The LGBTT Movement, the Brazilian Left, and the Process of Democratization

Abstract

During the political liberalization of the late 1970s, new social movements emerged to challenge long-standing notions of race, gender, and sexuality. Gay men and lesbians had created a complex world of semi-clandestine sociability in Brazil’s major capitals since the 1950s. In part, the gay and lesbian rights movement in the United States and Europe inspired a small group of Brazilian activists to push the limits of the political opening by publishing the monthly newspaper Lampião da Esquina and forming organizations that challenged homophobia and discrimination of people with non-normative sexual and gender behavior. Among other discussions, the Homosexual Movement, as it was known at the time, engaged in an internal debate about the relationship of its activities to the Brazilian Left, which was emerging from a clandestine existence imposed on it by the dictatorship. This chapter analyzes the complex interactions between sectors of the Left and the group Somos, Brazil’s first activist organization, founded in São Paulo in 1978 and dissolved in 1983.