One News Report at a Time: Let's look at Latin America

Before I begin, I would like to state that One Day at a Time (2017-) is an absolutely phenomenal TV show. It’s comedy about the three generations of a Cuban family living in the US, and surprisingly relevant to what this blog post is about. One of the issues covered in the show is LGBT, as the daughter in the family, Elena Alvarez, is a young Latinx teenager exploring her identity and comes out as gay in Episode 10 of Season 1. She is portrayed as a very opinionated young woman who cares very deeply about issues that matter to her. For example, being LGBT.

And here is where we tie into the topic of today’s post: the LGBTQ+ community in Latin America.

Compared to other regions of the world, Latin America is far more liberal, where same-sex activity is legal in practically all countries except the islands of the Eastern parts of the Caribbean. Same-sex marriage is recognised in five countries, two have civil union laws, and of course, the iconic Mardi Gras celebration, an integral part of the culture. But hidden beneath a salutary image lies an insipid reality, disregarded by the world.

The ‘progressive’ legislation is rendered practically useless by a weak rule of law. In practically all thirty-three countries, the regions are cloaked by widespread discrimination, either encouraged as de facto by the state or perpetrated by people in positions of power.

This alarming amount of discrimination has led to shocking statistics of violence. In Brazil a person is killed because of his/her sexual orientation every twenty-five hours. Over two decades, homophobic opinions have been the basis for over 1,000 murders in Mexico. Out of the five countries with the highest murder rates of trans and gender diverse people, four are Latin American countries (Berezowsky, 2018).

The prejudice within Latin America is partly attributed to the predominant machista model of masculinity. Its an ideal that pressurises men to construct their identity around images of virility and encourages harmful behaviours such as alcoholism, domestic violence, disregard for women and family abandonment.

Latin America is dangling over a very delicate precipice. The last decade’s progress of queer rights has been extremely significant, but if the region falls into complacency, all of it could be lost. And the LGBT activists are often left alone to their struggles, due to lack of resources, language barrier, and having international work focused on other regions of the world. If the international LGBT rights movement supports the region they would be able to build robust transnational networks to share info, resource and strategies, and emerge as the beginning of a domino effect that would significantly benefit the communities in Latin America.

Aurevoir,

-CLB

Photos: (1) Courtesy of Netflix

(2) David Gasser/LatinContent/Getty Images