Gay Guatemala

Six days later, unidentified assailants shot to death Julio Alfredo (“Freddy”) de la Roca Toledo, a dancer and choreographer, in front of his house. Without corroborating evidence, the National Civilian Police (PNC) attributed the killing to a band of carjackers.

On February 20, 1998, assailants in a gray car with tinted windows shot to death a transvestite in the capital. Fire fighters who arrived at the scene had to wait several hours for police to show up.

And so on. Guatemala has no laws prohibiting homosexuality, but the subject is so taboo, and anti-gay violence so accepted, that openly gay groups simply do not exist. This distinguishes Guatemala from Costa Rica, Panama, Honduras and El Salvador, where out-gay groups have formed in the 1990s.

“There are abuses against gays and lesbians by governmental authorities in the form of rape, forced fellatio, imprisonment without trial for prolonged periods, theft of personal belongings, beatings, threats to cause bodily harm, and death,” says Rubén Mayorga, a French-trained physician who is executive director of the Integral Sexuality AIDS Support Organization (OASIS). “I have personally witnessed the effects.”

Police regularly harass and detain homosexuals, using vague laws forbidding “scandalous behavior.” And homosexuals can’t count on authorities to protect them from violence or pursue assailants after the fact.

Security forces also regularly describe crime victims as being homosexual to make the offenses seem less serious. Anthropologist Myrna Mack, murdered by an army death-squad member in 1990, and U.S. nun Dianna Ortiz, kidnapped and tortured by the army in 1989, were both said to be lesbians. Guatemala City Bishop Juan Gerardi, murdered in 1998, was said to be gay.

Lesbians face distinct repression. The perception is that they have chosen their orientation either because they can’t attract men or because they haven’t had intercourse with a “real” man. This belief makes Guatemalan lesbians particularly vulnerable to rape, as assailants claim they’re doing the women a favor.

The leader of an OASIS affiliate called We Are Women, Guatemala’s only lesbian organization, describes other obstacles. “It’s more difficult for lesbians who are married to meet their lovers than it is for gay men who are married,” she says. “Women don’t have the cultural permission to come and go as they please.”
“On the other hand,” she adds, “women have more freedom to be close and affectionate with each other. Two women can hold hands in public, and they can share a bed as friends, but two men cannot.”

Latin American machismo equates maleness with dominance, and homosexuality with submission. It’s not unusual for a purportedly heterosexual man to brag about oral and anal sex with another man, but it’s always the other guy who was on the bottom. A penetrated man has been feminized, which inspires shame and ridicule.
Those who accept and openly flaunt the submissive role, as do transvestites, are subject to abuse. Yet male prostitutes must dress and act like women to help customers maintain the illusion that they’re straight.

This trap is especially dangerous in Guatemala, where it’s routine to dehumanize and eliminate large groups of people. A U.N. mission monitoring implementation of the nation’s 1996 peace accords notes “social cleansing” and “extrajudicial execution” of transvestites through “planned and coordinated actions.”

Homosexuals of all varieties face intense discrimination. After AIDS activist Mayorga was nominated to be infectious disease specialist at the Herrera Llerandi Hospital in Guatemala City, some of his colleagues objected, citing his presumed sexual orientation. He was fired without explanation a few months later. Similarly, when newspapers published photos of We Are Women members in an International Women’s Day demonstration, one of the women was fired by her employer.

Pandora’s Box—Guatemala’s first and, until recently, only gay bar—opened in 1976. The owners of most gay bars “pay regular ‘financial contributions’ to guarantee that their bars are not closed and their clients are not harassed,” Mayorga says.

But that doesn’t guarantee safety. Men seen at Pandora’s have been fired from their jobs. A TV show on “Pornography in Guatemala” showed faces of patrons at Trilogy, another gay bar, against their will. This led to the firing of one of the patrons from his job, Mayorga says.

But there is hope. A dozen groups are responding to AIDS. (OASIS, which formed in 1993, is the only one that addresses gay issues, a strategy that has opponents even among the group’s 200 members.)

The Center for Human Rights and Legal Action (CALDH) initiated a project against AIDS/HIV discrimination in 1997. While the group does not address gay sexuality, it does reach a mass audience through posters, calendars and radio spots. And its cartoon series appears in the daily Prensa Libre.

Richard Stern is Director of the Agua Buena Human Rights Association in San Jose, Costa Rica. He works to improve access to treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS in Central America.