presentation for Gender and Sexuality

Out in Nicaragua: Local and Transnational Desires after the

Revolution

Florence E. Babb University of Iowa

In June 2000, I returned to spend several weeks in Nicaragua after two years away and found the capital city of Managua transformed by the rebuilding of an urban center, with new government buildings, immense traffic circles and plazas, and hotels and commercial establishments in abundance. My first day back, I ventured into one of two major shopping malls and discovered that the movie Boys Don't Cry (Muchachos no lloran, with subtitles) was playing at a multiplex cinema. In a city where a couple of years before the only movie thea- tres were exceptionally seedy and offered X-rated porn, I was curious to see what reception this film would have in the Nicaraguan setting soon after its re- lease to wide acclaim in the United States. The audience at the matinee was small and fairly middle class—not surprising in a nation where the two-dollar ticket price was beyond the means of the majority—but it seemed to appreciate the movie's powerful story of sexual-identity transgression and its conse- quences in the American Midwest.1

When it comes to sex and sexuality, some stories are told whereas others remain untold. Histories of sexuality everywhere are subject to revision and debate when local, national, or transnational conditions prompt caution on the one hand or allow more open discussion of sexual difference and transgression on the other.2 Periods of social transformation may present opportunities for personal or national reflection on the politics of gender and sexuality, or they may push such reflection to the margins in the name of settling larger historical accounts. But what happens when personal or local desires are supported by transnational political currents and then clash dramatically with perceived na- tional interests?

For over a decade, I have observed the particular way that Nicaraguan women and men have negotiated the terrain of same-sex sexual politics.3

Whereas men's everyday sex lives have received public and scholarly attention, women's social activism around sexual politics is now gaining attention in Nicaragua and is deserving of wider scholarly notice. Feminist theorists, including

Cultural Anthropology 18(3 >:3O4-32X. Copyright © 2003, American Anthropological Association.

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pioneering feminist anthropologists, have long pointed to the historical devel- opment of women's relationship to the private sphere and men's to the public sphere as contributing to their unequal power in society. Recently, however, Carla Freeman (2001) has shown that a related assumption that women are more closely linked with the local and men are linked to the global has contrib- uted to the undertheorization of women's participation in globalization proc- esses. I want to suggest that the Nicaraguan case in question warrants attention precisely because, somewhat contrary to expectation, it has been men's wide- spread local same-sex practices that have often obscured women's local and global activism around lesbian and gay issues. My intervention in Latin Ameri- can sexuality studies is to call for a closer examination of women and gender differences, not simply to be more inclusive, but because this is necessary if we are to understand both local sexual practices and transnational political move- ments.

The Nicaraguan Revolution, which came to fruition in 1979 and held state power until 1990, offered an opportunity for women and men who were disen- franchised to become significant players in a social drama that would trans- form much of the national landscape during that decade.4 Frequent invocations of "30 percent women's participation" in the reports of the insurrectionary struggle that triumphed suggested that gender barriers, like class barriers, were overturned in the Sandinista period. The governing power that emerged from the struggle placed women and gender issues on the agenda, along with agrar- ian, health, education, and legal reform as national priorities. Indeed, laws were quickly passed that prohibited sexism in advertising, penalized commer- cial sex, ended the category of illegitimacy, and established fathers' responsi- bility for the well-being of their children. A new Constitution in 1987 was the first to include women's rights under the rubric of protecting the family as the basic unit in society.

In extending rights to women and protection to families in which marriage was de facto as well as legal, the Sandinistas had a more inclusive vision—par- ticularly in a society in which nearly half of households are headed by women and those with adult men are often not sanctified by legal marriage. The gov- erning Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN) was not willing, how- ever, to go further to establish reproductive choice or protection from domestic violence and sexual harassment as constitutional rights. Nor was the FSLN willing or able to move beyond a heteronormative conception of the Nicara- guan family and society. An emergent feminist movement and a nascent les- bian and gay movement would later question the underlying assumptions that went unchallenged by the Nicaraguan Revolution.5

My location as an international researcher aware of the involvement of lesbian and gay activists from abroad working on a range of social issues in Nicaragua—and also aware of broad cultural differences between gay commu- nities in the United States and Latin America—made me question the degree to which transnational political currents had inspired the gay movement there.6

To take up this question, I need to keep several idea-s in play. 1 first examine the

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ways that same-sex sexuality and politics were both expressed and suppressed during the years of the revolution and then consider the first glimmer of a gay movement in the post-Sandinista period; it is my view that homosexual politics emerged differently in the context of the Nicaraguan Revolution than in capi- talist societies like the United States but with some similar results. I then argue that greater attention to women and gender differences will enable us to move beyond the earlier insistence on indigenous and culturally "authentic" masculine same-sex identities to a broader analysis of contemporary sexual identities— including politically conscious gay men and lesbians.7 Finally, and following from the first two points, I turn to the related and vexing question of how to understand local sexualities in a globalizing era. My objective is to show that although same-sex sexual practices have been widespread for some time among Nicaraguans who do not identify as gay, the 1990s have made visible a grow- ing number of women and men who identify closely with the trans-national lesbian and gay movement. How they negotiate simultaneously the local and the global in their cultural politics, and the multiplicity of sexual identities that currently coexist, should illuminate these processes as they occur on a wider playing field beyond this small Central American nation.8

Coming Out in the Revolution

Nicaraguan writer and scholar Erick Blandon-Guevara (2001) describes an indigenous tradition of racial, class, gender, and sexual transgression held every year in late October in the barrio of Monimbo and the neighboring town of Masaya, which lie a short distance to the southeast of Managua. There, a carnival known as Torovenado (a hybrid of the words for bull and deer, hinting at active and passive male-sex practices) offers an opportunity for men of sub- altern social class and racial identities to masquerade as women and parade openly through the streets to the delight of other participants and bystanders. In classic carnival tradition, such wanton public displays are permissible just once each year, after which the everyday rules maintaining "proper" social dis- tinctions are again enforced. In this way, the temporary and playful breaking of rules serves to consolidate existing racial, gender, and sexual divisions as nor- mative. Although it is well known that the Torovenado attracts homosexuals from near and far, the folklore maintains that theirs is a momentary deviation rather than a long-term sexual orientation.9

Two North American writers who spent time in Nicaragua in the 1980s commented on the prevalence of same-sex practices among men even in the absence of a gay community (Adam 1989; Lancaster 1988). Barry Adam noted the lack of structural support for gay identities and communities emerging in a period of political unrest and economic hardship and in a culture constrained by the conservative views of the family promulgated by the Catholic Church. Roger Lancaster noted that homosexuality was associated with the decadence of earlier years during the Somoza dictatorship and, therefore, clashed with no- tions of morally correct revolutionaries.10 Moreover, a man could enjoy sex with other men as well as with women and still be considered "manly," so long

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as he was the active, penetrating partner (activo) and not the stigmatized, pas- sive partner (pasivo or cochon). Lancaster's (1992) influential work cautioned against using Western concepts of gay identity and culture in settings like the Managua barrio where he carried out research. Before 1990, scholars said little of the identities and practices of women having same-sex relationships in Nicaragua.11

In a Third World society in which large families often share close quarters with little privacy, it is not surprising that same-sex desires have found few op- portunities for open expression. In the United States, the historical formation of gay identities and communities has been linked to the growth of capitalism, a lessening reliance on the household as an economic unit, and resultant changes in work and family (D'Emilio 1983). Without the same historical tra- jectory of individuals leaving home to establish new work lives and new sexual identities, how might gay identity be experienced?12 Interestingly, when young Nicaraguans left home to participate in the revolutionary movement in the late 1970s and, again, left behind families in the early 1980s to participate in health and literacy brigades, they found needed opportunities for independence and privacy. Gay and lesbian Sandinistas who played important roles in the revolu- tion have begun, since the FSLN left power, to provide accounts of their expe- riences. Some individuals have related that although they were not entirely open about their sexual orientation, it was known and accepted by their ac- quaintances. The revolutionary leadership called on thousands of young peo- ple, students and workers, men and women, without regard to their social standing. As long as a certain "militance" in defense of the nation was evident, sexual transgression might be overlooked.

Just as military and college life have offered opportunities for sexual ex- ploration in the United States and other societies, in revolutionary Nicaragua an unintended outcome of service in the military and the brigades was the dis- covery of same-sex desire among a number of young women and men.13 Simi- larly, collectivized production and the emphasis on drawing women, as well as men, into the workforce also provided new opportunities for members of the same sex to come together away from homes and families. Solidarity with the revolution and greater proximity in work relations doubtless allowed some men and women workers to question gender and sexual relations. For example, feminist and lesbian participation in such mass labor-based organizations as the Sandinista Association of Rural Workers (ATC) served as a precursor to more independent political movements in the 1990s. A number of individuals were able to explore more intimate aspects of their sexual lives as a result of their collective participation in work and political activism.14

Once the FSLN rose to power and undertook its nation-building project, however, some social needs took precedence over others. By the time the Sand- inista government was preparing its new constitution, it was also contending with the Contra War and a deepening economic crisis and set aside some ex- pectations advanced by women. Not coincidentally, the first stirrings of a feminist movement—at once more radical and more derriocratic—that departed from

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the Sandinista mass organization AMNLAE (Nicaraguan Women's Associa- tion, Luisa Amanda Espinosa) can be traced to 1987, the year the new constitu- tion was approved (Kampwirth 1998).

That same year, state security officials clamped down on a group of lesbi- ans and gay men who had quietly been meeting together since the end of 1985 in Managua (Bolt Gonzalez 1996:295). Those who were called in and detained in March 1987 were active Sandinistas, but their organizing around gay rights was viewed as a deviation and not approved by the FSLN. Rita Arauz, who later became a well-known AIDS activist and NGO founder, was arrested but later released. She and others who were detained chose not to damage the revo- lutionary government by going public with their experience and therefore re- mained silent. Thus, the public was unaware of the incident, and the interna- tional response that surely would have followed this breach of human rights was avoided (Randall 1994).

In November 1987, gay men and lesbians who were among those organiz- ing clandestinely in Managua neighborhoods formed CEP-SIDA, an AIDS- education NGO. Perhaps because of the FSLN's chagrin over the intervention by state security, and reflecting the revolutionary government's ambivalence and uncertainty over how to respond to gay organizing, the Ministry of Health offered support to this grassroots program organized by members of the gay community. Significantly, the ministry's efforts were motivated by the 1988 arrival in Managua of a San Francisco-based health colloquium that addressed the issue of AIDS. Under the sympathetic direction of Minister Dora Maria Tellez, activists began distributing condoms to men in cruising areas and to students and sex workers, at a time when AIDS had barely made an appearance in Nicaragua and gay activism was almost unheard of (Schreiber and Stephen 1989). This show of support for a health-related initiative may have provided the government with a "safe" way to respond to the lesbian and gay community.

Then, in 1989, a contingent of gay and lesbian Nicaraguans and interna- tionalists, about fifty in all, participated prominently in the march to Mana- gua's Plaza de la Revolution in honor of the revolution's tenth anniversary (Randall 1993). They wore black T-shirts with hand-painted pink triangles, which had an impact on many observers as an international symbol of gay pride. This public coming-out of lesbian and gay-identified Sandinistas and their allies was empowering and paved the way for further activism. When I made my first trip to Nicaragua just a few weeks later, I found signs, however subtle, of a gay and lesbian social and political presence in Managua. Although the FSLN had slowed the public appearance of gay activism in the country, the revolution and the changes it brought about also provided the social and politi- cal space needed for a movement to coalesce.

Post-Sandinista Spaces for Lesbian and Gay Organizing

The electoral defeat of the FSLN in 1990 has generally been understood by analysts as resulting from the revolutionary government's internal weak- nesses as well as the U.S. aggression waged through the Contra War and the

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economic embargo. Lesbians and gay men adjusted to the new terms of their participation in oppositional politics as they confronted the neoliberalism of Chamorro and later governments, whose social agendas were considerably more conservative than that of the Sandinistas. Nonetheless, lesbians and gay men were empowered by the expanding social and cultural space they occu- pied. Like the women's movement in Nicaragua, the incipient gay and lesbian movement gained new openings and greater autonomy after 1990, as activists were no longer wedded to priorities established by the revolutionary govern- ment. That year, Shomos (We Homosexuals) formed as a collective of men and women, and Nosotras (We Women) formed as a lesbian feminist collective, first in Managua and then in other parts of the country (Bolt Gonzalez 1996:296).

In contrast to the recognition of Nicaraguan men's homosexual practices prior to 1990, when such practices were less politicized and less evident to the dominant heteronormative society, lesbians have become more visible, both as sexual subjects and as political activists in the years since then. In 1991, many Nicaraguan feminists broke away publicly from AMNLAE for a weekend of activities known as the Festival of the 52 Percent, a reference to the proportion of women in the country. At the festival, held in March to celebrate Interna- tional Women's Day, one of a number of booths offering information was oc- cupied by lesbians who were beginning to organize openly in Managua. They were well received and at the close of the festivities I observed that their booth did a thriving business selling slices of lemon meringue pie to an eager line of customers. That evening, same-sex couples were among the women and men dancing to the beat of a local band.

In June of that year, I attended Nicaragua's first public celebration of Gay Pride. Several hundred people came to a well-known cultural center, Coro de Angeles, for a showing of the gay-themed North American movie Torch Song Trilogy, selected as emblematic of gay lives globally, followed by a panel dis- cussion of homosexuality and human rights. The audience responded with pas- sionate testimonies of experiences suffered in families and in society, speaking out about injustice and personal pain. The diverse crowd that evening included well-known Nicaraguans who were both straight and gay and who were clearly hopeful and enthusiastic about the historic event taking place. In the years since then, Gay Pride has received more attention, with weeks of activities to commemorate it.

Lesbian and gay political activism was galvanized in 1992 by the reactiva- tion of a repressive sodomy law, known as Article 204. That year, the Chamorro government set out to regulate sexual behavior, sanctioning as "natural" and legal only those sexual practices that were related to procreation (Isbester 1998:377-379). Article 204 of the Penal Code criminalizes sexual ac- tivity "between persons of the same sex" in a "scandalous way," as nonpro- creative sex was determined to be a crime against the state. In response to the law, regarded as the most repressive in the Americas, more than 25 groups came together to launch the Campaign for a Sexuality Free of Prejudice. For several weeks, panels, protests, and celebrations of Gay Pride took place in

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Managua. The Xochiquetzal Foundation, an NGO constituted in 1990 and codirected by lesbian feminists Hazel Fonseca and Mary Bolt Gonzalez, played a leading role in generating support for the campaign. Despite the strong opposition to the law, it has remained on the books.15

By the early 1990s, several NGOs had been established that addressed the needs of gay men and lesbians. Nimehuatzin, an active AIDS-education foun- dation headed by Rita Arauz, also functioned at the outset as a gay community center before it adopted a more "professional" character. Xochiquetzal, men- tioned above, offers health and psychological services as well as sex education, directed largely, though not exclusively, to a gay and lesbian clientele; since 1993, this NGO has published the magazine Fuera del closet (Out of the closet), which presents a mix of informative articles, poetry, and art, and has come to be the central location for organizing Gay Pride and other activities. The feminist NGO Puntos de Encuentro (Encounter Points) and women's health centers like S. I. Mujer and IXCHEN began to conduct workshops on women's sexuality and to support gay rights. More lesbian organizations joined Nosotras, including Entre Amigas (Among Women Friends), and Grupo por la Visibilidad Lesbica (Group for Lesbian Visibility), which briefly pub- lished the magazine Humanas (Female humans). The significant involvement of lesbians in organizations and projects, outnumbering gay men, has turned the tide in establishing women's central and public place in lesbian and gay activism.

Amy Bank, one of the founders of Puntos de Encuentro, described the vo- cacion fundante (vocation to found organizations) of lesbians who, in contrast to middle-class gay men with professional careers, sought to carve out a niche for themselves as they engaged in political activism (interview, June 26, 2002). Although somewhat humorous, the observation may account for a very notable presence of women heading NGOs that are concerned with gender, sexuality, and AIDS. A male bisexual-identified16 owner of a gay bar told me that whereas men have more access to social space, women control the organiza- tions; he went so far as to characterize gay men as the subordinates and the les- bians as the machas (women viewed as strongly masculine) (interview, June 21, 2002). A certain tension exists over this perceived inequality, even be- tween gay men and lesbians who join forces to work together. Mary Bolt Gon- zalez may have revealed the attitude of a number of women when she shrugged off the notion that gay men are disempowered by lesbians: "Poor boys, I'm go- ing to give them some Kleenex," she commented in an exaggerated tone (inter- view, June 24, 2002). In her view, this is purely a vestige of sexist thinking and, moreover, lesbians working in NGOs are going about doing their jobs, not seeking power through political activism.

At the private level, to be sure, lesbians have continued to suffer the effects of social discrimination, reportedly having low self-esteem and self-confidence. This subject is explored in the first Nicaraguan book on lesbian lives, Sencilla- mente diferentes . . . (Simply different . . . ), written by psychologist (then codirector of Xochiquetzal) Bolt Gonzalez and published in 1996. In its prologue, prominent Sandinista Dora Maria T.ellez invokes the country's revolutionary past,

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calling on Nicaraguans to tolerate and respect cultural diversity, including sex- ual differences.17 The book's release was the focus of a Gay Pride celebration that year, when once again a large and enthusiastic audience turned out in Ma- nagua for a panel discussion of the study along with food, socializing, and mu- sic by the popular singer Norma Helena Gadea. This came at a time when women across the political spectrum had joined together in the National Women's Coalition to address issues of broad importance to them during that election year, and their sense of empowerment was shared by lesbians who spoke out about social discrimination.18

Despite the growing visibility of lesbians in public culture and in the gay rights movement, they have not successfully claimed social space to the same degree as gay men. Since 1990, the neoliberal turn in the country has presented new opportunities for men, including "Miami boys" who have returned from their self-imposed exile during the revolutionary period.19 Gay bars and clubs have opened to cater to the minority of gay men who have the economic means to enjoy reasonably safe public spaces, but women are just a small minority of the clientele. The pastor of the Iglesia Metropolitana, an activist church group of gay men and lesbians that has become in the past few years one of the major organizations serving the gay community, related to me the various places that gay men often meet in Managua. He described the bars, movie theaters, and even the Metrocentro mall, which he referred to as "Metro Gay," along with house parties that attract dozens of men each weekend, as providing the space that gay men desire. Recalling that the old cathedral was a meeting place of gay men until it was boarded up, he smiled as he told me that for several weeks a group of gay men had gathered in the new cathedral of conservative Cardinal Obando y Bravo. In contrast to the diverse areas frequented by gay men, he said that lesbians had few places to meet and socialize, and he characterized their parties as fiestas de traje (potlucks) (Armando Sanchez Bermudez, inter- view, June 29, 2002).

Even when a new bar, La Diferencia, opened in 1993 and declared itself a welcome space for "all who are different," few women were among the gay men present the night I went there with a few friends. The bar's music, tables for talking, and dance floor made the place an attractive venue, but like other "gay bars," this one was principally a place for men to cruise or socialize. Around midnight there was a fairly raucous transvestite performance, with smashing bottles and glasses as a grand finale. The situation had changed little by 2000, when I ventured into a new and popular gay venue, Locos Discos— the only difference was the huge crowd of well-dressed, evidently middle-class men dancing and drinking at the bar, I estimated that there were over a hundred men and about a half dozen women present that night. Lesbians may stay away because they lack the financial resources, have family responsibilities, or be- cause of the perception that the bars are a male space; even in gay and lesbian culture, Nicaraguans associate men with la calle (the street) and women with la casa (the house).20

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From the Local to the Transnational

Analysts of same-sex sexuality in the era of globalization have ranged from those who celebrate an opening up of opportunities for sexual minorities, to those who lament an incursion of western culture and imperialist politics in Third World areas. Tilting toward the former perspective, Dennis Altman writes that "new sexual identities mean a loss of certain traditional cultural comforts while offering new possibilities to those who adopt them, and activ- ists in non-Western countries will consciously draw on both traditions" (2001:95). Offering a passionate call for the second, more critical view, Martin F. Manalansan writes that "globalization obfuscates hierarchical relations be- tween metropolitan centers and sub-urban peripheries. By privileging Western definitions of same-sex sexual practices, non-Western practices are marginal- ized and cast as 'premodern' or unliberated" (1997:486). Still others reject an approach that assumes "an imported versus indigenous binary" (Puar 2001:1061) when examining sexual cultures in a time of transnational ex- change, which seems a salutary response to the debate that has emerged.

Here I want to consider to what degree and to what effect there has been a shift in Nicaragua between 1990 and the turn of the millennium from local and private same-sex practices to a more open engagement with transnational gay practices and politics.21 Once again, I argue that most of the discussion has fo- cused on men's experiences and that more attention must go to examining women's experiences and gender differences at local, national, and global lev- els. We cannot assume that men and women, specifically gay men and lesbi- ans, experience the same "comforts" or the same injustices or that they will re- spond alike to the transnationalization of sexual identities. There is no doubt that shared experiences of discrimination based on race, class, nationality, or sexual orientation may draw gay men and lesbians together, but male privilege generally confers greater economic advantage to men, who in greater numbers than women may claim new rights as consumers under conditions of globaliza- tion. On the other hand, women who have chafed under traditional cultural ex- pectations may see greater opportunities for gaining social and political space through participation in international gay activism.

Transitions in the political culture of sexuality and broader social transi- tions, in Nicaragua and elsewhere, cannot be treated separately.22 The transi- tion from the Somoza dictatorship to the Sandinista revolutionary government led to a transformation of the political economy to the benefit of a majority, yet there was a distinct narrowness of vision when it came to sexual expression.23

The post-Sandinista period has been notable for its rapid reversals as the revo- lutionary, socialist-oriented government gave way to a neoliberal one. Under the terms of the market-driven governments of Chamorro (1990-96), Aleman (1996-2001), and now Enrique Bolanos, citizens have been encouraged to compete for scarce goods and opportunities, and rewards go to those who survive as the "fittest." The freedom to compete for jobs and other resources extends to certain openings for commercial ventures that were not available under the Sandinistas. The rising poverty of many Nicaraguans has led more of them,

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including travestis (transvestites or transgendered persons) to prostitution,24

whereas a wealthier class of Nicaraguans opens businesses and clubs in Mana- gua's more fashionable neighborhoods. At the same time, the conservative so- cial climate prohibits open nonnormative sexuality without risk of undesired consequences. To an extent, the current climate may not be so different from the pre-Sandinista days when gay culture was tolerated to a limited degree, but only so long as it remained submerged in the dominant culture.

Nevertheless, lesbian and gay activism emerged in this altered social space from the clandestine gatherings in the latter half of the 1980s to open or- ganizing just a few years later. Not surprisingly, some of the Nicaraguans who formed the leadership of new groups and NGOs had gained experience in the United States or other nations with longer histories of gay organizing. Rita Arauz is one who returned to Nicaragua in the mid-1980s after ten years in San Francisco where her sexual identity and politics took form; on her return she founded the NGO Nimehuatzfn as an "out" lesbian. Arauz, along with activist Lupita Sequeira, appeared in the British TV documentary Sex and the Sandin- istas (1991), which considered the situation of lesbians and gay men during the revolution and its aftermath.25 Notably, and in contrast to others interviewed in the video, the two women spoke in English, reflecting the experience they had obtained outside their country as well as with English speakers in Nicaragua. During this period, from the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s, a number of resident internacionalistas (international activists) were among the most active in gay mobilization, even if behind the scenes. In a conversation among seven lesbians recorded by Margaret Randall (1993) only two were originally from Nicaragua whereas the others were from Costa Rica, France, Spain, and the United States.26

Transnational aspects of the lesbian and gay movement become signifi- cantly more apparent once women are brought into the picture. As we have seen, earlier accounts of same-sex sexuality and gay life focused on men, some of whom traditionally identified as straight but enjoying sex (as activos) with men as well as women or as quietly deviant (the pasivos or cochones). Some men participated as gay activists in the transition period, particularly when the AIDS pandemic galvanized them, but women have been more prominent among activists in the 1990s. Whether as founders of AIDS-related NGOs like Nimehuatzfn and Xochiquetzal (Rita Arauz, Hazel Fonseca, and Mary Bolt Gonzalez) or feminist NGOs like Puntos de Encuentro (including long-time in- ternationalists Amy Bank and Ana Criquillon), women have played a decisive role in devoting attention to gay and lesbian rights.

The transnational influence in gay rights politics in Nicaragua is evident in the adoption of the Gay Pride celebration on or around June 28 each year, following the practice in the United States (in honor of the Stonewall rebellion in New York City in 1969) and other countries. Nicaraguans debated whether to recognize that date or another one more closely related to their own national experience (for example, the intervention of state security officials in 1987), but settled on the date that had come to have the clearest symbolic meaning at

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the international level.27 This parallels other international holidays celebrated by activists in Nicaragua, including International Women's Day (March 8) and the socialist workers' holiday (May 1), signaling a desire to identify with a transnational movement.28

Material, ideological, and linguistic markers reveal Nicaraguans' pride in affiliating with an international gay movement. Although understood at first by the select few, these signifiers are beginning to enter the mainstream through newspapers and other media. International symbols used in Nicaragua today include pink triangles, rainbows, red ribbons, interlocking male or female sym- bols, the labrys, the color purple, and the acronym LGBT—often LGBTT, to recognize not only lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgendered individuals, but also transvestites. The inclusion of transgender and bisexual among sexual minority categories also signals a growing engagement with global gay poli- tics, as noted by a gay male activist I spoke to and whom I recognized as hav- ing appeared in the video Sex and the Sandinistas (1991).29 The trope of the "closet," "coming out," and "gaining visibility" are widespread now—as evi- dent, for example, in the publication Fuera del closet and in the Grupo por la Visibilidad Lesbica.30

The central place of "coming out" and "gaining visibility" among lesbians and gay men in the United States and other Northern nations is well known. That the same centrality is given to visibility as a political strategy in Nicara- gua is notable. In Jose Quiroga's (2000) essays on queer Latino America, he emphasizes that identity politics and the insistence on gaining visibility that is paramount in U.S. gay culture is tied to an imperial history and may not be lib- eratory south of the border. He describes the way that cultural politics may col- lide with identity politics in gay Latin America, where queer bodies are some- times "masked" as a deliberate strategy. Even in an age of global capitalism, the AIDS pandemic, and the transnationalization of the body, some may opt successfully for a queering of culture that does not rely on unmasking and de- claring one's sexual identity.31

To be sure, some Nicaraguans may resist the closet in their personal lives and still not emulate the "coming out" political strategy of the North, but oth- ers regard it as a highly useful tool for organizing a nascent movement. This is apparent in the frequent articles appearing in the magazine Fuera del closet that offer support to readers to come out to family, friends, and coworkers. The international influence on gay men and lesbians to come out is clear in the June 2002 issue of the magazine, which carries no fewer than three articles—two of them downloaded from global Internet sites—on the decision to make one's sexual identity known to others. Speaking with individual gay men and lesbi- ans, it becomes evident that the decision whether to come out is a negotiated process in Nicaragua, as elsewhere. One man told me, "Yo no soy closet, ni soy balcon [I'm not in the closet or on the balcony]," meaning that he reveals his identity selectively, as he deems desirable (interview, June 24, 2002).

Language itself is a significant marker of sexual identity and of the changes that are presently under way. Earlier studies discovered that men having

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same-sex relations were divided into active (unmarked) and passive (marked, cochon) categories, and in some sectors of Nicaragua the word cochona (signi- fying a masculine woman who has sex with other women) is better known than lesbiana (Bolt Gonzalez 1996:295). However, there are multiple terminologies used by and about men and women to signal their sexual orientations and iden- tities. Far more frequently now, we hear references in Spanish to lesbiana and gay, as well as to homosexual in Nicaragua.32 A gay bar may still attract more men, but la politico lesbica-gay finds more women than men in the leadership. The public presence of Gay Pride (Orgullo Gay) activities has contributed to a more widespread usage of global LGBT terminology in the country. In general, today we find a multiplicity of coexisting identities, from those who unselfcon- sciously participate in same-sex activity without embracing LGBT identity, to others who adopt many attributes and preferences of gay men and lesbians worldwide.

Further evidence of the appropriation of global gay political strategies may be found in the emphasis given to discourses and activism relating to AIDS and to human rights. It is undeniable that these issues resonate deeply in the Nicaraguan context, where social movements are calling for democratiza- tion and citizenship rights in civil society. But AIDS work and demands for ex- tending equal human rights to gay men and lesbians also have the strategic ad- vantage of appealing to broad humanitarian and liberal interests. Attention is thus turned from perceived deviant behavior to medical necessity and social justice. Added to the slogan advanced a few years earlier, "For a sexuality free of prejudice," there is a call now for a closer monitoring of sexual behavior and for safer sex practices. At a time when most organizations are seeking interna- tional support as NGOs, focusing on AIDS prevention and on human rights of- fers greater assurance of being heard, becoming part of a global dialogue, and receiving financial support. Needless to say, there is a certain risk that whereas lesbians working on AIDS prevention may appear selfless and civic-minded, gay men in general may be "medicalized" and appear to be the problem that re- quires a cure.

Although I have argued that the connections to transnational gay culture and politics are clear, this begs the question of whether there is currently a Nicaraguan gay and lesbian movement. In contrast to what I found in the early to mid-1990s when a fledgling movement was celebrated, my revisits to Mana- gua in June 2000 and June 2002 produced contradictory responses to the ques- tion. Whereas some individuals were still confident that a young movement was in the making, others, including some of the pioneers in political groups and NGOs, were reluctant to say that any unified social movement could be identified. Instead, they asserted, there were activities undertaken by a number of smaller groups that addressed issues of concern to lesbians and gay men. Although my trips were scheduled to coincide with Gay Pride, I had trouble learning in 2000, despite much questioning, what major activities were planned that would draw people together as in past years. 1 finally heard of and attended several events, including a presentation of USAID-funded research

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on gay sex practices and safer sex held at the bookstore-cafe Amatl, but they did not bring out the large crowds that were typical a few years earlier. Hazel Fonseca of Xochiquetzal suggested to me that under the conservative govern- ment of Aleman, a more cautious approach was being taken, with groups qui- etly conducting their work and seeking cultural openings in which to make gradual changes (interview, June 20, 2000). Nevertheless, there was an impres- sive range of activities that year, from the local, Puntos de Encuentro educating urban youth about sexual and other cultural differences, to the global, Nime- huatzin preparing to participate in an international AIDS conference in South Africa. Nicaraguan activists were well aware of the differences that separated them from one another as well as from internacionalistas, and they were work- ing to develop politically at a time of national-level uncertainty and social fragmentation.

We might justifiably conclude that the movement has not taken off as ex- pected a few years before, but it would be more accurate to say that organizing has taken a somewhat different course. Pluralist politics are the order of the day, with a number of groups incorporating gay rights issues into their more comprehensive agendas. Whether this is evidence that gay politics has ex- ceeded the limits of a unitary movement, has been "watered down," or that NGOs and other groups are competing for scarce resources in the competitive environment of neoliberalism is open to debate. The decline in broader-based, organized activity among lesbians and gay men parallels the diminishing pres- ence of other mass political organizations in the post-Sandinista period. Even so, Gay Pride had more visibility in 2002 than a few years before, as a series of events that were well publicized by Xochiquetzal and cosponsoring organiza- tions. Panels were held at Puntos de Encuentro, Xochiquetzal, the Central American University (which drew a record crowd of students to its video and discussion of the popular television program, Sexto Sentido), and even the gay bar Locos Discos. Social events and contests to select the Goddess Xo- chiquetzal and Mr. Macho lightened the mood. Most significantly, though not so widely known, a group of 13 lesbians and 13 gay men came together for a day-long meeting held at a lesbian-owned bar, Tabu, to form a Managua "cell" that would be a model for other cells and help build a national lesbian and gay movement. Among the principles established were those to endorse lesbian and gay rights, to support other Nicaraguans to "come out," and to move cau- tiously toward forming alliances at the international level.

Local and global politics are inevitably mediated by national politics. From the late 1990s, Liberal Party President Aleman and leading Sandinista Daniel Ortega formed a pact to protect their personal interests (Envio 1999). Aleman attempted to hide his record of corruption while Ortega sought to re- tain parliamentary immunity from charges of sexual abuse made in 1998 by his adoptive stepdaughter, Zoilamerica Narvaez. The latter's charges brought sex- ual violence to the forefront of national discourse as she made public allega- tions of 20 years of abuse. Ortega's wife, Rosario Murillo, stated in an inter- view for a major daily newspaper that her daughter's allegations against her

, ™ N S N A T I O N A L D E S I R E S IN N I C A R A G U A 3 1 7

stepfather were influenced by individuals of "uncertain sexual identity" who rejected marriage and family and "in general the values and culture of hetero- sexual relations" (La Prensa, June 5, 1998:1). Although homophobia is more common among political conservatives, lesbian and gay-baiting among promi- nent Sandinistas has been a cynical response to a threatened loss of power.33

When I returned to Nicaragua in the summer of 2000, the pact still shielded the two leading figures in the nation's politics. The sodomy law re- mained in place and, although it was largely unenforced, a young working- class lesbian had recently been arrested under the law and was murdered after her release, in what many regarded (and protested) as a hate crime. Bitter de- bates over Aleman's plan to turn the Nicaraguan Institute of Women into a new and conservative Ministry of the Family continued unabated. Yet, at the same time that there were obstacles to progressive change, there were more hopeful openings as well. A new and popular course on "Sexuality and Representation" was being offered by Erick Blandon-Guevara through the Gender and Human Studies Program at the Central American University. Cable television was bringing to Managua viewers Brazilian novelas (soap operas or sitcoms) with sensitive depictions of gay characters, and the first Nicaraguan novela to in- clude strong women and gay characters, Sexto Sentido (2001), was in produc- tion with the collaboration of the feminist NGO Puntos de Encuentro.34

The film Boys Don't Cry was meeting a favorable response from some members of the cultural elite when I visited with Rita Arauz of Nimehuatzfn; she expressed the wish that all the legislators in the nation could see the movie, because it would open up discussion and have a positive impact on creating a more tolerant society. Though she described herself with a smile as an "old dyke" (in her forties, she referred not so much to her age as to her generation's sexual politics), she welcomed the "queer" cultural flows from outside Nicara- gua.35 She acknowledged that gay imperialist interventions had sometimes been a problem in the past but suggested that the local population is now able to negotiate what elements of international culture to incorporate and which ones to reject (interview, June 23, 2000).36

Arauz's position is close to one articulated by scholars Elizabeth A. Povinelli and George Chauncey, who point to a need for studies of sexuality and globalization that move beyond abstract discussion of "flows, circuits, cir- culations of people, capital, and culture—without any model of subjective me- diation" (1999:445). Indeed, anthropologists and others seeking to discover "authentic" and local same-sex desire in pristine form in distant places—who argue against the use of "Western" concepts and terminologies—might take heed.37 The evidence of the transnationalization of sexuality is strong, yet what is introduced and retained is a matter of cultural and political negotiation even when unequal power relations are in play.

At times it has been strategic for Nicaraguan gay activists to reference the distant and indigenous past rather than the recent influence of gay movements in the United States or Europe in tracing their political genealogies. For exam- ple, a decade ago Xochiquetzal's center featured a mural on the exterior wall

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with indigenous designs suggesting the deep roots of gay culture in the region and engaging in a familiar sort of myth-making, depicting gay sexuality as transhistorical. Activist Lupita Sequeira invoked the timelessness, naturalness, and "authenticity" of Nicaragua's gay past, even as she pointed to connections between the country's contemporary gay culture and an international gay movement (Sex and the Sandinistas, 1991). Indeed, the cultural borrowings from lesbian and gay politics to the North are unmistakable, and it is this mix of local and transnational elements that is so evident today at the same time that few would claim that there exists a unified national gay identity or com- munity.

In the current Nicaraguan context, lesbian and gay groups and NGOs may feel that more is to be gained by creating and claiming ties with international counterparts and movements than by remaining focused at the local or national level. At a time when organizational growth has brought to light significant po- litical differences and when homophobia is still pronounced in the society, identification and solidarity with international groups may be desired. More- over, most organizations in the country depend on international financial sup- port, often from Europe, and funding agencies expect to find programs and services that mirror their own countries' gay rights movement activities.38 As a result, the neoliberal competition over scarce funding is often fierce in feminist and gay organizations. Some Nicaraguans are privately questioning how far their own social and political agendas are being established by international in- terests and priorities, but in order to be viable many consent to be guided by parameters set far from their shores. Arguably, the competition for resources among NGOs and other groups impedes rather substantially the formation of stronger ties of solidarity at the national level. Even those who are the benefici- aries of such international support are often harsh critics of the consequences of the state relinquishing responsibility for many social projects now taken on by NGOs. As feminist and left intellectual Sofia Montenegro put it, "NGOs are cheap for the state and good for capitalism, but the social movements have be- come NGO-ized" (interview, June 19, 2002).

The problem was to some extent ameliorated by the outcome of the No- vember 2001 presidential election, which saw the victory of Liberal Enrique Bolanos over Daniel Ortega. In his early months in office, Bolanos proved himself to be serious not only about confronting rampant corruption in the country but also about establishing closer working relations with NGOs. The improved climate at the national level may help to account for the somewhat more vibrant Gay Pride activities in June 2002 and for the renewed efforts to build a lesbian and gay movement in the country.

Conclusion

A number of writers examining gay identities have called favorable atten- tion to the "transnational turn" in sexuality studies (Povinelli and Chauncey 1999:439; Altman 2001). Yet, others have cautioned against rushing to em- brace globalization and its effects without due consideration of ways that

DESIRES IN N I C A R A G U A 3 1 9

global identities and practices are offset by national desires for "cultural be- longing, or cultural citizenship" (Rofel 1999:453). I have been guided by those who are at once mindful of continued local practices and of the enormous changes that are under way in many parts of the world, particularly in urban- ized areas (Parker 1999). My research in Managua has shown that while global exchanges have presented needed opportunities to expand sexual expression and sexual rights, neoliberalism has also benefited some far more than others as sexual subjects and citizens, particularly men and cultural elites. Women and members of the popular classes in general have experienced diminished possibilities and greater hardship in the years since 1990, even if they have also found new ways of organizing collectively.

This leads me to the central point that I have advanced here, that gender must be drawn into our analysis as we assess the politics of sexuality in Nicara- gua, as elsewhere. Insufficient attention to gender has been striking in sexual- ity studies (or gay or queer studies) generally and the Latin American region has been no exception (Green and Babb 2002). If we wish to keep culture and power at the forefront of our analysis and not simply emphasize the persistence of local sexual meanings and practices or celebrate globalized sexual cultures, gender along with race, class, and other social vectors must be understood as highly salient. The Nicaraguan case has shown that greater analytical attention to women, and specifically lesbians, challenges notions based on male same- sex sexuality in ways that should move us forward in our discussion of local, national, and transnational sexual expression. Earlier studies that examined the daily lives and sexual practices of low-income barrio men and more recent ones that critically assess the impact of neoliberalism in the lives of middle- class gay men who embrace global sexual culture as aspiring consumers are missing a large part of the story. This is not to diminish the importance of these studies, which have contributed greatly to what we know about sexual politics and cultures. Rather, I want to suggest, as feminists have for several decades, that experience is gendered and, what is more, the world is changing in ways that cannot be apprehended without that fundamental insight. By bringing gen- der and other forms of difference into view, we see in stark relief the social contradictions of individuals who are making collective gains through their life experience and political activism but continue to meet powerful obstacles to their self-determination and citizenship rights.

The mass mobilization of the population brought about by the Nicaraguan Revolution provided an unexpected opportunity for young women and men to explore and redefine their sexuality. During their years in power, the Sandinis- tas began to provide a space for more open discussion of gender and sexual re- lations and of personal life and politics, though they were ambivalent about the new desires that were expressed. In the post-Sandinista neoliberal era, the FSLN leadership has faced its own crisis in just these areas, sex and personal politics, signaling that there is much that is unresolved in Nicaragua's ma- chista political culture. For its part, the Liberal government has put in place a conservative social agenda that serves to underwrite the traditional nuclear

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family and heteronormative gender relations. Even so, at this stage, feminist, lesbian, and gay organizing and a discourse of human rights lend greater sup- port to those who have been silenced in the past. In a period of globalization, the transnational flow of ideas, information, people, and technologies is in- creasing rapidly and is meeting a more welcome response. Indeed, Nicaraguan gay men and lesbians have been groundbreakers in charting a politics of sexu- ality in Latin America.

Social critics and activists are emerging in Nicaragua who do not owe al- legiance to parties and they are insisting on social justice in a democratic civil society. For the first time, the call for justice and equality includes the private sphere as well as the public sphere, the integrity of the body and the person as well as the society in a new political culture.39 And gender and sexuality are in- creasingly understood to be social vectors that matter at the local, national, and transnational levels. Here I have suggested that sexual difference is deeply gendered at every level and that a consideration of women's experience may alter fundamentally our understanding of lesbian and gay identity and politics. My intervention in the dominant masculinist conception of local Nicaraguan same-sex desire is an attempt to engage discussion of transnational gay culture and politics in this postrevolutionary society. Whether lesbians and gay men will defend and build on the cultural space that has opened in the last decade and whether they will successfully gain political rights in this period of na- tional uncertainty remains to be seen. At the very least, what they are doing in small and diverse groups to link local desires to transnational projects points in some intriguing directions for the future.

Recently, the traditional Nicaraguan carnival Torovenado has drawn to its annual procession an increasing number of "out" locas (drag queens),40 who need not conceal their sexual identities during the rest of the year. Who knows whether viewing Boys Don "t Cry has not challenged some of them to defy local convention and to claim transgressive and transnational identities as their own?

Notes

Acknowledgments. I am grateful to all the Nicaraguans who have made my research possible, and to Grant Gallup for providing the home away from home that has long been my base in Managua. Between 1989 and 2002,1 received generous research support from the Fulbright Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the University of Iowa. The Obermann Center for Advanced Study at the University of Iowa generously provided the time and space for final revisions of the work for publication. Com- ments on earlier versions of this work were kindly offered by Victoria Rovine, Virginia Dominguez, Erick Blandon-Guevara, Lupita Sequeira, Kim Marra, Cymene Howe, Daniel Balderston, Ellen Lewin, Bill Leap, Aynn Setright, Jon Wolseth, Kelli Beer, Sarah Ono, Cara DeHart, Ann Anagnost, and anonymous readers for Cultural Anthropology.

Portions of this work were presented at the meetings of the American Ethnological Society in Montreal, Canada in May 2001 and the Latin American Studies Association in Washington, D.C., in September 2001. My book After Revolution: Mapping Gender and Cultural Politics in Neoliberal Nicaragua (University of Texas Press, 2001) offers further discussion of gay and lesbian organizing as well as of cultural politics more broadly in the 1990s.

I K M N S N A T I O N A L DESIRES IN NICARAGUA 321

1. Transgenderism and transvestism are not unknown in Nicaragua, where travesti (transvestite) performances at gay bars are common, travesti sex workers are increasing in number, and well-known market sellers appear publicly in drag. See Lancaster 1997 for a discussion of transvestism in everyday life in Nicaragua.

2. See Quiroga for an excellent discussion of the way that silences may figure dif- ferently and strategically across gay cultures. In his work on gay sexualities in Latin America, the author is "less interested in the subject who proclaims his or her own sexu- ality than the melancholic subject who refuses the confession, the subject who chooses to mask it, while at the same time showing us the mask" (2000:19).

3. My research in Managua has spanned 1989-2002, with about fourteen months spent in the country. The material on same-sex sexuality presented here extends from my broader project (Babb 1997, 1999, 2001a, 2001b). My desire to play a part in the telling of this story is no doubt motivated by several associations it has with my own personal narrative. I made my first trip to Nicaragua in 1989, when the revolutionary government was facing grave problems that it was unable to resolve before the national elections the following year. At that time, I had filed for divorce and was anxiously awaiting the out- come of a custody decision. I began a long-term research project that included two trips with my young son. I traced the effects of the sharp political-economic transition intro- duced by neoliberal governments on low-income women and men in the capital city of Managua. Although my main focus was on gender and the local economy, I became in- creasingly interested in the emerging feminist and lesbian and gay movements that were coming to have a more independent and public presence in the country, especially in Ma- nagua. These movements were significant and striking in their own right, but I was par- ticularly drawn to them as a long-time feminist, during a period when I was reexamining my own sexual identity. As it happened, Nicaragua's public coming-out and my own co- incided closely and played out on the same terrain.

4. A number of studies have examined the Nicaraguan Revolution in depth, includ- ing Spalding 1987, Walker 1991, and others. Several have considered the participation of and impact on women, including Brenesetal.l991,Collinson 1990, Molyneux 1986, and Perez Aleman 1992, among others.

5. Note that I will refer to "lesbian and gay," and sometimes, more briefly, "gay," as this reflects, in translation, the current language of activists (though not the wider population) in Nicaragua. In Spanish, homosexuales is generally used to refer to men who have sex with men, but the better translation in English is "gay men," rather than the more clinical-sounding "homosexuals." Bisexual and transgender identities are not un- common, and I will later make reference to LGBT identities. Also, I mention the nascent lesbian and gay movement, which in the early 1990s appeared to be gathering strength. Later in the decade, few would call the activist groups and NGOs a unified movement. During my most recent trip to Nicaragua in June 2002, a historic meeting of gay men and lesbians set forth once again to launch a national movement.

For further discussion and critique of the Sandinista program and the growth of the women's movement, see Chinchilla 1994, Kampwirth 1996, and Randall 1992. Elsewhere, I discuss the Sandinista decade briefly and then focus on the 1990s, when feminism and lesbian and gay activism grew stronger (Babb 2001a).

6. I only have anecdotal evidence of the disproportionate involvement of lesbians and gay men among internationalists active in Nicaragua during and after the Sandinista revolution, but it appears to have been considerable. See Rebecca Gordon's 1986 Letters from Nicaragua for the reflections of a lesbian feminist participant in Witness for Peace in Nicaragua in 1984.

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7. I do not mean to underestimate the importance of race and class in my discus- sion. Race and ethnicity are receiving increasing attention as social-political vectors in Nicaragua at the national level, though in the Pacific region (in which Managua is lo- cated), the convergence of these vectors with gender and sexuality is less notable than in the Atlantic region. Class differences are noted at various points in my discussion, and it is worth pointing out that lesbian and gay activists appear to come disproportionately from the urban middle class. Future research of the kind already carried out among poor and working-class men will need to be conducted among lesbians in the popular classes.

8. Parker 1999 makes a similar point in discussing the coexistence of "indige- nous," hybrid, and global homosexualities in contemporary urban Brazil. See also Patton and Sanchez-Eppler 2000 for discussion of transnational currents influencing queer identities in a variety of contexts.

9. This ritual of inverting the social order finds parallels in several religious festivals in Nicaragua in which "men dress as women, people take on the costumes of animals, animals challenge human authority, lower classes challenge elite power, and so on" (Lancaster 1992:251).

10. See El Pais 1992 for a discussion of gay culture in the years before the Sandinista revolution and during the 1980s. The article is notable for signaling a degree of accep- tance of the gay community by the early 1990s.

11. Since 1990, several authors have turned attention to the lives of lesbians in Nicaragua. See Ferguson 1991, Randall 1993, and Thayer 1997. Howe 1999 also offers a more nuanced and gendered approach to same-sex sexuality in Nicaragua.

12. Of course, a number of elite Nicaraguans left their country for the United States after the Sandinistas came to power, and their experience contributed to the development of gay and lesbian culture when they returned to Nicaragua after 1990.

13. See Berube 1990 on the emergence of gay identity within the military in World War II. In Latin America, the military has also provided opportunities for the expression of same-sex desire. See, for example, Beattie 1997.

14. Cuba makes an interesting comparative case with Nicaragua, as both Latin American nations experienced revolutions in the 20th century. In Cuba, as in Nicaragua, homosexuality was associated with prerevolutionary decadent bourgeois society. In both countries, a number of individuals left for the United States where they developed a stronger gay sensibility and politics. Those who returned, at least in the case of Nicara- gua, formed part of the leadership in gay political organizing on the one hand and part of the neoliberal impulse to embrace new economic opportunities on the other. A differ- ence between the two countries is that gay politics in Nicaragua was formed largely within the revolutionary Sandinista political culture, while in Cuba, those disillusioned with the revolution have been particularly outspoken. This difference is conveyed in the documentaries Sex and the Sandinistas (1991) and Improper Conduct (1984). For dis- cussion of gay culture in Cuba, see Lumsden 1996 and Quiroga 2000. The 20 years that separated the two revolutions may help to account for the greater acceptance and lesser suppression of gay identity and politics in Nicaragua.

15. At the international level, opposition was strong as well. A letter from the In- ternational Commission for Gay and Lesbian Human Rights (based in San Francisco) protesting Article 204 appeared in the Sandinista newspaper Barricada (June 21,1992). Amnesty International also protested Article 204.

16. This man made the astute observation that to claim to be bisexual in Nicaragua is often interpreted as "coch6n pero no tanto [a coch6n, but not so much so]." He said that depending on whom he is talking to, he identifies as bisexual or gay. He describes himself as

^NATIONAL DESIRES IN NICARAGUA 323

bisexual to those who are open-minded, but to those he judges need to be confronted with his sexual difference, he calls himself gay.

17. See Bolt Gonz&lez for more discussion of the findings from this research. Inter- estingly, she discovered that although some of the lesbians she interviewed adopted roles similar to those found among gay men—in a group of 30, one identified as pasiva and five identified as activa—the majority claimed to have equal or complementary roles in their relationships (1996:203).

18. See Blandon 2001 for discussion of the National Women's Coalition, which presented a Minimum Agenda to political parties participating in the national elections in 1996.

19. Fernandez- Alemany (2000) presents an excellent discussion of the neoliberali- zation of gay identities and politics in Honduras. His emphasis on the commodification of gay men, however, may lead him to overlook lesbians' substantial political participa- tion in a rather different development that he also notes: the globalization of human rights discourses in the gay movement.

20. See Parker 1999 for a useful discussion of Brazilian gay men's eroticizing of public space. I say more about Nicaraguan men's and women's separation between pub- lic and private space (calle and casa) in Babb 2001a. Gonzalez (2000) offers an interest- ing discussion of Nicaraguan women's sexuality as a site of social anxiety since the 19th century, though she restricts her analysis to heterosexuality. She argues that in the pre- revolutionary years under the Somoza dictatorship women had new opportunities for public participation, but concerns over prostitution and immorality circulated widely. Her work shows that the Sandinistas were particularly intent on enforcing codes of moral rectitude. Certainly, anxieties over men's and women's homosexual inclinations were also pronounced during the Sandinista decade.

21. See Green and Babb 2002 for discussion of the significant changes in sexual identity-based movements during the last two decades in Latin America.

22. For further discussion of Nicaraguan sexual culture in historical context, see Gonzalez 2001, Montenegro 2000, and Rodriguez 1996.

23. Older Nicaraguans still remember the tolerant attitude toward gay culture un- der the Somoza regime, which some say was due to an openly homosexual member of the Somoza family. Names of bars are recalled, including, among other venues, the mid- dle-class Swan Lake Bar, popularly known as the Duck Pond (Charco de Pato). During the 1980s, a popular bar, Lobo Jack, had a gay clientele but was not known as a gay bar, and other bars frequented by gays kept a low profile.

24. One evening in June 2002, I had an interesting conversation with a group of travesti sex workers, as they sought clients on a dark but busy street corner. They told me of three main locations where a total of about fifteen travestis now work, and they de- scribed their generally long hours and low earnings.

25. Lupita Sequeira (interview, June 25, 2002) recently commented to me that a new video is needed to provide an update of Sex and the Sandinistas. She also noted that soon after the video was made, the group of lesbians and gay men who were featured be- gan to have disagreements and lost unity.

26. The published conversation also reveals that individuals' memories of lesbian and gay organizing just a few years before varies significantly, depending in part on the roles they played in it.

27. See Randall 1994 for Rita Arauz's discussion of the question.

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28. See Manalansan 1997 for an insightful and critical discussion of the discourse of Stonewall and how it has come to function as an originary revolutionary moment for gays and lesbians everywhere.

29. The video is not shown in Nicaragua, I was told, because some individuals in it are not openly out to their families and coworkers. This man rushed to assure me that it was fine that I show the video in the United States and that it circulate outside Nicaragua.

30. In Bolt Gonzalez 1996, the first book published on Nicaraguan lesbians, an ap- pendix explicates these international symbols, presumably to further acquaint Nicara- guans with their meanings. It is also notable that in her interviews, the author generally began by asking to whom the lesbians she studied were "out" and how their families re- sponded to knowledge of their sexual orientation. She thus made use of the familiar tropes of "coming out," visibility, and identity politics that have become hegemonic on a global scale.

31. Similarly, Manalansan expresses the concern that as a result of globalization, terminology such as "the closet," "coming out," and "gaining visibility," has frequently been adopted without questioning the Western assumptions behind the terms. By pre- senting narratives of diasporic Filipino gay men, he shows that "the closet is not a mono- lithic space, and that 'coming out' or becoming publicly visible is not a uniform process that can be generalized across different national cultures" (1997:501).

32. Of course, some terms are used in a derogatory way, including maricon, mari- posa, mariflor, and loca for men, and machola, marimacha, hombrecito, and tortillera for women. Bisexuals are sometimes called bicicleta.

33. The daughter of former FSLN vice president Sergio Ramirez and a high-rank- ing woman in the party directorate were also targets of politically motivated gossip.

34. When I returned to Nicaragua in June 2002, Sexto Sentido had completed a suc- cessful season of programming in Managua, where it was one of the most popular shows on television. It was meeting similar success as it was shown in the provinces. A sample show and a documentary about the politics and production of Sexto Sentido, was being shown at gay film festivals in the United States and Europe to wide acclaim.

35. She spoke with me in English, using these terms. 36. She referred to the substantial number of lesbian and gay internacionalistas in

the country in the 1970s and their disproportionate influence in helping to form a move- ment. On the other hand, she and other Nicaraguans sought out opportunities to identify themselves as lesbian and gay to visiting delegations, so that international solidarity would be strengthened (Randall 1994:277).

37. Here I do not want to impugn those anthropologists writing in the 1970s and 1980s who understandably wished to avoid the extension of western terminology to every society and who usefully critiqued the overly unitary and transhistorical use of the terminology by some early activists and academics.

38. See Ewig 1999 for a discussion of the way that NGOs' dependence on interna- tional support has influenced the orientation of the women's movement in Nicaragua.

39. See Franco 2001 for discussion of the body as a site of cultural-political con- tention in contemporary Latin America. I discuss this phenomenon in the Nicaraguan case in Babb 2001 a and 2001 b.

40. See Blandon-Guevara 2001 for further discussion of Torovenado and the in- creasing presence of locas displaying irony and humor in their performance in the carni- val. As he relates, the threat of globalization producing a favorable environment for gay rights and gay culture to thrive in Nicaragua is not lost on the political and religious right or even some less conservative members of the cultural elite. When news reached the

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country, in April 2001, that gay marriage would be legalized in Holland, Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo said that such bad examples must not be emulated and that he would lead a hundred thousand people into the streets to protest if this were to occur in a globalized Nicaragua.

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