Latin America
LGBTQ bars in Latin America: A reporter’s notebook
These spaces are not available to everyone

La Purísima is an unapologetically irreverent gay bar on Avenida República de Cuba in downtown Mexico City. One of its most endearing features is the staff who dress as Catholic priests and nuns.
I was on assignment in Mexico City for the Washington Blade, the oldest LGBTQ+ newspaper in the United States for which I am the international news editor, in July when I decided to go to la Purí, as the bar’s known for short. I arrived shortly after 11 a.m. and spent the next 90 minutes or so dancing and slowly sipping shots of mezcal. I was walking outside to get some fresh air when Sergio, a staff person who was dressed as a priest, approached me in the hallway that led to the door and asked me if I wanted to go to confession. I said yes, and he led me to a small booth on the sidewalk. He unlocked the makeshift confessional and we went inside. I had learned in my childhood Confraternity of Christian Doctrine class at St. Thomas Aquinas Church that what one says inside a confessional remains between the penitent, the priest (and God.) I am not one to question Sergio’s standing within the church, but that night at la Purí was quite a memorable one.
I have reported from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Miami, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Peru, Chile and Brazil since the Blade hired me in 2012. One of the “traditions” that I have while on assignment in a particular place is to visit a gay bar. Community, regardless of place, is critically important and gay bars are a good way to interact with a certain segment of it that is privileged enough to have access to these spaces.
Some of my favorite places that I have visited while in Latin America are gay bars and clubs. They offer patrons a safe (and fun) place to be themselves, but before I list them I would like to note that not all LGBTQ+ people have access to these safe spaces.
• Bar Lou Lou is a small bar on Rua Teixeira de Melo in the heart of Rio de Janeiro’s Ipanema neighborhood. I was on assignment in Brazil twice in 2022 to cover the country’s presidential election. One night after dinner, I discovered the bar, a couple of blocks from the apartment in which I stayed while I was in Rio in March 2022.
I saw Pride flags and a group of people standing outside on the sidewalk. Walking inside, I ordered a caipirinha and soaked up the lively atmosphere. I returned to the bar a couple of days after. It was my last night in Rio before I flew back to D.C. A Brazilian volleyball player introduced himself to me and invited me to hang out with a group of people from the United States, France and the U.K. whom he had just met. I speak limited Portuguese and his English was limited, but the language barrier did not matter to me and to the group of friends we had just made. We danced and drank caipirinhas for several hours inside the bar and on the sidewalk until closing time at midnight. We exchanged phone numbers and Instagram handles before we hugged each other and said goodbye. I remain in touch with several of them today.

• Indie Lounge is a gay bar in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, that I visited on Feb. 9, 2022, while I was on assignment in the country. Vice President Kamala Harris and U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power had attended Honduran President Xiomara Castro’s inauguration a few weeks earlier. I was driving to an interview with Victor Grajeda, the first openly gay man elected to the Honduran Congress, in San Pedro Sula, two days earlier when I heard on the radio the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced sanctions against former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández for corruption. (Honduran authorities on Feb. 15, 2022, arrested Hernández at his Tegucigalpa home after the United States requested his extradition on drug trafficking and weapons charges. Hernández’s brother, former Congressman Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, is serving a life sentence in the United States after a federal jury convicted him of trafficking tons of cocaine into the country.) On the night I visited, Indie Lounge staff invited patrons to submit messages that would then appear on television screens throughout the bar. One of the messages read, ‘happy divorce, Andrés.” My husband’s name is Andrés, and I began to laugh when I saw it.

• Las Tunas, Cuba, is a provincial capital about 400 miles southeast of Havana. The National Center for Sexual Education (CENESEX), a group directed by Mariela Castro, the daughter of former Cuban President Raúl Castro, organized a series of events in the city in May 2015 to commemorate the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia (IDAHOBiT), which honors the World Health Organization’s decision to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder on May 17, 1990.
The bone-jarring drive from Havana to Las Tunas took more than 10 hours, and I finally arrived in the city shortly before 1 a.m. on May 16. The IDAHOBiT march that Mariela Castro led took place a few hours later. She and two activists later paid homage to Vicente García, a leading figure in the 10 Years’ War from 1868-1878 during which Cubans fought for independence from Spain, during a ceremony that took place in Las Tunas’ main square.
CENESEX also organized a party at a local nightclub on the city’s outskirts. It was around 2:30 a.m. on May 17 when a local bus driver introduced himself to me and asked if I wanted to go to the “after party.” I was exhausted, but I nevertheless accepted the invitation. I had never been to Cuba before, and I took him at his word when he told me that we would take a taxi to the restaurant where the party was taking place. We walked outside and climbed into a horse-drawn cart that brought us, his friends and a drag queen to the party. Our boisterous group made jokes and laughed at each other as the cart made its way through the city. The trip took less than 15 minutes, and the party continued once we arrived at the restaurant. Dawn was breaking when I returned to my hotel. I rested for a couple of hours and then began the long drive back to Havana. (I had reported from Cuba several more times when I arrived at Havana’s José Martí International Airport on May 8, 2019. Cuban customs officials told me that my name was “on a list” and they would not allow me into the country. I spent the next seven hours at the airport before an agent escorted me onto a flight back to Miami. The Cuban government has still not provided me with an official explanation of their decision not to allow me into the country. A contact suggested Mariela Castro, who is a member of the Cuban National Assembly, told the government not to allow me into the country because she did not want me to cover an LGBTQ+ rights march that independent activists organized in Havana three days later. The Cuban government has, to my knowledge, never publicly disclosed why it decided to prevent me from entering the country. I explained what happened to a press attaché at the Cuban Embassy in Washington me in July 2021 after he emailed me about meeting for coffee. He clearly did not know what his government had done to me. I did not hear back from him after I told him what happened.
• Mexicali is a Mexican border city that borders Calexico, Calif., in the Imperial Valley. I was on assignment in the area in July 2018.
The temperature was well over 100°F when I parked my rental car in a parking lot in Calexico at shortly after 8 p.m. on July 21, walked to the border crossing and entered Mexicali. I had a couple of tacos at a small, family-run restaurant and then walked to Taurinos Bar, a gay bar a few blocks south of the border. Patrons were playing pool and drinking beers while I asked the manager about then-U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration policies and their impact on LGBTQ+ people. I finished the interview and then walked to Porky’s Divine, another gay bar three blocks south of the border. A California woman and members of her bachelorette party were among those who were inside when go go boys took the stage. A drag queen dressed as Frida Kahlo was among those who also performed. The temperate was still around 100°F when I left Porky’s Divine shortly after 1 a.m. on July 22. I stopped at a nearby convenience store to buy a bottle of water and a bag of potato chips before I walked back through the border crossing and into California. I was back at my hotel in El Centro, roughly 12 miles away, in less than half an hour.
Not everyone can access these spaces: They often have cover charges, and that cost, along with drinks and transportation to/from them, are prohibitive to someone who is not economically privileged. And this economic privilege often goes hand-in-hand with violence and discrimination based on factors that include sexual orientation, gender identity and race.
“Access to a car or a job that does not involve sex work could very well mean the difference between life and death for a trans Salvadoran woman or a gay man who is perceived to be too effeminate,” I wrote in the Blade on Feb. 7, 2017, after my first reporting trip to El Salvador. “Many of these people feel as though they have no other option than to leave the country and migrate to the U.S.”
Alexa, a transgender woman with whom I spoke for the Blade in La Ceiba, Honduras, on July 20, 2021, told me it is “very difficult to lead the lifestyle that we lead as trans women” in the country because of discrimination and a lack of employment opportunities because of her gender identity. Alexa spent nearly three years in prison after authorities charged her with attempted murder, even though she claimed she was defending herself against a woman who was hitting her in the face with a rock.
She told me a Salvadoran man raped her in prison. Alexa also said the warden forced her to cut her hair and guards doused her with cold water in an isolation cell after the attack.
“I was a woman,” said Alexa. “They made me a man.”
We were both crying during the interview. We embraced each other for several minutes when it was done.
These stories are incredibly difficult to hear, and they are indicative of the reality for many LGBTQ+ people in the region who struggle to survive on a daily basis. It is crucially important to share these stories. It is also equally as important to show our readers there are safe spaces in Latin America that offer LGBTQ+ people a safe place where they can be themselves. Bars and clubs such venues.

Latin America
LGBTQ cruise ship rescues 11 migrants between Cuba and Mexico
Rescue took place in Yucatán Channel on Wednesday

A cruise ship chartered by an LGBTQ travel company on Wednesday rescued 11 Cubans from a boat that was adrift between their country and Mexico.
Vacaya in a press release said the Royal Caribbean’s Brilliance of the Seas, which had left from New Orleans, discovered the migrants’ boat in the Yucatán Channel, a strait between Mexico and Cuba that connects the Gulf of Mexico (the Trump-Vance administration now refers to the body of water as the Gulf of America) and the Caribbean Sea.
A video that Vacaya provided shows the migrants’ boat before the rescue. Other videos show the rescue taking place.
MTV’s Downtown Julie Brown, who was performing on the ship, described the rescue in a video she posted to social media.
“We are in the middle of a live rescue operation right now,” she said. “The captain of the ship, while we were hauling so fast the other way, thought he saw a boat in distress. So, we looped around … and it was indeed a boat in distress.”
“Nothing speaks more to VACAYA’s values than providing comfort in a moment of need,” said Vacaya CEO Randle Roper in the press release. “I’m so happy we were able to bring these 11 refugees onboard safely and provide medical care, dry clothes, food, and, most importantly, water.”
“It’s sad that some people have to put themselves through such trauma in hopes of finding a better life, but that’s where we are today,” added Roper. “I’m so proud of our LGBT+ guests rallying to collect clothes for these fellow humans in need.”
The ship is scheduled to return to New Orleans on Saturday.
Latin America
Latin America elections present challenges, opportunities for LGBTQ community
Voters in Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Venezuela to go to polls this year

Activists throughout the region agree the elections offer a crucial opportunity to advance the inclusion and protection of the rights of their community amid far-right advances.
Venezuela’s presidential election will take place on July 28, while Brazil’s municipal elections will happen on Oct. 6. Regional and municipal elections will take place in Chile on Oct. 27. Uruguay’s congressional elections are slated to occur on the same day.
María José Cumplido, executive director of Fundación Iguales in Chile, emphasized the importance of having LGBTQ representation in politics.
“It is fundamental because LGBTQ+ people tend to support laws or public policies aimed at protecting the community,” Cumplido told the Washington Blade. “In that sense, it is important that the voices of these people are heard because, obviously, they know the reality more closely and many times they have lived it.”
Cumplido noted “LGBTQ+ representation has grown notoriously in recent years, so much so that today there is an LGBTQ+ caucus in Congress.”
“That is good news,” said Cumplido.
Ignacia Oyarzún, president of Organizado Trans Diversidades (Organizing Trans Diversities or OTD), also from Chile, highlighted the observation and registration work the Trans Voting Observatory of Latin America and the Caribbean has done. Oyarzún also noted the promotion of transgender candidates as a way to combat misinformation a promote respect for the community’s political rights.
“We monitor the situation of the political rights of our communities in the region and establish guidelines through which we encourage respect for the right to elect representatives and to be elected,” said Oyarzún. “We also maintain initiatives that have to do with the dissemination of trans candidacies and news that go against the disinformation established through false news that have begun to circulate through the various social and political media.”
Collette Spinetti, president of the Colectivo Trans del Uruguay, pointed out the challenges faced by LGBTQ people in politics, especially trans people.
“The biggest challenge is to achieve trustworthiness especially towards gender-dissident people in their ability to be able to hold public office,” said Spinetti.

“In Uruguay politics is still quite macho, especially in the so-called traditional and right-wing parties where there is no political representation of members of the LGBTIQ+ community,” Spinetti further explained. “On the left, although there is, thanks to internal work, female representation, there is still a lack of work.”
“In this sense the scarce LGBTIQ+ representation is present through gay men,” added Spinetti. “There is still no representation of publicly lesbian people and only one representation in the interior of the country of a trans woman.”
In Brazil, Keila Simpson, president of Associaçao Nacional de Travestis e Transexuais (National Association of Travestis and Transsexuals or ANTRA), highlighted the diversity of LGBTQ representation in the country’s politics. Simpson nevertheless recognized the importance of mandates that go beyond identity and address a wide range of issues that benefit the entire community.
“The challenges for LGBTQIA people when it comes to applying for positions in Brazil are many,” she said. “The first one is the way Brazilian society sees this stigmatized and completely stereotyped population. If we think about the trans population, this violence is even greater, since in addition to being smaller in number, the discrimination is even greater because this population is commonly associated with eroticism and hypersexualization of their bodies, and these are the main problems these people face. they are associated when they run for prominent positions or leaders, even in the partisan political arena.”

In Venezuela, Richelle Briceño, a trans woman and former congressional candidate, on the other hand, lamented the lack of presidential candidacies that explicitly defend LGBTQ rights. She noted the country still faces fundamental challenges that prevent a serious debate on these issues.
“There are candidates who have expressed themselves against non-discrimination, but that’s as far as it goes,” Briceño recounted. “There are no specific candidates that I can tell you who even handle what the definition of the word queer is and how it is understood, let’s say, within LGBTQ+ activism.”
Briceño said María Corina Machado, an opposition leader who President Nicolás Maduro’s government has barred from running for office, has “come out in favor of issues such as equal civil marriage and the issue of recognition of trans identities.” Briceño noted to the Blade that Edmundo González Urrutia, who is running as her surrogate, did not meet with LGBTQ activists until last week.
“These activists exposed their points of view, however, the current candidate leading the polls has not made a public statement regarding his position or what his position will be on the issues of LGBT rights in Venezuela,” said Briceño.
Briceño further stressed that Venezuela “is still in a cave.”
“Here the country is in the basics, the country is in not losing electricity, in having water and in seeing how people eat daily,” she said. “The political and economic crisis that we have lived through for two decades, and with more depth in the last decade, has not allowed for a serious debate on the issues of the 21st century, including the rights of sexual diversity populations or the LGBT population and women”.
José Rodríguez, a Venezuelan psychologist who, like many of his compatriots had to leave his country, said that “as a young Venezuelan exiled in Chile for eight years, today I feel the tranquility of living in a society where a governmental interest in the welfare of my community is appreciated, expressed by a legal framework that although it could be better; compared to the overwhelming setbacks that have occurred in recent weeks in neighboring countries and the constant lethargy of Venezuela in terms of advancing the LGBTQIA+ agenda, is deeply painful and worrying.”
Caribbean
Gilead Sciences awards grants to HIV/AIDS groups in Latin America, Caribbean
Stigma, criminalization laws among barriers to fighting pandemic in region

Gilead Sciences this week announced it has given $4 million in grants to 35 organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean that fight HIV/AIDS.
A press release notes Asociación Panamericana de Mercadeo Social (Pan-American Association of Social Marketing) in Nicaragua, Fundación Genesis (Genesis Foundation) in Panama, Fundación por una Sociedad Empoderada (Foundation for an Empowered Society) in Argentina, Associação Nacional de Travestis e Transexuais (National Association of Travestis and Transsexuals) in Brazil and Caribbean Vulnerable Communities are among the groups that received grants. Gilead notes this funding through its Zeroing In: Ending the HIV Epidemic in Latin America and the Caribbean will “improve access to care, increase health equity and reduce HIV-related stigma for populations most affected by HIV.”
“The HIV prevention and care needs of people throughout Latin America and the Caribbean are incredibly diverse, and each of these programs addresses a unique community challenge,” said Gilead Vice President of Corporate Giving Carmen Villar. “Our grantees are deeply embedded in their communities and best positioned to provide needed HIV care and support services.”
“Their expertise will be essential to achieve the Zeroing In program’s goals of improving access to comprehensive care among priority populations, decreasing HIV-related stigma and reducing HIV and broader health inequities,” she added.
The pandemic disproportionately affects transgender people and sex workers, among other groups, in the region. Activists and HIV/AIDS service providers in the region with whom the Washington Blade has previously spoken say discrimination, stigma, poverty, a lack of access to health care and criminalization laws are among the myriad challenges they face.
First Lady Jill Biden in 2022 during a trip to Panama announced the U.S. will provide an additional $80.9 million in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Latin America through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
Cuba in 2015 became the first country in the world to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV. The Cuban government until 1993 forcibly quarantined people with HIV/AIDS in state-run sanitaria.
Antigua and Barbuda, St. Kitts and Nevis, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago in recent years have decriminalized consensual same-sex sexual relations.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2021 ruled Jamaica must repeal its colonial-era sodomy law. The country’s Supreme Court last year ruled against a gay man who challenged it.