La Historia (The History)




This section provides a brief history on Afro-Latina, Indigenous, LGBTQ+ populations in Latin America. Of course this is not the history in its entirety, but if you wish to know a more extensive history check out our sources for more in depth knowledge!
Afro Latinas' History in Latin America:
To be Afro Latina is to have an ancestral background of history in Latin America, whilst having an African history due to colonialism. For example, a large number of women that identify as Afro-Latina have a darker skin color or they are racially Black or African American, such as the Dominican singer Arama La NegraSee the source image or Puerto Rican-Dominican actress Zoe Saldana. See the source image 
In other words Latina comes in many shades. 
Afro Latina women have been throughout Latin America since the African slave trades which prompted the mixing of races in the early 16th and 17th centuries. However, The 1980s and 1990s are documented to be the time in which networks of social movements for equality and recognition started to appear throughout Latin America. These movements helped to define a political and cultural revolution in the region and each country played off of another country's model. Acceptance, recognition, and equal rights were and continue to be a progressive effort. People began to accept the fact that racism was a problem, that there was a need to create spaces for racial equality, acknowledge and the representation of peoples of African origin throughout the region. These movements were structured to model the historical development of black civil rights movements that were happening in the U.S., that were able to set up a regional and global agenda against racism and worked towards collective empowerment.  This shows the ingrained and internalized racism that occurred. This is very different from any racism that the overall Latin population may face. This has roots in slavery and attempts to deny a entire racial category, thus trying to make them invisible. This cloak of invisibility in turn denies the history of colonization and mixing of races rather than a homogenous Latin America. Afro-Latinos pose a threat to the European influence. In an overall movement for LGBTQ rights, the race of Afro-Latin population are ignored or they are left out of the social movements because of existing racism within the LGBTQ community. 
LGBTQ+ History in Latin America:
Argentina was at the forefront of gay pride in Latin America. The gay population in Argentina created Nuestro Mundo ('Our World') in 1967, considered South America's first public homosexual organization. In 1971, the Homosexual Liberation Front formed and two years later they started to publish the region's first gay magazine: Somos ('We Are').                   
But Argentine society experienced a whiplash against human rights, including those of gays and trans people, of every sort during the military government's Dirty War between 1976 and 1983, disappearing or killing up to 30,000 people. Their 'cleaning campaign' targeted gays in order to 'scare homosexuals from the streets to not bother decent people.'
One of the first lesbian organizations was the Feminist Lesbian Collective Ayuquelen, founded in 1984. The group of women who led it were revolutionary because they formed despite the conservative and patriarchal 1980 constitution that made any transgressions against the state, family and the Catholic church illegal. This organization helped to advance rights, but also work closer towards a democracy. 
Mexico also began to experience its own wave of gay rights movements in the 1970s. The Homosexual Liberation Front was Mexico's first gay organization, forming in 1971.” Nancy Cardenas became the first person in Mexico to publicly declare her homosexuality in 1973 and then led Mexico's Gay Liberation Front (GLF). By 1978, other LGBTQ rights organizations had formed that not only advocated for freedom of sexual expression in Mexico but for the Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions.         Around the same time in Brazil, the gay community there – and society in general – was experiencing a shift toward democracy by the late 1970s. Lampião ('The Lamp') gay newspaper began publishing in 1978 and became the 'primary communication vehicle for the homosexual community.'  São Paulo homosexuals formed the first openly gay organization, Somos, in 1979, which was the precedent to gay and lesbian groups in Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, Curitiba and the Amazon. The Feminist-Lesbian Action Group staged what's considered Brazil's 'Stonewall' at Ferro's Bar in São Paulo, in 1983.
Here are some videos to check out about LGBTQ+ community in Latin America and celebrating and LGBTQ+ inclusive black history month:

Indigenous Populations History in Latin America: 
Sources: 





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