South America
Nicolás Maduro declares victory in disputed Venezuelan presidential election
LGBTQ activists join opposition in denouncing irregularities
Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) on Sunday announced President Nicolás Maduro won a third term with 51.2 percent of the votes, compared to the 44.2 percent it said opposition leader Edmundo González received.
Fifty-nine percent of Venezuelans voted in the election that took place peacefully in most of the country, aside from reports of unrest in Táchira state that borders Colombia.
Authorities announced the results six hours after polling places closed, with CNE President Elvis Amoroso attributing the delay to a “terrorist” attack that affected data transmission. Maduro backed this explanation, suggesting a massive hacking of the electoral system took place.
The opposition, however, denounced irregularities and questioned the process’s transparency. Opposition leader María Corina Machado said she and her supporters have minutes that indicate González received 70 percent of the votes.
“There is a new president-elect and he is Edmundo González, and everybody knows it,” said Machado.
González entered into a political partnership with Machado, who Maduro’s government disqualified from holding public office. Machado backed González, a former diplomat.
“All regulations have been violated,” said González. “Our struggle continues.”
Maduro, for his part, called on his adversaries to abide by the results.
“This constitution must be respected,” said Maduro while speaking to supporters outside Miraflores Palace in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, after the CSE declared him the winner. “The referee must be respected and no one must try to tarnish this beautiful day.”
In this regard, Tamara Adrián, the country’s first transgender congresswoman who ran in the presidential primary earlier this year, told the Washington Blade that “according to the information we have from the minutes that witnesses were able to obtain in approximately 40 percent of the polling stations, Edmundo González won with a percentage higher than 65 percent of the votes in all the states and in all the social sectors.”
The former congresswoman added “that is the result we had around 8 o’clock at night, when they started to issue instructions from the National Electoral Council for two things: One, to prohibit the entrance of Edmundo González’s witnesses in the vote counting room, something that continued during the whole night.”
“That is to say they never had any oversight from González in the computations,” Adrián told the Blade.
“And two, they prohibited the table chiefs from printing the minutes that the law says,” she added.
The elections took place amid widespread distrust of the CNE, whose board of directors includes figures linked to the ruling party.
The opposition questioned the electoral body’s impartiality and lack of recognized international observers. Reports indicate people in several areas of Caracas on Sunday used pots and pans to protest the CNE announcement.
LGBTQ activist Richelle Briceño told the Blade “the electoral participation in favor of change in the country was a majority and that will has been undoubtedly twisted by those who have dominated the electoral power and the armed forces of the nation.”
“They gave official results that do not adjust to reality and consequently are unverifiable,” said Briceño.
Chilean president, Biden-Harris administration question election results
Chilean President Gabriel Boric and other regional leaders expressed skepticism about the results.
American Secretary of State Antony Blinken also expressed concern about the count’s validity. Cuba and Honduras, on the other hand, congratulated Maduro after the CNE declared him the winner.
“The Maduro regime must understand that the results it publishes are hard to believe,” wrote Boric on his X account. “The international community and above all the Venezuelan people, including the millions of Venezuelans in exile, demand total transparency of the minutes and the process.”
“We are seriously concerned that the announced result does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people,” said Blinken.
The situation in Venezuela remains uncertain, and the next few hours could define a new chapter in the country’s tumultuous political history.
“There is no certain formula for Maduro to leave the presidency while the other powers and institutions of the country are at his service,” said Briceño. “Venezuelans did what was in our hands, which was to express ourselves massively. Now we must continue to demand audited and verified results so that the truth is imposed before the world.”
“The support of the international community is fundamental for these purposes,” added Briceño.
Chile
Chilean presidential election outcome to determine future of LGBTQ rights in country
Far-right candidate José Antonio Kast favored to win Dec. 14 runoff.
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.
Argentina
Gay Argentine congressman loses bid for country’s Senate
Esteban Paulón is a long-time activist, vocal Javier Milei critic.
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.
Federal Government
Former USAID official criticizes White House foreign policy
Jene Thomas spoke at LGBTQ rights conference in Peru last month
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.
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