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I have been travelling and studying in Guatemala for five weeks, and came with hopes of getting involved in the queer rights effort and learning about queer experiences here. I’ve listened to stories and have learned a bit about life and survival for members of la comunidad.

It seems that the safest way to be queer in Guatemala is to be invisible. This might involve conducting your relationship covertly, or leading an entirely separate heterosexual life while pursuing your true desires behind closed doors. In my time here, I’ve been regaled with stories of elaborate double lives maintained for decades.

There is enormous pressure (both social and religious) to live a ‘conventional’ life, and if one has perverted impulses, one must suppress them, or at least satisfy them in secrecy. There is a great threat of violence against queer people, including sexual and other domestic violence, and there are many documented murders of transwomen each year. Additionally, I have been told of marriages forced upon queer women by their families.

Fortunately, there are some incredibly brave folks that refuse to be invisible, and I was lucky enough to meet a few of them at Guatemala City’s Gay Pride Parade. The parade consisted of a few floats from organizations like Oasis, Lambda, and the fabulously named Reinas de le Noche. Additionally there were dance and flag troupes, a handful of organizations marching with signs, and hundreds of gorgeous queens.

The message at Pride was clear: we exist, we are tired of being silent, and we are owed the rights extended to heterosexual Guatemalans (postscript to this message was: AND we are fucking fabulous). The march was less about gay ‘pride’ and more about the demand of queer Guatemalans to be recognized as human beings by the national government.

The gay rights movement in Guatemala began with organizing around HIV/AIDS education and prevention, primarily with homosexual men and sex workers. While there are no laws forbidding homosexual sex, there are also no laws expressly protecting gays from employment and other institutional discrimination or from physical violence. GLBTQI organizations in Guatemala are located almost exclusively in the capital, and are working to further basic human rights for queers in the country.

If you’d like to learn more about the situation for queers in Guatemala and how to get involved, check out: http://maxpages.com/oasis or http://www.reinasdelanoche.org.gt/default.asp. Also, catch a recent interview with the Directors of Oasis, and with yours truly at http://www.raisingmiro.com/2010/07/09/podcast-episode-3/.