The results of Chile’s presidential election will likely determine the future of LGBTQ rights in the country.

While Congresswoman Emilia Schneider, the first transgender woman elected to Congress, managed to retain her seat on Sunday, the runoff to determine who will succeed outgoing President Gabriel Boric will take place on Dec. 14 and will pit two diametrically opposed candidates against each other: the far-right José Antonio Kast and Communist Jeannette Jara.

Schneider, an emblematic figure in the LGBTQ rights movement and one of the most visible voices on trans rights in Latin America, won reelection in a polarized environment. Human rights organizations see her continued presence in Congress as a necessary institutional counterweight to the risks that could arise if the far-right comes to power.

Kast v. Jara

The presidential race has become a source of concern for LGBTQ groups in Chile and international observers.

Kast, leader of the Republican Party, has openly expressed his rejection of gender policies, comprehensive sex education, and reforms to anti-discrimination laws.

Throughout his career, he has supported conservative positions aligned with sectors that question LGBTQ rights through rhetoric that activists describe as stigmatizing. Observers say his victory in the second-round of the presidential election that will take place on Dec. 14 could result in regulatory and cultural setbacks.

Jara, who is the presidential candidate for the progressive Unidad por Chile coalition, on the other hand has publicly upheld her commitment to equal rights. She has promised to strengthen mechanisms against discrimination, expand health policies for trans people, and ensure state protection against hate speech.

For Schneider, this new legislative period is shaping up to be a political and symbolic challenge.

Her work has focused on combating gender violence, promoting reform of the Zamudio Law, the country’s LGBTQ-inclusive nondiscrimination and hate crimes law named after Daniel Zamudio, a gay man murdered in Santiago, the Chilean capital, in 2012, and denouncing transphobic rhetoric in Congress and elsewhere.

Schneider’s continued presence in Congress is a sign of continuity in the defense of recently won rights, but also a reminder of the fragility of those advances in a country where ideological tensions have intensified.

LGBTQ organizations point out that Schneider will be key to forging legislative alliances in a potentially divided Congress, especially if Kast consolidates conservative support.

A gay man who ran for the Argentine Senate lost in the country’s midterm elections that took place on Sunday.

Congressman Esteban Paulón, a long-time LGBTQ rights activist who has represented Santa Fe province in the country’s House of Deputies since 2023, ran to represent Buenos Aires, the Argentine capital, as a member of the Movimiento de Jublidaos y Juventud or “Movement of Young People and Retirees” party.

Paulón’s party received .6 percent of the total votes in the city.

“A new space that wants to be part of the construction of a future of development, equality, and growth for Argentina was born today in Buenos Aires,” said Paulón on Monday in a social media post. 

“I want to think all of the residents of Buenos Aires who put their confidence in the citizen movement and who think another way to do politics is possible,” he added. “We are not here to pass through, we are here to continue growing. We’re convinced that Argentina needs a better approach.”

The elections took place two years after President Javier Milei took office.

Milei has enacted a series of anti-LGBTQ policies that include the closure of Argentina’s National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Racism and dismissing transgender people who the previous government hired under the Trans Labor Quota Law, which set aside at least 1 percent of public sector jobs for trans people. Paulón earlier this year filed a criminal complaint against Milei after he linked the LGBTQ community to pedophilia and made other homophobic and transphobic comments during a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The Associated Press notes Milei’s La Libertad Avanza party on Sunday won 14 seats in the Senate and 64 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, which is the lower house of Congress. The election took place against the backdrop of the Trump-Vance administration’s promised $40 billion bailout for Argentina if Milei won.

Paulón, for his part, will remain in the Chamber of Deputies. 

LIMA, Peru — A former U.S. Agency for International Development official who participated in an LGBTQ rights conference last month in Peru said the Trump-Vance administration is adversely impacting human rights in the U.S. and around the world.

“He doesn’t want anyone to intervene with him, because he has these tendencies that are obviously antidemocratic,” said Jene Thomas, referring to President Donald Trump without specifically mentioning him by name in comments he made on Sept. 25 during the LGBTIQ+ Political Leaders from the Americas and the Caribbean Conference that took place in Lima, the Peruvian capital.

The LGBTQ+ Victory Institute co-organized the conference alongside LGBTQ advocacy groups from Peru, Colombia, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico. Former U.S. Ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina Eric Nelson is among those who also spoke.

“We were one of the leaders of the international community to intervene, for example the anti-NGO law here in Peru,” said Thomas, referring to a controversial bill that Peruvian President Dina Boluarte signed in April. “The ambassador took a very strong position against this law, and these voices have been silenced.”

“It doesn’t just affect the LGBT community,” he added.

Thomas worked at USAID for 28 years until his forced retirement on Sept. 2, the day his termination took effect.

He was mission director in Mexico, Peru, and Haiti, and held senior positions with USAID in Colombia, Pakistan, and in the Caribbean.

Expanding conservation efforts in the Yucatán Peninsula’s Selva Maya, addressing the root causes of migration from southern Mexico and Central America, and leading humanitarian efforts in Haiti are among the issues on which Thomas worked. He also worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Germany, and volunteered with the U.S. Peace Corps in Mali.

Trump-Vance administration shuttered USAID

The promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights abroad was a cornerstone of the Biden-Harris administration’s overall foreign policy. The global LGBTQ and intersex rights movement since the Trump-Vance administration froze nearly all U.S. foreign aid has lost more than an estimated $50 million in funding. (The Lima conference took place with 10 percent of the original budget.)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio in March announced 83 percent of USAID contacts had been cancelled, and the State Department would administer the remaining programs. USAID officially shut down on July 1.

Rubio issued a waiver that allowed PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during the funding freeze. The Washington Blade has previously reported PEPFAR-funded programs in Kenya and other African countries have been forced to suspend services and even shut down because of gaps in U.S. funding. Recent reports indicate the White House plans to not fully fund the program in the upcoming fiscal year.

GLIFAA board members in February resigned in response to Trump’s sweeping “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” executive order that he signed shortly after his inauguration.

GLIFAA is an organization for LGBTQ Foreign Service members. Thomas at the conference noted efforts at the State Department when he began his career to fight for gay and lesbian Foreign Service officers.

“We fought for more than a decade to change the system and then, we eventually won,” he said. “What we are seeing now is a setback.”

Thomas in response to a question about current U.S. foreign policy that George Hale, executive director of Promsex, a Peruvian LGBTQ rights group, asked said the White House’s anti-transgender and anti-human rights policies are having an impact around the world. Thomas added China, Russia, and other anti-democratic countries will try to become more influential on the global stage.

“This example is being replicated in all parts of the world, and not just in Latin America,” said Thomas. “It is true, and it is terrible.”

Thomas referred to advocacy in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic that began in New York and San Francisco in the early 1980s as an example of how to respond to the current situation. He also found inspiration in Spanish Sen. Carla Antonelli, a trans woman who said earlier this year in a parliament speech said she and other trans people “are not going to go back to the margins.”

“What we have to do is look for other allies. We have to come together to share experiences, to look for other financing,” said Thomas. “This is obviously a big part of what went into strengthening the fight against these anti-democratic currents.”

“The good news is that they are cycles,” he added.