Noticias

We thank this invitation. In the first place, we express our solidarity with our Mexican brothers and therefore we request:

- The Congress of Mexico to call for immediate approval of the initiative for constitutional reform for the rights of LGBT people in this country as well as the bill for the reform of the federal civil code to recognize equal marriage.

- For the first time a Latin American city to be seat of Gay Games and that seat to be the city of Guadalajara, Mexico.

We also reached to a consensus for the following declaration:

- We are very worried about the escalation of violence and hate crimes towards LGBTI individuals (especially transvestite and transexual people), the regression in equalitarian rights in several countries and the cuts in policies towards our population.

- We demand the end of institutional violence towards our community.

- The escalation of conservative fundamentalism has increased hate crimes based on sexual orientation and gender identity of their expressions, inmprisonments, persecutions, agressions, murders and other violent events at a regional level, situation that puts into evidence the urgent need to guarantee the principle of secularism of the States.

- The advance of predominant and fundamentalist churches in some governments of the region puts away our long-sought desire of laicity of States and democracys must not be subject to religious institutions or mandates.

- We express our solidarity and we support all our transexual, transvestite, transgender, lesbian, gay and bisexual fellows of the region that have suffered any kind of violence.

-  We demand the judicial institutions of the region to take all necessary measures to end the violence escalation towards our community and the clarification of all hate crimes based on sexual orientation and gender identity or their expression.

- The Latin American region is still facing everyday challenges to the well-being of our community: discrimination, stigma to gay and bisexual men and men who have sex with other men and the impact of HIV. These issues and their intersection determine the spheres of health, education, individual and colective security, access to justice, the persistance of discriminatory laws and policies and the role of States.

- Being our voice latin, black, aboriginal, anti-patriarchal and de-colonizing, we reach it from this site to relate ourselves with activism, politics, governments, internacional organizations and our own community as a differentiating signature for our theoretical and political elaboration.

- Latin America is a continent that, from its history, reveals opression and marginalization that runs through our bodies, languages, spiritualities and forms of socialization many of them generated by which colonization that put in our roots discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, identity and gender expression, reality that affects the exercise of rights of our communities.

- While equal marriage has been achieved in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay and Colombia, which represents an emblematic advance of our movement, it is necessary to extend those achievements to all countries in the region and promote the right to conform our families freely. Equal marriage is an advance but it does not constitute the only goal in our community's agenda.

- We demand the States of the region to enact Gender Identity acts for the full recognition of transvestite, transexual and transgender people.

- We condemn the fallacious argument on “gender ideology” that conservative people and religious fanatics employ to eliminate public programs, overturn laws or attack public policies and organizations throughout the region.

- Violence and discrimination are sustained by patriarchy, male chauvinism and religious and ideological fundamentalism and perpetuate the suffering of our community and families and impede our full enjoyment of human rights trying to revert important achievements.

- We claim the construction and experience of a non-binary sexuality and we fight for the respect of sexual and reproductive rights recognizing gender issues as a transversal axis for our objectives.

- We are in favor and we promote scientific advances related to the control of HIV and Aids but we do not want a monopoly of patents nor the absence of our voice in the formation of public policies by States.

- We are involved in stopping HIV transmission and we understand that it is necessary to define a new concept of safe sex.

- It is indispensable to strenghten regional leaderships with particular emphasis on youth and our ethnic and cultural diversity reaching the entire region and all parts of the world where there are Latino gay men. Thus, we consider necessary to call for a space that allows the building of necessary agreements to work jointly as well as revise work formats among the different leaderships, analize the current situation and identify the advocacy needs in regional politics to define strategies and activities towards the achievement of local, regional and global goals.

- We have as a challenge to understand the particularities and needs of the new generations in order to strengthen those leaderships.

- We must strenghten inter-generational exchange.

- There is evidence that HIV affects disproportionately to our community and the responses to the pandemic have been insufficient and incomplete in our region. On the other hand, HIV reveals all vulnerabilities we continue to be exposed to in all aspects of our lives, therefore it is necessary for us to advocate in order to achieve access to all technologies for the prevention of HIV and other infections sexually transmitted.

- Overdependence on financing system imposes arbitrary conditions to communities and they put in evidence the great inequality in the region, therefore it is necessary to advocate for the adoption of redistribution mechanisms of resources in countries of Latin America towards sustainability, particularly the response to HIV/Aids which affects differentially to our community.

- We gay and bisexual latino men are still deprived of the full enjoyment of all human rights and civil guarantees including protection in our communities and equalitarian access to the highest level of healthcare and well-being, decent work, justice, education, nutrition, social services and protection against violence and discrimination.

- We believe it is necessary to implement public policies that, in permanent dialogue and attending the demands of communities, contribute from state spaces concrete responses and programs to remove discriminatory barriers which cut back rights to gay and bisexual men everyday.

- The production and access to cultural goods, the promotion of healthy habits as well as the practice of sports and adequate nutrition must be guaranteed.

- It exists a high risk of absenteeism and desertion in all levels in the educational esphere as a consequence of bullying, and other forms of manifestion of stigma, discrimination and homophobia.

- Many members of our community are also people with disabilities and therefore they require necessary infrastructure and public policies for their full development and respect to their dignity.

- We must claim for the respect of all identity and pleasure praxis that our bodies promote.

- We are in favor of freedom of latino gay men of feeling, loving and being as they wish.

- We claim our bodies as battle fields, love fields, desire fields and pleasure fields.

- We recognize pleasure as part of our integrity as people, activists and leaders.

- We claim our belonging to the network GayLatino whose mission is the promote and defend freedom, equality and equity, access to integral health, justice and education, for the full exercise, free from discrimination and violence, of human rights of latino gay men and other men who have sex with other men towards a Latin America which respects, protects and celebrates the life of this community defending equality, diversity and visibility.

Mexico City, november 4th 2016.