LGBTQ history in Argentina

The history of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people (LGBTQ) in Argentina is shaped by the historic characterisation of non-heterosexuality as a public enemy: when power was exercised by the Catholic Church, it was regarded as a sin; during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when it was in the hands of positivist thought, it was viewed as a disease; and later, with the advent of civil society, it became a crime.

[1] In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the first activist groups of the country appeared, most notably the leftist Frente de Liberación Homosexual (FLH), whose immediate forebear was Nuestro Mundo, the first gay rights organization in Latin America.

[4] The end of military rule in 1983 was followed by a flourishing of lesbian and gay life in the country which, combined with the continued repression, resulted in a resurgence of activism, within which the role of Carlos Jáuregui and the Comunidad Homosexual Argentina (CHA) stood out.

During the decade, the travesti and transgender rights movement emerged, spearheaded by figures such as Mariela Muñoz, Karina Urbina, Lohana Berkins, María Belén Correa and Claudia Pía Baudracco.

[8][9] The Inca Empire (in Quechua: Tawantinsuyu) extended to part of the modern-day Argentine provinces of Jujuy, Salta, Catamarca, Tucumán, La Rioja, San Juan, and the northwest of Mendoza, incorporating them to the Qullasuyu administrative region.

[12] Nevertheless, Juan José Sebreli noted that: "This does not mean, however, that sexual permissiveness reigned in indigenous cultures, in the style of lost paradises that utopian anthropologists like Margaret Mead believe they find in primitive peoples.

"[14] According to Alberto Cardín, even though Métraux wrote on the Mbayá people, this was the name that the Guaraní gave in past times to the nomadic tribes of the Guaicuruan languages, who inhabited the other side of the Paraguay River.

[15] Pierre Clastres lived for a year among the Guaycurú people and reported two paradigmatic cases: that of Chachubutagachugi, a member of the Aché tribe who did not like men's jobs and worked alongside women; and that of Krembegin, an unapologetic homosexual who was frowned upon but never punished.

[1][16] Until the late 17th century, shamans—then known as machi weye—were men with special powers due to their permanent dual gender identities and relationships with spirits, which allowed them to act as mediators between the human and spiritual world.

[17][18] In the second half of the 19th century, with the indigenous tribes already in their decline, Lucio Victorio Mansilla reported in 1870 on the Ranquel people's orgiastic dances between men, writing: "They kissed, they bit each other, they threw obscene hands..."[13]

The repression of homosexuality was legalized in Spain with the establishment of the absolutist monarchy: the Catholic Monarchs instituted the death penalty at the stake for the act of "sodomy" or "nefarious contra natura sin" in 1497, and King Philip II revalidated it in practice in 1598.

[15] For example, missionary Luis de Bolaños intervened the myth of the creation of the Ypacaraí river, relating it to the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah, especially the idea of divine punishment for homosexuality.

[13] In 1770, viceroy Juan José de Vértiz y Salcedo ordered that vagabonds—including homosexuals although without naming them—were to be confined in the Falkland Islands (locally: Islas Malvinas), after being exposed in the town square to be mocked.

[23] The following year, the first public scandal occurred in the city, when Mariano de los Santos Toledo, who had relations with an Arab named Mateo, was denounced for wanting to abuse a twelve-year-old boy and, given his resistance, trying to assassinate him.

[26] There are some testimonies that give an account of the homophobic mentality during the first years of independence, such as a note that a Buenos Aires resident named Juan Madera sent in 1813 to the police mayor, in which he accused various men of introducing sodomy in the city.

[27] The myth has its origin in defamatory gossip spread by his enemies during the revolutionary years, which pointed to his thin voice, his sensitive and polite manners and his intimate friendship with his physician John Redhead.

[27] Homosexual tendencies can be inferred in Juan Bautista Alberdi, a bachelor concerned with the arts and fashions who was criticized by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento as "an abbot for his manners and a woman for his voice.

"[30] There are no historical sources about lesbianism of the time, although a relationship between Manuela Rosas and her cousin Dolores Fuentes can be inferred, as documented in some love letters, in one of which the former wrote: "How inhumane are my uncles who have taken a friend from me who is as if she were my wife!

[33] More than an advance of individual freedoms, the adoption of this theory meant the virtual and desired elimination of homosexuality from Argentine written works, so as to give a better image to potential European immigrants.

[35] A 1912 article published by Fray Mocho reported that this gang of crossdressing criminals made up of about three thousand men, which represented about 0.5 percent of the male population of Buenos Aires at that time.

[41] According to historians Omar Acha and Pablo Ben, the definition of gay men as a singular group was established during the first government of Juan Perón, even though the concept of homosexuality that characterized the time was different from the one that prevails today.

[47] Margaride's anti-homosexual campaign was part of a broader "anti-sex" effort, which included the arrest of heterosexual couples for kissing in public and the raiding of motels (colloquially: "telos"), calling the respective spouses when those detained were adulterers.

As part of the United States-backed Operation Condor, it carried out the infamous "Dirty War", a regime of illegal repression, indiscriminate violence, persecutions, systematized torture, forced disappearance of people, manipulation of information and other forms of state terrorism that forever changed Argentine society.

[59]During the time of the dictatorship, the city of Tigre in Buenos Aires Province became a famous place of refuge for LGBT people, since the police did not operate there, but the Naval Prefecture, which did not make arrests.

[52] The alternative magazine El Expreso Imaginario reported that in the presidential elections, "100% of the members of the gay population of Buenos Aires" voted for Raúl Alfonsín, who represented, on the one hand, a "guarantee of tranquility" against Peronism's confrontational discourse and, on the other, a "social democratic nuance" that heralded a change from the oppressive climate of the past.

[65] One of the references incorporated by the GAG was the international gay liberation movement, which gained greater notoriety with the media impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic by renewing its agenda to fight for new legal and medical policies.

[62] Unlike the other groups, by the end of the 1980s the CHA consolidated itself as the organization with the greatest symbolic, political and institutional weight, counting on a consensus and a majority degree of representation for the homosexual community.

[62] In April 1984, Jáuregui and fellow CHA activist Raúl Soria appeared on the cover of magazine Siete Días under the title "The risk of being homosexual in Argentina", in what is considered the first public exhibition of two men lovingly embracing each other and a landmark in gay visibility in the country.

[75] A popular hypothesis claimed the existence of a serial killer, although researchers such as Marce Butierrez and Patricio Simonetto challenge this view as an urban legend, pointing out that the murders on the Pan-American Highway had different characteristics depending on the area in which they occurred.

[91][7] The decree on the country's official gazette read: "Every travesti, transsexual or transgender person has the right to decent and productive employment in equal and satisfactory working conditions and protected against unemployment without discrimination for motives of gender identity or its expression".