rights discourse, as argued by Max Mejia in 1985. It was a cha nce
for activists to move beyond a testimonial politics to the center of pub-
 Life at the Margins 177

lie debate and to find a deeper expression in society. Along parallel lines,
when I visited Mexico on the eve of the election in 2006, many activists
and academics I met regarded a victory by Lopez Obrador as the best pos­
s ib ility for a change in course from the neoliberal economic project that
ha d persisted with remarkable continuity over the previous two decades
of P R I and PAN rule. They hoped that the left in power would also foster
a resurgence of grassroots activism and solidify the recent wave of leftist
victories repudiating the project throughout much of Latin America. For
them, Marcos's rejection of electoral participation amounted to a call to
remain at the margins that could only strengthen the right?9 I ndeed it
has been through articulating subaltern sectors at the margins of power
that the E Z L N has defined its politics. Little wonder, then, that the Sexual­
Gendered Dissidence organizing in solidarity with the Other Campaign
is comprised precisely of sectors left at the margins in the negotiated and
selective access to the arena of formal politics opened by a rights-based
discourse.
 *
Brazil without Homophobi a, or, A Technocratic
Alternative to Political Parties

In 2004 the Lula administration announced a broad-based effort, un­

precedented in the hemisphere, to incorporate public policies to combat
homophobia across federal ministries under the banner Brazil without
Homophobia (Brasil Sem Homofobia, B S H ) . To this end, working groups
of activists, civil servants, and academics were established in participating
federal bureaucracies to come up with goals and policies in their respec­
tive areas, and cross-ministerial meetings were held to give these poli­
cies transversal continuity, so that the Ministry of Education, for instance,
would know what was being done in the Ministries of Culture or Health.
At one level, B S H can be seen as growing out of activists' long history of
engagement with the Workers Party. It is notable, however, that the party's
national LGBT sectoral organization has been largely sidelined from the
formulation and implementation of these policies, presumably its pur­
pose. Moreover this advance of public policy through executive branch
bureaucracies, in some sense insulated from the partisan debates and
political calculations surrounding stigmatized identities characteristic of
legislatures, marked a sharp contrast with the veritable standstill of the
movement's legislative demands in the administration's first term. Finally,
while the Workers Party government has undoubtedly taken such policies
much further, there is also notable continuity with measures implemented
by previous, more conservative administrations. All these points suggest
that something beyond programmatic party politics is going on.
This chapter tells this other story, framing BSH as the outcome of activ­
ists' engagement with the state through a distinct and parallel route to
that offered by political parties. This route begins with activists' incorpo­
ration into the public policy domain through a kind of technical exp er­
tise: as experts on L G B T communities - or perhaps more aptly, on men
who have sex with men (M S M ) -who can therefore bring this knowled ge
 Brazil without Homophobia 179

to the formulation and implementation of policy. This other story begins

wit h the National STD/AI D S Program, established in the Health Ministry
i n 1985. Through policies combining access to free medications, including
a ntiretroviral drugs, and extensive prevention efforts that have cut in half
th e incidence of new H I V cases predicted a decade ago, the program has
be en broadly touted as a model of A I D S prevention for the Global South
( Bie hl 2004; Castro and Bernadete da Silva 2005) . In part through a series
of loans negotiated with the World Bank, it has also created a new model
restructuring the state's relations with civil society based on public-private
pa rtnerships in the delivery of state services. After a few tepid steps in this
direction under the administrations of Fernando Coli or and I tamar Franco,
this model was later consolidated and extrapolated to other areas under
Fernando Henrique Cardoso, eventually serving as a template for B S H .
To describe this alternative pathway t o the state, I draw o n the notion
of governmentality, developed by Michel Foucault in his later writings
(Foucault 1991, 2003, 2004; Tie 2004; Dean 1994, 2002; Curtis 2002). Gov­
ernmentality, broadly speaking, refers to the "conduct of conduct," or the
regulation of behavior, to particular rationalities or technologies of gov­
ernance that vary across time and place (Burchel1 1996) . Modern forms
of governmentality are closely linked to biopolitics, taking populations
as their object ( Foucault 1991; Curtis 2002). The concept of population
emerges in the eighteenth century, according to Foucault, permitting new
ways of defining, subdividing, calculating, and administering the body
politic. Unlike disciplinary power - decentralized and distributed through­
out society through institutions like schools, clinics, or prisons, acting on
the body with individualizing effects - biopolitical forms of power act not
on "man-as-body " but on "man-as-species," o rgan i z i ng the mass of life
in ways that permit new forms of regulation ( Foucault 1978, 2003, 2004).
Modern forms of governmentality are thus also linked to the development
of n ew scientific discourses such as de mo grap hy and public health, which
frame administration in technical rather than overtly political terms. One
example is the definition of "key populations at higher risk " of contracting
H IV, a process of constituting subjectivities (such as "men who have sex
wit h men" ) that allows new forms of intervention seeking to reshape the
co n du ct , desires, and capacities of target populations. The technocratic
a lte rn ative to p o l iti cal pa rties discussed below can be seen as a counterpart

to the sovereign field of rights, law, and citizenship discussed in earlier

chap ters. Indeed we can conceive of liberal democratic statecraft and mod­
er n tec hniques of management more broadly in terms of variably articu­
late d clusters, o r fields, of b i opol itica l , d iscip l i n ary, and sovereign power
(Tie 2004; Foucault 1991; Dean 2002).
The mod � ! of public-private partnerships that consolidates in the Na­
ti on al S T D /A I D S Program does so against the transnational backdrop of
180 Pathways

a broader neoliberal restructuring of the state, itself generally framed by

its advocates through a purportedly apolitical technical rationality, often
coupled with calls to insulate "rational" economic policies from democ ratic
"pressures." 1 Beyond an opening of national markets to global capital an d a
weakening of labor protections and other pillars of the welfare state, neo­
liberalism institutes new technologies of governmentality that pro mote
the decentralization and narrow, "cost-effective" targeting of service s, i n­
creasingly through the articulation of actors both above and below the na­
tional territory and within and outside the state. Seeking to optimize the
life processes of populations through a kind of "regulatory enframing" (for
example, in eliciting their adherence to health regimes) , such technolo­
gies rely on the constitution of political subjects and the internalization of
discipline (Burchell 1996; Ong 2oo6) . At the same time, such practices of
subjectification, while regulating, are not necessarily totalizing, implying a
slippage that may permit resistance and contestation of their terms (Butler
1990, 1997; Tie 2004; Gordon 1991). After all, since their campaign against
the World Health Organization's constitution of homosexuals as a patho­
logical population, Brazilian activists have politicized and challenged their
subjectification in purportedly neutral fields of expert knowledge.
For activists, this model has brought with it new possibilities as well as
constraints, and the line between conforming to new subjectivities and
stretching their boundaries is not always clear. Undoubtedly these con­
textual changes have contributed to a process of NGOization that has
transformed the social movement field, what activists represent, and how
(Alvarez 1997; Schild 1997; Yudice 2005; Ramos 2004) . At the same time,
by introducing an evolving and expanded notion of citizenship, activists
have successfully pushed the boundaries of subjectification on repeated
occasions, transforming public health from a technical arena of expert
knowledge into a field where the rights of sovereign citizens can be con­
tested and recognized. Brazil without Homophobia is perhaps the clea rest
example of this stretching. Finally, I think it is particularly telling about
the nature of democratic practice in Brazil and perhaps more broad ly that
the advances made by activists through this technocratic alternative have
found deeper expression in society than those made through dem ocratic
institutions such as legislatures and political parties, the limits of whi ch I
discussed earlier.

C O N S T RU C T I N G A B I O M E D I CA L C I T I Z E N S H I P,

OR, THE POLITICS OF B IOPOLITICS

Id o not purport to give a full account o f the H IV epidemic i n Brazil, of the

government's response to it, or of the history of the A I os movemen t a n d
 Brazil without Homophobia 181

i ts role in public policy. Such an account exceeds the scope of this work
a n d has been addressed in other writing (Camara da Silva zoo6; Daniel and
pa rke r 1993; Parker 1994; Dias and Pedrosa 1997; Terto 1996, 1997; Galvao
20 oo ; Castro and Bernadete da Silva zoos; Parker, Galvao, and Secron Bessa
1999 ; Ventura 1999). My purpose here, rather, is to outline how an evo lv­

in g mod el of relations between the state and civil society in the course of
thi s history has introduced new technologies of governmentality, reshaped
LG B T activism, and contributed to the development of what Joao Guil­
h erme Biehl (zo01, zoo4) has termed a "biomedical citizenship" in Brazil.
The first government program to address H IV not only in Brazil but in
La tin America was created in the state of Sao Paulo in 1983. I n 198s the
fe deral government, under considerable international pressure, approved
the establishment of the National STDIA I D S Program, which began to
operate the following year (Castro and Bernadete da Silva zoos) . For some
years the program's relations with activists remained fairly contentious. A
crucial turning point in this relationship occurred with the creation of its
NGO Articulation Unit in 199z, in the context of negotiations for the first
of a series of World Bank loans, as a program official explained: "This rela­
tionship with civil society isn't part of Brazilian tradition. We didn't even
have legal instruments to do it . . . . The board created a mechanism that
allowed it to happen without violating international or our national legis­
lation. Of course, signing the agreement with the World Bank facilitated
this, because we began referring to international agreements as well. We
now had the support of international agreements to justify this relation
with civil society."2 The creation of the unit fundamentally transformed
the program's relationship with activists from one of contention to one
of fairly close cooperation and, in some instances, economic dependence
(Villela 1999). By zoo7 there were about seven hundred NGOs of various
religious and political orientations working in the area of H IV IA I D S with
different populations, including almost all of today's gay men's and trans
groups and many lesbian groups (Vianna and Carrara zoo7) .
The creation of the program should itself be read against the backdrop
of a broader process of health sector reform. This process has undoubtedly
i n part responded to neoliberal formulas promoted by international agen­
cies, b ut it cannot be entirely reduced to them. The creation of the first
H I V IA I DS program in Sao Paulo, for example, was facilitated by the elec­
ti on in 198z of opposition governor Franco Montoro ( P M D B ) , who entered
offi ce promising to meet with representatives of social movements and
re sp ond to demands long repressed under military rule. This included
t he a rea of healthcare, which had experienced significant declines. While
t h e p opulation in the city of Sao Paulo had grown by 6o percent during the
197os, the nu � ber of health clinics had increased by less than 5 percent
182 Pathways

(Avritzer 2002). In the context of abertura, this accumulated "social debt "
gave rise to an important healthcare reform movement, which incl u d ed
a number of activists linked to the opposition P M D B and P C B , several of
whom came to staff the new administration's Secretariat of Health (G alvao
2ooo; Pego and Almeida 2004; R. Costa 2002). The movement advan ced a
solidaristic model of "collective health," underscoring the societal dime n­
sion of illness over narrowly biological frames while prioritizing univer­
sal access and the incorporation of excluded groups, understandings that
would be reflected in A I D S activism as well ( Pego and Almeida 2004) . I n
the constituent assembly, healthcare reformers succeeded in articula ti ng
support for a progressive healthcare reform agenda by a coalition of left
and center-left parties against the right-wing forces of the Centrao, backed
by the private healthcare industry (R. Costa 2002). This coalition success­
fully pressed for constitutional recognition of the universal right to health­
care and the institution of Brazil's Universal Healthcare System based on
principles of public sector responsibility, decentralized administration,
and civic participation ( Petchesky 2003). Thus while a neoliberal agenda of
state restructuring and a progressive healthcare reform agenda advanced
by social movements found points of convergence, such as administrative
decentralization, the course of Brazilian healthcare policy has also been
marked by tensions between the two, as I elaborate below (C. Machado
2006).
I nitial negotiations with the World Bank produced the first A I os and STD
Control Project, known as A I D S I, which lasted from 1994 to 1998 ; it was
followed by AIDS I I from 1998 to 2003 and AIDS III, which began in 2003
and had been extended through 2.007. As of this writing, negotiations are
under way for a fourth loan. Each of these loans has contributed to evolv­
ing mechanisms of governmentality restructuring the state's relationship
with organized civil society as well as society in general. Beyond changes
in scope and the populations targeted by public policies, successive loans
have increasingly prioritized the decentralization of administrative tasks
to states and municipalities as well as the development of standardized
and quantifiable criteria to assess N G O projects.
In a report published in 1997 the World Bank stated, "The largest an d
most elaborate effort to subcontract AI DS services to N G O s is probab ly
the annual competition for service grants in Brazil" (quoted in Galva o
2000 : 153) . As the term subcontract suggests, the model cons olid ated
against the backdrop of state restructuring and economic austerity. Wit h i n
this framework activists are incorporated as technical experts, offeri ng cer­
tain advantages in terms of cost-benefit calculations, as they bring with
them forms of expert knowledge and, indeed, much cheaper labor power
than state bureaucracies and civil servants. Thus according to the Wo rld
Bank:
 Brazil without Homophobia 183

The implementation of H I V/A I D S and STD control efforts among specific

hi gh risk groups can be most effectively carried out by societal organizations
that have formed a relationship of trust with members of certain high risk
groups. The individuals being targeted often belong to marginalized seg­
ments of society with which governments may have little experience. N G O s
can often bring more o f the specialized knowledge needed and often have an
established credibility with the target group. This is especially true for work
with homosexuals, commercial sex workers, street people, and indigenous
peo ples.3
As a reflection of neoliberal technologies of governmentality, what is sig­
nificant about these partnerships is not just that they took shape against
the backdrop of the "emptying of the state" but that they involve, more
b roa dly, a reconfiguration of bio political administration through what
some have called "contractual implication." Burchell (1996) describes this
as an exchange whereby individuals and collectivit ies a re actively brought
into areas that were once the domain of state agencies in exchange for
assu ming responsibility for the implementation and outcome of activi­
ties in accordance with approved modes of action. Under A I os I the Bank
supp orted 28 prevention projects targeting M S M , a figure that rose signifi­
can t ly under A I D S II to 193.4
In 1999 the National STDIA I D S Program under the Cardoso administra­
tion took a further step in its engagement with the movement by launch­
ing the S O M O S Project in partnership with the A B G LT. The project itself
resulted from a regional initiative by several N G Os, which had joined at
the Pan-American AI os Conference in Peru two years earlier to form the
Latin American Citizenship and Integral Health Association, with the ob­
jective of increasing H IV prevention policies targeting M S M in the region
·
through a dvocacy efforts with UNAI D S .5 The Association is currently one
of ni ne regional community networks working on H IV I AI os prevention in
collaboration with the Horizontal Technical Cooperation Group, a body
established in 1995 that brings together national H IV IA I os programs from
twenty Latin American and Caribbean nations to share experiences in pre­
vention and management. Most of the other regional networks are simi­
larly articulated around the populations primarily targeted by prevention
policies, including, for instance, Red TraSex, incorporating NGOs working
Wit h sex workers; the Latin American Network of People Living with H IV;
the Latin American and Caribbean Movement of Women Living with H I V I
A I D s ; and Red LacTrans, representing trans populations.
The S O M O S Proj ect is the Brazilian expression of the regional Advocacy,
Tra ining, and Technical Support Proj ect being implemented by the Latin
American Citizenship and Integral Health Association. It is a national
p roduct o f transnational activism, although because of the Health M i nis-
184 Pathways

try's strong support it has proceeded much further than in other countries.
In Mexico, where Letra s belongs to the Association, as of 2008 the project
had not received funding or gotten off the ground. The goal of S O M O S is
to help establish and strengthen new N G O s working with M S M through
training and follow-up visits by activists from more established organiza­
tions affiliated with the A B G LT, designated as regional consultation an d
training centers; in effect, becoming a kind of NGO factory to extend the
scope of activism - and consequently of the government's A I D S preven­
tion policies - to new areas. Training includes such skills as how to legally
register an organization, how to write its statutes, how to put together a
project proposal to request funding, how to administer a staff of profes­
sionals and volunteers, how to conduct advocacy, and how to intervene
with M S M to "influence individuals' attitudes and perceptions" in order to
encourage H IV testing and safe-sex practices.6 According to the A B G LT, by
January 2005 the project included the participation of two hundred move­
ment leaders in one hundred and eleven cities in twenty-five of its twenty­
seven federal entities (including Brasilia) .7 In 2004 the National Program
launched the Tulipa Project (Travestis United Fighting Tirelessly for A I DS
Prevention) . Following the S O M O S model, the project operates in five re­
gional centers and is coordinated by the National Travesti, Transsexual,
and Transgender Articulation, a national network of trans organizations
established in 2000, which today includes over forty groups.
There is no doubt that the Health Ministry's extensive infusion of re­
sources into the movement has contributed significantly to its impres­
sive growth and increased visibility since the 1990s. At the same time, the
effects of its involvement in the social movement field are by no means
neutral. Not only has it strengthened certain groups and sectors of the
movement over others, but organizations often adapt their activities to
funding priorities set externally. For example, the definition of M S M as a
population at higher risk of contracting H IV has meant that within the
movement, much more funding (not only from the government but from
international funding agencies) has gone to gay men's and trans group s
than to lesbian organizations, a point that raises questions about what
happens to populations who may not fit the subjectivities contempla ted by
technologies of governmentality. And while groups outside the A B G LT can
and do receive funding, the association's relatively close relations with th e
federal government (not only through the National Program but throu gh
B S H ) have clearly strengthened its position in the social movement fie l d
against dissenting voices.
The vast majority of lesbian groups in the country, for instance, split
from the A B G LT to establish the Brazilian Lesbian League ( L B L) at the
third World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in 2003 as an alternative nati on al
umbrella association, in large part due to conflicts surrounding gay men's
 Brazil without Homophobia 185

dominance of the organization (although another lesbian network, the

Brazilian Lesbian Articulation, was later created by groups affiliated with
the association). According to one of the L B L cofounders and a former
coordinator of the Workers Party National LGBT setorial:
When you are a mixed group, you get funding to work with the diversity [of
sectors] . So in the A B G LT, it was really the G that was in charge of the [pride]
parades; that organized what would happen. It didn't open room for our spe­
cific material, the specific things we wanted in the parades, our visibility,
nothing. And they would get funding from the Special Secretariat of Women
to put something together- but when August 28 [the Day of Lesbian Visi­
bility in Brazil] carne around, there really wasn't the visibility we would like
to have. There was no funding for it because it had already been spent on the
gays' parade. So we started working to create the L B L . The L B L was created
at a forum in 2003, and we left the A B G LT. The A B G LT was left without any
lesbians for six rnonths.8

The statement speaks to how unequal power and resources can increase
tensions within the movement and to how neoliberal technologies of gov­
ernm entality can reinforce a segmentation of subjectivities through iden­
titarian frames, which become doorways determining differential access.
Along similar lines, another activist explained the efforts to establish a
national transsexual umbrella organization as follows:
Within [the National Travesti, Transsexual, and Transgender Articulation],
there is a secretariat for transsexual issues and a secretariat for transgender
issues. In the Transsexual Collective, there will be a Travesti Secretariat ­
because we work in partnership - in fact, the transsexuals are beginning to
fight for that independence, because we saw there was a benefit for us. For
instance, in the National GLBT Health Council, there is a seat for gays, there
is a seat for lesbians, and there is a seat for travestis. Now, we ensured a seat
for transsexuals. So in the past it was just gays who spoke about G LBT health.
Whatever the gay said was law. Then it started being gays and lesbians. So
we said no. Now we have gays, lesbians, and trans. Except that with trans
people, we have two seats. So we are strengthening ourselves in the Ministry
of Health, the Ministry of Education, and the Secretariat of Human Rights.9

Beyond this sort of conflict, the National Program's evaluation of N G O

projects on the basis of technical criteria and an organization's past ex­
perience comprises a framework of governmentality that also reinforces
ce rtain trends in activism and constructions of subjectivities within the
social movement field. The social anthropologist Jane Galvao (2ooo : m) ,
a former Cf> Ordinator of the N G O Articulation Unit, has described these
transformations in terms of the relative weight of two competing para­
digms, leading to what she calls the "dictatorship of the projects," with
186 Pathways

potentially depoliticizing effects. Specifically she points to the grow ing

importance of a ( biopoliti c al ) paradigm based on public health that see ks
behavioral intervention, narrowly targeting designated populations a nd
prioritizing measurable outcomes th a t can be evaluated, for instan ce, i n
determining further funding, over a paradigm prioritizing politic al an d
cu l tural action, the outcomes of which are generally less quantifiable. Sh e
further notes that the biopolitical paradigm in some ways reproduces the
abstrac t individualism of liberal economic and political theory, framing
individuals in targeted popu la tions as consumers free to choose sexual
practices in a marketplace of ideas and information while obscuring how
broader industrial, governmental, and other structural factors might be at
play in shapi n g both social and sexual fields.
Finally, the incorporation of activists into the formulation and imple­
mentation of state policies may well undermine their capacity for critical
engagement. In several interviews, both activists and National STD/A I D S
Program officials indicated a critical awareness of this danger. According
to one program official :
I think NGOs have played a very important role both in pushing the passage
of legislation and in guiding policy - such as the law for universal access to
therapies [approved in 1 996] . But over time, N G O s have also come to posi­
tion themselves as executors of policy. So what you see, on the one hand, is
activism and societal control [referring to N G os' oversight of state action] ,
but little by little this focus has lost ground to activities geared more toward
the execution of policy. This is a cost . . . . Today I believe we, as part of the ex­
ecutive branch, have an important role in not letting NGOs become executors
of the state, which has to some extent happened over the years. In fact, our
principal lines of support today are in this area of advocacy and strengthening
.
the space of so cietal control - the construction of networks and forums - of
supporting civil society so that it can identify its mechanisms to control the
state itself. 1 0

It is worth considering these observations in light of my earlier discus­

sion regarding activists' emerging role not only in pressing for legislation
but in pulling laws off paper and encouraging their use. As I mentioned,
some theorists have contended that the fundamentally new role being
played by social movements as independent watchdogs of the state rep ­
resents a restructuring of the public sphere in Latin America that prom ­
ises a greater depth in democratic practice, a departure from corporatist
relations of dependence on political parties or the state that character­
ized earlier configurations (Avritzer 2002; Avritzer and Costa 2006). One
might juxtapose these understandings with the role of "societal control"
discussed here, also keeping in mind that the World Bank has increasingly
prioritized monitoring and evaluation by N G Os, linking these functions
 Brazil without Homophobia 187

to the sustainability and cost-effectiveness of policies. At the very least,

wh en seen through the framework of evolving technologies of governmen­
ta lity, the boundaries between the subjectification implied by regulatory
fra meworks and the possibilities for autonomous critical engagement en­
vi sioned by public sphere theorists are less clear.11

Stretching the Boundaries ofSubjectification

Like the liberal democratic institutional arrangements discussed in pre­
vious chapters, the technologies of governmentality instituted by the
National STD/AI DS Program, also reflecting transnational linkages, are
selective and constraining in their effects on a heterogeneous social move­
ment field, reinforcing certain subjectivities, desires, needs, and choices
by activists. But these processes, while regulating, are not totalizing, and
it is equally important to consider moments of slippage and how activists
have navigated this changing terrain, on repeated occasions stretching the
boundaries of subjectification. To this end, the trope of citizenship, which
became a dominant frame in public debate in Brazil during the 198os, has
been particularly important in transforming a governmental field of expert
knowledge and technical administration into an arena where the rights­
based claims of sovereign citizens can intercede in the biopolitical man­
agement of populations.
Several founders of Brazil's first A I D S N G O s came out of a history of
organizing with the gay and lesbian liberation movement and the left and
quite soon began introducing a human rights discourse as well as other
lines of social critique into their work. Since its establishment as the first
A I D S N G O in Rio de Janeiro in 1986 with the support of the Ford Founda­
tion, for example, the Brazilian Interdisciplinary A I D S Association under­
scored the need to understand the epidemic in the broader context of so­
cial exclusion and poverty which contributed to its spread, challenging
common perceptions initially associating the disease with foreigners and
wealthy homosexuals (Dias and Pedrosa 1997). In his collection of essays,
L ife before Death, released at the International A I DS Conference in Mon­
treal in 1989, Herbert Daniel (1994 : 53) - still militant on the left but, now,
also one of the cofounders of A B IA and founder of Pela Vidda, the first
group organizing people with A I D S - charged the technocratic rationality
of biopolitics with causing the "civil death" of people with H IV :
At the root o f the mystifications about A I D S are a series o f half-truths based
on apparently "objective" facts, resulting from "scientific" observations. The
"fact" that the disease is contagious, incurable, and fatal has become, thanks
to a rigordusly inexact simplification, part of the minimum operational defi­
nition society uses to deal symbolically with the disease. Deep prejudices di-
188 Pathways

rected to already marginalized groups (principally homosexuals) reemerge

and are reinstated. Worst of all, the person with AI os or the H IV virus is
declared dead while still alive. Before his or her biological death, he or she
suffers civil death, which is the worst form of ostracism a human being is
forced to bear.

Scholars have linked Foucault's notion ofbiopolitics with Giorgio Agam­

ben's elaboration of the early Greek distinction between bios, the life that
is sacred, and zoe, or bare life, underscoring how biopolitical technolo­
gies inscribe some populations in the realm of the sacred while others,
excluded from this realm, as "bare life," or life that is not sacred, are left to
die (Agamben 1998; Biehl 2om, 2004; Ojakangas 2005). Daniel's (1994 : 40-
41) notion of "civil death" directly contested this desacralization of life by
introducing a discourse of sovereign rights and citizenship into biopoliti­
cal practices " 'medicalized' by the technocrats of death." The concrete im­
plications of this discourse for governmental practice were twofold.
First, it put the population of people living with HIV /AI D S at the cen­
ter of public policy, eventually reverberating in the transnational field as
well. The Brazilian government's decision to extend universal access to
free medications, including antiretroviral drugs, signed into law in 1996,
stemmed in part from the constitutional guarantee of healthcare cited
above but also from this history of A I D S activism cast through a human
rights frame. Notably the decision conflicted with recommendations by
the World Bank indicating that it would be more cost-effective to invest in
preventing new cases rather than treating people already infected (Ramos
2004) . Though what is most disturbing about the recommendation is the
implication that some lives are disposable, rooted in the assumption of
scarcity underlying the biopolitics of access to lifesaving drugs within the
logic of global capitalism, it is worth noting that Brazil's drug program
ultimately cut costs to the public health system by increasing early self­
reporting by patients and reducing hospitalizations for opportunistic in­
fections (Petchesky 2003). Already in the first three months of 1997, Sao
Paulo and Rio de Janeiro reported a 35 percent and 21 percent drop in A I DS
deaths, respectively, compared to the previous year (Biehl 2004) .
Yet the broader political context of the law's passage also reflected the
tensions surrounding healthcare policy noted above. Indeed the Con­
gress approved an intellectual property law that same year to bring na­
tional legislation into compliance with the World Trade Organization's
(wTo ) Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property
Rights (T R I Ps). Among other measures, T R I PS forces nations to institute
twenty-year monopoly protections for patented medicines, often requiring
much cheaper generic versions to be pulled from the market. Studies of
the agreement's effects in India, Egypt, and Argentina have indicated that
 Brazil without Homophobia 189

the substitution of patented medicines for generic alternatives increases

prices between three and forty-one times, reducing national consumption,
endangering public healthcare systems, and further skewing global access
to lifesaving drugs (Petchesky 2003). As a result of the agreement, Brazil's
negative trade balance from pharmaceutical imports rose from $417 mil­
lion in 1995 to $1.277 billion two years later (Biehl 2004) . Between 1995 and
2 001 spending on STD IA I D S medications rose 24,000 percent (C. Machado
2 006) . These developments explain Brazil's reliance on cheaper, locally
manufactured generic versions of patented H I V IA I D S drugs. While T R I Ps
overwhelmingly supported the interests of the multinational pharmaceuti­
cal industry and was strongly backed by governments of the Global North,
particularly the United States, Article 31 allows states to issue compulsory
licenses for the production of generic drugs in cases of national emergency.
Brazilian activists also successfully pressed for the inclusion of stipulations
in the national law allowing compulsory licenses for drugs patented before
its passage or manufactured outside the country.
In fact, partly due to activists' pressure, Brazil has staked out a leading
role among countries of the Global South asserting the priority of access to
medicine over intellectual property rights and corporate profits ( Petchesky
2 003). I n 2000 it successfully pressed the General Assembly of the W H O to
publish a global index of prices for H IV IA I D S drugs, including generics.
And in 2001 it introduced a resolution at the UN Human Rights Commis­
sion defining access to affordable H IV IA I D S drugs as a basic human right,
approved by fifty-two of its fifty-three members, with the United States
alone abstaining (Mowjee 2003). That same year Brazil seemed poised to
become the first country to use Article 31 to issue compulsory licenses for
two H I V drugs, prompting the U.S. Trade Representative to file a complaint
at the WTO, although the case was ultimately settled. Still, the country has
continued to spearhead international efforts to loosen patent restrictions
in T R I Ps and recast health care as a universal human right superseding
intellectual property, notable, for instance, in its central role articulating
a coalition of countries from the Global South at the Doha Round of wTo
talks (Petchesky 2003 : 103) . I n 2005 Brazil again captured headlines when
it outspokenly repudiated the Bush administration's faith-based policies
denying U SA I D funds to H IV prevention efforts that "promote or support
the legalization or practice of prostitution" and requiring organizations
receiving support to take a formal pledge opposing it. While certainly con­
strained in many ways, these developments are worth noting as they sug­
gest that the articulation of actors, particularly N GOs, around frameworks
of governmentality cannot be reduced, as some have suggested, to links in
a seamles � chain of global management but can also become points of ten­
sion, contestation, and slippage, which indeed may have blowback effects
onto the transnational field itself (Hardt and Negri 2ooo).
190 Pathways

Second, beyond its implications for access to drugs, in the area of pre­
vention the discourse of civil death also extended public policies beyond
a narrow public health frame to incorporate the aim of ensuring full cit i­
zenship, a move generally made by pulling "citizenship" into the private
sphere through the trope of "self-esteem," as an activist and Workers Party
militant explained:
I think we learned a lot in all those years with A I D S in Brazil. Because at the
beginning of the epidemic, we thought people lacked information. If you have
information, you make changes and don't catch the disease. You know how
the virus is spread. You have a condom to fight H I V, so fine, the problem is
solved. But that's not how it works. We realized that isn't the solution. Every­
one knows about A I D S , how you catch it and how you don't, the importance
of using condoms, but that doesn't change behavior. So we began asking: Why
doesn't that make people adopt safer practices? And we discovered that it has
to do with a number of other things related to citizenship and self-esteem.
So then, why is it necessary for sex workers, for instance, to have a discussion
on their right to work on the street, not to be arrested, not to be the target of
violence, whether by police or clients? With it, [sex workers begin] to have the
capacity to negotiate with others, with the police themselves, with authori­
ties . . . . This has to do with their self-esteem, with seeing themselves as having
the same rights as other citizens, able to enter a supermarket, to enter a bus,
buy things, to be a full citizen, no longer just an object going out at night to be
used, humiliated, and thrown away. So it changes that person's relation with
A I D S and the entire question of human rights. And that showed us the need
to work with other things, not just information about condoms but a person's
relation with the entire world. 1 2

For both activists and National STD/A I D S Program officials who have
embraced this approach, the expansion of prevention through the frames
of full citizenship and human rights has considerably broadened the spec­
trum of public policy, including, for instance, government funding for the
creation of gay and trans NGOs through the S O M O S and Tulipa projects, as
explained by the A B G LT :
The philosophy o f the S O M O S Project is based on the principle that the full
exercise of citizenship is the essential element for STD/A I D S prevention.
Thus, in the case of M S M , whether due to rejection, lack of self-acceptance,
or primarily because of discrimination or prejudice, the full exercise of citi­
zenship often does not occur, thus increasing vulnerability to infection . . . .
The S O M O S Project thus believes that training and strengthening organized
groups of M S M who act to promote citizenship can be a way of reversing this
situation. Working to reduce prejudice and discrimination toward homosexu­
ality, the groups facilitate a process of interaction with the society in general
 Brazil without Homophobia 191

and contribute to strengthening the self-esteem of the people involved, thus

reflected in the prevention process: H E W H O LOV E S H I M S E L F TA K E S CARE
O F H I M S E L FY

As this statement suggests, the expansion of technologies of governmen­

tality through a discourse of sovereign rights and citizenship also stretches
the boundaries of subjectivities constituted by narrow biomedical ap­
proaches: the reduction of "M s M " to a high-risk group requiring condoms,
for instance. In Foucauldian terms, they do so by fostering new "practices
of self," as Harrer (2005 : 83) explains:
The process of self-constitution is situated in a field of forces and starts out
through a relationship to others, which in turn aims at producing a relation
to self ("rapport a soi "). This is achieved by way of certain ascetic technolo­
gies of the self, which one practices first, under supervision of a master. This
relationship is then replicated inside the subject, who will eventually take a
transcendental position towards him or herself. . . . Force, which is to govern
and dominate others, is being bent back on the subject itself. . . . Thus, self­
constitution is derivative of the governmental mode of power.

It would not be a stretch, I think, to suggest that the relationship of mas­

ter and subject described here can be extended to the essentially peda­
gogical relationship that activists assume toward the target populations
of public policies in their simultaneous promotion of a disciplined (safe)
sexuality and empowerment through full citizenship, now pulled down to
the level of everyday life through practices of self-reflection and building
self-esteem. Some scholars, it is worth noting, have suggested that Latin
American social movements' recasting of citizenship through discourses
of individual autonomy, personal responsibility, and self-help themselves
reflect broader neoliberal tendencies toward atomized individualism while
si desteppin g broader social critique (Alvarez, Dagnino, and Escobar 1997b;
Schild 1997; Yudice 2005). There is no doubt that activists' entry into the
public policy domain through this technocratic alternative has trans­
formed the nature of activism in ways that resonate with these critiques.
At the same time, however, the resources attained through the subcon ­
tra cting of projects - computers and other infrastructure, for instance ­
als o have spillover effects into areas of activism that exceed the formula­
tio n and implementation of projects and overall have clearly strengthened
t he movement in a variety of other activities in recent years. Moreover, as
D aniel's notion of civil death suggests, there are possibilities for stretching
t he boundaries of governmental technologies and concomitant processes
of subj ectification .
Nor is thl5 the only example of this kind of stretching. I noted above, for
instance, that within the movement, funding by the National S T D /A I D S
192 Pathways

Program has prioritized gay men's and trans N G O s over lesbian organi­
zations. In 1994, however, the Health Ministry extended the first federal
funding to a lesbian group for a prevention project implemented in Sao
Paulo by Urn Outro Olhar, the new incarnation of GALF, reinstituted as
an N G O in 1990. Two years later the National Program funded the first
National Lesbian Seminar in Rio de Janeiro. The seminar, which brought
together over seventy activists from twenty-two states under the banner
Health, Visibility, and Organizational Strategy, illustrates the kind of spill­
over effects permitted by federal resources; in addition to addressing mat­
ters of STD prevention and health, activists agreed to the periodic organi­
zation of subsequent meetings, which have since helped to articulate the
lesbian movement nationally.
These early projects were funded under the rubric of A I DS/STD Pre­
vention and Women's Health. As one of the organizers of the seminar
explained, "It was easier to obtain [funding] as a women's organization. So
we worked on women's health as a women's organization and held the first
National Lesbian Seminar. . . . And the Brazilian government financed it
because it was financing a women's institution, not a lesbian institution." 14
Thus strategically occupying a subjectivity p ri oriti zed in governmental
prac tice, lesbian activists over the years, albeit in a limited way, have been
able to stretch its boundaries: "For lesbians, specifically, there wasn't any
[funding] until this year [2001] . This year, things began to improve - there
is attention to lesbian projects. And now I know why- they explained that
lesbians had not yet created the demand with regard to soropositivity and
soronegativity for the Ministry to contemplate that segment. We've been
fighting since 1996, and now we're making the Ministry see things another
way." 15 Earlier that year the National Program had invited several leaders of
the lesbian movement from around the country to a discussion in Brasilia
on how to improve the quality of healthcare for "women who have sex with
women." Among the guidelines reached in that discussion were that any
action be supported by scientific knowledge of the epidemiological pro­
file of the population, including knowledge of its language and customs;
that a study be conducted to develop a profile of the community; and that
special educational materials be developed for women who have sex with
women.16 While the meeting's consequences have been fairly limited, the
guidelines speak to how lesbian activists entering this technocratic path to
the state have been able to stretch the boundaries of technologies of gov­
ernmentality to subjectivities once excluded, again positioning thems elves
as providers of specialized knowledge for targeted state administration.
Although lesbian groups have by no means received the level of funding
that has gone to N G O s working with M S M , the funding has been enough
to shape the course of activism itself. In this regard, one distinctive feature
of the lesbian movement in Brazil is the relative absence of the rancorous
 Brazil without Homophobia 193

conflicts between "institutionalists" and "autonomists" that continue to

divide its counterparts throughout much of the Spanish-speaking Ameri­
cas, including Mexico. I asked one activist about this difference; she offered
an assessment echoed by many:

I think it's ridiculous. In our view -and I say "our" as a Brazilian, not as Urn
Outro Olhar - because abroad, I've seen that there are those who don't re­
ceive financing and the institutionalists, who receive support. Well, first of
all, everyone receives support. When I say everyone, I mean the people from
the gay movement, from the feminist movement, from the black movement,
from the ecological movement, because if you don't, you can't do anything. . . .
In other countries, I saw it in Argentina, for example, that story between au­
tonomists and institutionalists is crazy. And we were put in the institutional­
ist camp at the time because we were the only lesbian group that had financ­
ing from the Health Ministry. And that was a huge battle for us. Later, other
groups came, and now I think everyone receives financing for lesbian con­
cerns. 1 7

Engagement with the state and international funding agencies has thus
become a question of quality and degree. Setting aside the arguments on
reform or revolution that characterized the movement at its emergence,
contestation now seeks expansion of the machine, not its destruction. To
this end, in 2007 the government announced the launching of Somos-Les
under the banner of B S H , no longer under the rubric of health but linked
to the Secretariat of Human Rights, with the goal of "strengthening" fifty­
one lesbian NGOs in the county by the end of the project. 1 8

F R O M H EA LT H TO B RA Z I L W I T H O U T H O M O P H O B I A

Perhaps the clearest example of activists' pushing the boundaries of this

technocratic path is B S H itself. Again, I do not mean to imply that partisan
differences have played no role in its elaboration. The vast majority of LG BT
activists in Brazil today have an ideological affinity with the Workers Party,
which has taken public policies for the sector much further than previous
administrations. Between the first and second round of the election in
2002 , over two hundred activists signed a manifesto in support of Lula,
a nd not long after his taking office, a group of activists presented human
rights officials with a list of demands in legislation and public policy that
lai d the basis for the program.19 Thus in a sense Brazil without Homo­
p hobia grows out of this history of engagement with the Workers Party
as well a s the tec hn ocratic alternative discussed above. The weight of the
alternative, I would argue, is evident in the ongoing importance of the
National STD/A I DS Program in developing B S H , in the migration to other
s tate sectors of technologies of governmentality developed there, and in
194 Pathways

a certain insulation from the perceived political costs of stigma behin d a

technocratic veil.
This migration began prior to the Lula administration and the launch­
ing of B S H , through an initial move from the Ministry of Health to the Sec­
retariat of Human Rights in the Justice Ministry, under Fernando Henriqu e
Cardoso. I asked officials with the National STD/A I DS Program how it con­
tributed to this move. Raldo Bonifacio, the adjunct coordinator of the Pro­
gram at the time, responded :
The Justice Ministry was having difficulties articulating with the gay commu­
nity. At the same time, the gay community was very much on the attack, as it
was criticizing the Brazilian Human Rights Program, which was the pride of
the Justice Ministry, the pride of the administration, but the gay community
was incessantly attacking it because it did not contemplate the gay popula­
tion. So they asked us to facilitate this articulation . . . . The Justice Ministry
wanted not only for us to facilitate this contact with them but also to see our
. work model, how we were able to establish objective partnerships with N G Os
when the Justice Ministry wasn't able to do so.2°

Paulo Junqueria Aguiar, a technical consultant with the Program, added,

"I think we did even more than that, because even in terms of image, gays
came to be seen as healthcare militants too. And I also think that our in­
fluencing these groups to work with AI os trained them to produce projects
as well."21 Beyond their specific role as interlocutors between activists and
Justice Ministry officials, then, the statements underscore the importance
of the governmental model of public-private partnerships developed
through H IV prevention as both a template for work in other areas and as
a conduit for activists' professionalization and technical training.
Not long after these early contacts, and after consultation with the Na­
tional STD/A I DS Program to learn from its experience, the Human Rights
Secretariat established a technical group comprised of activists and offi­
cials from various agencies to develop public policies for the LGBT sector.
The limited inroads opened through this new foothold in the federal gov­
ernment included funding for a national LGBT hotline to report crimes,
early efforts to incorporate LGBT activists into police training, and the in­
corporation of activists in the Brazilian delegation at the Durban Con­
ference against Racism, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance, where the
government included in its proposal an antidiscrimination clause contem­
plating sexual orientation.22
With the Lula administration's announcement of B S H , oversight of the
program was assigned to the secretariat. The coordinator of the program
at the time discussed the central role of the National STD/A I D S Pro gram
in its elaboration:
 Brazil without Homophobia 195

When we decided to create the program, how were we going to organize

it? We received the demand, the proposal that the movement wanted. We
needed to negotiate with the administration - since it was an action to be
taken in various ministries, we needed to negotiate with various ministries.
And we also thought that a dialogue was important to see how far it was plau­
sible. We did this through the National STD/A I D S Program. The STD/A I D S
Program was the major locus of conversation on this matter. . . . So when a
proposal reached me, I would read it. Then I would send it to the STD/A I DS
Program. They would hold discussions, make changes, and return it to me, to
the administration.23

Brazil without Homophobia has four broad objectives: (1) supporting

projects to strengthen public and nongovernme n tal institutions that pro­
mote homosexual citizenship and combat homophobia; (2) training pro­
fessionals and representatives of the homosexual movement who defend
human rights; (3) disseminatin g information on rights for the promotion
of homosexuals' self-esteem; and (4) encoura gin g denunciations of human
rights violations against the LGBT sector. The program has specified fifty­
two policy points in eleven areas, ranging from human rights to cultural,
educational, and labor rights; transversal policies addressing the intersec­
tions of race, gender, and sexual orientation; and the Foreign Ministry's
promotion of discussions on LGBT rights in international forums.24
During visits to Brasilia in July 2006 and June 2007 I was able to speak
with people working with the program in eight federal agencies to see what
had been done in the three years since its launching. While real steps had
been taken in some areas, the implementation of policy was very uneven.
The cross-ministerial meetings designed to give policies transversal scope
had been halted after a year, to some extent stymied by the overall govern­
ment paralysis precipitated by a series of corruption scandals at the end
of Lula's first term. In principle, technical groups were supposed to have
been established in all participating agencies; in practice, however, they
had been created, in some cases meeting only sporadically in the Secre­
tariats of Human Rights and Public Safety and in the Ministries of Edu­
cation, Culture, and Health, in the last case, for the first time addressing
LGBT health concerns outside the parameters of the STD/A I D S Program.
Activists had formed the Societal Control and Oversight Program for Brazil
wi tho ut Homophobia, with government funding, to act as an independent
watchdog monitoring the project's implementation, but as of June 2007
it h ad yet to consolidate as a functioning group. People working with the
p roj ect generally attributed these limitations to bureaucratic inertia and
en trenched institutional homophobia.
Work had gone furthest in the Ministries of Culture and Education.
Given these agencies' official role in both defining and administering Bra-
196 Pathways

zilian "culture," it is worth considering how technologies of governmen­

tality are recasting ideas of both sexuality and nation, largely through th e
trope of diversity. As I mentioned in chapter 5, during my early researc h
the discourse of diversity, both sexual and cultural, was absent in Brazi l,
in striking contrast to its dominance in Mexico. Its growing salience in the
past two or three years, however, undoubtedly reflects its increasing we ight
internationally. In my research on B S H , for instance, several officials re­
ferred to recent international agreements, particularly to the Durban D ec­
laration and Program of Action and the Universal Declaration of Cultural
Diversity, both adopted in 2001. Yudice (2005) has linked this new transn a­
tional celebration of diversity to evolving technologies of governmentality
in the context of late modernity. Pointing to a growing international trade
in "cultural goods and services," he suggests that it reflects a new under­
standing of "culture," no longer as a unifying field of shared norms and
values but as a toolkit of resources that can be variably instrumentalized
by different actors, and, indeed, a broader epistemic shift, in Foucauldian
terms, problematizing the "representation" of the sign through a height­
ened awareness of performativity and simulation. It is worth underscoring
that the fragmentation of"culture" implied by these changes can lend itself
as easily to a contestatory politics deconstructing totalizing myths of na­
tion as to a depoliticizing commodification, depending on a critical read­
ing of cultural practices (including the performance of identitarian scripts)
as produced and reenacted in fields of power-yet another boundary that
activists must precariously tread.
Within the Ministry of Education, B S H was housed under the recently
created Secretariat of Continuing Education, Literacy, and Diversity. Here
again there is some continuity with the Cardoso administration. It was
after the Durban conference that a discourse of diversity was introduced
into the ministry, with the creation of the Diversity in the University Pro­
gram, which for the first time instituted affirmative action measures for
Afro-Brazilian and Native American students in Brazilian institutions of
higher learning. Under Lula this program was expanded and incorporated
into the new secretariat. Like its insertion into party platforms in Mexico,
"sexual diversity" became a subsequent elaboration of racial, ethnic, an d
cultural pluralism. At the same time, itself a resource that can be variably
instrumentalized, the trope has been used in somewhat different ways:
articulating legislative coalitions across identitarian boundaries in Mexico
(to a certain extent blurring them) and delineating boundaries aroun d
claims to difference in formulating sector-specific policies in Brazil, in
each case primarily reflecting the institutional imperatives of the fields
being navigated.
After a few initial meetings with LGBT activists in early 2005, the Min­
istry issued a call for proposals from N GOs, educational institutions, an d
 Brazil without Homophobia 197

municipal and state government agencies. Of the ninety-four proposals re­

ce ived within three weeks, fifteen were chosen as pilot projects, including
twelve in partnership with NGOs. The fairly limited scope of these efforts ­
n o n e, for instance, was selected in the North - raises questions about the
p e n etration of a model involving the delegation of state functions to civil
society. As the coordinator of B S H explained more broadly, "The resources
fall far short of those needed to support these policies. If you are going to
support a schoolbook, you might support a group of teachers [in Curitiba].
But the country isn't just Curitiba. Our biggest problem now is to try to
multiply that scale."25
As an official working with BSH in the Education Ministry explained,
the topic of sexuality began to be introduced into Brazilian schools in the
1990s, though relevant material was approved by the Ministry of Health,
not Education, prioritizing a medical discourse of AI DS/STD prevention.
One of the ministry's goals is to expand these parameters, again, in a sense,
stretching of the boundaries of the technocratic path discussed above.
In several conversations this official also underscored the importance of
understanding identity categories not as fixed essences but as fluid and his­
torically contingent categories produced in the context of power, a position
that clashed with more essentialist understandings of identity advanced by
some activists.26 The point is worth noting for a couple of reasons. First,
it suggests the possibility of a more critical incorporation of the rubric of
diversity by the state than that posited by liberal multiculturalism, with its
tendency to reduce social inequality to cultural difference. Second, it again
suggests that the articulation of actors around technologies of governmen­
tality can also become points of tension and even institutional breakdown.
Indeed in 2007 all twelve of the projects selected by the ministry under
BSH were conducted in partnerships with universities, not N G O s, partly in
response to revelations of mishandling of funds by NGOs participating in
the Literate Brazil Program, also instituted by Lula.
Reflecting the administrative imperatives of government bureaucracy,
th e selection criteria for projects -which included such factors as a pro­
posal's budgetary viability, sustainability, multiplying capacity (involving
its reach) , thematic scope (for instance, linking homophobia to other forms
of disc rimination) , and the experience of the organization - were framed
in technical rather than political terms.27 Interestingly, when I asked the
offi cial about the participation of the Workers Party LG BT setorial in the
p rocess, he explained that it was not involved, as B S H followed technical,
not political, criteria.28 I asked the same question of the official in charge
of the program in the Ministry of Culture, who responded, "Our support
does not d t; pend on the political position of any group; that's out of the
question. We don't ask what party a person belongs to. The only demands
we make are: Is this a cultural project? Does the institution work with
198 Pathways

LGBT? Is it a project that will strengthen people's self-esteem? Yes. Then

that's that."29 Given that one of the setorial's central purposes is to in fl u­
ence the policies for a given sector in Workers Party governments, the re ­
sponses struck me as particularly telling both of the transformation of t he
left on its road to consolidating as a mass-based electoral party and of the
overtly depoliticized terms of activists' incorporation into the public p olicy
domain as purveyors of expert knowledge.
Within the Ministry of Culture, BS H was placed under the Secretariat of
Diversity and Identity, created in 2004, among other reasons, to formulate
policies that "promote diversity and strengthen identities."30 A statement
on the secretariat's website locates its creation in the broader context oflate
modernity, specifically citing the simultaneous crisis of national identities
and the displacement of the Enlightenment subject, "the typical subject of
modernity," as a kind of mythic universal construction (the liberal Homo
economicus, for example) . While national "cultures" once represented both
the singularity of national projects in the transnational field and forces of
homogenization nationally, the statement goes on, intensified processes of
globalization have called these unifying constructions into question, fos­
tering "the reappearance of identities once understood as local, regional,
or ethnic." Citing international documents such as the Universal Declara­
tion of Cultural Diversity as well as the growing importance of "so-called
cultural goods and services" in international trade agreements, the state­
ment underscores the importance of supporting cultural diversity against
the aforementioned forces of homogenization.31
The Ministry of Culture took the lead in the implementation of B S H .
A couple o f months after its creation, a technical group was established,
bringing together government officials and activists linked to the A B G LT.
In early 2005 the ministry called on NGOs to send proposals for the orga­
nization of LGBT pride parades. The following year access was opened to
groups outside the A B G LT, and the parameters for proposals were b roa d­
ened beyond parades. Given the centrality of these parades for activists'
cultural politics and the state's cultural policy for the sector in recent years,
a word or two is in order regarding their incorporation into official con ­
structions of nation. For activists, the explosive growth of marches in re­
cent years has constituted what many have come to prioritize as a new
strategy of "mass visibility." In 2006 over one hundred marches were orga­
nized throughout the country, and Sao Paulo's, the world's largest, drew
over 2.5 million people.32 This growth is particularly impressive given the
marches' relatively recent appearance in the country. While there were a
couple of relatively unsuccessful efforts to organize them earlier, sustai n ed
efforts began in Rio de Janeiro in 1995, in the context of the seventeen th
International Lesbian and Gay Association Conference, and in Sao Pau lo
two years later. Once again government involvement began not with th e
 Brazil without Homophobia 199

M inistry of Culture but with the National STD/A I D S Program, as a means

to disseminate material on prevention.
When I began my early fieldwork in 2001 in the city of Rio de Janeiro,
t he Sao Paulo parade had already surpassed wo,ooo marchers, but Rio's re­
m ained fairly small. At the time I was struck not only by this difference but
also by the fact that while activists in Mexico City had made the organiza­
tion of pride marches a central focus of mobilization beginning in 1979, the
year after the movement's emergence as a public actor, their significance to
Brazilian activism had been so recent. At the time I asked several activists
in Rio about the parade's limited expression in the city and received the
following kinds of responses:
In the first and second years, it was a disaster. Nobody went. It's not part of
the culture. The first year was 1993, in Copacabana, there were about twenty
people, at most thirty. It was nothing. An interesting sociological point about
gays in Rio de Janeiro: you'll see bichas going to film festivals, cultural festi­
vals, everything, but no one will go to a parade. (F., activist with Atoba, 23
March 2001)

Rio's big marches are the samba schools. Our march would have to be a
Carnival, or something like that, which has our face. Because walking down
Copacabana shouting God knows what - ! don't know - that's just not ca­
rioca. (J., former activists with Somos of Rio de Janeiro and Grupo Arco-iris,
1 0 March 2001)
In light of the subsequent growth of the marches, even Rio's, which today
draws over one million marchers, it is interesting that activists explain
their limited success by inscribing the marches as alien to the culture.
In contrast, in his introduction to the B S H Technical Group's first re­
port, the new culture minister, Gilberta Gil, declares, "The ciranda of the
women in the Northeast, the Folia de Reis, and the LGBT Pride Marches are
examples of a rich and exuberant diversity that comprises through lights,
orations, songs, dances, and many colors a country constructed through
difference." 33 What is remarkable about this statement is that alongside
the kind of so-called folk traditions that once typified official constructions
of nation, we find a transnational expression of LGBT identities that even
activists a few years earlier told me was somehow alien to the culture. Gar­
c ia Canclini (1995a) has pointed to this intensified hybridization between
the global and the local, between the "mass" and the "folk" as the hallmark
characterizing cultural transformations in Latin America in late modernity.
Here it is inscribed into official discourse by a minister whose own role in
the Tropicalist movement of the 1970s, with its hybridizing impulses, is
also worth recalling. And in case Gil's statement fails to settle any doubts,
the Technical Group's report, provocatively titled "A Technical Assessment
200 Pathways

of the Cultural Merit of LG BT Pride Parades," also attests to the march es '
Brazilianness, basing this judgment on, among other reasons, their natu re
as a periodic collective expression that includes activities considered cul­
tural, such as film festivals; the fragmentation of understandings of culture
and nation in the context of late modernity; and the marches' adherence to
parameters set out by Law 8.313191, instituting the National Cultural Sup­
port Program.34 The assessment, required to establish marches' eligibility
for funding, thus links transnational technologies of governmentality re­
defining both culture and nation as fragmented terrains in ways that per­
mit new forms of rationalized administration with particular identitarian
expressions, likewise associated with a transnational modernity.

C O N C LU S I O N

This chapter has focused o n activists' occupation and i n some instances

expansion of a technocratic alternative to political parties in Brazil, largely
because this engagement has gone much further there than in any other
country in Latin America. Yet the technologies of governmentality restruc­
turing the relations between the state and civil society in Brazil have trans­
national dimensions that are shaping social movement activism and sexual
politics more broadly. In July 2006 the Horizontal Technical Cooperation
Group and the Latin American Regional Office of UN A I D S held a confer­
ence in Rio de Janeiro to produce a strategic plan to combat homophobia
in the region and a policy guide to this end, again expanding the scope
of H I VIA I D S policy through a human rights frame. In 2007 representa­
tives of the Mercosul LG BT Network, uniting activist groups from member
states, presented a proposal to human rights authorities for a Mercosul
Sem Homofobia, based on the Brazilian modeJ.35 And as the country has
become a leading voice in global discussions on sexual rights and H IV I
A I D S , some of the policy frameworks developed in the National STDIA I DS
Program have become, in the words of a former director, "an expo rtab le
Brazilian product" (Castro and Bernadete da Silva 2005 : 283). In 2004, the
Brazilian government and U N A I D S formed a partnership to establish the
International Center for Technical Cooperation with the goal of fostering
"horizontal technical assistance" among countries of the Global South in
order to strengthen national responses to the epidemic, drawing on the
Brazilian experience.36 Certainly the program's successes are notable. B ut
whatever the merits of these developments, it is important to keep in mind
that they are consolidating in a heterogeneous and contested transnational
field and that the sedimentation of hegemonic norms at that level is re­
inforcing trends in social movements nationally.
In Mexico the National Council for the Prevention and Control of H I VI
A I D S (CONAS I DA) was established in 1988 and elevated to a national cen-
 Brazil without Homophobia 201

ter (the National Center for the Prevention and Control of H IV /A I D S ,

C E N S I DA ) in 2001. As i n Brazil (and elsewhere in the region), i t has become
an alternative pathway to the state for activists, although its opening to civil
society has been significantly slower and more limited (Torres-Ruiz 2006).
Then general director of C E N S I DA, Jorge Saavedra, thus recalled, "I think
from the start, C O N AS I DA was an area that was open to the gay population.
Of course at that time, folks tried to hide or veil things, to avoid using the
word. But many gay groups did already start to work with C O N AS I DA in the
198os. Of course, that often remained at the level of a window where you
could go complain to the government . . . . The responses were bad, fair, or
more or less okay at that time, in the 198os and 1990s, but it was the only
window available to the gay population or the population of men who have
sex with men." 37
The slower and more limited opening of this path in Mexico speaks not
only to the country's much later transition to democracy but to differ­
ent histories of neoliberal state restructuring and health sector reform.
In a comparative study Raquel Abrantes Pego and Celia Almeida (2004)
underscore important differences in the societal actors constellating
around these processes in both countries. In Brazil, they note, the Univer­
sal Healthcare System, inspired by the solidaristic vision of the healthcare
reform movement, instituted decision-making mechanisms such as na­
tional, state, and municipal councils, half of whose members were repre­
sentatives of civil society, that were relatively porous to societal demands.
In Mexico, on the other hand, where the election in 1982 ushered in one of
the earliest, most orthodox and sustained projects of neoliberal reform in
the region, a technocratic cadre of public health experts regarded existing
P R J -dominated health sector bureaucracies as permeated by clientelistic
and corporate practices and sought to rationalize and modernize the sec­
tor by "depoliticizing" health and increasing efficiencies by incorporating
the private sector.
This said, a community liaison office was established in CO NAS I DA in
1989, later elevated to the level of the Department of Civil Society Organi­
zations, though for much of its history its efforts were limited by tight bud­
getary constraints, amounting largely to the distribution of condoms and
information on safe sex. Although a small number of prevention projects
in partnership with N G O s were funded earlier, in 2001, after considerable
lobbying by activists in the country in consultation with their Brazilian
counterparts, Mexico signed a much smaller loan with the World Bank, en­
visioning a similar role for N G O s in H IV/A I D S prevention. In 2006, though
ultimately not using the World Bank money, C E N S I DA announced the first
competition (or N G O H IV / A I DS prevention projects, funding over one
hundred proposals.38
Yudice (2005) has argued that the NGOization of social movements in
202 Pathweys

Latin America reflected in these histories has actually weakened the public
sphere, as activism has given way to bureaucratic administration. While
activists' incorporation into the administrative apparatus undoubtedly im­
plies navigating new constraints, my analysis in this chapter suggests more
nuanced possibilities as well. Three points might be made in this regard.
First, I have suggested that activism today also exceeds the regulation of
governmentality and that the resources infused into movements through
incorporation into governmental practice may have spillover effects into
other areas even as they reinforce certain trends. Just as legislation, even
when remaining on paper, might have symbolic reverberations in other
fields, advances in the field of bureaucratic administration can have
broader reverberations in the state and society. Second, I have suggested
that the field of governmental administration can itself, in some instances,
be transformed from a technocratic into a politicized terrain. By this, I do
not mean to fall into an a critical celebration of neoliberal technologies of
governmentality, but rather to suggest that, given the growing importance
of international financing in shaping social movement fields not only in
Brazil but in the Global South, it is important to recognize the possibilities
that activists navigating a highly constrained and increasingly rationalized
terrain are carving out to stretch the boundaries of subjectification and
contest the terms of biopolitical exclusion.
Finally it is worth considering this line of activism in relation to the in­
stitutional arena of politics privileged by theories of the public sphere. In
his ethnography conducted at the Caasah A I o s Hospice, founded in Salva­
dor, Bahia, in 1992, a hospice serving sex workers, travestis, and other so­
called marginal populations, Joao Guilherme Biehl (2001, 2004) discusses
the enactment and limitations of what he terms a "biomedical citizenship"
in Brazil. On the one hand, even against the backdrop of state guarantees
of universal health care, he notes that the local state and medical com mu­
nities there retain the capacity to "let die," as statistical practices and label s
such as "drug addict," "prostitute," and "noncompliant" make the poorest
partially visible and traceable by the public health system in ways that in­
scribe them in the realm of bare life, allowing them to be blamed for th eir
death. At the same time, he notes, "The fact is that in such houses of sup­
port, former noncitizens have an unprecedented opportunity to claim a
new identity around their politicized biology, with the support of interna­
tional and national, public and private funds. Here the immediate access to
the language and goods of biomedicine and the administration of heal th ,
the politics of patienthood, has priority over the making of metaso cia l
guarantees of social order or over political representation" (2004 : 122 ) .
In this chapter I have sought t o trace the development of this biom ed i­
cal citizenship and its subsequent expansion into other realms of gover n­
mentality by considering activists' historic intermingling of a sovereig n
 Brazil without Homophobia 203

discourse of rights and citizenship with governmental imperatives of tech­

nical administration. Considering the penetration of this citizenship at the
level of everyday life in this "zone of social abandonment," it is notable that
Biehl suggests the priority of this biomedical route over the rights-based
claims to political representation. In earlier chapters I underscored the
limitations of activists' achievements through the democratic path of po­
litical parties and parliamentary institutions privileged by theories of the
public sphere. In this regard, whatever the limitations of a citizenship con­
structed through this technocratic alternative, it speaks to both the demo­
cratic promises of liberal modernity and their relationship to neoliberal
technologies of governmentality that the achievements made through it
have arguably found a much deeper expression in society. Indeed to the ex­
tent that the LG BT movement itself has diversified considerably in Brazil,
expanding to regions outside major urban centers and comprised largely
of lower-middle-class and working-class activists, this penetration has oc­
curred in large part through this technocratic alternative to representative
institutions, incorporating activists into technologies designed to extend
the reach of public policies in capillary ways.
 *
The Hope and Fear of Institutions

In 1917, in the midst of Mexico's revolutionary fervor, as lawmakers met

to define the new institutional foundations of the nation's political life,
Alfonso Cravioto, a federal deputy from the state of Hidalgo, posed the
following question to his congressional colleagues:
I say this: leadership posts of National Representation, beyond a real function,
have an honorific character, the character of representing the trustworthiness
of the Chamber. . . . This morning, I discussed an argument with a group
of colleagues that I find formidable in light of the justification we are con­
sidering. Can you imagine someone daring to include in the by-laws that a
president [of the Chamber] should be deposed if he proved to be a pederast?
No. Undoubtedly not. How could we anticipate such a case? The very act of
anticipating it in the by-laws denigrates National Representation to the ut­
most, not just because we could believe that an individual of such low morals
and such a physical degeneration could sit among us but also that we would
make such a terrible mistake as to choose a man of such a frighteningly low
sensual category, placing him in the Presidency. But I ask you: what would
the National Representation do if, by misfortune, the acting president at any
given moment proved to belong to this class of men and a participant in one
of those public dances that are unfortunately taking place in our midst, and
this were published in the papers? I ask you: would the National Representa­
tion tolerate having this individual at its command for even a moment: at its
highest post and presiding over our sessions? 1

The answer, of course, was no. The question, indeed, was rhetorical. Law­
makers presumably took for granted the relations of power constituted by
sexual stigma and their replication in the federal Congress at this founda­
tional moment in the nation's political life. The legislative field, after all ,
was a gendered terrain - even if enforced informally, left unspoken - an d
 The Hope and Fear of Institutions 205

beyond the exclusion of women, lawmakers presumably understood that

m en should be men in the Congress as well as in everyday life.
Cravioto's remarks cast light on certain themes explored in the course
o f this work, with implications not only for Mexico and Brazil but more
broadly. His statement suggests two related but distinct levels of exclusion
from representation: representation in formal politics (a lawmaker cannot
be a pederast) and representation at the level of language or significa­
tion (even the word cannot be spoken). Notably the broader question at
stake in the debate revolved around the capacity of formally democratic
in stitutions to subordinate the particular interests (and unmentionable
vices) of public officials. Thus celebrating an "almost victorious" global
stru ggle against the particular privileges of both church and state, Cra­
vioto declared, "Fortunately these are no longer the times when Louis XIV
could say 'I am the state."' In stipulating that a gendered exception should
not speak its name, in other words, Cravioto was seeking to safeguard the
universality of both purportedly rationalized democratic institutions and
nation.
Paradoxically, however, his remarks contained the seeds of their own un­
doing and point to countervailing forms of resistance moving from the bot­
tom up and outside in. Already the increasingly visible homoerotic subcul­
ture in the country - the "public dances unfortunately taking place in our
midst" - made its way into public discourse in the legislative field, if only
to speak that it must not be spoken. In other words, Cravioto's taken-for­
granted assertion that gender roles should be enforced was only necessary,
indeed only possible, because of their erosion through everyday forms of
resistance in the postrevolutionary public square. As I have argued, these
tensions between enforcement and resistance circulated around the con­
stitution of queer spaces and identities and the prohibitions and permis­
sions attached to them. Several decades later, LGBT activists in both Brazil
and Mexico emerged to contest these gendered boundaries more directly
in public discourse. In doing so, they sought not only to reinscribe repre­
sentation within the public sphere but to appropriate its symbolic capi­
tal - in Cravioto's words, its "honorific character" - to move in the other
direction: in other words, to contribute to a new "common sense" on gen­
der and sexuality at the level of everyday life. This work, at one level, can
be read as a story about the transnational circulation of texts, including
gendered and sexual scripts, linked to a project of modernity, and their
e mbedded effects in (re)constituting the boundaries of identity, the pub­
lic, and the nation. At another, it explores how national activists have con­
te sted these gendered boundaries and how the changing structures of the
p ublic sphere have shaped both the terms of their entry and the penetra­
tio n of their efforts.
206 Conclusion

At the transnational level, I posited a field populated by multiple glo bal

communities within which an evolving project of liberal modernity has at­
tained a hegemonic weight. In Latin America in recent decades a regio n al
convergence on liberal democratic institutional frameworks and neolib­
eral structural adjustment policies has undoubtedly fostered com mo n
trends in sexual politics over time, shaping activists' priority deman ds of
the state as well as the response to them by the state and other politi ca l
actors. In emphasizing the heterogeneity of the transnational field, how­
ever, an approach that departs from both unifying accounts of an interna­
tional public sphere and totalizing accounts of empire, I sought to high­
light the polyvalent strands comprising globalization beneath the level
of hegemonic norms, as variably situated national actors, from positivist
criminologists to left party militants, participate in transnational discur­
sive repertoires and articulate linkages across national boundaries in dis­
tinct ways. In doing so, my intention was not to posit a global marketplace
in which consumers, abstracted from social and historical circumstances,
are free to choose what scripts they appropriate or not. Rather, I sought
to underscore the relations of power and processes of selection, as well as
the tensions and possible fissures, underlying the consolidation of pre­
vailing trends at both the national and transnational levels, which may
overshadow or displace dissident voices crafting alternative sexual politics
and identities. Thus, for example, activists mobilizing around dissident ex­
pressions of gender and sexuality at the World Social Forum in recent years
have strongly criticized the liberal turn taken by significant sectors of na­
tional LG BT movements, as manifest in the energy and resources invested
in civil unions, in a tendency toward isolation from other political causes
and actors, and in a lack of critical attention to neoliberal globalization .2
Activists from Brazil and Mexico have participated in these transnational
dialogues and raised similar critiques within national movements, though
their position and influence have been significantly shaped by broader in­
stitutional frameworks that have encouraged other priorities, desires, and
rationalities, particularly in state-directed efforts.
At the national level, I suggested that we might conceive of the public
sphere by disaggregating it into multiple fields within which the bound­
aries of representation are contested, each with institutional and cultural
parameters that constrain discourse and limit access as well as distinct ar­
ticulations with the transnational field. Thus in contesting understandings
of gender and sexuality within leftist parties, activists, in a sense, used on e
language, another within feminist movements, and others in approachin g
legislatures, the biomedical establishment, and so on. This approach pre­
supposes an understanding of identity as constructed and contested in a
polyvocal manner, in various overlapping and embedded, though poten­
tially contradictory fields of representation. Without denying the way tha t
 The Hope and Fear of Institutions 207

p ower inheres in fields that may privilege particular transnational con­

s tr uctions of sexuality and gender, this framing was in part meant to per­
fo rm a certain displacement of critiques often raised in theorizing about
th e globalization of sexualities, which tend to focus narrowly on LGBT
a ctivism or identities and their relationship with local sexual fields.
In fact these discussions have in many ways paralleled broader debates
ab out the promises and violence of modernity. Reflecting both a skepti­
cism of liberalism's master narratives informed by postmodern, postcolo­
nial, and feminist critiques and a suspicion informed by queer and femi­
nist theories of the demand for formal representation itself, critics have
charged that a globalized LGBT identity politics has reproduced narratives
of progress and civilization in ways that relegate alternative expressions of
dissident genders and sexualities to the realm of the backward, often in
seeking institutional outcomes of little relevance to many (Altman 2001;
Binnie 2004; Guzman 2oo6; Decena 2oo8; Cruz-Malave and Manalan­
san 2002a; Patton 2002; Santiago 2002; Manalansan 2006). While I have
drawn on a number of insights produced by this literature, I have also tried
throughout this work to be more attentive to gray areas and to resist the
facile binaries at times reproduced in these critiques. Such binaries con­
tinue to map what I think is a much messier and more entangled world
across overlapping rubrics of national and foreign, subaltern and elite, "au­
tochthonous queers" ( presumably untouched by modernity) and cosmo­
politan gays (presumably alienated or colonized} , at times reducing activ­
ism to a mere parroting of U.S. -based identity politics. In this respect, Jon
Binnie (2004) has justifiably criticized how theorizing on globalized sexu­
alities in the U.S. academy in particular has at times taken up postcolonial
critiques in ways that paradoxically read the United States as all-knowing
and ever-present while denying decisional agency in the Global South and
the significance of local histories. In order to navigate the gray areas of a
political terrain perhaps better understood as hybrid, I sought not only to
emphasize the fragmentation and the multiple genealogies underlying an
activist project that may (only) superficially appear to be unified but also
to contextualize this project within a broader critical analysis of the chang­
ing discursive constraints and structural limitations of the public sphere.
In this regard, more than other studies of sexual politics in the region,
th is work has focused considerable attention on the weight of formal politi­
cal institutions. Party systems, electoral laws, parliamentary arrangements,
state bureaucracies, and international frameworks intercede at multiple
points and in various ways in the discussion. In exploring their significance
I have also drawn on bodies of literature that are rarely put in dialogue and
that tend to regard the implications of formal political institutions in very
different w�ys. Given this attention, it is worth considering both the hope
and the fear these institutions inspire. This debate takes us back to the two
208 Conclusion

levels of representation suggested above and to the relationship between

law and norm, institution and culture, in the context of Latin Ameri can
modernities.

QU E E R I N G T H E P U B L I C S P H E R E , PA RT I :

T H E P RO M I S E O F D E M O C RACY

As Leonardo Avritzer and Sergio Costa (2oo6) have argued, the concept of
the public sphere posed a challenge to a prevailing assumption of "demo­
cratic elitism" in postwar democratic theory, which found expression in
one of the central contributions by Latin American and Latin Americanist
scholars to these debates: the literature on democratic transitions and con­
solidation. Assessing the prospects of the formal democracies that emerged
throughout much of the region in the final decades of the twentieth cen­
tury - the backdrop of my discussion of LGBT activism in this work- the
transitions literature emphasized the critical importance of formal politi­
cal institutions fundamentally as a way to ensure the stability of tenuous
democratic arrangements, particularly against antidemocratic elites, who
had long demonstrated their willingness to veto the democratic rules of
the game if demands for distributive justice went too far. Democratization
was understood as a complex and potentially reversible process involving
moves and countermoves by competing authoritarian, democratic, and
semidemocratic elites, sometimes involving the mobilization of mass sec­
tors, sometimes their containment. Thus premised on a marked analytic
distinction between elites and masses and often on a perceived contra­
diction between political stability and mass participation, democracy was
generally identified with the narrow institutional parameters of liberal rep­
resentative government ( periodic elections, legal opposition parties, basic
civil liberties and political rights, and a free press) and deemed to have
consolidated when rival elites regarded these arrangements as the only
game in town ( Linz and Stepan 1996; Avritzer and Costa 2oo6; Avrit zer
2002; D. Collier and Levitsky 1997; O'Donnell and Schmitter 1986) .
In time, however, an initial optimism inspired by the end of aut hori­
tarian rule gave way to disillusionment amid persistent social inequali­
ties, human rights violations, and corruption in new democracies. In re­
sponse many scholars shifted their attention from the narrow institutional
parameters privileged in the transitions literature to the broader societies
in which they were embedded (O'Donnell 1996, 1999; Alvarez, Dagnin o,
and Escobar 1997a; Panizza 1995; Avritzer 2002; Avritzer and Costa 2oo6;
Dagnino 1997; Dagnino et al. 1998). Whatever its limitations, to whi ch I
return below, the concept of the public sphere as an intermedia ry space
between the state and society provides both a normative framework fo r
 The Hope and Fear of Institutions 209

deeper understandings of democratic practice and a critical lens to assess

it s realization.
Of particular concern in much of this literature was the specific histori­
cal configuration of the public-private divide in the region, as theories of
hybridity were extended to democratic practice. In one way or another, the
in capacity of purportedly rationalized institutions to subordinate the par­
ticular interests of elites - or the weakness of their performative force - has
contributed to the clientelism and relations of favor that routinely inter­
vene in formal statecraft; to systematic impunity and starkly differ�nt ex­
periences of the rule of law within the same society; and to the persistence
of societal authoritarianism conditioning stratified forms of citizenship.
The turn to the public sphere retained the hope in formal democratic insti­
tutions of the transitions literature, though extending it to encompass the
structured relationship between the state and society. The proliferation of
social movements throughout the region mobilizing in opposition to au­
thoritarian governments and the growing importance of human rights in
shaping public discourse marked something fundamentally new in orga­
nized civil society's relationship to politics, holding out the promise that
activists could expand and deepen the parameters of citizenship and begin
holding states accountable in ways that might intercede in and challenge
asymmetric relations of power in the private sphere.
The particular historic configurations of the public-private divide in
Brazil and Mexico have undoubtedly formed a central constitutive aspect
of the political terrain that LGBT activists have had to navigate. Through­
out this work they have been manifest in laws that remain on paper and
policies that go unimplemented as well as in the intermediary role that
activists are carving out, not just transmitting societal demands to the
state but pulling formal frameworks off paper to increase their performa­
tive force. Again, my intention in this work was not to disqualify activists'
engagement with the state as inevitably compromising. Nor did I mean to
suggest that the legal frameworks achieved by activists to date are useless.
Even laws that remain on paper create symbolic resources that can be used
in subsequent political efforts, and state-directed efforts can, in some in­
stances, provide a focus for mobilization that may have deeper reverbera­
tions and spillover effects into other areas of activism. And certainly, in
some instances, formal legal changes can bring real material and symbolic
ben efits to people's lives, particularly in contesting existing practices al­
rea dy constituting gendered and sexual subjects.
In this regard, it is worth mentioning a new priority that has emerged
on both movements' agendas since I completed the greater part of my
research. In 2006 and 2007, P R O congressmen working closely with trans
activists intr� duced two proposals in Mexico's Chamber of Deputies to
210 Conclusion

allow transsexuals to change their name and gender on official docum ents .
Little progress has been made in advancing either, but the Federal District
Legislative Assembly approved a similar measure the following year, a nd
in 2009, the National Supreme Court ofJustice unanimously ruled to all ow
a transsexual woman to remove a notation from her birth certificate indi­
cating her juridical past as a male.3 In Brazil, while courts have permitted
similar changes in several individual cases, in 2006, a federal deputy wi th
the Workers Party introduced a bill to permit transsexuals to change th ei r
name legally. Certainly these proposals reflect the growing presence of
trans activists in public debate in recent years, while building on the sym­
bolic framework achieved by LGBT activists over the course of decades.
They also reflect multiple articulations with the transnational field,
not just in the similar (though not identical) demands being pursued but
in the prior inscription of transsexual subjects in gendered legal frame­
works and pathologizing medical discourses. The proposals are certainly
not ideal. In both countries they require those seeking changes in offi­
cial documents to present a medical diagnosis of gender identity disorder,
a diagnostic category codifying transsexuality as a mental illness in the
World Health Organization In ternational Classification of Diseases. They
thus articulate technologies of governmentality across legal, psychiatric,
and medical regimes in ways that require individuals to continue facing
official barriers in their daily lives while undergoing years of disciplinary
medical surveillance (Bento 2004, 2006). In 2008, however, another bill
was introduced in the Brazilian congress contemplating the travesti
population, also by a deputy with the Workers Party, which does not re­
quire a medical diagnosis. And while neither Brazilian proposal permits
changes in the officially assigned gender, both do differ from the proposals
in Mexico by making changes contingent merely on a medical diagnosis
rather than sex reassignment surgery. In this respect, they contemplate
activists' critique of official reductions of gender to genitalia rather than
an expression of self, an understanding that has forced many individuals to
submit to painful surgeries that risk complications, such as the permanent
loss of sexual pleasure, in effect "demanding the sexual and reproductive
body as the price for access to citizenship" (Cabral and Viturro 2006 : 266) .
Moreover at the first National LGBT Conference in Brasilia in June 20 08,
an unprecedented event that brought together activists from every state in
the country and officials from all three branches of government, the healt h
minister's announcement that Brazil's universal healthcare system woul d
extend free access to hormone therapy and surgery for those who seek it
speaks to activists' engagement in multiple fields and a further elab ora­
tion of the biomedical citizenship discussed in chapter 6 , while suggesti n g
that the possibilities for gender self-determination may extend beyond the
strata of those who can afford to pay. These legislative proposals certainly
 The Hope and Fear of Institutions 211

op erate through existing political systems while leaving them largely in­
t a ct, and the bills themselves are not ideal, yet if they are passed they may
non etheless facilitate the lives of thousands of people who routinely face
i nstitutionalized forms of violence and economic marginalization through
existing rationalized inscriptions of the gender binary in medical and edu­
ca tion records, birth certificates, employment credentials, and passports.
Such steps, while partial, should not be discounted (Currah 2006).
All of this said, I have also noted very real limitations in activists' efforts,
c on ditioned, if nothing else, by the limited organizational scope and re­
sources of movements themselves. And while I think the contention that
activists have been fully co-opted into a seamless web of biopolitical man­
agement obscures multiple points of tension in a more heterogeneous ter­
ra in, their incorporation into public policy frameworks through neoliberal
technologies of governmentality has undoubtedly charted a difficult path
between critical oversight and administration. It is with a certain ambiva­
lence that I have drawn on the paradigm of the public sphere in my dis­
cussion. While I find the framework helpful in thinking about activists'
attempts to expand and deepen the parameters of citizenship and to con­
sider some of the challenges and limitations they have confronted in this
project, I am also aware of its conceptual blind spot as an effort to rescue
an incomplete project of modernity from itself. This ambivalence is in part
guided by a sense that activists, like all of us, are navigating an imperfect
wodd and that political engagement must be informed by a critical aware­
ness of its limits and implications. In this regard, the "queering of the pub­
lic sphere" in the title of this book can be read in two ways, referring not
just to activists' efforts to incorporate questions of gender and sexuality
into formal political debate but also to the importance of questioning the
master narratives associated with this project.

QU E E R I N G T H E P U B L I C S P H E R E , PA RT I I :
'
M O D E RN I TY S O T H E R FAC E

In a seminal text in the literature on democratic transitions, Guillermo

O'D onnell and Philippe Schmitter (1986) draw on Machiavellian tropes to
des cri be these processes as moments of enormous flux. During these peri­
ods of exceptional uncertainty, when the structures ordinarily constraining
society are weakened and highly contested, chance events ( fortuna) and
t he remarkable talents of individuals (virtu) can intervene in unexpected
an d contingent ways until a stable democratic order institutes the "nor­
mal uncertainty" of periodic elections (or alternatively, fails to do so) . In
t he context of my broader discussion here, it is worth recalling Hannah
Pitkin's (19B4) feminist reading of Machiavelli in Fortune Is a Woman. At
the heart of Machiavelli's political thought, she explains, is the valoriza-
212 Conclusion

tion of autonomy, or self-government, a feat that a masculine virtu mu st

achieve through a taming of the feminine fortuna, expressed in gendered
language and metaphors of sexual conquest. If virtu is Machiavelli's i deal
quality, she goes on, effeminato (effeminate) is his most scalding epithet,
as nothing is more contemptible or dangerous than for a man to be li ke a
woman, "passive and dependent" (25). The ultimate virtu of the prince is
generative authority, the ability to create free citizens and by that token
autonomous men. But while Machiavelli expressed particular admiration
for the virtu of founding patriarchs like Moses, the givers of law, he also
recognized that such founders, like the origins of states, are necessarily
mythologized : "No leader stands in relation to his follower as a craftsman
to material, imposing form on inanimate matter. He must always deal with
people who already have customs, habits, needs, beliefs, rules of conduct,
who already live somewhere in some manner." Such myths are necessary,
then, to obscure the societal derivation of political power and the founda­
tional violence of law as "all beginnings lack legitimacy and thus need to
create their own" (99).
Modernity's p ro mis e o f autonomy, enlightenment, and freedom has
always hidden its other face. The founder that Pitkin identifies in Machia­
velli's writing is the figure of Odysseus in Horkheimer's and Adorno's
(1998) dark vision of the Enlightenment, tied to the mast of his ship in
order to rescue the self from the Sirens' call to oblivion and thus asserting
his rational mastery over myth and nature, the prehistory of the unified
subject, of identity. He is the figure that Enrique Dussel (1995 : 48) sees in
the conqueror Hernan Cortes, "the colonizing ego, subjugating the Other,
the woman and the conquered male, in an alienating erotics," weaving his
own mythology as he sacrifices them on the altar of reason and universal
rights. Even in his staunch defense of modernity, Habermas (2om : ns) rec­
ognizes its laws as "Janus-faced," asserting that "legal norms must be so
fashioned that they can be viewed simultaneously in two different ways ,
as laws of coercion and as laws of freedom." This other face of moder­
nity lies at the heart of queer and feminist suspicions of formal political
representation noted above and explains the importance of going beyond
a celebration of rights achieveq through formal frameworks to consider
their societal embeddedness. Here I want to consider two related lines of
critique which are crucially important in guiding our engagement wit h
the project of modernity, yet I also want to trouble some of the binaries
they reproduce in ways that I think are more attentive to the gray areas of
hybrid terrains.
In a powerful critique of the liberal frame of "sexual citizenship," Correa ,
Petchesky, and Parker (2oo8) remind us that the seductive trope of "citi­
zen" has always been concerned as much with the production of outsiders
as with political empowerment through the extension of rights:
 The Hope and Fear of Institutions 213

From its origins in ancient Greek politics to present-day liberal democracies,

the idea of citizenship was intrinsically about drawing boundaries - between
citizens and others (strangers, aliens, barbarians) ; between public and private
spaces; between categories of virtue and categories of deviance; and between
"majorities and minorities." For Aristotle, a citizen was by definition someone
capable of both ruling and being ruled, which in no way could include women,
slaves, or resident aliens. Today, the "war on terror" seems to have trumped
the much-vaunted era of globalization, with its free movement of goods, capi­
tal, people, ideas, and images across borders. Instead we see the proliferation
of steel and electronic fences and surveillance technologies and an unprece­
dented number of refugees and internally displaced persons - those abjected
from the safety of citizenship through armed violen.ce and disasters, both
natural and man-made. "Citizenship" becomes irrelevant if you are a dark­
skinned Muslim in the West, or a woman accused of honour crimes by her
community, or a transgender or intersex person almost anywhere. (157)

As sites for the structured circulation of discourse, including discourses

on human and sexual rights, sexual health, technical expertise, citizen­
ship, and nationhood, the political institutions of modern governance in­
duce and stabilize certain forms of representation and political agency,
fostering the sedimentation of identities, desires, and rationalities within
particular fields. Throughout this work, I have noted a number of ways
that this seductive call of institutions - their ability to make us "desire the
state's desire," as Butler (2002) has framed it - has come into play. At the
broadest level, I traced how gradual transitions to formal democracy went
hand-in-hand not only with changes in LGBT movements but with a par­
allel reorientation of a number of other actors (Marxist parties, feminists,
religious political activists, and so on), the mediated effects of which also
conditioned activists' negotiated terms of entry into the p olitical public
sphere. This capacity of institutions to induce and naturalize categories of
thought makes particularly vital a critical awareness of who and what get
left out of political discussion. This is all the more true for liberal tropes
such as sexual rights and citizenship, as well as the identities built around
them, given their hegemonic standing in the international field and his­
toric complicity in obscuring such exclusions behind the guise of univer­
sality Queer and feminist theorists have confronted such exclusions with
.

what George Yudice (2oos : s7-58) has called a politic s of disid enti ty While
.

i dentity politics takes identities as a given, or as the "naturalized base from

which one acts," the politics of disidentity regards them as the "regulated
effects of discourse." Fundamentally a project of deconstruction, the poli ­
t ics of disideptity thus seeks primarily to reveal the relational contexts
a nd the "constitutive exclusions" that produce, naturalize, and generalize
such subjects as "woman," "gay," "transgender," "Brazilian," "human," and
214 Conclusion

"citizen" in ways that do violence to multiple singularities and that bot h

include and exclude.
A second, though related line of critique is informed by subaltern stu dies.
John Beverley (1999) has suggested certain tensions between the logic o f
organized civil society, linked to modern ideals of individual autonomy
and civic participation, and a communal logic based on interpersonal re­
lations. In colonial and postcolonial contexts, where the penetratio n of
the public sphere and civil society is generally shallow, he contends, "t he
subaltern necessarily exists at the margins of or outside the boundaries
of the state, or in its fissures" (121). While suggesting the possibility that
an organized civil society and communal relations existing at its margi ns
could peacefully coexist, he cautions that modernity has historically in ­
scribed such relations into the symbolic realm of the primordial or pre ­
political and taken up their transformation (or liquidation) as part of its
progressive telos. The kind of modernity idealized by Habermas, he con­
tends, has to be "achieved" and is very much tied to notions of develop­
ment ( pedagogic, hygienic, and so on), and "the (legal-ethical) category
of citizen," he reminds us, "is not coextensive with the (moral-communal)
category of person" (121). Along quite similar lines, queer theorists of glob­
alization affirmin g a "ri ght to silence" against the imposition of a transna­
tional coming-out narrative associated with a project of LGBT rights have
picked up on what Beverley identifies as a "dialectical impulse" connecting
organized civil society to the project of colonialism itself, if through an
oppositional frame (Guzman 2oo6; D. Lopes 2007; Santiago 2002; Decena
2oo8; Manalansan 2oo6; Cruz-Malave and Manalansan IV 2002a). Here the
rationalized boundaries of citizenship (sexual or otherwise) are problema­
tized in terms not of exclusion but of expansion, as the imposition of yet
another civilizing mission.
Both lines of critique are powerful. There is no doubt that transnational
frames of sexual politics have been privileged in political public spheres
in Latin America, in part reflecting the racial and class relations that have
historically structured them as well as their articulation with the transna­
tional field. At the same time, the sharp binary divisions between elite an d
subaltern and between the inside and the outside of modernity (or the
state) suggested by these arguments should be navigated more care fully
and risk reinscribing static or primordial understandings of the "out si de"
while bracketing the relations of power that exist "there" (wherever that
may be) from critical inquiry. Moreover I would argue that the tran s na ­
tional categories privileged in sexual politics are likewise more fluid an d
polyvocal than these critiques su ggest and are more adaptive to di ffe ren t
contexts. In this regard, George Yudice (2005) has suggested that the strong
performative force attributed to law in the politics of disidentity in so me
ways reflects its intellectual roots in the United States, where it emerged as
 The Hope and Fear of Institutions 215

a c hallenge to the hegemonic minoritizing discourses that gained political

c ur rency in the wake of the civil rights movement and where the effica­
c io usness of law in the private sphere is generally (and problematically)
as s umed. This is not to say that political institutions do not constrain and
l i mit political discourse in ways that sediment identities and create exclu­
s io ns that need to be challenged; it is to say that the performative, and nor­
malizing, force of law clearly cannot be assumed and, if anything, remains
an open question.
In his elaboration of citizenship as a lived experience in daily life,
Ro berto DaMatta (1987) has posited the "house" and the "street" as central
metaphors organizing the symbolic division between public and private
in Brazil, with implications for other Latin American societies. The street,
he suggests, is governed by universal and impersonal principles that gen­
erally confront people not as rights that empower but as rules that re­
press. The house, on the other hand, is a place of hierarchy as opposed
to universal principle, family rather than citizenry (or subjectification by
the state), interpersonal relations rather than abstract individualism, and
dependence rather than autonomy. Breaking down the binary division be­
tween inside and outside suggested above, DaMatta argues that the key to
understanding social relations in Brazil is not to focus on one code or the
other but on the interconnections and complementarity of the two, point­
ing to how people routinely draw on the interpersonal code of the house to
navigate and humanize the oppressive universalism of the street. Drawing
on the work of the literary critic Silviano Santiago, Yudice (2005 : 68) argues
that this kind of navigation between codes suggests a logic of "supplemen­
tarity" that represents a different inflection to disidentification character­
istic of the hybridizing impulses of Latin American modernities: "Supple­
mentation is a form of disidentification, but the emphasis is neither on the
'dis(s)' nor the identification. Santiago refers to a logic of 'both-and' rather
than 'not that: " This is not a Romantic celebration of racial and cultural
mixing but a recognition of people's strategies of survival as they draw on
cultural capital to navigate changing and hybrid terrains, without reducing
activists' contributions to transforming at least one of these codes to a
co lonial imprint.
The re are implications here for a sexual politics of daily life as well, as
sc h olars have noted how a logic of "both-and" constitutes "hybrid identi­
ti es" that combine both transnational and local categories, often in ways
t hat overlap with symbolic divisions between public and private space
(Ca rrillo 1999, 2002; Sivori 2006). In her wonderful ethnography Hombre,
m ujer, y m uxe en el Istmo de Tehuantepec, the anthropologist Marinella
M iano Borrl! so (2002) describes changing gender relations among men,
Wo men, and muxe, a local category structuring homoerotic desire, in the
Za potec society of Juchitan, Oaxaca. Juchitan, notably, pl aye d a prominent
216 Conclusion

role in Mexico's transition to democracy as one of the first municipalities

won by the opposition. In 1981 the Coalition of Workers, Peasants a n d
Students of the Isthmus, which since its inception identified as both a
popular and ethnic organization, seeking to recover communal lands, won
an election in alliance with the United Socialist Party of Mexico, though
the Popular Municipal Council it established would be crushed by the P R J ­
dominated state government two years later, culminating a campaign of
repression and political assassinations.
Known for the prominent role played by women in both economic and
public life, the local society, explains Miano Borruso, also recognizes the
societal role of the m uxes as a source of moral and economic support for
their mothers and, not uncommonly, initiating teenage boys in their first
sexual experiences. At the same time, she notes, homosexuality among
women is not accorded the same status and is generally repressed, indi­
cating the presence of a heterosexism, albeit constructed differently from,
perhaps more loosely than that prevailing in the dominant culture. Within
homosocial spaces, a number of categories circulate, including loca, reina,
perra, gay, vestida, m uxe, mampo, chichifo, mayate, and gay tapado. And
while noting an affinity between the category "gay" and local professional
classes (artists, hairstylists, civil servants, salesmen) as well as a greater
conformity to dominant standards of masculinity, she also points out that
such class divisions are not rigid and that people circulate within the same
spaces and cross identity categories with a great deal of fluidity, depend­
ing on the field being navigated. Yet there are many sources of change. A
younger generation of m uxes has adopted practices of cross-dressing that
an older generation considers "an exaggeration," influenced by popular na­
tional and international images disseminated through the mass media and
thus indirectly by broader cultural transformations fostered by the femi­
nist and LGBT movements. Within the family, notes Miano Borruso, the
acceptance of m uxe children - particularly vestidas, now more public - is
in crisis, increasingly condemned by the men of the house, brothers and
fathers. Muxes ' articulations with political society have also changed, as
clientelistic relations with local P R J leaders have given way to contacts
across party lines. During her stay the first police raid targeting m uxes in
the town's history occurred, prompting a group to file charges with th e
local human rights commission, approach a local television station, an d
organize the Biini Laanu Collective ("People Like Us") , the first gay orga­
nization in the town, thus adopting (and adapting) the language accorded
legitimacy in the public sphere.
Again, I do not mean to fall into an acritical celebration of a glo bal
supermarket. Identity categories are constructed, circulated, and ap pro­
priated within fields shaped by relations of power in ways that, like th e
structures of capitalism, democracy, and the public sphere, with wh ich
 The Hope and Fear of Institutions 217

they are very much bound, must be open to critique. At the same time, it is
cl early difficult to map fluid and heterogeneous sexual terrains across neat
binaries of elite and subaltern, authentic and alienated, or inside and out­
side. And without affirming a universal telos positing an "out gay identity"
as the pinnacle of civilization, the kind of freezing of the traditional or au­
tochthonous at times suggested by critics seems equally problematic and
prescriptive for cultural terrains very much ensconced in modernity, with
all its contradictions. Supplementation is not about surpassing the past
or mimetic reproductions of the foreign but about cultural rearticulations
that are necessarily open-ended in response to changing needs (Yudice
1992).
The legacies of democratic transitions in Latin America are undoubtedly
partial. As O'Donnell and Schmitter (1986) pointed out twenty years ago,
the formal arrangements that emerged from these processes were delib­
erately crafted in ways to reduce the scope of debate, limit accountability
to publics, and safeguard entrenched economic interests in the private
sphere. It is not surprising that efforts to appropriate and reinscribe these
frameworks have themselves been limited by these constraints. I have tried
to navigate the complexity of this relationship without falling into reduc­
tive formulas. Thus while recognizing the plurality of voices within orga­
nized movements and activists' capacity, in some instances, to stretch the
boundaries of institutional fields, I have also stressed these fields' pro­
found limitations and the importance of attentiveness to the dangers of
their seductive call.
 Acronyms

M EXICO
Political Parties i n Mexico
PA N National Action Party
PCM Mexican Communist Party
PDS Social Democratic Party
PMS Mexican Socialist Party
PRO Party of the Democratic Revolution
PRJ Institutional Revolutionary Party
P RT Revolutionary Workers Party
PSUM United Socialist Party of Mexico
PT Workers Party

Other Acronyms Used

ALDF Federal District Legislative Assembly
CLHARI Rosario Ibarra Lesbian and Homosexual Support Committee
FHAR Homosexual Revolutionary Action Front
F NA L I D M National Front for the Liberation and Rights of Women

B RA Z I L
Political Parties i n Brazil
ARENA Alliance for National Renovation
M OB Brazilian Democratic Movement
PC B Brazilian Communist Party
PC do B Communist Party of Brazil
P oe Christian Democratic Party
P DS Social Democratic Party
PDT Democratic Labor Party
PFL Liberal Front Party
PL Liberal Party
PMDB Brazilian Democratic Movement Party
220 Acronyms

PSB Brazilian Socialist Party

P S, D B Brazilian Social Democratic Party
PT Workers Party
PTB Brazilian Labor Party

Other Acronyms Used

A B G LT Brazilian Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Association ;
subsequently renamed Brazilian Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual,
Travesti, and Transsexual Association
FGCS Gay Faction of the Socialist Convergence
GALF Autonomous Lesbian Feminist Group
GGB Grupo Gay da Bahia
 Notes

In troduction

1. This document is located in the Edgard Leuenroth Archive, University of

Campinas, henceforth referred to as A E L/ U N ICAM P.
2. Pontifical Council for the Family, " Family, Marriage, and 'De Facto Unions,"'
26 July 2000, www. cin.org.
3· John Norton, "Vatican Says Sex Reassignment Service Does Not Change a
Person's Gender," Catholic News Service, 14 January 2003 ; Currah 2006.
4· Offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, "Considerations
Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions between Homosexual
Persons," 31 July 2003, www. vatican .va .

5· Rocio Sanchez, "Fox apuesta por Ia defensa de Ia 'familia natural,"' No­

tiese, 22 March 2004, www. notiese.org ; Mario Reyes, "El Congreso Mundial de
Familias discrimina y viola derechos humanos : O N G s," Notiese (Mexico City) , 31
March 2004.
6. The notion of traditions as constructed implies a process of selection
and generalization of certain symbolic practices that are reified and linked to
totalizing accounts of nation or community in response to very present needs
( Hobsbawm 2003 ) . Chatterjee (1993, 1998) justifiably warns against falling into
the problematic modern vs. traditional dichotomy that characterized postwar
modernization theory, suggesting that what is really at stake in these disputes
are competing modernities. In this respect, appeals to community and tradition
do not always represent a rejection of liberalism tout court but rather constitute
a mechanism of selection for actors, variably filtering its political and economic
prescriptions. Against the backdrop of the evolving global culture posited by
world polity theorists, moreover, religious activists in many countries are in­
creasingly relying on what the sociologist Juan Marco Vaggione (2005) has called
"strategic secularism." This move implies a turn away from appeals to particular­
ist constructions of religious or even national tradition and toward universalist
frames such as human rights or scientific discourses, for instance, purporting to
prove that life begins at conception scientifically. For reasons I explore in this
222 Notes to Introduction

book, such tactics are much more evident in Mexico than Brazil . On the trans­
national dimension of religious political mobilization, see Jakobsen 2002; Buss
and Herman 2003.
7· These observations owe much to the dialogue between Schwarz an d
Habermas elaborated by George Yudice (2005). In a fascinating account of state ­
formation in nineteenth-century Mexico, Escalante Gonzalbo (2005) offe rs a
parallel assessment of the public sphere and the constitution of "imaginary citi­
zens."
8. Hanah Suzart, former president of the Rio de Janeiro Transgender Associa­
tion (Astra), secretary of the National Transvesti, Transsexual, and Transgender
Articulation, in discussion with author, Rio de Janeiro, 10 January 2006.
9· In principle, the notion of hybridity, applied to the cultural, political, and
economic realms, seeks to break down certain binaries historically used to char­
acterize Latin America's relationship to a transnational modernity. On the one
hand, it seeks to problematize the dichotomy between the modern and the tra­
ditional and the teleological narrative historically associated with it, whereby
societies would over time progress by replacing traditional practices with mod­
ern ones. The concept of hybridity, in this case, is used to pluralize expressions
of modernity and to underscore the contemporaneity and entanglement of so­
called modern and traditional practices. On the other hand, the concept has also
been used to counter a paradigm of cultural imperialism, in this case by blurring
the boundaries between the national and the foreign and between resistance
and domination. Here a narrative of foreign imposition on the national is com­
plicated by scholars highlighting processes of selective appropriation, reinterpre­
tation, inversion, and accommodation. Two major criticisms have been leveled
against the concept: first, that the very notion of hybridity is paradoxically con­
tingent on the modern/traditional bi nary it seeks to undercut; and second, that
its challenge to the Gramscian paradigm of cultural domination through hege­
mony reproduces ideologies of mestizaje in Latin American thought, which have
historically erased violence and power ( Lund 2oo6; Beverley 1999). My use of
the term in this work, however, is informed by Lund's assessments of its critical
possibilities in two related ways. First, while in some respects blurring the lines
between the national and the foreign, between resistance and domination, it
certainly does not erase them. Nor does it imply, for instance, that either trans­
national global communities or hybrid cultures at the national level are free of
power asymmetries, exclusions, or conflict. Rather, I see it as providing an ana­
lytic approach that frames globalization as a contested and polyvalent process,
focusing attention on what practices are appropriated, by whom, and to what
effect. Second, by recognizing that all national expressions of modernity are
in some sense hybrid - by repudiating, for instance, the formulation of "pure
models" of democracy in the core to which Latin American counterparts are
defined in terms of lack- hybridity comes to "stand in for the deconstructive act
itself," by recognizing the tensions and constitutive exclusions underlying the
master narratives of modernity ( Lund 2006 : 46, citing Beverley 1999) .
1 0 . Luz Maria Medina Mariscal, longtime activist with the lesbian movement
 Notes to Chapter One 223

an d founder of Fortaleza de Ia Luna, in discussion with author, Xalapa, Veracruz,

14 September 2000.
n . Nancy Cirdenas, "Sin ataduras: Los chicos de Ia banda sin fin," Eros, Au­

gust 1976.
12. Cecilia Riquelme, cofounder of Ayuquelen Lesbian-Feminist Collective,
Sa ntiago, Chile, partic_ipant in several lesbian feminist conferences, and orga­
nizer of the Lesbian Feminist Conference Historic Preservation Commission, in
discussion with author, Mexico City, 21 June 200 5.
13. Raimundo Pereira, president of Atoba, in discussion with author, Realengo,
Rio de Janeiro, 10 January 1999.

1. Sexual Subjects and Public Spheres

1. Case file 14890, Mexico, D.F., Archivo General de Ia Nacion, Mexico City.
I ncludes letter from Alfredo Lozano Cuaron to President Adolfo Lopez Mateos,
1 June 1959; letter titled "Presentation of Report" to Maria Luisa Macias Mojica,
chief of the Department of Correspondence and Archives of the Secretariat of
the Presidency from unidentified author, 2 5 June 19 5 9. While the documents list
the suspect as Manuel Lozano Rodriguez, the content, including his address,
indicate that they refer to the painter Manuel Rodriguez Lozano.
2. Antonio Carlos Moreira, "Deraldo Padilha: Perfil de urn Delegado Exibicio­
nista," Lampido da Esquina, no. 26 (July 1980); Green 1999a.
3· Although, as Monsivais notes, the raid in 1901 marked a radical break in
terms of the publicity accorded to "the 41," in an extensive review of fifty years
of Mexican newspaper coverage in the nineteenth century, the activist and in­
dependent researcher Cecilia Riquelme (2003) found a few rare references to
homosexualities and cross-dressing by Mexican women that already reflect cer­
tain themes later echoed in the press coverage of that case. The earliest article
Riquelme uncovered, appearing in the newspaper El Siglo XIX on 21 June 1842,
for example, recounted the case of Madame Boyard through the prism of sexual
inversion, underscoring her exoticism and foreignness: "Just as there are men so
feminine that, if they didn't have beards, the most skilled naturalist would be
hard pressed to determine their sex; in one word, just as there are marimaricas,
there are also women so manly, with the inclinations and habits of a soldier, a
species of which not a single individual might be found in this city. Given this,
and because we can provide the spectacle, like a man with no arms, we offer our
readers the true story of a famous marimacho, who was the terror of her neigh­
borhood." Because she was elegantly dressed and feminine in appearance and
mannerisms, the article proceeds, people might not suspect that she belongs to
"the species." But Boyard had a "virile courage" and was able to "play with guns
like other women play with fans." She was taken to court for attacking a man, and
when questioned by the judge, she explained that the attack was justified as he
had "insulted the lady in [her] company."
4· Armando Cristeto, "Breve Relatorio de Hechos, Los 41 ," Grupo Homosexual
de Accion e Informacion, Mexico City, 2001.
224 Notes to Chapter Two

5· "Creaci6n de Ia Liga Mexicana de H igiene Mental," Criminalia 4, no. 4 (1938),

387-88.
6. Emilio Viale, "Las Redadas, pr;ktica anticonstitucional, pero cotidiana," Pro­
ceso, 8 October 1978.
7· Carlos Monsivais, "A Ia escalada de delincuencia Ia policia opone su propia
delincuencia: Las redadas, contacto diario de Ia autoridad con los ciudadanos
pobres," Proceso, 18 March 1984.
8. Joao Silverio Trevisan, "Sao Paulo: A guerra santa do Dr. Richetti," Lampiiio
da Esquina, no. 26 (July 1980).
9· Genilson Cezar de Souza, " PM alega defesa social para prisoes em massa,"
Reporter 4, no. 42 (1981).
10. In 1946 the U N S also registered as the Popular Force Party, although it was
banned three years later; in 1971 it registered as the Mexican Democratic Party
(Rionda Ramirez 1997) .
11. "La 'condoecologia' de Carlos Castillo Peraza," Reforma, 31 May 1997.
12. Confidential interview, Mexico City, n July 2000. The group, Quiere a
Mexico, had no official ties with the PAN ; indeed its members remained in the
closet within the Party for fear of the political costs of coming out. The official
Vicente Fox campaign website did include a link to this group as a "supporting
organization."
13. Sandra Herrera, PAN Secretary for the Political Promotion of Women, in
discussion with author, Mexico City, 22 November 2000.
14. "Diego y el joterio," Masiosare, 24 March 2002.
15. Nubia Silveira, "Desencontros e tensoes da historia dos poderes," Zero Hora
( Porto Alegre), 9 July 1986; M. Moreira Alves 1979.
16. " p o s busca apoio protestante," 0 Estado de Sao Paulo (Sao Paulo), 20
December 1981.
17. "Entrevista: Bispo Carlos Rodrigues," Familia Evangelica, Apri1 1999·
18. Valter Gonc;alvez Junhor, "Urnas Fieis," Eclesia, November 2002; Departa­
mento Intersindical de Assessoria Parlamentar, "Bancada Evangelica chegara
menor a 53! Legislatura," 17 October 2oo6, www.diap.org.br.
19. "D. Ivo diz o que pensa," Zero Hora ( Porto Alegre), 11 July 1982; Archdiocese
of Rio de Janeiro, "Ac;ao pastoral com politicos cat61icos," Comunicado Mensa/,
C N B B , year 48, no. 531 (1999): 1262-63.
20. Surveys are conducted nationwide through face-to-face interviews in the
home among adults, age eighteen and older. The margin of error for the 2000
survey in Mexico was + 2.5; similar figures are not provided for the other sur­
veys.
21. Raul Godinez, "La TV, efectiva para Fox: Le cre6 una imagen positiva," La
Jornada (Mexico City) , 18 July 2000.

2. Occupying the Partisan Field

1. Herbert Daniel, Notus Marginais: Con tribuipio para urn debate sabre a
homossexualidade, Part I, March 1979, Centro de Informac;ao da Mulher Archive,
 Notes to Chapter Two 225

Sao Paulo. On sexuality within the Brazilian guerrilla movement, see Green
(2007).
2. Daniel, Notas Marginais.
3· Claudia Hinojosa. "Ni el lesbianismo ni Ia homosexualidad son delitos:
Se requiere un mecanismo legal que defienda estos derechos," D i , 12 Novem­
ber 1981.
4· The October 8 Revolutionary Movement, which had participated in the
armed struggle against the military regime, was a considerably active faction
linked to the M O B, the official opposition party.
5· "Entrevista : Herbert Daniel, 0 gueto desmistificado," lstoE, 27 July 1983.
6. Leticia Armijo, composer and director ofEI Colectivo de Mujeres en Ia Musica
and the Coordinadora Internacional de Mujeres en el Arte, former dual militant
in the PCM and Oikabeth, in discussion with author, Mexico City, 6 June 2000.
7· The Socialist Convergence grew out of the Workers League, founded in 1975,
with roots in the student movement. It was reconstituted in 1978 with the goal of
establishing a broad-based leftist party. Indeed it was a group of workers linked
to the Socialist Convergence who presented the initial proposal to create the
Workers Party at the ninth Metal Workers and Electricians Congress in Lins, Sao
Paulo, in January 1979 (Santana 2001).
8. In 1985 these included three independent parties (the P RT, the Mexican
Workers Party, and the United Socialist Party of Mexico) and two so-called satel­
lite left parties (the Popular Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party),
which received political and financial support from and in turn largely supported
the ruling PRJ (Carr 1992). In 1976, by comparison, only the satellite Popular
Socialist Party formally participated in elections, backing the P R J 's presidential
candidate.
9· The P C M announced its intention to seek legal registration in 1974 (Carr
1992). In 1976 it launched the (informal) symbolic candidacy for the presidency
of the labor leader Valentin Campa. At the eighteenth Party Congress in 1977
the party passed a resolution backing a policy of alliances, paving the way for
the Coalizi6n de Izquierda, an electoral alliance that coalesced around the P C M
ticket in 1979.
10. In the first effort of its kind in the country, activists with the group Outra
Coisa produced a gay guide of Greater Sao Paulo in 1980. The guide listed thir­
teen nightclubs, thirty-two bars and restaurants, sixteen cinemas, fourteen pub­
lic bathrooms, eight saunas, and twenty-seven cruising areas as homosocial
spaces. It identifies only three bars or restaurants and one nightclub as having a
predominantly female clientele; one and six, respectively, a travesti clientele or
shows. Interestingly, the authors associate such guides with the emergence of
homosexual movements in the West, noting the tenth anniversary of Spartacus
International that same year, and suggest that its publication in Brazil is a "logi­
cal outgrowth" of the appearance of a homosexual liberation movement and a
specialized press. Grupo Outra Coisa, 0 Bandeirante Destemido: Urn guia guei de
Siio Paulo, 1980, A E L/ U N I CA M P.
n. joao Carlos Rodrigues, Mirna Grzich, Aguinaldo Silva, Francisco Bitten-
226 Notes to Chapter Two

court, Adao Acosta, and Paulo Martins, "Fernando Gabeira Fala, Aqui e Agora,
Diretamente dos Anos 8o," Lampicio da Esquina, no. 18 (November 1979).
12. Jose Mario Ortiz Ramos and Luis Carlos Resende, "Fernando Gabeira em
nova roupagem," Em Tempo 3, no. 97 (1980).
13. Caterina Koltai, Workers Party Committee, Sao Paulo, " o E S O B E D E<;: A,"
1982, A E L/ U N I CAM P.
14. Caterina Koltai, "0 Pamfleto censurado: ' o E S O B E D E<;:A,"' 1982, A E L/
UN I C A M P.
. 15. Carlos Monsivais, ''A Ia escalada de delincuencia Ia policia opone su propia
delincuencia: Las redadas, contacto diario de Ia autoridad con los ciudadanos
pobres," Proceso, 18 March 1984.
16. Anuario juvenil Mexicano: 1985 (Mexico City: Consejo Nacional de Recursos
para Ia Atencion de Ia Juventud, 1985).
17. Socialist Convergence, "Balan�o de atividades, segunda parte," Sao Paulo,
4 April 1982, Centro de Documenta�ao e Memoria da Universidade do Estado de
Sao Paulo.
18. Comision Nacional Juvenil del cc del P C M , "Tribuna de Discusion XIX
Congreso Nacional : Por una politica comunista para Ia juventud," Oposici6n, 25
January 1981.
19. Coordinacion Nacional de Ia Convergencia Juvenil, "Los jovenes y el PRo,"
Cuadernos del Tercer Congreso Nacional, vol. 2, 1995.
20. Socialist Revolution and the Struggle for Women 's Liberation . Resolution
approved by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, 1979, http://
www. marxists.org. On international Trotskyism, see Alexander 1991; Hobson and

Tabor 1988.
21. Untitled document written by dual militants with the P RT and Lambda,
1978, in the author's possession; Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores,
"Liberacion homosexual: Un analisis marxista," special issue of Bandera Socia ­
lista, no. 91 (1983).
22. I n Latin America Eurocommunism had the greatest influence on the com­
munist parties of Mexico and Venezuela, though here, as in Europe, it did not
represent a single model but a loose repertoire of tactics and strategies selectively
adapted to national circumstances. Important features of this repertoire included
a rejection of insurrectionist strategies; revised notions of the transition to social­
ism, particularly the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat, also rejected at
the nineteenth PC M congress and replaced by the notion of "democratic workers'
power"; and changes in the notion of a vanguard party. Influenced by Gra mscian
thought, Eurocommunists accorded greater importance to the cultural terra in
as a field of struggle and envisioned a slow conquest of civil society by a broad
coalition of the left, including noncommunist progressive sectors (Carr 1985) .
23. Jose Ramon Enriquez, "Carlos Monsivais: Feminismo y homosexu alidad ,"
El Machete, no. 1, May 1980.
24. Roger Bartra, social critic and former editor of El Machete, in disc ussi on
with author, Mexico City, 7 July iooo.
25. Jose Ramon Enriquez, former PC M militant and early member of Lambda ,
 Notes to Chapter Two 227

i n discussion with author, Mexico City, 12 June 2000. In 1971 the first National
Congress on Education and Culture in Cuba ratified the "pathological social
character" of "homosexual deviance," resolving to stop such deviance and not
allow homosexuals in the party (Okita 1980).
26. Roger Bartra, social critic and former editor of El Machete, in discussion
with author, Mexico City, 7 July 2000.
27. Carlos Nelson Coutinho (1991 : m), a party militant aligned with this sector
of the P C B , attributes a renewed interest in Gramscian thought within the Bra­
zilian left in the late 1970s to a broader reassessment of democracy and the need
to articulate linkages with civil society, in the wake of the military government's
defeat of the armed insurrection and in the context of international debates:
"For many Brazilian intellectuals on the left, [ Italian Communist Party General
Secretary] Enrico Berlinguer's statement in 1977 that democracy was a 'universal
human value' represented a definitive breaking point with 'Marxist Leninism."'
Not long after the Central Committee returned from exile, however, it began
marginalizing this current, removing militants from positions of authority and
from the party newspaper, A Voz da Unidade, precipitating the exit of several
militants. One of the few women in the Central Committee, Zuleika Alambert
recalled a masculinist and conservative political culture in the party, despite
her successful efforts to press for the Committee's adoption of a resolution on
the status of women: "Nothing was ever said about homosexuals [in the party] .
Women, they said, were important, but to the extent that they participated in
the general revolution." I asked Alambert about party militants sympathetic to
Eurocommunism: " 1 , for instance, was one of them. I'm a great fan of the Ital­
ians . . . . Eurocommunism represented a third way. In fact, it was when I went to
Europe that I began to see what feminism was, to look at Marxist conceptions . . . .
So there was that group, and I belonged to it . . . . It was a minority, and that's
why we were expelled. That happened after we had returned to Brazil." Zuleika
Alambert, former P C B Central Committee member and president of the National
Women's Council, in discussion with author, Rio de Janeiro, 21 September 2001;
"PCB abre mais uma dissidencia contra corrente de Giacondo," ]ornal do Brasil
(Rio de Janiero), 24 July 1981; "Sutilezas do P C ," Is toE, 22 December 1982; "Comite
Central foi rejuvenescido," ]ornal do Brasil ( Rio de Janiero), n February 1984.
28. "Confusoes Comunistas," IstoE, 31 March 1982.
29. "1984: Que fazer?," IstoE, 13 June 1984.
30. Oscar Hinojosa, "En el II Congreso Nacional, el P S U M mostr6 su inmadu­
rez y cay6 en contradicciones," Proceso, 22 August 1983; Asamblea Nacional de
J6venes del PSU M , "A Construir un Movimiento Juvenil de Masas y Por el Socia­
lismo ( Resolucion Asamblea Nacional de J6venes del P S U M ) ,"24 April 1983; Raul
]ardon, "La Santisima Trinidad," Asi es, 2-8 September 1983.
31. "Propuesta de Heberto Castillo a Cuahtemoc Cirdenas y Ia Corriente
Democratica," La Unidad , 5 June 1988; "Convenio politico que suscriben Ia Corri­
ente Democrarica y el Partido Mexicano Socialista," La Unidad, 12 June 1988.
32. Liszt Vieira, former Rio de Janiero state deputy, Workers Party, in discus­
sion with author, Rio de Janeiro, 25 July 2001.
228 Notes to Chapter Three

33· Claudia Calirman, Dau Bastos, Marcelo Lipiani, Leone! Azevedo, Miria
Chor, and Soriana Jorge, "Dialogo de Gerac;oes," Luta e Prazer, Vol. 1, no. 8 (April;
May 1982).
34· Rita Quadros, longtime activist with the Workers Party L G B T setorial an d
legislative aide, subsequently active in the Brazilian Lesbian League and the les­
bian representative on the federal government's National Women's Rights Cou n­
cil, in discussion with author, Sao Paulo, 10 August 2001.
35· Castillo y Soledad, "lnforme sobre el estado de Ia construcci6n del partido
en provincia,"Boletln Interno de Discusi6n e Informacion, no. 55, October 1982.
36. Sonia Hypolito, former Workers Party secretary of social movements, in
discussion with author, Sao Paulo, 14 August 2001.
37· Joao Machado, former member of the Workers Party National Executive
Committee, in discussion with author, Sao Paulo, 5 October 2001.
38. Marcos Rolim, former federal deputy, Workers Party/Rio Grande do Sui,
and president of the Chamber of Deputies Human Rights Commission, in dis­
cussion with author, Brasilia, 10 October 2001.

3· The Lim its of Liberalization

1. Angel Trejo, "Buscan apoyo del P R I los invertidos," Sol de Mexico, Edici6n
de Mediod£a (Mexico City), 6 October 1978; Invitaci6n a conferencia de prensa
nacional para el 7 diciembre, 1978, anunciando Ia candidatura de Victor Amez­
cua ( para diputado); Veronica Castro ( para diputada suplente), Centro de In­
formacion y Documentacion de los Homosexuales en Mexico "Ignacio Alvarez"
(Ignacio Alvarez Information and Documentation Center on Homosexualities in
Mexico).
2. Angel Aguilar Perez, "Deciden homosexuales y lesbianas apoyar Ia candida­
tura de Rosario Ibarra de Piedra," El D£a (Mexico City), 28 January 1982; J. Martin
Moreno Duran, "Apoyo del 'tercer sexo' a Ia candidata del PRT," La Prensa (Mexico
City), 28 January 1982.
3· ]. Martin Moreno Duran, "Apoyo del 'tercer sexo' a Ia candidata del P RT," La
Prensa (Mexico City), 28 January 1982; Leslie Serna, '"Estare donde sea que haya
un oprimido': R I P," Bandera Socialista, no. 220, 1 March 1982.
4· Another gay candidate also ran for federal deputy that year, with the newly
created Social Democratic Party, also Trotskyist, but failed to mobilize much
support within the movement.
5· "Carta de intolerancia politica y social," Uno mas uno, 24 March 1982; Bob
McCubbin, "Mexican Left Support for Gay Rights Grows," Workers's World Party ,
21 May 1982; Mogrovejo 2oooa.
6. Max Mejia, "Un primer balance de C L H A R I ," Bandera Socialista, no. 236, 3 0
August 1982.
7· Miccolis 1983; "Homossexuais procuram apoio dos candidatos," 0 Estado de
Siio Paulo (Sao Paulo), 24 October 1982; "Homossexuais e Eleic;oes," 0 Corpo, 1982 ,
Centro de Informac;ao da Mulher Archive; "A forc;a dos homossexuais," Visiio, 11
October 1983; "Pesquisa Somos-Aue," A E L/ U N I CA M P, 7 November 1982; GA L F
 Notes to Chapter Three 229

and Grupo Outra Coisa de Ac;:ao Homossexualista, "Debate sobre Homossexual­

is mo e Feminismo," A E L/ U N I CAM P, 1982; Huides Cunha and Luiz Mott, "Grupo
Gay da Bahia consulta os candidatos sobre homossexualismo e A I D S ," mimeo­
graph, 14 September 1982, Grupo Gay da Bahia Archive, henceforth identified as
G G B Archive; "E nos tambem?," Boletim do Grupo Gay da Bahia 2, no. 5 (1982),
G G B Archive; "Cronologia das principais atividades do GGB (Abril-Agosto 1982) ,"
Boletim do Grupo Gay da Bahia 4· no. 2 (1982), G G B Archive; "0 G G B e Noticia,"
Boletim do Grupo Gay da Bahia 5, no. 2 (1982 ) ; Joao Antonio Mascarenhas, Rio de
Janeiro, to Peter Ashman, Essex, England, 21 December 1981, A E L/ U N I CA M P.
8. Comision de Trabajo Homosexual, Partido Revolucionario de los Trabaja­
dores, "La linea del PRT en el movimiento de liberacion homosexual y su instru­
mentacion," 1983, mimeograph in author's possession.
9· Joao Antonio Mascarenhas, Rio de Janeiro, to Karen-Christine Friele, Oslo,
Norway, 29 March 1982, no. 16oj82, A E L/ U N I CAM P.
10. The International Gay Association became the I nternational Lesbian and
Gay Association in 1986.
u . Braulio Peralta, "Jose Ramon Enriquez: Debe ser autonomo el movimiento

homosexual," Uno mas uno, 24 June 1982.

12. Joao Baptista Breda, Sao Paulo, to Joao Antonio de Souza Mascarenhas, Rio
de Janeiro, 20 July 1982, A E L/ U N I CA M P.
13. Joao Antonio Mascarenhas, Rio de Janeiro, to Antonio Carlos Tosta, Sao
Paulo, 6 July 1982, no. 228/82, A E L/ U N I CA M P.
14. I n Brazil's elections for the Federal Chamber of Deputies, the military's P D S
and the opposition P M D B would capture 43.2 and 43.0 percent of the valid votes,
respectively, with the rest going to the populist Democratic Labor Party (5.8 per­
cent) , the resurrected Brazilian Labor Party (4.5 percent) , and the Workers Party
(3.6 percent). By the admittedly questionable official results in Mexico, the P R J
and the PAN captured 69.3 and 17.5 percent o f the votes for the Federal Chamber,
respectively. The P S U M became the second largest opposition party, garnering
4 ·4 percent of the votes, with remaining votes distributed among several smaller
parties, including 1.3 percent for the P RT. Brazil: 1982 Legislative Election and
Mexico: Resultados Electorates para Ia Camara de Diputados, 1961-91, both avail­
able at Political Database of the Americas, Georgetown University.
15. Joao Antonio Mascarenhas, "Circular no. 38oj82: Direitos dos Homos­
se xuais: Candidatos as eleic;:oes de 15 de novembro de 1982," 8 December 1982,
GG B Archive. Three of the five gay candidates, all men, are also counted as
making public statements, which explains why the total number of candidates is
fi fty-one, not fifty-four. Also, Mascarenhas lacked information on the other two
gay candidates with respect to their support for the petition or the movement,
an d so counted only forty-nine of the fifty-one as potential allies. The candidates
ran for a number of offices: governor, vice governor, state and federal deputy, and
city council. I do not list these positions because they are incidental to the point
made here. However, it is worth noting that these candidates included a num­
b er of prominent politicians, including Franco Montoro ( P M D B , List B, elected
Sao Paulo governor); Darcy Ribeiro (Democratic Labor Party, List c , elected vice
230 Notes to Chapter Three

governor of Rio de Janeiro); and P M D B leader Ulysses Guimaraes (List c), who
would subsequently sign the petition and preside over the constituent asse mbly
that produced the Constitution in 1988.
16. For state and federal legislative elections, the entire state represents a n
electoral district, sending several lawmakers to Congress; for city council, the e n ­
tire city. Under proportional representation systems, the number of seats a p arty
wins in a legislature depends on its percentage of the total votes. In Brazil th is is
calculated through a complicated electoral quotient. Assuming that a party cap­
tures six legislative seats, under a closed-list proportional representation system
like Mexico's, party leaders compile ranked lists of candidates before the elec­
tion, and the top six candidates on the list occupy those posts. Party leaders thus
retain considerable control over who gets elected. Under an open-list system like
Brazil's, however, those seats would depend on intraparty competition, going to
the six candidates who individually captured the most votes (Mainwaring 199 5,
1997).
17. "Homossexuais e elei�oes," 0 Corpo, 1982, A E L/ U N I CAM P. It is worth under­
scoring that open candidate lists were significant even in 1982, when their effects
on party discipline were attenuated by the country's recent abandonment of the
bipartisan system and the requirement for voters to cast a straight ballot. The
latter's elimination and other electoral changes in 1985 only reinforced this party
indiscipline and the potential doorways it opened for activists (Nicolau 2002).
18. Luiz Mott, founder of the Grupo Gay da Bahia, in discussion with author,
Salvador, Bahia, 8 October 2001.
19. Some activists in Mexico, however, did object to the commemoration of
the Cuban Revolution given the homophobic policies of the Cuban government.
Also, in Brazil, despite the defeat of the Socialist Convergence proposal, a con­
tingent of gay and lesbian activists participated in the rally anyway.
20. "Eias tern a palavra," Veja, 19 March 198o; Joao Silverio Trevisan, "Congresso
das Genis: Esquerda joga bosta nas feministas," Lampiiio da Esquina 2, no. 23
(1980).
21. GALF, ''Autonomia: Uma Questao sempre em Pauta," 1983, A E L / U N I CA M P.
See also Rosely Roth, ''Autonomia," Chanacomchana, no. 4 (September 1983) .
22. Miriam Martinho, "GA L F : 4 Anos de Atua�ao," Chanacomcha na, no. 3
(May 1983).
23. Yan Maria Yaoyolotl Castro, confounder of Lesbos, the first lesbian group in
Mexico, and several other early lesbian organizations, in discussion with author,
Mexico City, 17 November 2000.
24. Lesbianas Morelenses, unpublished mimeograph, 2(5), January 1984 , Ar­
chive of Comunicacion e Informacion de Ia Mujer; also Mogrovejo 2oooa.
25. Joao Silverio Trevisan, "Quem tern medo das 'minorias'?," Lampiiio da
Esquina 1, no. 10 (1979).
26. "Fala do Grupo Aue na 32a reuniao da S B Pc -Rio de Janeiro," July 1980, A E L /
U N I CAM P.
27. ''A Natureza do regime politico: Programas dos partidos politicos: P T B ,
PS D , U D N , P D C , P R P, P L , P R , PS P, A R E N A , M D B," special issue of Documenta(:QO e
 Notes to Chapter Four 231

at ualidade politica, no. 9 (1978); Partido do Movimento Democratico Brasileiro,

Manifesto, Programa, Estatutos, 1980; Partido Democr<itico Social, Programa: Re­
Jo r ma e Transformar;iio, Brasilia, 1980; Partido Democratico Trabalhista, Mani­
festo, Programa, e £statuto, Rio Grande do Sui, Assambleia Legislativa, 198o; Par­
ti do dos Trabalhadores (1998).
28. Joao Antonio Mascarenhas, carta circular, no. 38oj82, 8 December 1982.
A E L/ U N I CA M P.
29. Joao Antonio Mascarenhas, "0 Terceiro Mundo e o Movimento de Libera­
c;ao Gay," International Gay Association Third Annual Conference -Agenda and
Papers, Newsletter 81-1, original manuscript, G G B Archive.
30. Joao Antonio Mascarenhas, Rio de Janeiro, to Peter Ashman, Essex, Eng­
land, 26 January 1982, no. 51/82, A E L/ U N I CAM P.
31. Ibid.
32. International Gay Association, "Political Parties: World Survey 1981," A E L/
U N I CAM P.
33· Luiz Mott, G G B founder, in discussion with author, Salvador, Bahia, 8 Octo­
ber 2001.
34· Joao Antonio Mascarenhas, "Comunicado no. 1/85 do Triangulo Rosa: A
campanha contra o codigo 302.0, historico e consequencias," Rio de Janeiro, 25
March 1985, A E L/ U N I CAM P.
35· Joao Antonio Mascarenhas, Rio de Janeiro, to Luzenario Cruz, Sao Paulo,
21 December 1981, A E L/ U N I CAM P.
36. Luiz Mott, Salvador, to Federal Deputy Fernando Lyra ( P M D B ) , Brasilia, 20
September 1984, A E L/ U N I CA M P.
37· Joao Antonio Mascarenhas, Rio de Janeiro, to City Councilman Fer­
nando Gondim da Motta ( P M D B , Olinda), 19 September 1984, no. 288/84, A E L/
U N I CA M P.
38. Heather Dashner, former PRT Central Committee member, in discussion
with author, Mexico City, u July 2000.
39. "Relatorio do 10 Encontro do Forum Brasileiro de Gays, Lesbicas e Travestis
na Politica: Visibilidade e Ousadia, Cidadania para Todos," Salvador, Bahia, 12-13
February 1996.
40. Paulo Mariante, Gay and Lesbian Nucleus of the Workers Party, Campinas,
in discussion with author, Campinas, Sao Paulo, 19 September 2001. Suplicy is a
for mer federal deputy, a former Sao Paulo mayor, and the author of a civil unions
b ill.

4 · Advancing Homosexual Citizenship

1. List obtained from Federal Deputy Cida Diogo, Workers Party, Rio de Janeiro,
coordinator of the caucus, Brasilia, July 2007.
2. A B G LT website, www. abglt.org.br; Cezario, Kotlinski, and Navarro 2007. At
the state le*el, Alagoas, Sergipe, Mato Grosso, Pa ra , Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do
Sui, the Federal District, Minas Gerais, Sao Paulo, Santa Catarina, Mato Grosso
do Sui, Paraiba, and Piaui had laws or constitutional protections against dis-
232 Notes to Chapter Four

crimination on the basis of sexual orientation as of 2006. Unlike in Mexico, Bra­

zilian states lack the power to legislate in criminal and civil law. State anti dis­
crimination laws therefore can only fine public or commercial establishments
for discrimination, and recognition of partnerships can only be extended to state
employees.
3· Camara de Deputados, Secretaria Geral da Mesa, "Quadro de Mudanr;a de
Partidos," information obtained by author, 16 October 2001.
4· Italo Cardoso, Sao Paulo City Councilman, Workers Party, in discussion with
author, Sao Paulo, 9 August 2001.
5· Ruth Escobar, former Sao Paulo State assemblywoman, P M D B , and subse­
quently the first president of the federal government's National Women's Coun­
cil, in discussion with author, Sao Paulo, 30 August 2001.
6. Unaddressed letter by Joao Antonio Mascarenhas, Rio de Janeiro, 13 Janu­
ary 1984, no. 13/84, A E L / U N I CA M P ; Triangulo Rosa, "Comunicado no. 1/85: A
Campanha Contra o C6digo 302.0, Hist6rico e Consequencias," Rio de Janeiro, 25
March 1985, A E L/ U N I CA M P.
7· Joao Antonio Mascarenhas, Rio de Janeiro, to Luiz Mott, Salvador, 9 June 1983,
no. 136/83, A E L/ U N I CA M P.
8. These figures represent an imprecise snapshot in the midst of the campaign.
They are compiled on the basis of letters and documents produced by activists
at the time, some of which slightly contradict each other, in part reflecting these
efforts' diffuse nature throughout the country. With the exception of the Sao
Paulo State Assembly, which reflects a roll call vote on the motion, the figures
are largely based on lawmakers who signed the petition prior to its approval, and
the figures for the Bahia State Assembly reflect assemblypersons who signed the
petition before it was actually approved. The motion in Macei6, moreover, did
not include antidiscrimination, limiting itself to calling for the suspension of the
W H O paragraph.
9· Liszt Vieira, former Rio de Janeiro state deputy, Workers Party, in discussion
with author, Rio de Janeiro, 25 July 2001.
10. G G B , "Informe, no. 27/1984: Apelo a uma definir;ao," 18 August 1984, G G B
Archive.
u . Joao Antonio Mascarenhas, Rio de Janeiro, to Luiz Mott, Salvador, 27 Janu­

ary 1987, A E L/ U N I C A M P. The party breakdown of these constituents was P M D B

27; Workers Party 3; P F L 3; PDT 1; P C B 1; Communist Party of Brazil L
12. This kind of ambivalence toward addressing the epidemic within gay
groups is suggested by Cristina Camara da Silva (2002) in her insightfu l study
of Triangulo Rosa. The former Atoba leader Joao Lucio G. Damasco indi cates
similar concerns raised within that group when he joined in 1986. Joao Luc io G.
Damasco, "Prevenr;ao a A I D S no Ativismo Homossexual," unpublished, undate d
mimeo, Centro de Documentar;ao e Recursos-A B I A .
13. Miriam Martinho, " 1979-1989: 1 0 Anos d e Movimentar;ao Lesbica n o Bra sil ,"
Um Outro 0/ha r 9 (1990), 8-q; "As lesbicas tambem sao gays," Boletim do Grup o
Gay da Bah ia 6, no. 12 (1986), 1.
 Notes to Chapter Four 233

14. Jose Genoino, former federal deputy, Workers Party, Sao Paulo and Workers
Party president, in discussion with author, Brasilia, 18 October 2001.
15. Most evangelical deputies were affiliated with parties of the right ( P F L 9;
PT B 2; Christian Democratic Party 1) or the center ( P M D B 16) , though 2 were
elected with the Workers Party and 4 with the populist left Democratic Labor
Party (Pierucci 1989).
16. Helena Chagas, "Constituinte: A nova bandeira social da Igreja," 0 Globo
(Sao Paulo), n May 1986; "c N B B e contra inclusao de aborto e divorcio na Carta,"
Folha de Siio Paulo (Sao Paulo) , 24 May 1988.
17· Brazil's Protestant population has grown exponentially, from 5.2 percent in
1970 to 15.6 percent in 2000, with the largest growth among Pentecostal churches
(Jacob et al. 2004; Fernandes et al. 1998; Burdick 1993). On the political trajectory
of the Universal Church, see Oro 2003.
18. ''As indulgencias plen;hias," fornal do Brasil ( Rio de Janeiro), 7 August 1988.
19. Roberto Jefferson, PTB Leader in the Federal Chamber of Deputies, in dis­
cussion with author, Brasilia, 9 October 2001. Jefferson's own trajectory reflects
the wayward ways of the Brazilian right on these matters as well as the potential
pitfalls of such alliances. Though he voted against the amendment in 1988, activ­
ists later worked with him as the rapporteur of Marta Suplicy's civil partnerships
bill. After he was implicated in a corruption scandal that would eventually lead
to his expulsion from the Congress, his revelations implicating the Workers Party
administration in a cash-for-votes scheme brought the federal chamber to a vir­
tual standstill.
20. Repubilica Federativa do Brasil Assembh�ia Nacional Constituinte: Didrio,
Brasilia, Congresso Nacional, 29 January 1988, 6683.
21. I should also mention the second unsuccessful attempt to incorporate an
antidiscrimination stipulation in the federal constitution, this one taking place
in the context of the constitutional reform proceedings of 1993-94. The Con­
stitution of 1988 included a stipulation to convene a reform process five years
later to make changes in the document. What is perhaps most notable about the
movement's involvement in that process was the questions it once again raised
about its commitment to the left and its broader agenda. Several leftist parties,
including the Workers Party, boycotted the process, regarding it as an effort by
the right to backtrack on a number of progressive reforms included in the Consti­
tution of 1988 and to shorten the presidential term from five to four years (one of
a handful of changes actually approved in the proceedings) at a time when Lula
seemed well positioned to win the presidency. In 1993 gay and lesbian activists
representing twenty-one groups met at the Cajamar Institute, a school for union
militants with close ties to the Workers Party in the state of Sao Paulo, for the
seventh Brazilian Meeting of Lesbians and Homosexuals. The recently created
Workers Party Gay and Lesbian Nucleus played a central role organizing the
event. One of its founders later recalled, "The highpoint of the meeting was the
discussion on the constitutional revision. The groups resolved to say no to the re­
vision, understanding that at that moment, it represented a threat to the rights
234 Notes to Chapter Four

won in the constituent assembly of 1988. In other words, that the revision was a
very well-honed strategy by rightwing parties to take back rights already won by
social movements. Moreover, it was also decided that we would not present any
proposals to change the text of the federal constitution, as this would represen t
indirect support for the revision. The right stance was a total boycott." An a nti­
discrimination amendment was nonetheless introduced, but without the sup­
port of the left it faired poorly and was defeated in a final vote of 53 to 250, with
7 abstentions. William Aguiar, "Urn encontro historico," Femme: Publicafiio do
Grupo Afins (Santos), no. 2 (1993), 30; Republica Federativa do Brasil: Diario dos
Trabalhos Revisionais, Brasilia, Congresso Nacional, 3 February 1994, 609-14.
22. This problem of regulation reflects broader institutional shortfalls in legis­
lative procedures in the country. According to a staff· person at the Sao Paulo
State Assembly library who had recently conducted a study on the question, of
thirty-eight laws passed from 2000 through July 2001 that required regulation,
twenty-one still lacked it in November 2001. Based on my research in the Sao
Paulo City Council, of the sixty-six laws approved in 1998 requiring regulation,
twenty-three had been regulated, forty had not, and three had been declared un­
constitutional by October 2001. The literature on legislative procedures in Brazil
has paid little attention to what is, at best, an impediment to the effective rule
of law and, at worst, an informal veto power compounding the executive's domi­
nance of legislatures widely noted by scholars. Regarding the executive's power
to regulate, see Freire 1986.
23. "Nos e a politica : 0 que queremos," Boletim do Grupo Gay da Bahia 2,
no. 6 (1983), 10; "Historia dos Encontros Brasileiros de Homossexuais," Boletim
do Grupo Gay da Bahia 13, no. 27 (1993), G G B Archive; Joao Antonio Mascaren­
has, "Casamento entre pessoas do mesmo sexo: Ardilosa Provoca�ao," 26 Decem­
ber 1987, A E L / U N I CA M P ; Grupo Somos (author identified as Daniel), "Casa­
mento Homossexual," Casamento Homossexual, Outras Palavras, Da Violencia a
Conscientiza{:iio, December 1,981/January 1982, A E L / U N 1 CAM P ; "Reivindica�oes e
propostas de governo dos grupos Outra Coisa de A�ao Homossexualista e A�ao
Lesbico-Feminista feitas ao governador Sr. Franco Montoro," A E L / U N I CA M P.
24. Roldao Arruda, "Gays querem ter os mesmos direitos de casais heteros­
sexuais," 0 Estado de Siio Paulo (Sao Paulo), 1 May 1994.
25. "Na frente da batalha," Boletim da A B G LT, February 1998.
26. "Parceria civil e aprovada na comissao," Boletim da A B G LT, February 1997 ;
"Projeto sofre pressao da C N B B ," Boletim da A B G L T, February 1997; Leand ro
Fontes, "Uniao civil de gays vira guerra santa," 0 Globo ( Rio de Janeiro) , 24
June 1997; "Na frente da batalha," Boletim da A B G LT, February 1998.
27. Roberto Jefferson, PTB leader in the Chamber of Deputies, in discussion
with author, Brasilia, 9 October 2001; Denise Rothenberg, "Alian�a da fe," Correia
Braziliense (Brasilia), 10 August 1999.
28. Joao Machado, former Workers Party National Executive Committee mem ­
ber, in discussion with author, Sao Paulo, 5 October 2001; William Aguiar, "Os
homossexuais e o P T," Brasil Revolucioncirio, no. 16 (June-August 1994); Godinho
1998.
 Notes to Chapter Four 235

29. Fabiana Zamora, legislative aide of Deputy lara Bernardes, Workers Party,
Sao Paulo, in discussion with author, Brasilia, 12 July 2006.
30. Roger Raupp Rios, "Superior Tribunal de Justi<;a reconhece direito de
homossexuais," fornal do Nuances 1, no. 3 (1998).
31. Luiz Mott to constituent assemblypersons, 18 March 1987, A E L/ U N I C A M P.
The campaign against paragraph 302.0 went beyond party politics. Several pro­
fessional associations also issued statements of support, including the Brazilian
Society for Scientific Progress, the Brazilian Association of Anthropology, the
Brazilian Society for Population Studies, the National Association of Graduate
Studies in the Social Sciences, and the Brazilian Psychiatric Association. "Os
Direitos dos Homossexuais Defendidos pelas Associa<;6es Cientificas," Textos do
Grupo Gay da Bahia: Em Comemoracao ao 10� Aniverscirio da Funda(:do do G G B :
28 Fevereiro de 1 980 (Salvador: Grupo Gay da Bahia, 1990), 64-69.
32. Constituent Assembly, Repubilica Federativa do Brasil Assemb/eia Nacional
Constituinte: Dicirio, 29 January 1988, 6683.
33· This is undoubtedly reinforced by the tendency of Brazilian right-wing
politicians to self-identify further to the left than they really are to avoid being
labeled "conservative" ( Power 2ooo; Mainwaring, Meneguello, and Power 1999).
34· Renato Simoes, Sao Paulo state deputy, Workers Party, and president of
the State Assembly Human Rights Commission, in discussion with author, Sao
Paulo, 1 November 2001.
35· Rita Quadros, longtime activist with the Workers Party L G B T setorial and
legislative aide, subsequently active in the Brazilian Lesbian League and the les­
bian representative on the federal government's National Women's Rights Coun­
cil, in discussion with author, Sao Paulo, 10 August 2001.
36. Comissao Especial Uniao Civil Livre, Audiencia Publica, no. 0601/96 (testi­
mony by Toni Reis, president of Grupo Dignidade, Curitiba, and A B G LT secretary
general) , 6 August 1996.
37· Comissao Especial Uniao Civil Livre, Audiencia Publica, no. 0524/96 (testi­
mony by Luiz Mott, anthropologist and president of the Grupo Gay da Bahia), 25
June 1996. On the significance of historicist narratives in modernity, see Chakra­
barty 2000. The feminist critic Inderpal Grewal (1998) offers an insightful critique
of the silences produced by human rights discourse, particularly the "women's
rights as human rights" frame deployed by transnational feminists. Beyond the
selective and often politicized deployment of global human rights mechanisms,
she underscores the common reinscription of colonial and postcolonial images,
echoed here, of a First World, participating in civilization, rescuing a Third World
mired in barbarism, while remaining silent about broader structures of violence
linking the two.
38. Joao Antonio Mascarenhas, "Atividades do Triangulo Rosa em 1987,'' 13
January 1988, A E L/ U N I CA M P.
39· Ubiratan da Costa e Silva, Sao Paulo, to Irmao Paulo Bonotino, Canoas, Rio
Grande do Sui, 20 January 1988, A E L/ U N I CA M P.
40. Joao Antonio Mascarenhas, "Cochilamos, camaradas," Rio de Janeiro, 22
November 1987, A E L/ U N I CA M P.
236 Notes to Chapter Five

41. Somos, "A Crise do S O M O S ," 12 June 1983, A E L/ U N I CA M P.

42. I I I E B H O : Reso[U(:Oes, 6-8 January 1989, A E L/ U N I CA M P.
43· Joao Antonio Mascarenhas, Rio de Janeiro, to GALF, Sao Paulo, 2 March 1982,
no. 108/82, A E L/ U N I C A M P. The letter from G A L F activists is quoted in this let­
ter.
44· Luiz Mott, founder of the Grupo Gay da Bahia, in discussion with author,
Salvador, Bahia, 7 May 2001.
45· Ivair Augusto Alves dos Santos, special advisor, Special Human Rights Sec­
retariat and National Council against Discrimination, in discussion with author,
Brasilia, 10 July 2006.
46. Elaine Inocencio, projects manager, Secretariat of Human Rights, Justice
Ministry, in discussion with author, Brasilia, 16 October 2001.
47· Jorge Luiz de Souza, Workers Party L G B T setorial of Rio de Janeiro, in dis­
cussion with author, Rio de Janeiro, 4 July 2001.
48. Fry 1982; Matory 1997. On the participation in the public sphere of Mro­
Brazilian and Kardecist Spiritualist religion, see Giumbelli 2008.
49· Celio Golin, "0 Umbigo nos atrasa," ]ornal do Nuances 1, no. 5 (1998}, 2.
so. Eugenio Ibiapino, founder of the LG BT movement in the Baixada Fulmi­
nense, founding member and president of Grupo 28 de Junho, in discussion with
author, Novo Igua�u, Rio de Janeiro, 20 August 1999.
51. Beto de Jesus, Eduardo Piza, and Julian Rodrigues, "Congresso da A B G LT :
Desafios e perspectivas d o movimento G L BT brasileiro," 1 4 November 2006,
http:/ /mixbrasiLuol.com.br.
52. Beto de Jesus and Alexandre Boer, "Mercosur Countries and Associated
States Commit Themselves to the Fight against Homophobia," 29 August 2006,
www. ilga.org.

53· Beto de Jesus and Alexandre Boer, ''Avan<;os nas politicas de DH G LBT no
Mercosul," 21 August 2007, www. somos.org. In 2007 Uruguay became the first
Latin American country to legalize civil unions between same-sex couples at the
national level.
54· Scott Long, ''Anatomy of a Backlash : Sexuality and the 'Cultural' War on
Human Rights," World Report 2005, ed. Human Rights Watch, January zoo s ,
http:/ /hrw.org.
55· Ibid.

5· Life at the Margins

1. Max Mejia, " Homosexuales y lesbianas: Una lucha por derechos civiles," La
Batalla, February-March 1985.
2. As of 2009, the states of Aguascalientes, Coahuila, Colima, Chihuahua,
Chiapas, Durango, Tlaxcala, and Veracruz had approved criminal antidiscrimi­
nation laws in addition to the Federal District. Several states had also passed
Laws to Prevent and Eradicate Discrimination, calling on governments to take
affirmative measures to combat discrimination. The federal law was not a crimi-
 Notes to Chapter Five 237

nal law but essentially established the National Council for the Prevention of
Discrimination. None of the existing antidiscrimination laws explicitly contem­
plate gender identity or expression, although in March 2007, P R O Deputy David
S anchez Camacho introduced a bill that would include "sexual-gender identity
or expression" in the categories contemplated in the existing federal law. Ricardo
Hernandez Forcada, "El colectivo LGTITB y el tema de Ia Seguridad Publica,"
Notiese (Mexico City), 18 February, 2009, www.notiese.org; also www.conapred
.org.mx.
3· By September 2007 bills to pass similar measures had been introduced in
the states of Jalisco, Chihuahua, Guerrero, San Luis Potosi, and Puebla. Organi­
zations in Michoacan, Veracruz, and Zacatecas were discussing similar measures
with lawmakers. In the conservative state of Chihuahua, the proposal, introduced
by the P R O , was roundly defeated in April 2008 by a vote of twenty-eight to two,
with three abstentions. Lawmakers with the P R J , the PAN, and the Green Party
voted as a block against it. The two votes supporting the measure came from
legislators with the P R O and the Workers Party. Christian Rea Tizcarefio, "Con­
greso de Chihuahua da reves a uniones gays porque a tentan contra matrimonio,"
Notiese (Mexico City), 4 April, 2008, www. notiese.org. Christian Rea Tizcarefio,
"Presentara el P R O en Chihuahua iniciativa de pacto de solidaridad," La jornada
(Mexico City), 12 February 2007; Christian Rea Tizcarefio and Fernando Mino,
"De como Ia movilizacion fructifico en ley," Letra s (Mexico City), 1 March 2007;
Abner Raziel Wlez, "Proponen Ley de Sociedad de Convivencia en San Luis Po­
tosi," Notiese (Mexico City), 9 August 2007; Christian Rea Tizcarefio, "Se aprueba
por unanimidad Ley contra Discriminacion en Guerrero," Notiese (Mexico City),
13 June 2007.
4· Juan Jacobo Hernandez and Rafael Manrique, "10 Afios de Movimiento Gay
en Mexico: El Brillo de Ia Ausencia," 29 August 1988, unedited mimeo, Centro de
Informacion y Documentacion de las Homosexualidades en Mexico Ignacio AI­
vare (Ignacio Alvarez Information and Documentation Center on Homo sexuali­
ties in Mexico).
5· Yan Maria Yaoyolotl Castro, founding member of Lesbos, the first lesbian
group in Mexico, and several subsequent organizations, in discussion with au­
thor, Mexico City, 17 November 2000.
6. Comite contra Ia Represion, Lambda, "Balance y Perspectivas del Grupo,"
Grupo Lambda: Bolet{n Interno de Discusion, no. 1 (Apri1 1981).
7· Coordinadora Feminista del D. F., "Democracia, feminismo, y las elecciones:
Algunos puntos para elaborar Ia plataforma electoral de Ia Coordinadora,"
Cuadernos de Trabajo, no 1 (April 1991). Four gay and lesbian activists ran for
office in 1991 with the P RT, some of whom were incorporated through this femi­
nist campaign.
8. A R O F, Memoria Historica de Ia Asamblea de Representantes del Distrito Fed­
eral (Noviembre de 1988-Septiembre de 1997) (Mexico City: A R O F, 2ooo).
9· Amalia Garcia, P R O president, in discussion with author, Mexico City, 10
November 2000.
238 Notes to Chapter Five

10. Raul Monge, "Las cifras del miedo: En once meses, crecio Ia criminali dad
en el Distrito Federal hasta en 106%," Proceso, 17 December 1995.
n . Amalia Garcia, PRO president, in discussion with author, Mexico City, 10

November 2000.
12. The electoral reform law of 1977 created the political association as a lesser
institution than a political party. A political association cannot launch ca n di­
dacies on its own, though it can through a registered party.
13. Patricia Mercado, former leader of the P RT women's section and founder of
Diversa, in discussion with author, Mexico City, 10 July 2000.
14. Juan Jacobo Hernandez, "Los homosexuales ante el senado," Macho Tips,
no. 14 (1987); Hernandez, Manrique, and Rivas 1988.
15. Dante Rivas Ramirez, Xochiquetzal, Centro de Estudios Sociales, A.C., in
discussion with author, Xalapa, Veracruz, 7 September 2000.
16. Jose Aguilar, national coordinator of O E M Y S E X , in discussion with author,
Mexico City, 10 November 2000.
17. After his term in the A L O F, Sanchez Camacho came out publicly as gay
and participated in the organization of the P R O Sexual Diversity Commission. In
2006, after obtaining the first "sexual diversity" slot on the party's candidate lists,
he became the first openly gay man elected to Mexico's Chamber of Deputies.
18. Campana de Acceso a Ia Justicia para las Mujeres, "Un Codigo Penal para
las Mujeres," undated report, in author's possession. In the end the P R O majority
sidestepped the joint commission's work on the civil code, introducing and ap­
proving its own proposal on the last day of sessions, which the P R J and the PAN,
surprised by the move, rejected on procedural grounds. The informal agreement
on abortion laid the basis for the so-called Robles Law, which expanded the
circumstances under which women could legally obtain an abortion to cases in
which the pregnancy involved a serious threat to a woman's health, malforma­
tions of the fetus, or unwanted artificial insemination. The law was approved in
a special session of the A L O F shortly after the 2000 election and signed into law
by the interim mayor Rosario Robles ( P R O ) . In 2007, shortly after the presiden­
tial election the previous year, the A L O F approved a law that legalized abortions
during the first trimester.
19. Margarita Zavala, Secretariat for the Political Promotion of Women, Na­
tional Action Party, in discussion with author, Mexico City, 15 November 2000.
20. Irma Islas, PAN deputy in the A L O F, in discussion with author, Mexico City,
31 August 2000.
21. Elia Baltazar, "Partidos y O N G , contra Ia propuesta de eliminar delito d e
discriminacion," La jornada (Mexico City) , 23 September 2001.
22. Antonio Medina, ''Aguascalientes ya castiga Ia discriminacion," No tiese
(Mexico City), www.notiese.org, 14 March 2001.
23. Antonio Medina, "Eiiminar 'moral y buenas costumbres' del Codi go mu­
nicipal, demandan gays en Aguascalientes," Notiese (Mexico City), www.no ti ese
.org, 8 September 2000.
24. Claudio Banuelos and Victor Ruiz, ''Aguascalientes: Desmienten cam p aiia
contra homosexuales," La fornada ( Mexico City), 26 August 2ooo; Alma E. Mu-
 Notes to Chapter Five 239

noz and Roberto Garduno, ''Aprueba Ia Iglesia cat6lica Ia segregaci6n en Aguas­

ca lientes," La ]ornada (Mexico City) , 26 August 2000.
25. " J G LH RC Alert: Mexico: Stop Police Brutality, Arbitrary Arrests at Gay Bars,"
e-mail alert, 26 April 2002.
26. "Garantizar Ia libertad, diversidad y pluralidad de Ia sociedad mexicana :
Fox," Notiese (Mexico City), www. notiese.org, 4 August 2000.
27. Minutes of meeting ofJoint Commissions on Constitutional Points, Indige­
n ous Affairs, and Legislative Studies, 25 April 2001.
28. Aldar Adame, "Pro-Vida, Red Familias y PAN en contra de las Sociedades
de Convivencia," Notiese (Mexico City) , www. notiese.org, 4 July 2002.
29. "Diputados realizan acuerdo en torno a Ia sociedad de convivencia," press
release No. C S O U B O L / 024, 29 April 2002, A L O F, II Legislatura.
30. Enoe Uranga, deputy in A L O F, Independent elected on P O S ticket, and
chairwoman of the A L O F Human Rights Commission, in discussion with author,
Mexico City, 7 July 2002.
31. Ibid.; Aldar Adame, "Miedos vs. razones: Sociedades de convivencia," No­
tiese (Mexico City), www.notiese.org, 8 July 2002; author's personal observations
at the A L O F on the day of the vote.
32. Enoe Uranga, deputy in A L O F, Independent elected on P O S ticket, and
chairwoman of the A L O F Human Rights Commission, in discussion with author,
Mexico City, 7 July 2002.
33· Sabina Berman, "Cr6nica : El P R O huye a las seis," Reforma (Mexico City) ,
22 June 2003.
34· Alejandra Martinez, "Polariza a! P R O ley sobre gays," El Universal (Mexico
City), 9 December 2003; Antonio de Marcelo, "Le sacan ! Lopez Obrador y R. Be­
jarano recomiendan mejor someter a consulta union de gays," La Prensa (Mexico
City) , 8 December 2003; Antonio Medina, "No a! referenda sobre sociedades de
convivencia: P R O y P R J ," Notiese (Mexico City), 10 December 2003, www. notiese
.org.
35· Margarita Zapata Choiseul, "Ley de convivencia: Compromiso de Ia
izqui erda," El Universal (Mexico City), 29 December 2003; Enoe Uranga, former
deputy in A L O F, elected on the P O S ticket, and chairwoman of the Human Rights
Commission, in discussion with author, Mexico City, 7 August 2008.
36. Angelica Luna y Parra, P R J deputy, A L O F, and former P R J National Civic
Movement coordinating secretary (1989-93), in discussion with author, Mexico
City, 14 August 2000.
37 · Marta de Ia Lama, former P R J representative in Representative Assembly
o f t he Federal District (1994-98) , in discussion with author, Mexico City, 7 Au­
gust 2ooo.
38. Interview with a P R J official with the Office of Vulnerable Groups, National
Co nfederation of Popular Organizations, Mexico City, 28 September 2000.
39· The measure was passed by a vote of twenty to thirteen. All nineteen P R J
d ep uties in the state supported t h e bill, a s d i d a deputy with t h e Workers Party.
All nine PA N deputies opposed it, as did the single P R O deputy present and two
deputies from smaller parties. Two deputies were absent from the vote (one P R J
240 Notes to Chapter Five

and one PRO). "Aprueba congreso de Coahuila pacto civil de solidaridad," C I M A c ,

7 January 2007, www. cimacnoticias.com.
40. "II Asamblea Legislativa: Sesion Extraordinaria," Mexico City, A LDF ,
4 July 2002.
41. Miriam Ruiz, "Hay retrocesos en derechos humanos, advierte O N U a Fox,"
C I MAC , 8 December 2003, www. cimacnoticias.com.
42. Marcos Rolim, federal deputy, Workers Party, Rio Grande do Sui, and presi­
dent of the Chamber of Deputies Human Rights Commission, in discussion with
author, Brasilia, 10 October 2001.
43· Redaccion, "Respeto a Ia ley de culto y asociaciones religiosas, reclama n
ongs," Notiese (Mexico City) , 29 May 2003, www. notiese.org.
44· Claudia Hinojosa, longtime activist involved in a number of groups, in­
cluding CLHARI and Lambda, in discussion with author, Mexico City, 6 Novem­
ber 2000.
45· Partido de Ia Revolucion Democrcitica, Instituto de Estudios de Ia Revolu­
cion Democr<hica, PR D : Programa de Ia Revoluci6n Democrcitica, 1993.
46. Editorial ad in Del Otro Lado, no. 16 (June 1994) . The ad appeared during
the Pink Vote Campaign, an unprecedented effort by activists to elicit statements
of support across party lines in that year's election, reflecting broader repercus­
sions of the election in 1988.
47· Antonio Salazar, "Minorias sexuales: Derechos civiles y humanos," Pagina
Uno (Mexico City) , 10 October 1993.
48. Enoe Uranga, former deputy in A L D F, elected on the PDS ticket, and chair­
woman of the Human Rights Commission, in discussion with author, Mexico
City, 7 August 2008.
49· Marcos Brandao, "Entrevista: Roberto Jefferson, Modernidade na cupula
do poder," G Magazine, July 1999.
s o. Antonio Medina and Christian Rea Tizcarefio, "La iglesia catolica y el PA N
vs. Sociedades de Convivencia," Notiese (Mexico City) , 6 November 2006, WWW
.notiese.org.
51. Deputy Marta Suplicy's Office, "Parceria civil registrada entre pessoas do
mesmo sexo: Projeto de lei no. 1.151/95," Brasilia; "Parceria civil deve ser urn di­
reito a cidadania," undated statement signed by a number of prominent aca­
demics, intellectuals, and celebrities.
52. "Iniciativa de ley de sociedades de convivencia: Exposicion de motivos ,"
mimeograph obtained from Enoe Uranga's office, A L D F.
53· Comision Estatal de Diversidad Sexual del Distrito Federal, "Propuestas
para Ia Agenda Legislativa y del Gobierno del Distrito Federal sobre Diversidad
Sexual," 2006.
54· Oficio No. O I Pj6ooj6osjo833/o6-o7, "Subprocuraduria de Atencion a Vic­
timas del Deli to y Servicios a Ia Comunidad, Direcci6n General de Servicios a Ia
Comunidad, Oficina de Informacion Publica," Procuraduria General de Jus tic ia
del Distrito Federal, 12 June 2007. Official records identify nine of those fi ling ­
these complaints as male, one as female, and one as "female-identified ma le." By
 Notes to Chapter Five 241

June 2007 two of the cases remained under investigation and the others had been
closed without proceeding to trial. Due to poor record keeping on this matter by
the state, these figures may slightly underreport the number of cases.
55· Primera Encuesta Nacional sabre Discriminacion en Mexico, Consejo
Nacional para Prevenir Ia Discriminaci6n and Secretaria de Desarrollo Social,
Mexico City, April 2oo5, c o - RO M .
56. Christian Rea Tizcareiio, "Mas de mil personas se han unido en sociedades
de convivencia," Notiese (Mexico City) , 12 December, 2008, www. notiese.org.
57· Juan Carlos Hernandez Meijueiro, director of Xochiquetzal, Centro de
Estudios Sociales, A.C., in discussion with author, Xalapa, Veracruz, 7 Septem­
ber 2000. The categories mayate and chota refer to the masculine active role and
feminine passive role, respectively.
58. Dante Rivas Ramirez, Xochiquetzal, Centro de Estudios Sociales, A.C., in
discussion with author, Xalapa, Veracruz, 7 September, 2000.
59· Alfonso Castro, founding member of Nuevo Lenguaje Siglo XXI, in dis­
cussion with author, Veracruz, 9 September 2000. I should note that there were
earlier, short-lived efforts to organize in the state. A document by the P RT Homo­
sexual Work Committee in Mexico City published in 1978 mentions incipient
efforts to mobilize in Veracruz, Guadalajara, and Oaxaca. Activists from Veracruz
also participated in the second Gay and Lesbian Pride March in the capital in
1980. P RT Homosexual Work Commission, untitled document in author's pos­
session, 1978; Mario Eduardo Rivas, "La Marcha de Homosexuales," El Machete,
no. 4 (August 1980).
6o. Chirinos Calero was not above using homophobia as an electoral tactic
himself. In 1994 his government orchestrated the appearance of a group of drag
queens with a local performance group at a campaign dinner for Cuauhtemoc
Cardenas in Xalapa, where they hugged and kissed the P R D presidential can­
didate and declared their support for him in the name of the gay community.
They appeared again later, at another rally in the Port, where Cardenas was met
with catcalls of "Mayate ! Maric6n!" The events gained widespread coverage in
both the local and national press. Ricardo Ravelo and Rodrigo Vera, "El gobierno
veracruzano pag6 a los travestis, porros y teporochos que hostilizaron a Cuauh­
te moc," Proceso, 4 October 1993.
61. Juan Carvajal, founding member of Claroscuro Gay, in discussion with au­
thor, Veracruz, 26 June 2000.
62. Antonio Argudin, Frente Nacional de Personas Afectadas por el V I H /S I DA
Veracruz and co-organizer of several gay and lesbian cultural weeks in the Port of
Ve racruz, in discussion with author, Veracruz, 10 September 2000. In his research
o n Mexican immigrant men in the United States, Cantu (2002) has also noted an
i dentification of homosexuality with vestidas.
63. "Crearan zona de tolerancia," Diario de Xalapa (Xalapa), 28 April 1998.
64. Daniela Pastrana and Arturo Cano, "La intolerancia en los tiempos del
ca mbia," La jornada (Mexico City), 4 February, 2001.
65. Antonio Medina, ''A o jo de judicial' se decide quien es gay o sexoservidor
'
242 Notes to Chapter Five

en Veracruz," Notiese (Mexico City), 16 January 2001, www. notiese.org; Vanesa

Quinones Vazquez, "Continuan agreciones contra homosexuales en Veracruz,"
Notiese (Mexico City) , 8 February 2001.
66. Rosa Maria Galindo Castaneda, "Problemas en Cardel," Diario de Xalapa
(Xalapa), 23 May 1998.
67. Rafael Leon, founder of Grupo Orgullo Cardel, in discussion with author,
Cardel, Veracruz, 11 September 20oo; Rosa Maria Galindo Castaneda, "Alcalde
reprime a homosexuales," Diario de Xalapa (Xalapa), 4 May 1998.
68. Rafael Leon, founder of Grupo Orgullo Cardel, in discussion with author,
Cardel, Veracruz, 11 September 2ooo; "Orgullo Gay," flyer in the author's posses­
sion.
69. Redaccion, " 'No es su responsabilidad' cuidar de Ia salud publica," E/
Mundo de Cordoba (Cordoba), 28 July 1999.
70. Confidential discussion with author, Cordoba, Veracruz, n October 2000.
71. Ibid.
72. Silvia Ponciano Toral, "Para defender sus derechos integran un frente gay,"
El Mundo de Cordoba (Cordoba), 14 August 1999.
73· Why the party sponsored the forum is difficult to answer. The PAN leader
in the state legislature, Alejandro Cossio, who pleaded ignorance at the forum
and apologized for the actions of local PAN officials in the state, suggested that
the culture of the state and hence the party is more open than elsewhere in the
country, although the repeated crackdowns launched by the party's local officials
would seem to contradict this notion. One relatively unusual aspect of the PAN
in Veracruz, however, is its relatively recent growth as a serious opposition party.
According to information obtained from panista officials in the state, between
1996, the year it had grown enough to petition for an autonomous state leader­
ship council, independent of the National Executive Committee, and 2000 the
number of active members in the PAN grew from approximately 300 to 5,192.
While significant sectors of the party and its leadership clearly represent a reli­
gious base, these sectors are somewhat diluted. At the same time, the gay activist
Juan Carvajal had been pressing for a legislative forum for a couple of years. In
2000 he organized a meeting of LGBT groups in the Port of Veracruz to discuss
legislation and invited members of all the party blocs. He informed the PA N
in particular that all the other blocs had agreed to attend and that the party
would be seen as backward if it failed to do so. In the end, only one PAN deputy
appeared at the meeting and agreed to propose an official forum in the assem­
bly. Alejandro Cossio, PAN leader, Veracruz State Assembly, in discussion wi th
author, Xalapa, Veracruz, 19 October 2ooo; Juan Carvajal, founder of Claroscuro
Gay and Comite Orgullo Veracruz, in discussion with author, Veracruz, 9 Sep­
tember 2ooo; author's personal observation of the preparatory meeting.
74· "Version estenografica del Primer Foro de Legislacion sobre el Derech o en
Diversidad Sexual," Xalapa, Veracruz, 21 August 2000, unpublished minutes ob­
tained from PA N faction in Veracruz state legislature; Guadalupe Lopez Espinosa ,
"Piden reglamentar Ia prostituci6n," Politica (Xalapa), 22 August 2000.
 Notes to Chapter Five 243

75· Juan Carvajal, founding member of Claroscuro Gay, in discussion with au­
th or, Veracruz, 17 August 2007.
76. Rafael Villegas Hernandez, founding Member of the Cooperativa de Tra­
bajadores Sexuales los Angeles en Busqueda de Ia Libertad and an activist with
Brigada Callejera, Mexico City, in discussion with author, 1 November 2ooo; Ice Ia
Lagunas, "Remiten a 35 en operativo contra sexoservicio," El Universal (Mexico
City), 12 August 2004; Mariana Norandi, "Trabajadoras sexuales celebran el pri­
mero de mayo con el otro Mexico," La ]omada (Mexico City), 2 May 2007.
77· According to the official results, Felipe Calderon defeated Lopez Obra­
dor by a slim margin of . 56 percent of the votes. The PRO and its sympathizers
responded with vocal accusations of electoral fraud and calls for a full recount
under the banner "Vote by vote ! Booth by booth !," and organized the largest
protests in the country's history. In a scathing assessment of the electoral crisis,
the political scientist Lorenzo Meyer (2007) points to it as a crucial test of the
country's democratic transition, one that it decidedly failed. Specifically, under­
scoring the convergence of the PAN and dominant sectors of the PRI around a
neoliberal economic project and the notable continuity of this project under PRI
and PAN administrations since 1982, he suggests that the real test of alternation
in power came not in 2ooo but in 2006, when a real change of course appeared
possible.
By Meyer's account, the Fox administration's attempt in 2005 to oust Lopez
Obrador from office and disqualify his candidacy, launching an investigation
against him for failure to clear construction equipment from a street leading to
a hospital in a timely manner, represented the first volley in the right's effort to
thwart his ascent - in effect, a kind of preemptive coup. Massive popular pro­
tests, however, forced the popular PRO mayor's reinstatement. After the election,
Calderon and his sympathizers responded to protesters arguing that the PRO had
failed to comply with the formal requirements for a full recount, which would
have entailed filing individual complaints contesting each booth in the country.
Ultimately the electoral tribunal upheld the PAN 's contention, thus grounding
the legitimacy of Mexico's democracy on legal formalism rather than full trans­
parency and critical oversight.
78. Subcomandante Marcos, Zapatista Army of National Liberation, "State­
ment of Support for the Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Community,"
June 1999. Contacts between LGBT activists and the EZL N began in 1994, when
the latter called the National Democratic Convention to bring together activists
fro m various sectors around the country. In preparation for the meeting, activ­
ists organized the National Lesbian and Gay Assembly, which prepared a list of
de mands that were presented at the convention, including a national antidis­
cri mination law, recognition of same-sex unions, sex education at all levels of
schooling, and H IV/A I D S prevention campaigns. For an account of the contacts
between the sexual diversity movement and the Zapatistas, see Palma 2006.
79· Hermann Bellinghausen, "Reprocha Marcos a inteiectuales perder de vista
Ia lucha continua de desposeidos," La jornada (Mexico City), 27 June 2006.;
244 Notes to Chapter Six

Hermann Bellinghausen, "Estupido culpar al E Z L N por no apoyar a Lopez Ob ra ­

dor: Marcos," La jornada (Mexico City), 7 July 2006.

6. Brazil without Homophobia

1. One obvious example is the call for independent central banks, though in
fact scholars have widely noted the extensive use of presidential decree powers
and similar measures to "insulate" the harsh economic policies advocated by
neoliberal technocrats from popular or parliamentary pressures ( Haggard a n d
Kaufman 1995; Shugart and Mainwaring 1997; Power 1998).
2. Raldo Bonifacio, adjunct coordinator of the National STD I AIDS Program ,
Ministry of Health, in discussion with author, Brasilia, II October 2001.
3· "Brazil: Third A I D S and STD Control Project," Project Information Docu­
ment PI DII5I2, World Bank, 15 November 2002.
4· Sector and Thematic Evaluation Group and Operations Evaluation Depart­
ment, Project Performance Assessment Report: Brazil First and Second A I DS and
S TD Control Projects (Loan 3659-BR and 4392-BR), Report No. 28819, World Bank,

27 April 2004.
5· juntos SOMOS Mais Fortes, Curitiba, A B G LT.
6. Ministerio de Saude, Secretaria de Vigilancia em Saude, Programa Nacional
de DST e A I D S , Projeto soMas: Desenvolvimento organizaciona/, advocacy, e In­
tervem;:iio para ONGs que trabalham com gays e outros HSH, Brasilia, Ministerio
de Saude, 2005.
7· Associac;ao Brasileira de Gays, Lesbicas e Transgeneros, Resolurroes do I Con­
gresso da A BG LT , Curitiba, Associac;ao Brasileira de Gays, Lesbicas e Transgene­
ros, 2006.
8. Virginia Figueredo, member of the Workers Party LG BT setorial and the
Brazilian Lesbian League, in discussion with author, Rio de Janeiro, 23 Janu­
ary 2006.
9· Hanah Suzart, former president of the Rio de Janeiro Transgender Associa­
tion (Astra) and secretary of A N T RA, in discussion with author, Rio de Janeiro, IO
January 2006.
10. Eduardo Barbosa, consultant, Civil Society Articulation and Human Ri ghts
Unit, National STD 1 AI os Program, Ministry of Health, in discussion with author,
Brasilia, 13 July 2006.
II. On the difficult dialogue between Foucault and Habermas, see Kelly 1994;
Love 1989; Habermas 1991.
12. Alexandre Boer, gay activist with Somos of Rio Grande do Sui and sou th ­
ern regional director of the A B G LT, in discussion with author, Porto Alegre, Ri o
Grande do Sui, 5 June 2001.
13. juntos SOMOS Mais Fortes, Curitiba, A B G LT, 18-19.
14. Elizabeth Calvet, founding member of the Rio de Janeiro Lesbian Collec­
tive, which organized the seminar, in discussion with author, Rio de Janeiro,
5 January 1999.
15. Elizabeth Calvet, in discussion with author, Rio de Janeiro, 30 April 2001.
 Notes to Chapter Six 245

16. Miriam Weber, "Encontro de Lesbicas em Brasilia," ]ornal do Nuances 3. no.

15 (2001) .
1 7. Interview with longtime activist with Rede Urn Outro Olhar, Sao Paulo,
7 November 2001.
18. Secretaria Especial dos Direitos Humanos-Subsecretaria de Promoc;ao e
Defesa dos Direitos Humanos, Presidencia da Republica, "Atividades em 2006,"
undated mimeo, in author's possession.
19. Claudio Nascimento, coordinator of Grupo Arco-Iris, human rights secre­
tary of the A B G LT, and one of the key negotiators in the elaboration of B S H , in
discussion with author, Rio de Janeiro, 18 January 2006.
20. Raldo Bonifacio, adjunct coordinator of the National STD /A I D S Program,
Ministry of Health, in discussion with author, Brasilia, 11 October 2001.
21. Paulo Junqueria Aguiar, technical consultant, National STD /A I D S Program,
Ministry of Health, in discussion with author, Brasilia, 11 October 2001.
22. Marcelo Cerqueira, "Ministerio de Justic;a entra na Defesa dos homos­
sexuais," HomoSapiens 3, no. 18 (2ooo-2o01).
23. Ivair Augusto Alves dos Santos, special consultant, Secretariat of Human
Rights, National Council against Discrimination, in discussion with author, Bra­
silia, 10 July 2006.
24. Conselho Nacional de Combate a Discriminac;ao, Brasil Sem Homofobia:
Programa de combate a violencia e a discrimina�iio contra G L B T e de promo�iio
da cidadan ia homossexual, Brasilia, Secretaria Especial dos Direitos Humanos da
Presidencia da Republica, 2004.
2 5 . Ivair Augusto Alves dos Santos, special consultant, Secretariat of Human
Rights, National Council against Discrimination, in discussion with author, Bra­
silia, 10 July 2006.
26. Interview with Ministry of Education official working with B S H , Brasilia,
10 July 2006.
27. "Relat6rio sobre a selec;ao de projetos de capacitac;aojformac;ao de pro­
fissionais de educac;ao para a cidadania e a diversidade sexual ( S ECAD / M EC ) ,"
Brasilia, 21 December 2005.
28. Interview with Ministry of Education official working with B S H , Brasilia,
10 July 2006.
29. Interview with Ministry of Culture official working with B S H , Brasilia, 11
J uly 2006.
30. "Atribuic;oes (Art. 11 do Decreta 5.711 de 2006) ," 2006, www. cultura.gov.br.
31. "Fomento a identidade e a diversidade cultural no contexto brasileiro," Au­
gust 2004, www. cultura.gov.br.
32. "Brasil ja tern 102 Paradas programadas para 2006," Central de Noticias Gay,
Mix Brasil, 23 June 2006, http :/ fmixbrasil.uol.com.br; Di6genes Muniz, "Parada
gay surpreende e bate novo recorde," Folha Online, 17 June 2006, www1 .folha.uol
. co m .br.
33· Gilberta Gil, "Palavra do M inistro," G L B T e cultura: Relat6rio, Grupo de Tra­
balho de promoriio da Cidada n ia G L B T do Min isterio da Cultura , Brasilia, Ministry
of Culture, [2oo6] .
246 Notes to Conclusion

34· "Parecer tecnico sobre o merito cultural das paradas do orgulho G LBT,"
GLBT e cultura: Relatorio, Grupo de Trabalho de promor;cio da Cidadania G L B T do
Ministerio da Cultura, Brasilia, Ministry of Culture, [2oo6] .
35· Alexandre Boer, Somos, Saude e Sexualidade, and Beto de Jesus, co­
secretary general of t LGA- LAC , "Em Direc;ao a urn Mercosul sem Homofobia," 26
September 2007, www. ilga.org.
36. International Center for Technical Cooperation on H I V/A I DS ( I C TC/
A I DS ) . "Public Announcement Dealing with the Pre-qualification of lnstitutions
to Undertake International Cooperation Activities in the Field of H I V/A I D S in
2oo6" UN A I DS , I CT C , Brazilian government, Brasilia, November 4, 2006.
37· Jorge Saavedra, director general, Centro Nacional para Ia Prevencion y
Control del V I H /S I DA , C E N S I DA, in discussion with author, Mexico City, 24 Au­
gust 2007.
38. "Presenta Censida resultados de Ia convocatoria para financiamiento en
prevencion," Letra s, 3 August 2006.

Conclusion
1. Diario de los Debates de Ia H. Camara de Diputados 1916-1994: Legislatura
XXVII, Aiio Legislativo I, no. 54, Special Session, u June 1917.
2. Fernanda Sucupira, " FSM Caracas: Por urn movimento G L BT ainda mais
politizado," Agencia Carta Maior, 26 January 2006, http:/ fagenciacartamaior.uol
.com.br.
3· The bill in the A L D F, proposed by a lawmaker with the short-lived Social
Democratic Party, was approved by a vote of 37 to 17. Lawmakers with the PRO,
the PRJ, and small left parties overrode opposition by the PAN and the Green
Ecological Party of Mexico. While the Supreme Court decision in Mexico estab­
lished an important precedent, four similar decisions are needed in other cases
to establish force of jurisprudence. Christian Rea Pizcarefio, ''Aprueba A L D F iden­
tidad legal para transgeneros y transexuales," Notiese (Mexico City), 28 August,
2008, www. notiese.org; Christian Rea Pizcarefio, "Suprema Corte incentiva mo­
vimiento transgenero y t ranssexual : activistas," Notiese (Mexico City), 7 January,
2009, www. notiese.org; Redaccion Anodis, ''Aprueba A L D F ley trans, votaci on
queda 37-17 a favor," Anodis. com, 29 August, 2008, www. anodis.com.