Leading Guatemalan newspaper pranks gays, tells them they can marry

In Latin America, April Fools' Day doesn't come in April - nor is it called "April Fools' Day"... discuss.

Actually, it's called "Innocents' Day" and it comes around every December 28th.

Anyhow, considering all the hoopla surrounding the decision last week by Mexico City's Legislative Assembly to grant gays the right to marry and adopt, a Guatemalan newspaper thought that it would be hilarious to prank Guatemalan gay couples yesterday and make them believe that their government had also granted them the right to marry.

In an article titled "The gays will be able to create a family in Guatemala", El Periódico reported that Guatemalan president Álvaro Colom had broken away from his past and promised to promote a law making it easier for gays to marry. President Colom, according to the article, had hosted a surprise Christmas dinner with the country's LGBT leadership on Saturday and had been able to work out every difference that the LGBT rights movement might have held with his government. The article also said that most of the government's ministers had been present at the dinner, including the ministers of Defense, Education and Athletics, and that Colom had taken the opportunity to personally apologize for making comments against the LGBT community in the past.

In addition, the paper said that the Guatemalan president vowed to institute a series of measures to prevent discrimination against the LGBT community in the country, and that he would require any private institution doing business with the country to prove that at least 10% of its workforce was LGBT.

But, wait! It was all a prank!

In the last sentence in the article, the paper said "Lastly, the leader asked all communication media representatives to distribute the news until today, December 28th, Innocents' Day", the only sign that readers had been had.

A few readers caught up with the prank leaving messages behind calling it in poor taste. Others thought it was the real deal, including Guatemalan homophobes who called the news a travesty. And yet, so far, there has been no apology forthcoming from the paper's editors.

Related

• Gay marriage in Guatemala on Innocents' Day (Spanish, Universo Gay)

Guatemala: Stunning charges against leading LGBT rights advocate

Details are sketchy and vary from one account to another but a Guatemalan government agency has brought 'attempted murder' charges against a leading LGBT rights advocate in a case that stems from an attack against a transgender woman last July.

The charges against Jorge López (right), director of the HIV prevention non-governmental agency OASIS, seem ludicrous considering his long-standing efforts as an advocate for transgender folk. At least one human rights organization is calling for an international response demanding an impartial review of the charges brought against him.

The charges: In a news brief, La Hora reports that the Guatemalan Public Ministry released an arrest warrant against López for "his alleged participation in the attack against a transgender on July 4th in Zone 1."

According to Telediaro 3, the Public Ministry alleges that López was among a group of people who beat up a transgender woman so badly that her arms almost had to be amputated.

Prensa Libre, on the other hand, seems to get the facts wrong in reporting that López was accused of murder against a transgender woman found dead on a public street in June of 2008.

López says it's a government vendetta: All three papers report that López surrendered yesterday and defended himself before the media as he made his way into the courthouse.

"As he indicated before entering the courthouse, [López said] he is being pressured by the National Civil Police (PNC) and the Public Ministry (MP), based on accusations he made last September that agents from both institutions attacked six homosexuals", says Telediario 3.

Prensa Libre says that he admitted that there had been a attack against transgender individuals on the date mentioned by the authorities but argues that he was among those who called the authorities to alert them to the attacks (he says he plans to use the phone records as roof of his innocence).

Reports said that he was joined by representatives from international human rights organizations and Guatemala's Human Rights Attorney's office at the court hearing.

International response: So far, the New York based Human Rights First is the first organization to demand a proper review of charges against López. From their statement:

López is the director of a prominent organization that works to protect the rights of transgendered sex workers in Guatemala and he has spent many years advocating for them. He worked closely with the victim and sought police protection for her shortly before the attack. He later submitted complaints about police misconduct against sex workers, shortly before the arrest warrant against him was issued.

They also urge folk to sign on to a statement asking the court to "begin an impartial review of the validity of the charges against him and to close the case against him if there is insufficient evidence."

Sign-on statement: I urge you to join Human Rights First! Click here and demand that justice be served. It certainly looks as if the Guatemalan government is trying to get rid of of a key human rights advocate by trumping up charges against him. The least you can do is to demand an independent review of the charges brought against him.

*** UPDATE! *** (posted Jan. 26th at 5:04PM): A source says that charges against López were lowered from attempted murder to harboring and hindering persecution. He was released by the court as the case proceeds through the legal system and put under house arrest. I'll post additional information as it becomes available.

Related:

• Guatemalan trans rights advocate faces arrest warrant (Pink News, Jan. 21, 2009)

Homophobia in soccer, part 64

Saturday night, Miami's Dolphin Stadium will be the host site for a friendly match between Guatemala and Honduras' national soccer teams.

As a number of Latin American sports journalists were interviewing Guatemala's coach Hernán Darío Gómez, he spotted Reinaldo Rueda, a Guatemala-born technical assistant for Honduras. He then walked over to him and planted a "thundering" kiss.

This according to Honduran papers La Prensa and El Heraldo, both which said that the coach's antics demonstrated his tremendous sense of humor.

Asked what the kiss meant, Gómez told reporters: "The kiss can mean anything, except that we are faggots."

He was certainly playing it up for the reporters and obviously thinks that playing up the fag angle is funny but when it comes down to it it's just more of the usual homophobic banter that happens in the world of soccer.

Guatemala gay porn uproar

A gay porn flick released by the Miami- based Kristen Bjorn Productions in 2004 called "Men Amongst the Ruins" is raising heckles from local community leaders in the colonial city of Antigua, Guatemala, who are disturbed that some of the sex scenes were aparently filmed in the ruins of colonial-era Christian temples.

Antonio Tovar, the Director of Conservation of Ancient Guatemala, told the AP that while the production company did film in an 18th century Catholic temple that has since been converted into a museum, the sex scenes were filmed elsewhere and edited to seem as if they took place inside the museum.

Antigua, which dates back to the 16th century, used to be Guatemala's capital city until a series of earthquakes left it nearly deserted in the 18th century and Guatemala City became it's last and current capital. Kristen Bjorn, known for the exotic worldwide locales he choses as settings for his porn films, did not make a comment to the AP.

So, while the Guatemalan gay rights organization has suffered the loss of eight of its members to violence just this year, a US-based gay porn producer uses a Central American city for profit (reminds me of something else) and Guatemalan authorities seem to care more about the sex that aparently never took place in a temple than the rash of killings that has plagued OASIS over the years.

UPDATE: You can read more about this at "Drowning in a glass of water" from El Blog Diabolico.

Guatemalan police implicated in murder of trans woman

Today, the Latin American bureau of the AP is reporting that the country's Human Rights Ombudsman, Sergio Morales, released a statement charging that police were involved in the clandestine shooting of a transgender woman who was a member of the gay rights and HIV prevention organization OASIS. As usual, the AP publishes the victim's name of birth and categorizes the victim as a homosexual man but ads "[Juan Pablo] Mendez Cartagena, known as 'Paulina' in the homosexual world, died in a nearby hospital from bullet shot wounds" and that the shooting occurred "in a street known as travesti and transsexual prostitution area."

Pray tell, what does 'the homosexual world' mean to the AP? And while we are at it, why not dignify the woman who was killed by giving her the name with which she chose to live her life? (at least the English language Reuters story gets it right)

Of course, that is an issue of semantics and reporting. Much more serious is that OASIS members continue to be victims of such horrible violence: The agency tells the AP that eight of their members have been murdered in what is a young year and the sad thing is that it's not something new. Check out this profile of OASIS from the online webzine, The Gully, from 2000.

The Ombudsman did not release additional information such as the names of the officers saying that the investigation was still in process.

Jorge Lopez (pictured above), the Director of OASIS, told the AP "we hope that the investigation is followed to the end."

Photo credit: E. Sologaistoa, taken from The Gully.

Beneath the Radar: Aruba, the Cherokee Nation and the Mayan Indians

Just beneath the radar, there have been some interesting developments on the same-sex marriage front in the Caribbean and among indigenous groups in the United States and Central America.

· Yesterday, Aruba’s Superior Court said that the government had to register the Dutch marriage of two women, Aruban-born Charlene Oduber-Lamers and Dutch-born Esther Oduber-Lamers, under laws established when the Caribbean island was a Dutch colony. Unlike former British colonies in the Caribbean (i.e. - Bahamas, Turks & Caicos, Jamaica and Belize), Dutch colonies (i.e. - Aruba and the Dutch Antilles) never inherited anti-sodomy statues from their colonizers which – in general – makes them supposedly less homophobic. Nevertheless the ruling is already creating tensions between the Aruba government and Holland as Aruba is determined to make a final appeal before the Dutch Supreme Court arguing “that Dutch law also grants the island the right to self-rule - permitting it to ignore Holland's legalization of gay marriage” and that “the civil code [does] not allow for same-sex marriage and that it would go against Aruba's way of life.”

· Just as in the case of the Oduber-Lamers, Dawn McKinley and Kathy Reynolds are a lesbian couple who are also struggling to have their marriage recognized by a different nation: The North-American Cherokee nation. Both had received a marriage certificate when they exchanged vows in May of 2004 but its official filing was stopped when Todd Hembree, a member of the tribe and attorney, sued to have it blocked arguing that he would suffer grave harm if the marriage was allowed to stand. In June of 2005, the tribe adopted language limiting marriages to couples of different sex. And, while on August 3rd a tribal court dismissed the suit saying that Mr. Hembree had no standing to file the suit and could not show how he would be harmed by the women’s marriage, on August 10th a group of Cherokee Nation Tribal Councilors filed another petition requesting a temporary injunction while also arguing that recognition of the women’s marriage would cause irreparable harm to the tribe. On August 15th, the court granted the injunction. A hearing will soon be held and debate still simmers.

· In the meantime, down in Guatemala, similar rifts were exposed recently among Maya tribe members when an unsigned Mayan Wajxaqbib’ No’ Indian Defense press release was sent out on July 6, 2005, which, among other things, stated:

Gays have risen as a result of the social decomposition in the midst of the 20th century. We cannot rationalize this issue since it does not fit within our culture as indigenous people, just as it also stands against the development of humanity according to nature’s principles…

If they were born with this defect or learned it later, we cannot, or there should not be any room for these same things to continue happening or by copying other countries’ behaviors.

It should not be strange that countries that are politically, militarily or economically powerful are the ones which have the most gays, since they are responsible for the atrocities committed against poor communities, they are the ones who export their filth and pollute our communities.

Just as the Unites States and other wealthy nations are the ones who export all type of transgeneric products, industrial pollution, chemical warfare, lack of culture, assimilation and illnesses such as AIDS and others.

This type of attitudes or customs are an inheritance from the ‘democracy’ of industrialized countries, who lack spirituality and who – currently – only see the human self as a cybernetic machine, with whom they can do as they please.

Countries such as Guatemala could not remain behind and those who govern us are the premier degenerates. Now these [governing bodies] put the legalization of gay matrimony in their agendas – is it perhaps because they cannot see the principal problems that afflict the nation?

Local non-profit, Amigos Contra el SIDA (Friends Against AIDS) picked up on the release and immediately demanded an apology, stating that it was irresponsible for a marginalized and oppressed minority to attack another, defending the right for gays to marry and adopt children, reiterating their respect for the Maya tribes and sharing anecdotes about the repression of gays in Guatemala under the hands of the police and the government.

The call to action by Amigos must have had an internal impact in certain Maya circles because, on July 31st, 2005, the Wajxaqbib’ No’ Indian Defense released an “Error Notice Related to the Press Release Sent Out on July 6th about the Gays:”

We assume institutional responsibility for the enormous error caused by an individual’s opinion, the limited articulation of ideas on the subject in the press release, and not our institution’s political or ideological stand.

We ask for forgiveness from all those persons and institutions that received this degrading expression which caused great damage, to people and institutions that assume their full right to sexual diversity, we let you know that the position of the Indian Defense is related to the defense and respect of the rights of every person as an individual or a collective.

Though this apology is apparently the official statement that the Defense is sending out to people who contact them on the issue, to date, Amigos have yet to receive the statement directly. Amigos remain open to talking to the Maya leadership on these issues the Defense admit having little knowledge of or much familiarity.