The Politics of Sexuality in Latin America: A Reader on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights

Identity, Revolution, and Democracy: Lesbian Movements in Central America

Identity, Revolution, and Democracy Lesbian Movements in Central America Millie Thayer I  s and s, revolutionary guerrilla movements fought poverty and dictatorship throughout much of the Central American isthmus. In the late s, a new kind of social movement was born in the region. In the space of five years, fledgling lesbian movements surfaced in four Central American countries: Costa Rica (), Honduras (), Nicaragua (), and El Salvador (). These movements were a product, in part, of the political and social upheaval of preceding decades; in part they were related to underlying structural changes, to the onset of  in the region, and to the influence of gay and lesbian movements elsewhere. Despite some common roots, however, there were striking differences among the movements that developed in different countries. In Costa Rica, the movement turned inward to construct its collective identity. The lesbian feminist group Las Entendidas combined therapeutic support for its members with efforts to create a larger lesbian community,and used an idiom of spirituality and woman-centered culture that might be familiar to students of the s lesbian movement in the United States.₁ In contrast, Nicaraguan lesbians took an assertive public stance, insisting on their right to membership in society and on the rights of all people to “sexuality free of prejudice.” Fundación Xochiquetzal, a nonprofit organization founded by lesbians and gays, sought to remake social mores in the sexual realm. The Nosotras collective 144 provided emotional support and education about sexuality and feminism to its members , but many of them also joined in a coalition effort to fight a repressive antigay law passed by the country’s legislative assembly.² Lesbian movements in Nicaragua and Costa Rica represent opposite ends of a continuum of social movements from a more internal to a more external orientation . At one end, there is a stress on the self-esteem and personal identity of group members that, in the case of Costa Rica, extends to efforts to construct a broader lesbian community out of existing social networks. At the most “extroverted” end, lesbians in Nicaragua sought to revolutionize how society conceives of sexuality, while simultaneously claiming a place in that society. Though both orientations were founded on a concern with identity, lesbian movements in these two Central American countries defined that identity and their goals and arenas of action in sharply divergent ways. I examine and explain these contrasting approaches to lesbian organizing [. . .]³ TheorizingVariation in Social Movement Identities New social movement () theorists have situated lesbian movements within a new genre of social movements that they see as a product of global shifts away from societies based on production and toward postmaterial, information societies, in which states and complex systems have come to intrude on the individual’s very core. According to these scholars, the peace, feminist, ecological, community, and gay and lesbian movements of the s and s represented means of resisting these growing threats to personal autonomy (Escobar ; Habermas ; Melucci , , ; Offe ; Slater ; Touraine , ). The protagonists of these movements, according to  theorists, were both those sensitized to the negative effects of modernity—the new middle class—and those suffering from it; the proletariat was no longer the epic actor on the stage. Unlike traditional, class-based movements,  modes of action tended toward direct democracy, horizontal organization, and a rejection of hierarchical forms of representation and institutionalization. Furthermore, resistance to domination of everyday life occurred on cultural, not political ground. Rather than contesting for political power, or pressing demands on the state, these movements struggled for the right to difference. Construction and defense of identity were central concerns.⁴ Some recent analyses support the idea that certain elements shared by many contemporary movements, such as the politicization of the private and the assertion of identity as a primary goal, represent a significant departure from the past (Buechler ; Johnston, Larana and Gusfield ). But others criticize the reification of a category that does not take into account differences among collective identities (Gamson , J. ; Gamson, W. A. ).₅ Identity, Revolution, and Democracy / 145 In privileging identity-based movements,  theory offers important insights into movements such as those analyzed here. However, its sweeping structural explanations obscure distinctions among these movements and overlook the historical specificities that might enable us to explain why, for example, Nicaraguan lesbians constructed their movement differently than their Costa Rican counterparts. Theorists in the resource mobilization...