Persecution of LGBTQ people in Paraguay (1954–1989)

Stronismo—the 35 year period between 1954 and 1989 of Alfredo Stroessner's reign in Paraguay—was marked by a high degree of political repression. After the 1954 military coup d'état led by Stroessner, former president Federico Chávez was forced to resign. Elections were held on July 11, 1954 with Stroessner as the only candidate. Both Stroessner and Chávez were members of the right-wing Colorado Party, and Stroessner’s initial appointment to presidential power in 1954 was marked by internal conflict within the party. As a result, many civil servants were expelled from Paraguay. Sociologist Lorena Soler has remarked that “the great majority of the people tortured and imprisoned during Stroessner’s first years belonged to the Colorado Party and the Armed Forces." The resulting report, published in 2008, revealed that over the course of Stroessner’s regime,20,090 people were victims of human rights violations, including 50 extrajudicial executions, 336 disappearances, and 3470 exiles. Furthermore, a total of 19,862 arbitrary arrests were made during Stronismo, no less than 18,772 (94%) of which involved some type of torture. Among the country’s adult population (an average of 1,250,000 between 1950 and 1992), one in 124 people were victims of a human rights violation. The scope of the regime of terror also encompassed the basis of economic power in Paraguay until today: land. Between 1954 and 2003, 7,851,295 ha was distributed irregularly over a total of 12,229,594 ha adjudicated during the same period. The tierras malhabidas (lands acquired through corrupt means) represented the 19.3% of the surface of the national territory (40.675.200 ha).While the Commission of Truth and Justice reported on a variety of crimes committed by the Paraguayan state during Stronismo, it contained no information about the LGBTQ+ people captured by the police or the types of violence inflicted upon them while they were detained. As a result, no official statistical information about the political repression of LGBTQ+ Paraguayans during the last dictatorship exists, and most of the historical recollections come from individual testimonies and investigative work from independent researchers. Renata Costa's 2010 documentary film 108 (Cuchillo de Palo), for example, features interviews with queer "kuir [queer]" women and men who lived in Asunción during Stronismo which recount instances of detainment and torture. Within the period of the Dictatorship (1954-1989), as well as before the start of it, gender and sexual minorities were in a clandestine state due to the lack of social and legal support. The dictatorship heightened the social exclusion of LGBTQ+, trans/travesti people, in particular, would encounter housing and job discrimination, having to do mostly sex work. During the day and night, trans/travesti people would have to hide from the police, and they would be routinely taken to police stations for interrogation. Compared to gay men, there is less historical data on lesbian women; they encountered invisibilization for being women, as well as other forms of abuse and violence during the dictatorship. == Persecution and detention of LGBTQ+ people ==

The Bernardo Aranda Case (1959) During the night of the 1st of September 1959, the body of Bernardo Aranda was found, fully burned, in his home. At 25 years of age, he was known for working as a radio speaker in Asunción, Paraguay. As multiple editions of El País stated, his murder was framed as a "murder of passion." While, at the time of his death, he had a girlfriend, the police suspected Aranda could be gay, and a day after his death, they launched an operation to capture supposedly homosexual men. During the first days of this raid, the media (complicit and coerced by the state) stated that there were no detainees, which was proved to be false. Its first usage to denote an amoral, abject, homosexual man can be traced to a political cartoon published by the Revista Ñandé, a fortnightly magazine which published humorous propaganda in line with the Colorado Party. On one occasion, the magazine published a cartoon depicting a procession of men with emphasized buttocks, each with the number 108 written across their backs, directed by police wielding clubs. Those people who were part or associated with the number 108 became both subjects of laughter and discrimination. The text “108 y 1 quemado” ("108 and 1 burned") was prominently displayed in the magazine. They would display effeminate men depicted in jail with a "108" shirt, or shown going back to attack an ex with gasoline, which was the method used to murder Aranda. The case of Mario Luis Palmieri On the 22nd of March 1982, Mario Luis Palmieri was kidnapped by someone who called his school and pretended to be his father for him to leave early. Six days later, the 14-year-old Palmieri boy was found dead. Reinaldo Chamorro Chávez was the only person found guilty of this crime. There are multiple theories, but Chávez never spoke about it. The death of Palmieri led to a major persecution of LGBTQ+ people, predominantly gay men, as police suspected that this was a "crime of passion" committed by a gay man. They compiled a list with over six hundred gay men, supposedly gay men, effeminate, as well as other gender and sexual minorities that they thought could have been involved. This list provided information that aided the massive persecution, interrogation, and torture of many of the people in the list (though there are no specific numbers of how many were actually taken to a detention center. This second massive police campaign led to a deepening of the social and economic violence all members of the LGBTQ+ community were encountering, particularly after the original 108 captured in 1959. Within the raid of 1982, Pedro Costa is taken, interrogated, and tortured. Years later he is found dead in his house. Costa's story shows up in the documentary 108/Cuchillo de Palo (2010), in which Renate, Costa's niece and film director, sets out to find out what happened to her uncle. == Effects of Persecution ==

The persecution of homosexuality resulted in the retreat of many gay, lesbian, and transgender people to social lives characterized by secrecy and self-censorship. If someone was exposed as a homosexual, it could mean expulsion from their family, losing their job, or being detained and tortured by the state police. Lawyer and human rights activist Erwing Szokol has noted that, In the final years of the dictatorship in Asunción, there were also places dedicated to nighttime recreation where many of the attendees were considered homosexual. These regular haunts were known to the authorities, since with the sophisticated intelligence system, it was impossible to carry out any activity without it coming to their attention. In times of crisis, the police would raid these gatherings to conduct violent raids and arbitrary arrests. They also organized a “memory tour” at the 2013 Pride March in Asunción in which a drag queen dressed as a state policeman toured historical sites related to the caso 108 “such as police stations where homosexual men were detained, Bernardo Aranda’s house, and the Antequera Stairs, a meeting place between various travestis and homosexual individuals [met] during the dictatorship." == References ==