“Now is the Time!”: Struggle for Sexual Diversity in Venezuela

[polly7]

By Maria Gabriela Blanco and Susan Spronk

and Jeffery R. Webber

Source: The Bullet

Thursday, August 23, 2012

http://www.zcommunications.org/now-is-the-time-struggle-for-sexual-diversity-in-venezuela-by-maria-gabriela-blanco

Under Hugo Chávez, there have been many gains in the struggle for liberation, including for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered people (LGBT). Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation was outlawed in the 1999 Labour Organic Law but anti-discrimination proposals were dropped from the 1999 Constitution due to pressure from the Catholic Church; same-sex couples cannot marry or adopt children and several proposals that would have advanced such struggles were defeated in the Constitutional referendum of 2007. There have always been diverse political currents within the LGBT community, but three years ago, the first revolutionary LGBT collective was formed. We caught up with one of its founding members, activist María Gabriela Blanco, at a meeting of the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Popular Alliance, APR) in Caracas.

— Susan Spronk and Jeffery R. Webber.

Right now I work in a social production enterprise, trying to work with the communities to socialize property and production. I am not only a homosexual [she says laughing]. And although we have control over the political because we have the government, we do not have control over the economic. Chávez has told us this same thing many times. It is no secret. But we are advancing with this new model of production and management, and advancing in how we see ourselves as workers and as producers; we are not going to have these discussions if Chávez leaves.

We have to work to guarantee the vote. The reason that the President is there is that he is the figurehead who moves us emotionally, who unites those of us from the base, who inspires the popular movements. He is carrying the process but we are responsible for it. Without a doubt, there have been so many gains and a million demands; our movement is not yet as advanced as others such as the campesino movement, or the movement of renters. I do not know anyone who has been unaffected by this process: a friend who received a new house because theirs was destroyed in a flood, another who has participated in one of the missions. Here we have free education. There is free health care, even if it is not the best (although Michael Moore shows how the U.S. claim to the best health care is a lie). The media outside of Venezuela misrepresents this process; Chávez is the most democratic president this country has ever had. •