Midway through the cere- mony in which Patricio Aylwin was being offi- cially nominated as the presiden- tial candidate of the democratic opposition in August, 1989, Las Yeguas del Apocalipsis (The Mares of the Apocalypse), a gay performance group, dramatically unfurled a large banner that read "Homosexuals for Change." Pre- sent at the ceremony-which marked the beginning of Aylwin's campaign to be Chile's first democratically elected president since Salvador Allende-were most of the prominent political New political horizons emerged for the gay movement in the wake of Pinochet's defeat. During this moment of transition, Chilean homosexuals articulated an organized and militant political voice for the first time. figures of the opposition to the Pinochet dictatorship, and the event received wide coverage in the national and international media. The intervention of Las Yeguas only briefly disrupted the event, but the unfurling of that banner marked an important shift in the history of the gay movement in Chile. It changed the tone of the movement's presence in the public arena, signaling the beginning of a period in which politically organized homosexuals would begin to demand their right to be heard and included in the larger processes of change sweeping the Chilean political landscape. The history of the homosexual movement dates back to the revolutionary days of Salvador Allende's social- ist government. The first public gay march took place in 1972, yet few remember the group of homosexuals and transvestites that marched through downtown Santiago demanding rights for "the third sex," a phrase they picked up from the title of a popular movie playing in Victor Hugo Robles is a Chilean journalist and independent activist. He is a former member of the Steering Committee of the Homosexual Liberation Movement (MOVILH), and he directed and produced the radio program Open Triangle between 1993 and 1996. Translated from the Spanish by NACLA. local theaters at the time. The march, organized by an ad hoc group of individuals, was an isolated event and had no orga- nization or movement behind it. To no one's surprise, it was bro- ken up by the police, who threatened participants with violence and arrest if they did not disperse. On the day after the march, the headlines of El Clarin, the most popular pro- Allende daily, reflected the left's disdain for homosexuals: "Faggots take over downtown Santiago." In spite of the revolutionary spirit of the times, those years were not a period that would have allowed for a politically organized gay movement. There was no place anywhere on the politi- cal spectrum where the virulent homophobia of Chilean society was questioned. In fact, that very homophobia underwrote much of political discourse at the time. In the intense political struggles between supporters and opponents of the Popular Unity government, political figures were often depicted as maricones, or "faggots," in speeches and political cartoons. This was particularly common among the left, which was fond of portraying its opponents as effeminate oligarchs of questionable moral character. Soon after the march, a variety of factors--growing social turmoil, a hostile press that portrayed homosexu- als as delinquents, the threat of a military coup and the violence with which the gay march was handled- forced homosexual activists to return to their ghetto and await better conditions for their struggle. The wait was long, for soon came the military coup in 1973, with its bitter history of tortures, deaths and disappearances. The victims were countless. Perhaps the most forgotten are the many transvestites who were executed during the days immediately following the coup. 36NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 36 NAGIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON SEXUAL POLITICS The 1980s were difficult years marked by intense protests against the regime, but change was in the air. This period saw The a, the emergence of the participa first lesbian organiza- the tions and the birth of human , the gay economy in mar Santiago. The heavy regulation of sexuality that has always existed in Chile intensi- fied during the Pinochet dicta- torship as society became in- creasingly militarized. At the same time, however, the rise of frpp-mnrkpt idpnlov allnwud for the emergence of the first gay dance clubs. Interestingly, this phenomenon paralleled a much more dramatic emergence of topless bars in which female prostitution became quasi-legal. The emergence of gay clubs was not a reflection of official tolerance towards homosexuality, but of the tacit recognition of homosex- uals as a potential economic market. The gay clubs that emerged in this period, particularly those that attracted a more working-class crowd, were regularly raided by police. Nevertheless, it was during the 1980s that a semipublic gay nightlife became possible in Santiago. On the political front, the lesbian community began to organize itself during the latter years of the military regime. The Ayuqulen Lesbian Feminist Collective was the first public organization of its kind. For several years after its formation in 1984, it was the sole voice of Chilean homosexuals both nationally and internation- ally. "Our organization envisions a path that begins with reflection in the context of the feminist experience," said an Ayuquelen member in a press interview, "and recog- nizes the need to come together to study the issues that emanate from our condition as lesbians."' In Con- cepci6n, a group of lesbians founded the Lesbians in Action (LEA) Collective. But up to this point, the presence of gay and lesbian organizations and the enunciation of their demands had been discrete in character. This all changed in 1988 with the irruption of Las Yeguas del Apocalipsis onto the scene. The interventions and perfor- mances of this art duo sent shock waves through Santiago's cultural circles. "We came together to pro- voke," said one member in an interview. "Our name alone was intended to produce allergic reac- tions within a scene characterized by conformism and complicity with .tnte repreRsiCn We de.- nounced hypocrisy and accomodation to the dictator- ship. Before the advent of democracy, it was in part us maricas (queers) who enunciated what others couldn't or wouldn't say." 2 Along with their intervention at Aylwin's nomination for the presidency, Las Yeguas staged a series of performances that aggressively "homosexualized" the political and cultural discourses of the time. One of their most memorable performances was their staging of the cueca sola in the foyer of the building that housed the Chilean Human Rights Commission. Years earlier, the mothers of the disap- peared had appropriated the cueca-Chile's national dance in which a couple flirtatiously dance around one another-to symbolize the disappearance of their male partners by performing the dance alone. On the foyer floor, Las Yeguas placed a large cloth map of Latin America and covered it with broken glass. As these two gay men "danced alone" wearing only long white skirts, their feet bled and made imprints on the map. Through performances like these, the group inserted the issue of homosexual oppression into the larger discourses of the opposition to the Pinochet regime and situated the polit- ical demands of homosexuals squarely within the hori- zons of the left. VOL XXXI, No 4 JAN/FEB 1998 Z 0 0
