Argentina: Bears attacked

On Tuesday, January 18th, three members of the Buenos Aires Bear Club in Argentina visited the offices of the National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism (INADI) and filed a claim detailing a number of recent homophobic attacks against the club and its members.

Club coordinator Gabriel Sánchez tells Tiempo Argentino that on the night of January 15th, as club members and their friends began to arrive to a monthly grill-and-meet event, twenty or so individuals living in a nearby hotel started harassing them and asking them for money.

When members refused to give money, Sánchez says that some of the assailants began to shout "You getting together to fuck, fat faggots!"

As the tone got more aggressive, club members went inside the clubhouse and shut the door.  Outside, assailants pulled a discarded mattress and some trash bags against the door and set them on fire, as captured in this photo which was posted on the paper's website.

Club members were able to open the door and put out the fire with a fire extinguisher. By then, Sánchez says, the police had arrived and kept guard preventing further violence.

"We are well aware of the different economic situation and the reality of living in an overcrowded hotel, but were never hostile to them," said Sánchez, "These people are enraged by sexual diversity, something that has never been a problem in the neighborhood."

Sánchez says that the problems began a month earlier when the hotel accepted a number of new residents a month before the latest incident.  Bear club members started to complain of being verbally harassed as they made their way to the clubhouse or that their vehicles were damaged after refusing to pay them a bogus parking fee.

AG Magazine says that, in their complaint to INADI, bear club members describe the assailants throwing rocks and glass bottles which left a few of their members hurt. They also say that while the police did eventually arrive, they treated the altercation as a minor problem between neighbors but refused to arrest anyone or to register a complaint.

Maria Rachid, a former president of the Argentinian LGBT Federation who was appointed as Vice President of INADI in December by Argentinean president Cristina Fernandes de Kirchner, said that the government-led agency would accompany the members of the bear club and help them to file criminal charges on the basis of any personal damages or injuries as well as attempted murder.  She also vowed to approach the local police department to address the way their officers responded to the attack.

Rachid was also instrumental in pushing and securing marriage equality rights for all gays and lesbians in Argentina.

• Related: Rex Wockner: Buenos Aires Bears clubhouse attacked (Bay Windows, Jan. 24, 2011)

Argentina: Ban on gay soldiers is lifted, effective today

While there are signs that neither the Obama administration nor the US Congress are in a rush to lift the damaging "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" military policy which requires that soldiers who disclose their homosexuality be kicked out of military service, there is some great news today from Argentina.

A translated excerpt from an article published today in AG Magazine, one of the best LGBT news portals in Argentina:

In Argentina, starting today, a new military justice system goes into effect which decriminalizes homosexuality among uniformed members, eliminates the death penalty, and moves crimes committed exclusively within the military to the public justice sphere [previously there had been a separate military court system].

Under the old system, gays were not permitted to have access to a military career, at the same time as this sexual orientation was penalized. And, while there are no publicly known former sanctions against gays under the old policy, this does not mean that men and women with that sexual orientation have not been disciplined, and perhaps separated from the armed forces under a mantle of silence.

In fact, with this new system, gay men or lesbian women who wish to train in the forces should encounter no impediment, nor any military retaliation areas.

According to the AP, the new law replaces one that had been in the books since 1958, and goes into effect today, six months after it was approved by Argentina's legislative body and promoted by President Cristina Férnandez de Kirchner.

Clarin says that the changes in the military code resulted, in part, from the American Convention on Human Rights strong opposition to the death penalty clause that existed in the previous code. Some see the changes as putting further distance between modern Argentina and its military dictatorship years, particularly since it puts the military under purview of the country's public courts.

One more LGBT rights development in a Latin American nation that leap-frogs over current US policy.

Related:

• Argentina officially ends trials for homosexual acts in military (AP via 365gay.com, March 2, 2009)
• A New Argentina Overturns Gay Military Ban (Queerty, March 2, 2009)
  
• Opinion: A Study of contrasts on 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell by Steve Ralls (The Huffington Post, March 2, 2009)
  

Brazil: Deep in the Amazons, Ticuna tribe members come out as gay

Unless I see it in Spanish-language media, I often miss out on news items from Brazil. Portuguese is close enough to Spanish so that I can grab the general sense of an article and Babel Fish always comes in handy for those words that I don't get, but it takes time to go through an article and sometimes I don't have too much time on my hands.

One recent alternative has been Gay News Watch. Having made Brazil his home for a couple of years (and having a Brazilian partner as well), Chris Crain - who runs GNW - probably understands more Portuguese than I do and keeps a more vigilant eye on stories from the country.

In any case, if it wasn't for this AG Magazine translation of this article* from Folha Online, I would have missed the following:

Deep in the Amazon jungle, in the Brazilian border with Peru and Colombia, a few young men from the country's most populous indigenous tribe - the Ticunas - have begun to defy cultural norms requiring they behave in a masculine manner or that they marry a member of the opposite gender already designated for them during their childhood.

Three Ticuna tribe members from the Umariaçu village, including 22 year-old Natalicio Ramos Guedes (above) say that at least twenty of the 3,600 village members - including them - are gay.

The Indian National Foundation of Brazil confirms that different tribes have recently reported members coming out.

"This is something new for us," says Darcy Bibiano Murati, a Ticuna tribe member who is the director of the Foundation, "We never saw indians such as these, now there has been rapid growth in all communities, young men from 10 to 15 years of age."

Ramos Guedes, whose brother Marcenio is also gay, participates in a local folk dance group. Both dress up like women and perform traditional dances at different social events throughout the region.

Both brothers say that it hasn't been easy to be so open. Marcenio says he left home when he was fifteen because he could not stand the constant fights with his father and moved to neighboring Tabatinga where he worked as a domestic servant. Now 24, he is back home and says that his family now supports him and backed him in launching the dance troop (both brothers are pictured left with their father and other members of their family).

"I do not suffer discrimination for dancing," says Marcenio, "Everyone sees it with respect. I suffer the prejudice of other young people in the village. If I say something they want to beat me up or throw stones."

Natalicio tells Folha Online that he is afraid to walk on his own and always makes sure he has company when he goes out.

Among the first of the Ticunas to ever come out publicly is 32 year-old Claricio Manoel Batista who studies pedagogy at the State University of the Amazon and also is a primary school teacher. He came out to his parents in 1992 when he was sixteen years of age when he lived in the Umariacu village.

Batista says that his father never mistreated him because he liked to stufy and took care of the chores at home but even to this day, while they have stopped asking him about it, it is clear to him that they would rather not have a gay son. "They say that no one accepts it," says Batista.

In published studies, the late anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro (1922-1997) stated that there were registered cases of gays among the different Amazon tribes as far back as the 19th century but sociologist and historian Raimundo Leopardo Ferreira says that it's the first he has heard of it.

Ferreira says that his concern is that as more tribe members come out as being gay, the prejudice and homophobia that currently exists among tribe members will make it so difficult for gay Ticunas that they will be driven to substance abuse or have other social problems stemming from societal rejection.

* Original article and images by Katia Brasil for Folha Online.