SEXUAL POLITICS IN LATIN AMERICA
The outbreak of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s was a turning point for sexual minorities in Latin America, where few well-established movements for homosexual liberation existed before the...
...In many cases, these openings served as the grounds from which broader debates and struggles for sexual freedom were launched...
...Globalizationthe imposition of a neoliberal system of exchange on all national economies-has dramatically reorganized production and mandated the privatization of the state in the service of transnational capital...
...Modeled after their U.S...
...The AIDS crisis, however, has generated openings for a critical public discussion of sexuality and homosexuality in countries where the Catholic Church and/or military regimes exercised almost total control over how these issues were discussed in the public sphere...
...Commodified mass culture, as Marta Lamas points out, poses a tremendous counterweight to rightwing and religious discourses on sexuality and reproduction...
...Movements for homosexual liberation and reproductive rights have by no means gone unchallenged...
...The left's sexism and homophobia played no small part in their exclusion...
...After all, the appearance of acceptance created by the marketplace is often just that, an appearance...
...The regulatory functions of the nuclear family are more crucial to the reproduction of capital today than they have ever been, and in many countries, the Catholic Church hierarchy has gladly assumed the role of arbiter and enforcer of all things sexual...
...Yet as regulatory controls intensify, the marketplace itself generates challenges to conservative moral- izing...
...Identity can be a powerful source of political agency which can lead to broader projects for social transformation, yet it can also lead to the infinite fragmentation of social groups and make effective political action impossible...
...This wave of conservativism is not simply an attempt to return to the past, but is part and parcel of larger social transformations...
...This issue has been raised in several countries where strong gay economies have emerged...
...Within globalized neoliberal economies, the need for more disciplined laborers and more efficient consumers has led to greater policing of sexual and reproductive practices, particularly as the economic model proves itself a failure for most Latin Americans...
...These debates and struggles form the subject of this NACLA report...
...The outbreak of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s was a turning point for sexual minorities in Latin America, where few well-established movements for homosexual liberation existed before the arrival of HIV...
...Yet this "acceptance" is in many ways contingent on the ability and the willingness of individuals to conform to the specifications of the consumer niche assigned to "gays" by mercantile interests in the pursuit of profit...
...Recent years have seen an alarming conservative tide in many Latin American countries at the same time that movements have sought to consolidate their political presence...
...Ruling classes perceive these liberalizing ten- dencies as a potential danger to the very institutions which ensure their reproduction, hence the "family values" campaigns, the refusals to decriminalize abortion, and the indifferent responses to the AIDS crisis in many countries in the region...
...Commodity culture itself, however, provides no real political alternatives to the structural arrangements that produce and reproduce sexism and homophobia...
...More often than not, these specifications exclude women, transvestites and working-class peo- ple in general...
...Although lesbians had won spaces within feminist and women's movements as part of a broader struggle for gender equality and reproductive rights, sexual minorities had been unable to articulate themselves as an autonomous political force within the reformist and revolutionary projects of the 19 6 0s and 1970s...
...and European counterparts, emerging gay enclaves in Latin American urban centers are offering some gay men increasingly "acceptable" lifestyle options...
...The case of the Chilean homosexual movement, chronicled by Victor Hugo Robles, powerfully reveals these contradictions...
...The roots of sexism and homophobia are left virtually intact...
...The problem here is not with identity politics per se, but with the atomizing and depoliticizing tendencies within such politics...
...But as he suggests, movements for sexual rights become further politicized as they join other struggles-be they for human rights or better wages...
...In his article on Brazil, Charles Klein questions whether sexual identities that are defined primarily through consumption can be the site of progressive sexual politics...
Vol. 31 • January 1998 • No. 4
