Police Persecution, Liberation, and Human Rights: Modern Homosexual Identity and the Transformations of Sexual Politics in Buenos Aires, 1950–2010

“Police Persecution, Liberation and Human Rights: Modern Homosexual Identity and the Transformations of Sexual Politics in Buenos Aires, 1950-2010” explores the transformation of GLBT politics in Buenos Aires from the mid-twentieth century to today. In the 1950s modern homosexual identity emerged in Buenos Aires in response to social ostracism and police persecution. Following other populist movements, Peronism in the 1950s turned to the persecution and public denigration of “sexual degenerates” as a way to establish a contrast that could cement the idea of a united people with a family oriented sociability. By 2010, however, Argentina became one of the first countries to legalize same-sex marriage, a political move also promoted by a Peronist government. Whereas in the 1950s attacking homosexuals seemed politically convenient, by 2010 the opposite was the case, to the extent that the national government ended up profiting from an LGBT-friendly image. In order to explain how this transition happen, my paper will discuss the transformations of the culture of gender and sexuality among the middle and working classes as well as the changes that took place at the level of LGBT politics during this era. In doing so, this presentation will discuss the early consolidation of homosexual identity, the rise of a “liberation” paradigm for LGBT politics in the 1970s, the eventual embracing of a human rights paradigm by the mid-1980s and the integration of LGBT activism into mainstream politics in the last two decades.