Historical Moments: The LGBT Community in El Salvador, Part II

Young, Lesbian and Out on the Streets of San Salvador

Part II of a series profiling historical moments for the sexual diversity community in El Salvador, from 2009-present. See Part I, and Part III.                

                                              

San Salvador.

August 2012. 
I recently had the chance to take part in an interview between two activists from the Salvadoran lesbian community-- Veronica Reyna and Andrea Ayala-- and GLAAD (The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.) GLAAD’s Alexandra Bolles carried out the interview from her New York apartment via Skype, and I served as the interpreter. The three-hour discussion covered everything from the LGBT community’s history in El Salvador, to Reyna and Ayala’s personal coming-out stories, to the instrumental role that social networks play in finding a partner when you live in a homophobic country. Bolles and I found ourselves blown away by the courage of these two young women to continue to struggle for their rights. We were inspired by their stories. Below, you find excerpts of each of the three published parts of the interview, along with an excerpt of the fourth article, which Bolles and I co-authored. This article argues the importance of solidarity actions from the US in support of the Salvadoran LGBT community, and presents possibilities for us to do so. Enjoy, and for more information, you can contact the sites listed in the fourth article, or me, at Dmack08@gmail.com.

Part 1 AA: The history of the Salvadoran LGBT movement goes back until 1985 in San Salvador, when the country was still in civil war. There were two battalions that were involved in the story I’m about to tell you, called the Bracamonte and the Atlacatl. They were both trained in the School of the Americas in torture techniques. One night, the battalions rounded up transgender sex workers on the street and kidnapped between 10 and 15 of them. They disappeared, were tortured and raped by members of the battalion, then assassinated, and their bodies were left in an area next to a highway. This information is recorded in the Truth Commission Report (which can be read here) in the United Nations but it is unable to be reviewed because of the Amnesty Law that was passed right before the report was released, so this story is known by word of mouth.

Part 2 AA:When I came out…my parents as a last resort, sent me to a psychologist. I didn’t realize I was actually going to conversion therapy. When I started, she actually gave me pills, medication, and to this day I don’t know what was in those pills. Therapy consisted of looking at photographs of men, drawing pictures of myself as a woman, and answering the question, “why do I want to be the man?” I realized that this would go on forever if I was open about who I was, so I decided to just say “yes” to everything she asked. She’d ask, “don’t you like boys?” and I’d say, “yes, I love them, they’re the best ever.” For two hours a week for six months, I maintained that lie. After those six months, the psychologist told my parents that I was cured. Of course, I was never cured because I was never sick and I love women, but I had to live a parallel life; the life in front of my family and a hidden life as a lesbian, where I would have to escape from class to see my girlfriend in high school.

Part 3 VR: My idea for the future is that we can live in peace, and I say that not just for the LGBT community, but for El Salvador as a whole. We have such a high level of violence that is not just expressed as homicides or as gang violence, even though it’s usually reduced to that, but there are all sorts of violence---gender, social, physical, sexual, economic violence. You’re not only targeted for your sexual orientation, but for whatever—whatever excuse they could possibly make—and it’s difficult to coexist and live peacefully in this country. Of course, it’s more difficult as a lesbian, but my dream for my own life is to live openly with my partner, my friends, my family at some point, without causing a problem by living openly as who I am, and to be able to feel like I’m living safely here, not because I have a soldier with a loaded gun behind me, which tends to be the image of peace that is propagated in El Salvador, but because I live a peaceful coexistence with the people in my society…. (It is) so important to create solidarity and relationships with people in other countries… If we continue to only focus internally—on me, on these four walls that surround me, on my borders—we won’t be able to build a world community of globalized struggle for LGBT rights, which is what we so desperately need. We need a wider vision of what community means, a worldwide community that struggles in favor of the LGBT population.