All language subtitles for Sexo y revolución (2021) - Ernesto Ardito

*Homosexual Liberation Front (1973)*
Once, one of us dreamt about a place.

It was open and full of space.

There was an avenue called Libertad.

Instead of exploiting one another, people loved each other.

No-one attacked anyone

because everyone made love with whomever they felt like.

Adults behaved like children
and they caressed each other.

Everyone dreams of a place like this, without oppression.

A life worth being lived.

With love, with true love; crazy, full love.

Without exploitation.

However, that dream has nothing to do with real life.

It’s a society of oppressors and oppressed people.

The capitalist oppresses the worker.
The father oppresses the son.

The male oppresses the woman.
The straight oppresses the gay.

Exploitation is perfect,
it’s perfect that women are inferior beings

and that homosexuals have no right to exist.

Otherwise they will be sent to jail,
to a psychiatric institution or to be shot.

Marginalisation and silence.

Sex and Revolution

I was born dead.

Doctors at that time recommended smoking
to open the lungs.

My mom smoked a lot.

My mom went to childbirth smoking.

She had a problem in childbirth.

The doctors couldn’t get me breathing.
I had no vital signs whatsoever.

I was considered dead.

I don’t know how long I was left like this

but I do know that an aunt,
who was doing her residency at that clinic

walked into the room and started slapping me
again and again until I began to cry.

When I was nine, mum and dad split up.
I was the only child at school whose parents had separated.

Everyone stared at me as if I had done something weird.

And my dad, even weirder,
three months after the separation, committed suicide.

We found out later he had kept his bipolar condition a secret.

He acted like a teenager who would never grow up.

I had just turned nine and my brother seven.
And my brother kind of lost it.

From then on, his life was troubled
because he had been my father’s favourite.

For as long as I can remember,
I have always liked men.

I found the male body wonderful, beautiful.

I liked boys, even grown-up men.

There was a man who used to wear a suit to the office,
and once I grabbed his leg and started stroking it.

I was four or five years old.

I was taken away from him,
and I yelled: I want to hold that man’s leg!

No-one ever explained things to me back then.

I started to realise I shouldn’t do it,
but no-one explained to me why not.

And the growing up process was tough because,
from childhood, I had to learn to hide my feelings.

I remember the family scandal
when I played with a doll.

The first memories I have with a degree
of eroticism, of desiring someone else

of being with someone,
were always with a boy.

So it was as natural for me as breathing.

As children play, the teacher watches and may become
concerned about a particular child’s behaviour.

From then on, it’s a daily task
to explore the root of this problem.

I never considered it weird,
but from a certain time, in second grade

being somehow effeminate,
not taking part in boys’ sports

not being violent,
having clear gay characteristics

made me realise it was
wrong to be like that.

And my dad would look at me,
thinking: ‘What have I done wrong to get this?’

But he never said anything.

Somehow, by trial and error

I began to realise that the way I was
wasn’t the way others wanted me to be.

I was teased because of
my effeminate behaviour.

I was too much of a girl and I was told
to ‘be more manly’. I didn’t fit in.

My mum used to beat me up to make
me different, change my attitude.

But I didn’t change. I was too much of a girl.

I was already a girl.

In secondary school one of my brother’s friends
squeezed my back hard

and called me fag, fag, fag”..

The pain made me cry.

We were the three secondary school gays,
bullied by everyone.

"To be a fag is shit, cause
to be a faggot is horrible.”

"Men were born to bang women,
women need to be fucked.”

Sex as violence was publicly accepted at that time
for the sexuality of both men and women.

Chauvinism was a type of culture,
and women participated as much as men

saying, "that man is not manly enough”,
“that man is kind of limp. ”

I was in secondary school when
I remember waking up in tears

and calling my brother
to tell him "I like boys."

My godfather recommended
me to go to therapy.

My relationship with sexuality
started at an early age.

As a young boy I used to have those
kinds of games with my friends.

Playing doctor and that sort of thing.

I was born this way.

The thing is, as a young boy,
I wasn't aware that it wasn't totally ok.

In my teenage years,
there was always some inner torture

and it was more difficult to conceal it.

It was my best kept secret,
even though it was no use to me.

I knew inwardly
I had been born defective.

I used to have nightmares
of being chased.

I lived with huge guilt for
what I was going through.

I knew there was something wrong
with me and I had to change.

I had a powerful will to do something,
but will has nothing to do with it

on the contrary, it's counterproductive.

I even ended up with a
duodenal ulcer as a result of all

the stress, since I didn't know what to do with my life.

I had suicidal fantasies every day.

Not everyone has suicidal thoughts every day.

I found it very hard because I didn't understand anything,
I had no information.

If I had known then what we know today
it would have been reassuring.

I'd had an incident.
When I was 15, I was caught in a situation

and because of it I ended up visiting a shrink.

It was a dreadful experience.

I think he believed that men are made the hard way.

Once, after the session,
we left his office, walked down the street

and into a large sports shop
where he bought me a punching ball.

Obedient as ever,
I set up the punching ball at home and I hit it

because I believed it would heal me.

The thing was that I was completely rejecting
what was happening to me.

I wanted to get rid of it.

When I was 20,
I fell in love with a younger boy

who never knew about my feelings.

It was devastating for me.

It meant I had taken the last missing step.

Being just a purely sexual matter is one thing

but if love is at stake, an unattainable love…

This was hell because of the suffering involved.

Sex and Revolution Manifest,
Homosexual Liberation Front, 1973.

Child sexuality is explicitly denied
by the ideology of the system.

Even when this sexuality objectively exists,
it is mutilated.

Child sexuality shows the sex object
and the variety of impulses

which encompass the human libido.

From that perspective,
it is the most authentic side of life.

And this huge flow of potential libido energy

has to be sidetracked towards
the social goals of insane jobs.

Dominant classes transform free sexual energy
into insane jobs

because they need it
for exploitation and insane production.

Libido domination and sexual repression
during childhood

ends with its reduction to specific body parts:
genitals.

Actually, the whole body is capable of contributing
to sexual pleasure

but the domination society
needs the most number of body areas

to be assigned to work.

Genitalization is destined to remove from
the body its pleasure generator function

in order to turn it into an
instrument of deranged production

leaving sexuality with only
the essential reproductive role.

That's why the system severely condemns

all forms of sexual activity

that aren't the penis-vagina type

regarding them as pathological deviations
or perversions.

In order to chain human beings into deranged work

it is necessary to cripple them
by reducing their sexuality to the genitals.

The castration of sexuality
aims at introducing

the typical system of domination into the minds,
within its thoughts.

A human being who makes
the object of domination their own sex drive

will be regarded as a repressed and
controlled individual in social scenarios.

A human being who makes
the object of domination their sex drive

is undoubtedly ready to take
the role of the controller

and/or the controlled.

I would prefer you were a
murderer than a homosexual!

Psychiatric Hospital

Until 1973, homosexuality was diagnosed
as a psychiatric disease

Gays and lesbians were locked up in
psychiatric hospitals and underwent surgery

to remove the 'evil' from them.

Lobotomy,

uterus extraction,

egg extraction, clitoris extraction.

Castration, vasectomy

and pudenal nerve surgery

to remove all pleasurable feelings
connected to orgasm.

Electroshocks, hormonal treatments,
chemical treatments

to cancel the sex drive or induce vomiting.

Aversion and repulsion therapies.

No-one was cured.

Most patients fell into depression,
self-harming or suicide.

The luckiest ones only
went through hypnosis therapies

group therapies or psychoanalysis.

The Catholic Church and its 285 million devotees

still believe homosexuality is a disease
that needs to be cured through psychiatry.

In Argentina,
lobotomies have been carried out

namely the removal of brain parts
to heal homosexuality.

It seems that a person incapable of thinking
can't be gay.

These surgeries,
worthy of Nazi concentration camps

were overseen by both Dr. Márquez,
University of Buenos Aires temporary dean

and psychiatrist of the Military Hospital

and Dr. Lionet, current University
of BA dean and neurosurgeon.

The former diagnosed and the latter operated.

Onganía Dictatorship 1966/70

Dictator Onganía
was an active Catholic

who had appointed
inspector Margaride.

He was in charge of controlling the sex life of citizens

their habits, and anything that
deviated from public morality.

Police would suddenly break into motels
to check if couples were married or not.

Catholic Church hunt tradition.

Obsessive surveillance over dress code.

Cary Grant's haircut was considered the
only one suitable for the true male.

Cary Grant and his partner Randolph Scott.

Dictator Onganía was incensed when he saw

the Opera Bomarzo at the Colon Opera House,
and banned it immediately.

He was outraged because the bulge of the
male dancer's genitals could easily be seen.

In this chauvinist oppressive system

those individuals who do not fulfill
the established sexual role: the homosexual

Are a danger to this sistem

Not only because they defy it,
but because they reveal its oppressive role.

The desexualisation of the human body
is a result of culture.

On this attempt to legitimise the ideology
of the repressive exploitation system

we see the disease of culture

*Leonardo Castellani, Catholic Priest *
Dear brothers and sisters

*Leonardo Castellani, Catholic Priest *
If there is so much feith in the world

why there are so many calamities,
so many atrocities

so much degeneration, so much disgrace
and so many physical catastrophes?

In a new magazine called Extra,
I read that in Buenos Aires there are

200,000 sexual degenerates or gays,
and I regret to say this word here.

The only comfort is that this is happening
in every city around the world.

In Rome, in St Paul's times,
the same thing happened.

In his epistle to the Romans, St Paul refers to
it as God's punishment for the pagans' atheism.

What's the link between atheism and homosexuality?

St Paul says that this corporal degeneration
existed due to atheism

since atheism may be a psychiatric degeneration,
thus one thing corresponds to the other.

What side has the Church always been on?

On this one:

everything that is unnatural is sinful.

Since we don't rule nature,
we are just rulers of our will.

God rules nature.

Therefore, suicides against human nature
are a crime.

Homosexuality, which is unnatural, is a crime.

Despite being not harmful to anyone,
apparently.

Sex has the function to unite human beings
in constantly renewed and creative ways.

The opposite means to reduce sex
to only one of its possibilities:

reproduction.

That's why the chauvinist culture
thinks of gays as degenerates

sick, abnormal, or deviants.

Gays actually vindicate all the free sexuality

repressed from childhood
by the sexist domination system.

The same system that represses it
in order to channel the sex energy

in the deranged production

is the same system defines what's good or bad

it generates guilt and bad conscience.

Gays are the scapegoat of sexual repression.

They get the most severe and immediate punishments.

In Argentina,
attacking gays is a national sport.

To talk about homosexuality in Argentina

is not only pleasure, but also terror.

Those kidnaps, tortures, robberies,

imprisonments, and derisions

that gays have been through
traditionally in Argentina,

preceded and may help to explain

the dictatorship genocide in 1976.

It's unbelievable to think
that police attend special courses

to recognise gays and lesbians
by the thickness of their ears.

What's wrong with homosexuality,

with sexuality in general in Argentina

for such harmless actions as licking the penis

or anus to cause such a scandal?

More specifically,
the formation of the police,

social and family structures
designed to persecute homosexuality.

There are two suspicious people
prowling around that place.

It was impossible for two gays
to meet up in the street on a pick-up plan,

because they would be instantly
detected by this police set-up.

If two just-met gays were spotted,
they would be separated.

They would be interrogated separately
to find out if they had just met in the street

or if they were friends walking together.

It was outrageous,
it was like a permanent Gestapo for gays.

Back then, the famous police edicts

like the 2H and others were in force.

These edicts were against disturbing the peace,
and sexual incitement.

They hadn't been issued by a judge, though.
They were police edicts.

Police were the ones deciding
who should go to jail.

In 1969, a group of gays

gathered in a tenement
on the outskirts of Buenos Aires

inaugurated the first attempt at
a gay organisation in Argentina:

'Our World' group.

Its main goal was to eradicate the police edicts

and the application of edict 2H

that imprisoned gays in Devoto prison.

Transvestites used to live in Devoto prison.

All they wanted was to walk, live, exist, and be.

Its members were mainly activists
of medium/low-class unions,

who were led by Héctor Anabitarte.

Héctor Anabitarte was also
a Communist Party activist

who had been rejected by the Party

after coming out of the closet.

A gay in charge of young political school education

was considered a menace.

This situation diverted him from his main objective

that of generating debate within the Communist Party
around sexual liberation

around homosexuality as part of sexual liberation

which needed to be part of the revolution.

He had also travelled to Russia,

where he asked how gays were treated there.

He was told: No, there aren't any gays.

-How come?
-No, we force them to get married.

Those who couldn't get married
were given degrading psychiatric treatment.

He had returned in shock from that trip

after realising that Russia
wasn't the land of freedom he had imagined.

Laws against gay relationships
also existed in the Soviet Union.

All this repressive apparatus
was backed up by scientific concepts.

Psychiatric treatment
was a kind of a torment.

Homosexuality was considered
a bourgeois deviation,

an intrinsic degeneration of the capitalism
that had to be fought against.

It was a degeneration
caused by the insanity of capitalism,

therefore gays were insane.

Moscow, 24th of May, 1974.

The Soviet film director, Sergei Parajanov,
has been sent to a work camp

for six years after being found guilty
of homosexuality

and incitement to suicide,
reliable sources said today.

The Russian director recently stood trial in Kiev
accused of such crimes.

Homosexuality is a crime
in the Soviet Union.

Sayat-Nova by Parajanov was censored.

Sometimes I wonder: Have I invented this or is it the truth?

It's simply the truth, but as I perceive it.

WANTED

Argentina in shock after first appearance of urban guerrilla.
FAL kidnapped and liberated Paraguayan Consul.

I became an activist at FAL,
Liberation Army Forces.

I was chosen as a general delegate
in secondary schools.

I was only 16 when I was coordinating
all the secondary schools

I organised a 50,000 student protest,

when streets were blocked
and the whole city was paralysed.

One day, we were
at a 17-year-old friend's birthday party.

One boy takes me away and asks me:
Are you gay?

And I say: ´Yes, I'm gay, I like men.´

And he says: ´Why didn't you say anything?´

I say: ´I am treated badly when I admit it.´

And he says: ´In the political struggle gays
are looked down on because they are traitors.

You are very valuable,
but I doubt you'll make it.'

From then on they had me isolated,
caught, cut-off.

I felt I was being held back because
I couldn't participate in the same way the others did.

New York. Manhattan.

Gay bar ´Stonewall Inn.´

The night of the 27th of June, 1969,

the regulars became fed-up of police raids
and decided to resist.

It had never happened before.

Astonished policemen called
for more back-up units

after seeing gays from all over the city
gathering at the bar door.

They were destroying police cars
and assault vehicles.

Barricades and litter-bins
were being set alight.

Continuous confrontations with the police.

There were shouts of ´Gay Power´
and everything was being smashed.

It took four days for things
to calm down.

It was the first time in the world
that gays rebelled

against a police and moral system
that pursued gays.

The Stonewall riot gave rise
to the first

gay liberation groups in the USA.

The Gay Liberation Front,
which fought for a thorough social transformation,

organised, a year after the riot,

the first and largest
Gay Pride march in history.

In Argentina,

in August 1971,

the union of Our World and a group of gay intellectuals
inspired in the American Gay Power,

inaugurated the official
Homosexual Liberation Front,

known by its acronym FLH.

FLH historic landmark
of immense relevance

*Homosexual Liberation Front (1973)*
Our movement emerges as a gay organisation

of both genres who are not willing

to be marginalised and pursued

just because one sexual orientation
is practised.

This pursuit has a clear political root.

Sex itself is a political matter.

To this extent,
the liberation we believe in cannot exist

in a system of economical domination,

such as the dependent Argentine capitalism.

The Homosexual Liberation Front
is an anti-capitalist,

anti-imperialist and anti-authoritarian movement,

which wants women's and men's liberation,
oppressed by the patriarchy.

Debates start around the meaning
of patriarchy domination within capitalism.

The document 'Sex and Revolution' by FLH
is foundational.

It describes what the patriarchy is
and explains

what this fourth feminist wave
is proposing 50 years later.

*Sex and Revolution Manifesto*
All private and public acts

end up being acts that fulfil
a political function.

Every human being faces,
from the day of his birth, a primary group:

the family, with the responsibility to educate
and produce system-conditioned human beings.

In the family, the male has the absolute

economical, political and social power.

His objects of domination are first,
the woman,

and secondly, the children.

The latter are the product-goods
of the family factory.

In the family,
similarly to other facets of social life,

the dichotomy is replicated:
oppressors and oppressed.

This domination presides over each daily act.

Its essence is revealed
in the male sexual power

over the female during intercourse.

Intercourse is a culturally structured
institution for male satisfaction.

He has the legitimate right to enjoy sex
whenever he feels like it.

The dominant male scenario in intercourse

is mirrored in everyday life.

Thus, the woman is reduced to an object
of pleasure and reproduction.

For its part, the system imposes
the obligation of doing the household chores

without any type of compensation,
which unmasks the true situation:

domestic slavery.

In everyday life, the individual takes on
the same roles found in the family.

He'll be the oppressive father, if male,

or the submissive mother, if female.

The father's authoritative figure is replicated
in the policeman's figure,

the boss', the employer's, the State's:

System-bearing figures

that individuals will bow to,
as they do to the father.

Therefore, the domination idea is passed
on to each individual

within the family.

We, the gays and the women,
are oppressed by sexism

in the heart of this capitalist society.

And the straight males are
the oppressive group.

I'm still amazed at the political bravery and boldness,

as well as the conceptual certainty of that document.

Today being anti-patriarchal is mainstream,

being gay is mainstream.

However, at that time

it was very different.

The FLH, was the group I belonged to.

Homosexual Liberation Front

Being a front, it attracted many groups.

I used to be a well-behaved,
but withdrawn and geeky boy.

One day I came across 'The Gay Liberation Book',

which made me realise
that out of all the gay people I knew,

the most interesting were the ones
who turned it into activism.

That was when I began my quest
to find FLH,

which wasn't easy.

I was given a phone number.
I called right away,

and was called to an interview.

It was a Saturday afternoon.

That night, they were going clubbing.

They invited me and I said yes.

That's how I ended up in a club
in Lanús named Monali.

What an amazing thing.
I'd never seen two guys dancing together.

Suddenly there were hundreds there
and it was such a diverse range of people.

One of the great things about homosexuality
is that it covers all ages, social classes, religions.

All types were there,
from both rich and poor neighbourhoods.

It was always organised clandestinely
in Greater Buenos Aires,

since police there were easier to bribe
than Buenos Aires City police.

There were police raids every day.

Up to 400 people might be
taken away in police buses.

Just horrible.

Our struggle was to do away
with these police edicts

but they weren't abolished until 1996.

My story is set in 1973.

The Eros group, led by Néstor Perlongher,

was the largest within the FLH
and I was involved with that.

Perlongher believed that when
the time came to take power

and the revolution was
manifested in all its glory,

gays would take part in a smaller
revolt within the greater revolution.

The Eros group carried out
the most revolutionary,

most explicit and
most streetwise actions,

such as spraying messages
on walls or walking into bars

and handing out leaflets
before running away.

*Eros Group*
Every week hundreds of gay imprisonments take place.

Why is that?

Because the bloody system of exploitation
and domination is based,

ultimately, upon repressing
the erotic potential of people.

Namely, if people loved each other,

they wouldn't exploit,
take over, or kill.

Neither would they allow others
to be exploited, taken over or killed.

The homosexuals, by showing through
our sexual practice the actual

and concrete possibility of erotic pleasure
not related to reproductive functions,

nor to the hierarchical vertical
structure of marriage,

nor to the patriarchal family,

we gays pose a threat to unleash
the wave of love upon a society

precisely based on repressing love.

That's why we gays are persecuted
and humiliated outcasts.

Chauvinists can't bear our presence
without sending us to prison,

killing, attacking or insulting us.

They are afraid of us.

They are afraid of our unlawful sexuality,
of their own repressed,

denied and forgotten sexuality.

By making love, we gays,
the disgrace to the family,

come out of hiding and
start being ourselves,

questioning not only the mere foundations
of the system that oppress us

but all kinds of oppression.

This struggle is about the recognition of
our right to love the way we feel,

and about the end of police repression.

Grouped together in the FLH,
we Argentine gays claim:

abolition of anti-gay police edicts;
freedom to imprisoned gays;

a halt to political and sexual repression.
That is Group Eros.

We didn't have access to
the same gay community,

since people didn't agree
with an explicit struggle.

The mindset was 'Behave well".

"If we don't offend,
we'll be tolerated".

Many great gay intellectuals find
no benefit in being part of a group.

Why become public if they are okay?

U.S.A. Feminists.

At that time the argentine left parties
didn't take part in the debates

about sexual liberation,
patriarchy and feminism.

A more basic debate about proletariat

and the revolutionary movement was happening.

The Homosexual Liberation Front began conversations

with the revolutionary Left movement.

However, the Left leaders weren't
interested in sexual liberation.

They were aware of the repercussions
of Fidel Castro's regime towards gays in Cuba.

The idea about gays
needing re-education centres.

I guess they didn't know about

Fidel Castro's conception
of those centres as prisons.

Gays would commit suicide;
they would be raped by prison guards.

In 1965, Raúl Castro created

Military Units to Aid Production,
which was aimed at those who

had taken the wrong path away
from society to help them get back on track.

They were concentration camps,

to where most gays, lesbians, activists
of the Cuban Revolution were sent.

Great writers such as Reynaldo Arenas,

who ended up hating the revolution

that not only sent all of them to
prison but destroyed them physically.

In the Cuban Revolution!

Left-wing parties claim that homosexuality
is a product of decaying capitalism.

*Sex and Revolution Manifesto*

Homosexuality existed long before capitalism,

since the original human libido
doesn't scorn any of its possibilities.

Behind this left-wing parties' proposal,

lies the inability to formulate a new order,
a truly new revolutionary routine.

The Homosexual Liberation Front
proposes to start a revolution

that simultaneously annihilates
not only the economic and political

system foundations but also
its sexist ideological grounds.

Otherwise, the system of oppression
will replicate automatically

after a revolutionary process that would only
shake the political and economic spheres.

The official rhetoric was absolutely
heteronormative and hero-worshipping.

In the '70s, guerrilla heroism

was a completely chauvinistic
and heterosexual heroism

And that rhetoric permeated all.

It was prohibited to express yourself
in a particular way,

to wear specific trousers,
i.e. freedom of expression.

I was an activist in a political party.

I was a member of the
Students' Union at my university.

Guillermo is an activist in the
Socialist Party of Workers, with Trotskyist ideas

You censored yourself because
you wanted to belong,

you wanted to be there.

Revolution was important, activism,
the building of the Party.

And within the Party, this did exist.

One grows up fighting against a desire.

And there is a word for that.

The first homophobic,
the greatest homophobic,

against the gay, is the gay themselves.

In the whole process of
denying your sexuality,

you begin consolidating your own homophobia.

So, this is a filter
for social relationships,

for your place in the world.

There were two books we consumed
as junior party members,

both by Wilhelm Reich,
a German Communist activist.

He wrote The Function of the Orgasm
and The Sexual Struggle of Youth.

Man is the only biological species

that has destroyed
his own natural sexual function.

That is what's wrong.

*The Function of the Orgasm by Wilhelm Reich*

It turns man into a source of hatred,
generating terrible disasters for humanity.

From the beginning of the
patriarchal authoritarian culture

more than 4,000 years ago,

human beings have adopted
a hostile attitude

towards what's alive
within themselves.

They've stepped away from pleasure.

Duty has replaced the
natural enjoyment of work,

and guilt has replaced
the enjoyment of orgasm.

Sexually frustrated men
and women define

the moral and social parameters
of human sexuality.

This way is condemned to darkness;
to a dirty, unhealthy life.

It is opposed to culture and development.

Sexual dissatisfaction and restrained
sexual energy lead to neurosis.

Sexual repression serves the purpose of
subduing human beings more easily.

The same way foal and bull castration
subdues beasts of burden.

However, no one has thought about

the devastating results of that mental castration.

And no one can foresee
what human society will face.

Among the hundreds of patients
I treated and observed over many years,

not one single woman
had experienced a vaginal orgasm.

Among men, 70% showed severe genital disorders.

We had two alternatives:

one was turning
into the Sleeping Beauty

waiting for Prince Charming
to wake us up.

*Homosexual Liberation Front*

The other was rebelling.

Rebelling is the only chance left
for people to start living.

Protesting, claiming, vindicating our rights.

Making our dreams come true.

We recalled a Mario Benedetti quote:

'Prohibition is wonderful, permission is dire'.

We weren't the first ones,
nor the only ones.

There were many people,
most of the people were rebelling.

They were fighting for liberation and
many of us were there, fighting.

We understood that sexual liberation
was a vindication worth fighting for,

not forgetting that one can't be free while
there are slaves around,

or in bed.

I was already an activist in Quilmes,
south of Buenos Aires, in Berazategui.

I remember a group of comrades talking about
the reason for the revolution.

We always concluded
that it was art and sexuality.

To dedicate yourself to art
and to lead a full and pleasurable sex life.

What I liked most about the FLH was the political
involvement we were searching for.

We not only sought to liberate ourselves
in order to live life without being attacked,

but also for the freedom of a whole society.

One of the slogans we had was living and
loving freely in a liberated country.

We were struggling for that reason.

1973 was a really busy year.

Peronism proscription had ended after
an 18-year ban of uttering the name Perón.

It was a huge move that meant Peronists could
now participate in national elections.

In a meeting between Campora lawyers and
the Homosexual Liberation Front,

it was proposed to create psychiatric hospitals
to treat homosexuality.

It was the left-wing Peronism,
they didn't understand each other.

However, the Homosexual Liberation Front
knew the only possible alliance in politics

was to be found in Peronism,

since the other groups
didn't have the same access.

So Peronism achieved a crushing
victory with the slogan

'Campora to office, Perón to power'.

We were living Campora's springtime,
and that was a really good time.

With springtime we mean that
something really cool is going on.

There was a libertarian atmosphere and the
Homosexual Liberation Front was a part of that.

By then, I was flourishing,

having figured out my sexuality and
being able to start living well.

When Campora takes over,
the most logical thing for us was to be there.

We have to come out and make
ourselves noticeable -

it's the only way to get out
from underground.

We have to get organised and
take to the streets.

We arrived in Plaza de Mayo,
a group of 15 bareheaded people.

We were isolated, because no one
wanted to be around us.

An enclosed area.

Like a void around the
Homosexual Liberation Front.

Suddenly no one wanted to get contaminated.

Our flag not only said Homosexual Liberation
Front, but also May love and equality prevail.

And these are verses
from the Peronist march.

The thing is that no one had
vindicated them in that way.

It was the first time in
the whole of Latin America

that a gang of homosexuals, like us,

took part in aclear political act
such as the takeover of a president.

Our fight was actually to be accepted
as political actors.

The national mindset was that
a homosexual with social awareness

wasn't influential.

I always remember an act
in the School of Law.

All the support organisations
were read out,

and when the Homosexual
Liberation Front was mentioned,

what happened?

Everyone burst out laughing.

Right-wing and left-wing parties,

including the most progressive left-wing party,

were actively anti-gay,
posing different arguments.

Back then, a d ocument is issued by ERP
called Morals and Proletarianisation.

Monogamy allowed,
infidelity was punished.

Homosexuality was a bourgeois monstrosity
that had to be fought.

Campora allows Perón to return from exile.

That's June 20, 1973.
He landed at Ezeiza.

We welcomed him.
We went there to welcome him

All roads were blocked, all closed,

the only way to get there was on foot,
miles and miles.

We lined up on that road,

which got us noticed.

The people in front of us
walked way up ahead,

and the ones behind us,
knowing who we were,

walked way behind,
so as not to merge into our group.

That was shocking.

Suddenly, instead of being the FLH,
we looked like a group of lepers

nobody wanted to have contact with.

Instead of carrying banners,
we should've got bells,

the same ones lepers used in the Middle Ages
to announce their presence.

That was very hard,

I've just come out of the closet,
just joined the FLH

and had no experience of
that kind of treatment

I couldn't handle it,

and I didn't make it to Ezeiza.

I left the march because
it was unbearable.

I've never been through
something like that.

When they get to Ezeiza
the massacre breaks out.

Right-wing Peronism against
left-wing Peronism.

No casualties of the FLH in Ezeiza.

USA fosters the violent advance of fascism

and state terrorism in Latin America

to stop the left development.

All suppression of sexual reward
brings about rage due to frustration.

It materialises in hatred, sadism,
aggressiveness, and destructive tendencies.

The sadistic destructiveness of our times

is the result of the inhibition
of natural loving life.

The orgasmically unsatisfied individual
experiences anguish due to pleasure,

which is actually fear of pleasurable arousal
and fear of a free and independent life.

They develop a fake character and

dread all kinds of spontaneous
and excitable behaviour.

Driven by hatred and envy,

they become fierce enemies of progress.

That’s why the anguish due to pleasure is the
foundation where the self-repressed individual

will recreate the denying ideologies of life:
basis of dictatorships.

Or they lead to mass killings
in the form of wars.

Military Coup D'etat In Chile,
11 September 1973

Anguish due to pleasure becomes
a powerful source from which politicians

and conservative political parties
extract their energy.

Their goal is to exert all possible kinds
of reactionary political practices

to control the main working class.

There can't be permanent
peace on Earth,

and all our efforts to socialise huma
beings will be in vain,

while politicians and dictators with no idea
of love continue controlling the masses

who are endemically neurotic
and sexually sick.

There will be annihilation of life,
whether through compulsive education,

compulsive social institutions
or through wars.

In order to eradicate neurosis
from the masses

we need first of all to eliminate
the material needs of people

and guarantee an obstacle-free development
of sexual happiness for each individual.

In this way, we will achieve
an authentic democracy.

Society wasn't ready for us,
for our vindications

The homosexual battle in Argentina

Activism wasn't ready at all.

And the right-wing Peronism
accuses the left-wing Peronism

of being infested with
drug heads and gays.

March Against The Military Coup D'etat In Chile

The first time I saw the Left speaking out
overtly against homosexuality

was in the solidarity march with Chile,

when the left-wing Peronism - about 200,000
youngsters occupying 10 blocks

- were chanting ‘We aren’t fags, we aren’t junkies,
we are FAR soldiers and Montoneros’.

Everyone sang and
believed in this slogan.

Not surprisingly, they were the two
bourgeoise degenerations

rejected by youngsters to make the revolution.

Not to end up on drugs
and not to be gay.

I felt that being gay
wasn't something I could choose;

I couldn't have chosen to like
women instead of men.

Then I realised I was wrong,
so I discussed it with my political organisation.

I was sent to therapy to be
converted to a normal person.

'We aren't fags, we aren't junkies,
we are FAR soldiers and Montoneros'.

That killed us.

Those words spoken by people with
whom we'd tried to be comrades-in-struggle,

left us feeling isolated.

Left us out completely.

It slammed shut our fantasy
of having a political involvement

within the current wave.

That's when the FLH shut down.

There was no other choice.

The government's tolerance towards
right-wing para-police groups'

operations strengthens
after the death of Juan Perón

and the takeover of his wife Isabel,
surrounded by a fascist entourage.

Left-wing activists were killed daily.

The fascist magazine El Caudillo,

reported the authorities' calls to terminate gays
and suggested lynching them,

in an open reference to the
Homosexual Liberation Front.

For the first time the threat
becomes a death threat.

For this reason, the Homosexual
Liberation Front goes underground

because they believe they could be
victims of the extermination plan.

At that time, a group of
FLH activists step down

and propose the dissolution
of the organisation.

Panic starts to spread.

Fascism has declared war on us.

*Homosexual Liberation Front*
It poses the absolute annihilation of Argentine gays.

*Homosexual Liberation Front*
It poses the absolute annihilation of Argentine gays.

Can gays pretend nothing is going on?

And allow ourselves to be taken peacefully
away from our homes and killed like animals?

The Argentina Homosexual
Liberation Front's answer is NO.

Only if we're united and use
our personal fears for the benefit of all

will we manage to defeat the enemy
and regain the human dignity being denied to us.

Only gay love and union
can stop the fascist death machine.

Let's form control, organisation
and propaganda groups.

Let's spray the FLH acronym
on every wall in the country.

Those words and that bravery
they are heroes to me.

Absolute heroes.

Daniel joins the People Revolutionary Army (ERP),
a Marxist guerrilla organisation.

He's jailed in 1974.

I was kicked and beaten up
on my way into the barracks.

I was hurled against the wall,

five guys were beating
me up simultaneously

with boots, with weapons,
with sticks, with everything.

I reached the cell in a mess,

but they kept torturing
and beating me up.

I was forced to remain awake for 10 days,
which was the worst of all tortures.

Three mock executions by shooting.

I survived because I had been jailed by the army,
as opposed to Isabel Perón's Administration.

I was tortured in the most
horrendous way for a month.

I was still alive, so I was taken
to Magadalena Military Prison

and kept in solitary confinement,
unable to see anyone, isolated.

The next decade of my life,
from my 20s to 30s,

I would be in jail.

It was brutal.
Ten years felt like an eternity.

You weren’t permitted to
speak with anyone,

you weren’t permitted
to see the sunshine,

you were punished for no reason
and you had no visitors.

You had nothing,

it was just you with your body
in an enclosed space with nothing else.

If you wanted to use the toilet,
you had to shout for four hours

until you were taken there.

Ten years of your life.

All you could do was try to survive,
not give up.

I instantly resorted to humour.
I laughed at myself.

In 1975, during the famous strike
in Villa Constitución,

we as the PST, a political party,
launched a solidarity campaign and a strike.

That's when we were arrested
and kidnapped.

We were a group of seven comrades.

We were robbed of everything.

We were taken to a base
and tortured.

What saved us was the fact that
we didn’t look like guerrilla members.

That September, eight comrades were killed
in the La Plata massacre.

We were brave and carefree.

Merely handing out leaflets
could lead to being beaten up or disappeared.

It was daily life,

you were aware you
were living on the edge

and your only concern was
how to hide any important data.

During the kidnapping,
mock executions by shooting were performed.

At this point in my life
I'm horrified to say

that I don't remember
being distressed about it.

The Videla military dictatorship unleashed
a systematic pursuit of every gay person.

This prevented all forms of organisation
and forced us to focus on surviving.

The same day of the Coup D’etat
I happened to pop by the Mail Office

to pick up a letter from my mother.

She told me the police
had been in my hometown,

broken into her house,
and had taken her to the station.

My mum was a school principal,
it was a complete scandal.

To force my mum to give them
my address,

my 12-year-old brother was given
a mock execution by shooting squad.

So I had to leave my home
in Berazategui.

We gays didn't know what would
happen to us if arrested,

either we could be taken to
the station or end up being shot.

Due to the general atmosphere
and the fear,

gays were confined to private places.

In such a deadly atmosphere,

we gays needed to keep on fucking,

so we sought places we could go.

I think continuing to have sex
was a way to fight against this deadly order.

That's why we continued
looking for places away

from surveillance
and morality brigades.

That's how we found public toilets.

We called the sexually-active
public toilets Tea Rooms.

Hidden camera of Ohio Police (1962).

Utilised to condemn gays.

It turned out to be an excellent
meeting spot for an initial sexual encounter,

to meet people or
simply for satisfaction.

Especially the public toilets
in train stations

where there were many passers-by.

It was like a theatre piece
were each person had a role.

There was the morality policeman,
the crazy young queen,

the fat queen, the ugly queen.

Everyone moved as if
they were on a chessboard

with positions constantly changing.

During dictatorship years,

Tea Rooms were regarded as sordid
or free places that had ceased to exist.

Brotherhood places.

Teenagers desperate to have
their first sexual experience went there,

and so did I.

I was at secondary school
and I remember seeing

some kind of activity
at Belgrano R train station.

I used to peep.

I realised I could go there
for sexual satisfaction.

You are really horny
in your teenage years

and you don't know what to do.

You’re gay and you think
you’re the only one on Earth.

Picking up on the street was dangerous
from the activist point of view,

since many gays had disappeared.

Sexually attractive men were used
as kings to seduce gays on the streets

and then kill them

There were no social networks
nor gay clubs.

We relied on the vibe,

on our female intuition
through sightings and codes..

You couldn’t just simply approach someone,
you had to take a long detour.

So going after someone
or being pursued

was dangerous due
to plainclothes police officers.

There were other public places.

Some cinemas recreated a sex atmosphere,
a place for making out.

Isabel Sarli movies were shown,

aimed at a lonely
and horny male audience.

So queens would approach straight men.

The gay looking for the king.

There was a quest for the opposite.

It was a time when gays
hadn't seized equality,

there weren't fully gay couples,

with gay domestication

and assimilation into liberal societies
and democracies.

When writing about his life in the pre-Castro Cuba,
Reinaldo Arenas says

that he didn't fuck with peers, i.e. gays,
but he would fuck the father of a family.

It was always a quest for a mystery,
a chance, a thing that was decoded.

It wasn't predicted nor foreseen.

At that time, during dictatorship years,
our badge was wearing tits.

Taking to the streets
in dictatorship years .

with inflatable tits

You had to have the balls to do that!

It was about surviving at that time.

Because many transvestites
were found dead

and we didn't know
how that happened.

Valeria Del Mar was kidnapped in a clandestine jail,

to be raped by policemen.

We were pushed out of the car.

There was a fat police officer
at a desk who said:

'You brought the two
bunnies we'd asked for'.

My friend Romina and I
looked at each other

because we were only 20 years old.

We were taken to the back cells
on the 2nd floor.

Valeria Del Mar was the only witness
to report the robbery of a baby

who was given birth to by an
arrested-disappeared in the dictatorship jail.

I was having a shower
when I heard a woman shouting

‘Bring a towel. The baby is coming’.

I felt the birth, a baby was crying.

After the labour, a police officer said,

'Fill up this bucket
and clean up your crap.'

And I saw a pale, dirty,
bloodied woman.

I told her I'd help her fill the bucket.

The policewoman overheard me,
came in, looked around

and said to the other officer:

'What is this fag doing here?
Why didn't you tell me?'

The officer grabbed me by my hair,
and pushed me shouting

'What are you doing here, you bloody faggot!'

I slipped on the girl's blood
and was dragged back to the cell,

where I was dumped on
the ground. I was dirty.

As I was being dragged,

I could see the other officer
holding a baby.

The girl was there and I spent
the whole day naked in the cell.

Valeria Del Mar survived. She was the only
transvestite in a trial against the dictatorship.

The mother of the stolen baby
remains disappeared.

Democracy returns in 1983,

political prisoners are released.

When I was released I felt like a
baby thrown onto the streets.

We were given back the clothes
we had worn when jailed

ten years before.

Old trainers, bell-bottom trousers,

which were the only ones I had
for six weeks after my release,

and a t-shirt that still fits me
ten years later.

I put those ridiculous clothes on

and I looked like I was dressed
up for a Village People party.

Also, the t-shirt was
completely psychedelic.

When people saw me in the street,
they did like this…

I had been jailed in a world
where everyone wore a suit.

I couldn't get what was going on now.

Men were wearing shorts,
sleeveless shirts

and they greeted everyone
with a kiss.

The world has turned gay,
I thought.

Shirtless guys in parks sunbathing.

Today all these things
seem normal to us,

but back in 1983,

someone who had been in a cellar
for 10 years couldn’t believe his eyes.

San Francisco, 1977. Harvey Milk is

the first gay activist elected official.

The world regime started to change,

from the old suffering gay
to another gay regime.

Though still not visible,
a new time of media exposure had begun.

November 27, 1978 Harvey Milk
is assassinated

by Dan White, his homophobic political rival

When democracy started,
the police apparatus remained unchanged.

It was still unpunished.

The police were the same as
in the dictatorship years.

The morality brigade was still working

and there was a specific interest
in the pursuit of the gay community.

To stop police abuse,
Carlos Jáuregui

creates the Argentine
Gay Community (CHA).

In 1984, the National Commission
for the Disappearance of People (CONADEP),

documented and published

the crimes in the dictatorship years
in the book Nunca Más.

The President of the
Argentine Gay Community,

Carlos Jáuregui,

explained many years later
that the rabbi, Marshall Meyer,

one of the heads of CONADEP,

confirmed the existence of
a record of 400 gay prisoners,

who were tortured, raped
and disappeared

due to their sexual identity,
during the dictatorship.

we were treated sadistically and violently
the disappeared Jewish prisoners.

The rabbi also said
these cases weren't included

in the Nunca Más book,

due to pressure from
the Catholic Church.

Carlos Jáuregui, the first president
of the Argentine Gay Community,

states that the media must also
be central to our cause.

Risks Of Being
Gay In Argentina

We will be educating
through the media.

Regarding a minority as dangerous
is the same approach

to the laws proposed in
Nazi Germany in 1936.

Little by little society will get used
to the images and the voice.

That's the way to remove
the terror that surrounds us.

The idea was the visible gay,

the gay who could step out
from the dark, from the catacombs,

make a place for himself -
and change from the gay

who suffers due to his isolation
into a gay who lives normally.

Rock Hudson laid the HIV issue
on the table worldwide.

I began to panic because I
had already started living with my sexuality

by the time Rock Hudson
came out of the closet

in Hollywood to say
he had the gay plague.

By 1985 the first echoes were
coming from the USA and Europe.

The issue hadn't appeared
in Argentina yet.

Two years later, in 1987,
the first HIV tests were carried out

in the Argentina Gay Community.

From then on, we began living a time
of great dread and discrimination.

Houses where someone with
HIV had lived in were burnt down.

We used to live in terror because

it was considered a death sentence.

A form of termination through the bodies.

HIV epidemy is a hole in a generation,

and the gay struggle was
a huge backward step.

Many things had been achieved,

but overnight we turned into
the representatives of a world epidemic.

The pandemic that was immediately
regarded as the gay plague.

Another casualty of the gay plague in Argentina

Discrimination at first was brutal.

It had hurt. I’d felt humiliation
and an overwhelming grief

when I heard my friend’s brother,
who’s a doctor, saying ‘Let them die alone.’

My friends began to die too.

One funeral after the other.

The whole support system stemmed
from the organised gay groups.

Argentina included.

The Argentine Gay Community (CHA)
was first to start work on it.

The first Spanish leaflet I remember,

explaining how to put on a condom,
was published by the CHA.

We created a foundation called
HIV Alternative Vision.

The first thing we did with donations

was to remodel Room 17
from Muñiz Hospital,

which is where at that time
all the HIV-infected patients were taken.

In the main San Francisco paper,
The San Francisco Chronicle,

there was a front page
article saying

"Those who have been rejected...

...by the way they love...

...were showing the world
the true meaning of love."

That was in relation to all
the social work and service

given to the community
by the gay organisations.

Here it was the same.

The CHA was the first one to act.

Our work was based on making
people feel fine with themselves.

By doing so, their body
would react better,

the immune system would be stronger.

The key was the preliminary work
so the disease wouldn't explode.

The HIV virus takes the life of
Carlos Jáuregui in 1996.

In 1992, Nestor Perlongher had died of HIV,
a model of the Homosexual Liberation Front.

Every Thursday, the Mothers
of Plaza de Mayo march.

The FLH survivors were
contacted by them.

We marched with
the Mothers in Plaza de Mayo

and we finally arrived at
the same place

we had been 40 years earlier.

We walked in their footsteps.

One last pep talk:
We don't want to be persecuted,

nor caught,

nor discriminated,

nor killed,

nor cured,

nor analysed,

nor explained,

nor tolerated, nor understood.

We just want to be acknowledged.

In 2010 same-sex marriage bill is passed in Argentina.

It was the first Latin American country to do so.

In 2012, was recognises the right to have

a self-perceived sexual identity in the national ID.

Currently, millions of women fight against

chauvinist violence, gender equality and legal abortion.

Translated by Cesar E. Pretelli & edited by Gay Hollister
caesartranslations@gmail.com