Scandalous Encounters: The Making of Mexico’s Gay and Lesbian Liberation Movement from Cuba to San Francisco

On 26 July 1978, gay and lesbian militants from the burgeoning Homosexual Revolutionary Action Front (FHAR) convened at a leftist solidarity march meant to commemorate both the Cuban Revolution and the upcoming tenth anniversary of the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre. Seizing a moment awash in symbolism, FHAR activists chanted “Socialism without Sexism” and “Revolution in the Factory and the Sheets” converting the march into the first public demonstration for gay and lesbian liberation in Mexico. Members of Mexican Communist Party (PCM) enacted their displeasure by physically separating from the march. When asked why they were keeping their distance, an anonymous representative of the PCM responded, “because of the faggots [putos].” This paper explores how 1978 was the culmination of over a decade of gay, lesbian, and feminist organizing in the wake of the Cuban Revolution. Early gay and lesbian activists like FHAR founder Juan Jacobo Hernández and the lesbian playwright Nancy Cárdenas were inspired by the transnational circulation of ideas regarding sexual rights, the liberatory potential of the Cuban Revolution, and the local demands for democratization before and after the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre. They emerged from the 1968 student movements with organizational experience and leftist ties, traveling to places such as San Francisco and taking part in homophile movements abroad before returning to Mexico to form the Homosexual Liberation Front (FLH) in 1971 – a predecessor to FHAR. This paper explores how different international experiences – from the Cuban repression of homosexuals to the 1975 Cuban Family Code – affected how FHAR would formulate its politics around the liberation of gay men and lesbians through the abolishment of homophobia and heterosexism in Mexico’s leftist parties, particularly the Mexican Communist Party.