Queers and Televisionaries:
the strategics of sexuality in neoliberal Nicaragua

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by Alyssa Cymene Howe

<References and Author Profile follow>

There are many ways of being queer, many mediums in which to project private desires into public forums and many strategies with which to negotiate the politics of sexuality in the 21st century. The purpose of this discussion is to examine the reshaping of queerness in Nicaragua--a process which is largely taking place in the Nicaraguan mediascape. While queer people have never been entirely invisible in Nicaragua, I argue that particular kinds of queer subjects are now being performed in a way that marks a departure from previous queer models. These "strategic sexualities," take one of two forms: anonymity or normalized subjectivity. In other words, media-disseminated models of queerness in Nicaragua are either tucked behind a mask of anonymity, or normalized to conform to middle class, often Northern (US and European) values of home and hearth. These strategic subjects are products of Nicaragua's political and economic history and the country's place in the global scheme of things. I will suggest that Nicaraguan civil society activists are attempting to rewrite the cultural logics of sexuality in Nicaragua and that their so doing, informs our understanding of the strategics of sexuality in a world saturated by images and diverse scapes of meaning.

Imagine, for a moment, two paradigmatic tales of queering the Nicaraguan media, each of which have taken place in distinct historical/political moments. First is the story of Ernesto. On a sunny April afternoon, he and I have been sitting in front of his pink house, drinking the same sweetened black coffee he has offered me every time we have met over the past three years. He has been telling me about the early days of gay and lesbian activism in Nicaragua, during the Sandinista 1980s. He says of that time,

We went to the media, we went to the written media, we went to the radio and the TV and we sat down and we said, we are homosexuals, we are lesbians, we want you to respect our rights. That you respect our human rights. We are all equal to whoever. We are good kids, we are good fathers, we are good mothers, we are good neighbors, we are good workers. Equal. There are bad ones too, like everyone. But we are humans and here we are.

Ernesto finishes his story by telling me that this technique of “declaring” one’s sexuality in the media wasn’t successful, at least not for him. He ended up losing his position in the Sandinista military and hasn’t been able to get a job since. According to his friends, he was too early and too vocal about being a cochón (fag) in a public sphere that wasn’t quite ready for it.

Almost two decades later Nicaraguan activists are again attempting to reshape the cultural logics of sexuality. They are attempting to combat prejudice against non-heterosexual people, again utilizing the media to project queer characters into the Nicaraguan society, the target “viewing audience.” Sexto Sentido (the Sixth Sense) a Nicaraguan soap-opera/sit-com produced by a feminist NGO, recently screened an episode where Vicki tells Eddie (the hard-drinking, handsome, macho star) that she is a “lesbian.” Vicki, the queer TV character, however, is substantively different from Ernesto’s show of queerness in the 1980s. Vicki is not a “real” lesbian, she just plays one on TV. The questions which remain after the TV set has dimmed are: how are queer subjectivities reshaped by these particular performances and what are the dynamics and relationships between these strategic sexualities?

Through a series of historical and cultural processes, a particular form of queerness has appeared in the Nicaraguan media arena. First, state repression of homosexuality, in the form of an anti-sodomy law, has resulted in the projecting of private desires into public spaces: telenovelas (soap operas), magazines, late night radio talk-shows. If queerness in Nicaragua was something that has always been enshrouded in taboo, it has now moved into full televised view, stereo sound and color graphics. The anti-sodomy law, which penalizes those who “promote, practice or propagandize...sex between people of the same sex” has not, despite its intent, quelled non-heterosexual subjects. Whether attempting to dissuade queer-convening during the revolutionary regime of the 1980s, or the more recent neoliberal-legal attempts to do the same--state repression has effectively caused the proliferation of queer characters in the Nicaraguan mediascape.

Second, the queer TV/radio/print characters created by Nicaraguan activists demonstrate certain qualities. I will argue that they take one of two forms, either anonymity or normalized queer subjectivity. In their anonymous form, queer characters are both unidentified (nameless) and bodiless. That is, they do not actually appear anywhere: they are instead voices on nighttime radio airwaves or writers/poets with an asterisk in place of a identifying byline. In a unique twist, activists attempting to "visiblizar" (to make visible) non-heterosexuality, have chosen to erase queer bodies altogether. In its normalized form, Nicaraguan queerness is performed very much like the models of homosexuality familiar in the North (US and Europe). In place of what has been called "role-based" homosexuality (one partner the macho/butch, the other, the passive/femme) the "egalitarian" model appears more and more ubiquitous within Nicaraguan activists' attempts to make a "respected" space for non-heterosexual people. These "lesbian," "gay" and "homosexual" subjects are distinct from their more traditional Nicaraguan counterparts, the cochón, loca, maricon (fag) or the cochona, marimacha, tortillera (dyke). "Lesbian" and "gay" characters also follow northern codes of normalcy including professionalization, monogomous coupling, family formation. They are very acceptable queers.

Finally, the anonymous and normalized subjects that appear in the Nicaraguan mediascape are, I believe, strategically selected kinds of subjects. They are intended to deal with the vicissitudes of state repression and the historic, cultural condemnation and distrust of non-heterosexual people. The recent "visiblization" of queer characters in the media does not mean that Nicaraguan queers did not exist before; to the contrary, as many Nicaraguans have told me, "every neighborhood has their resident fag.” The difference is that the strategically performed queers that appear in the contemporary mediascape are in search of respect in place of the mockery usually encountered in the neighborhood. These qualities of anonymity and normalcy serve to disrupt cultural codes of sexuality and create distinct kinds of queer people, ones who deserve respect, in the public space of radio airwaves, TV broadcasts and newspaper/magazine stands. It is a technique to bring “privates” into public display in the hopes of creating a more tolerant place for queer Nicaraguans.

STAGING SEXUALITY:
THE INVISIBLE LESBIAN, "QUEERS" AND SITES OF STRUGGLE

Roger Lancaster has written that the “cochón” (fag) is instrumental to the maintenance of Nicaragua’s particular brand of machismo, emphasizing the integral role that sexuality plays in the creation of gender. Much of this macho-maintenance is achieved through very specific sexual positionings: namely, the cochón is always pasivo and the “real man” is always the activo, “inserting” partner. Only one of these homoerotic players comes away marked with the stigma of being less of a man, or a fag, and that is the cochón, the passive partner. Indeed, Lancaster claims that the real man actually garners more macho status in his sexual conquests of cochones, as long as he privileges sex with women. Thus, non-normative sexualities are fundamental, in Nicaragua as in other places, as to how gender is constituted and maintained. In other words, it is more than a question of the “merely sexual.” If the cochón, in his passivity, serves to define “real men” as gendered characters, it follows that his female counterpart, the dyke, likely serves as a foil for “appropriate” femininity.

While it appears that the active/passive paradigm, and the apportionment of stigma, is being transformed by the influx of international media and copious border-crossing individuals, this construction continues to be the cultural norm in Nicaragua just as it appears to determine appropriate gender performance. It is unclear whether Nicaraguan lesbians (lesbianas) and dykes (cochonas, tortilleras, marimachas) engage the active/passive sexual paradigm because no research has been conducted on the topic. However, there is no doubt that in Nicaraguan popular culture, there are women who have affective and sexual relationships with other women who are marked as sexually “other.” While Nicaraguan cochonas are generally considered easy to single out because of their "hombruna" (mannish) ways there are other relevant players within Nicaraguan queerness. At the other end of the queer continuum, are the “very womanish” women (muy mujer) and the femininas --all of whom have either occasional or exclusive sex with other women, but do not consider themselves (nor are they considered by their neighbors, friends or husbands) to be homosexual, lesbian, bisexual or in any significant way, sexually "different.” By way of illustration, in Nicaragua, if a woman in high heels, lipstick and miniskirt is walking hand in hand with a short-haired woman who dons boots and a man’s long-sleeve shirt, the streetcorner gossiper will probably not say, “Oh my, look at those shameless lesbians.” She will instead say, “Why is that pretty woman hanging around with the dyke?.” The presence of women who sleep with women but are not labeled as sexually different, suggests a far more complicated set of sexualities than can be successfully rendered through the terms lesbian, gay or bisexual.

The translation of the Northern lesbian into Latin American contexts is not quite tenable. There are many non-heterosexuals who slip outside the terms, and I will suggest that “queer” is a way to conceptualize this diversity; it is also a way to highlight those other non-heterosexual subjects who often end up in the endnotes--that is, the dykes and the femininas. The terms we engage, and the conceptual framework that supports them, have much to do with the politics that are generated in the name of “lesbians, gays” or queers. I have never heard the term “queer” used in Nicaragua. It is not a local term, it has not been translated, nor has it been magically integrated into the parlance of Nicaraguan activists savvy to LGBTT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, travesti) movements across the globe. However, going against some formulas of anthropological convention, I am going to use the term queer throughout the course of this discussion for two reasons. First, queer is an umbrella term and as such, is brief and more reader-friendly than repetitive lists of identity monikers (eg. homosexual, lesbian, gay, bisexual, travesti, transgender, fag, dyke, polyamorous, etc.). Second, and more importantly, while queer has come to designate a plethora of non-heterosexual, non-vanilla-sex folks it also has a flexibility of meaning that, I argue, helps us to better conceive of sexuality diversity in places such as Nicaragua.

Queer names a category, or a kind of people marked as different by their sexual choices and/or orientations. But queer simultaneously disrupts the very notion that any of us can correctly live under any given “identity” sign. While assuming a “lesbian” or “gay” identity may affirm one’s self-identity and group membership, the danger is that signs also mark subjects. In the legal realm this can sometimes be disastrous. The risk in using queer as a concept is in its Northern origins and potential ideological imperialism. Too, there is the danger, as Gloria Anzaldúa has pointed out, that queer, as a sign, risks erasing differences of class, ethnicity and geographic origins. It is a term that could slip and come to represent only the dominant sector of a queer mass (namely white, monied, Northern men). If queer as a concept appears to be infinitely flexible, perhaps dangerously “loose,” I believe that this very looseness is what makes it salient to media politics in contemporary Nicaragua. In other words, queer should not be mistaken for an ethereal way to evade real-life politics. Rather, queer is expansive enough to do the politics required in places where sexualities leak outside the neat categories of homosexual, lesbian, and gay.

This discussion focuses on the media interstices of queer activism in Nicaragua. However, there are many other sites at work here, a global within the “local.” Just as Nicaragua’s Sandinista revolution drew inspiration from previous revolutionary causes, so too have sexuality activists drawn inspiration from other nations. Peruvian gay rights groups send videotapes of queer-positive commercials to groups in Managua. Nicaraguan lesbians living in Miami write emails of support to activists back “home.” The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission coordinates with Nicaraguan lesbian and gay rights lawyers. The international language of liberation and pride are on the lips of those involved with the struggle and rainbow flags are not uncommon. Queer activism in Nicaragua can hardly be called a purely local phenomenon.

Sexuality activism in contemporary Nicaragua is more akin to a multi-sited struggle than the “movements” seen in other settings and other eras. Activists describe their work in terms of a lucha (struggle) for “visibility and respect.” It would be incorrect to describe the media visibility of queerness as a national movement because this struggle does not follow the “Western grammar” of movements. In many ways, activists have opted to exchange the street protest and a struggle against the state for the dispersed queer subject who can be projected into Nicaraguan living rooms. Additionally, the strategies Nicaraguan activists employ include utilizing activists and discourses outside the borders of the nation-state, emphasizing the transnational nature of these modes of social transformation. In other words, Nicaragua is not isolated, but rather, an integral aspect of the global cultural flows of queer political activism, rhetoric and materials and “struggle” appears to have replaced the creation of a “movement.” Consequently, dispersion and ubiquitous ambiguity may be better tropes for envisioning the processes at work here.

PENAL CODES: LEGISLATING THE SODOMITE

Nicaragua’s history of insurgency, particularly the 1979 Sandinista Revolution, hints at the potential for another form of insurgency: a form of revolutionary sexuality in the media. However, over the past two decades, state repression of Nicaraguan queers, in various degrees of severity, has appeared amongst the Sandinistas as well as the structural adjusters. Under the Somoza dictatorships (1936-1979), cochones and their boyfriends had a certain degree of visibility. They could cruise designated parts of the capital city without being harassed. However, with the coming of socialist revolution, the familiar Marxist refrains of “bourgeois decadence” were brought to bear on the sexually different; the Sandinistas, when they took office, made it their task to “clean up the streets.” Lesbianism and its bedfellow, feminism, were often considered imperial ideologies of the North. By this reckoning Nicaraguan women were neither suited for feminism nor were any of them lesbians. Lesbianism was something “imported” from the US and Europe. However, Sandinismo did provide a significant opening for women’s activism, and amongst these activists were more than a few lesbians. Sandinismo also offered lesbians and gays, according to Millie Thayer, “if not social acceptance, at least greater room for maneuver.” This maneuvering, however, was constrained by a legacy of machismo and socialist doctrine. When, in 1986 a mixed group of Nicaraguans and internacionalistas met, calling themselves The Nicaragua Gay Movement, they were soon infiltrated by Sandinista State Security and made to answer for their purportedly counter-revolutionary organizing. The Sandinista’s fear of counter-revolution was not unfounded, given that counter-revolutionaries (the US-sponsored Contras) were waging war against the country. Members of the Nicaragua Gay Movement, all of them loyal Sandinistas, agreed to cease their meetings.

Later in the decade, fear of an AIDS epidemic and a respected, purportedly lesbian, Minister of Health, encouraged the regime to reevaluate their attitude towards gay groups. Through street education programs, gay and lesbian activists joined with health workers and international brigades from places such as San Francisco, CA. AIDS, then, provided both a cover and a catalyst for future organizing. Most prominent queer activists in Nicaragua today were a part of these educational, outreach programs in the late 1980s. Overall, the relationship between queer organizing and the revolutionary regime was uneven and contradictory. Queers were purged from the military and yet one of the most respected revolutionary comandantes is everywhere rumored to be a dyke. State security shut down queer meetings and yet there was never the heavy-handed persecution as was seen in Cuba. If the Sandinistas were ultimately ambiguous in their treatment of queers and queer rights, the neo-liberal new comers were decidedly, and legislatively, repressive.

The US-sponsored coalition party, UNO who took power following the democratic elections of 1990, signaled the demise of Sandinista rule. That same year Arnoldo Alemán became the mayor of the capital city of Managua and sent the police to raid the gathering places of cochones. When Alemán was elected president in 1996, a national level series of “Family Codes” were enacted, including a revised educational plan promoting “Victorian” rather than “libertine” values.

A Victorian perspective favors natural values, etiquette and morality…it follows a natural law...sex is for procreation, not recreation...sex is natural between men and women...while solitary sex, sex between people of the same sex and sex with animals (do not follow this natural law)...we must consider the consequences of the sexual revolution, the lost morals and the lost virginity...the effect of Hollywood pleasures and radical feminist movements and gay groups.”

While the educational codes are meant to inculcate a heterosexual hegemony in the minds of Nicaraguan youth, the utmost threat to queers in Nicaragua is the 1992 revision of the penal code. Article 204, which created steeper sentences and broader language to criminalize “sodomy” states that, “the crime of sodomy is committed by anyone who persuades, promotes, propagandizes or practices, in scandalous form, coitus between people of the same sex.”

Article 204 was widely protested by AIDS outreach organizations, feminists and queer-sympathetic civil society activists of all stripes. However, the anti-sodomy legislation, considered by Amnesty International to be the “most repressive anti-sodomy legislation in Latin America” continues to threaten to imprison Nicaraguan queers. Given 204’s definition of a sodomite (including those who promote or propagandize homosexuality) coupled with steep sentences, being public (or “declared”) about one’s queerness is dangerous business. When the sodomite is written into a law “a body is defined, delimited and articulated by what writes it.” To claim a gay or lesbian “identity” in contemporary Nicaragua is to flirt with incarceration. Repressive legislation also makes traditional movement strategies, such as the street protest, risky. As Marta, who leads a lesbian rap group put it,
We can’t say that they (the women in the group) are lesbians, because they would close the place down. It is the only place that there is that is semi-open. Semi-open. But we can’t say it, not openly. For example, we can’t do a march in the street…They would throw us in jail!...because of the prejudices and the legal parameters.

The threat of incarceration has meant little on-the-street activism for queer rights. Likewise, organizations that educate about AIDS must be vigilant about how they discuss same-sex sexual practices or they risk being, as one staff person told me, “shut down....or maybe just fiscally terrorized by the state.”

No queer activists have been incarcerated under 204. But the threat remains. I argue that this threat, the repressive apparatus of the state, has shifted the sites of engagement. Queer activism has not however gone “underground.” It has gone onto the airwaves, into full color graphics and on TV. In other words, repression has become Foucault's “proliferation.” By attempting to legislate the sex of the nation the state has, in essence, created a climate where it is illegal to be "declarado" (declared). In turn, activists have responded by creating more complex ways of declaring their presence, including the use of high-tech media to distribute images of queer subjects. State repression, in this case, when coupled with international LGBTT movements, transnational solidarity links, and sexuality savvy from all corners of the globe, has spawned a whole new breed of Nicaraguan queer visibility.

MEDIA-MOBILIZING QUEER SUBJECTS

Anyone on the street will tell you that in Nicaragua, people don’t talk about sex. However, daily observation and conversation will yield a bevy of sexual innuendo, double entendre, and outright lascivious comments. Beyond quotidian discourse, sexuality is also broad cast and media-mobilized. It is everywhere. Usually, and until recently, in the heterosexual form. But this is changing, and the Nicaraguan media-imaginary is being queered. Button-up Catholic-styled prudishness continues to exist and sexuality in Nicaragua is nothing if not an open secret: titillating Brazilian soap operas, a weekly “Salud y Sexualidad” (Health and Sexuality) newspaper insert which includes stories about the "mysterious" clitoris and penis enlargement.

If sexuality is by Nicaraguan accounts, taboo, homosexuality is even more so. However, neither sexuality nor homosexuality are invisible. To the contrary. Just as every neighborhood has a local cochón and marimacha, so too do homoerotics pop up in the most public of places: news articles about Mexican gay “weddings,” editorials about the need for seperate travesti bathrooms in Rio de Janeiro, photos of Hillary Clinton waving to Pride marchers in New York. Thus, queer positive activists are expanding the already extant space of queer visibility, not making it from scratch. Likewise, queer activists are developing strategic kinds of sexuality in a culture where queerness is well-known, if not well-respected. The difference is that contemporary activists are insisting on a particular kind of visibility--one that falls under the category “gay” "lesbian" or "homosexual" rather than its kissing cousin, that of the cochón or the cochona.

These newly visible forms of queer subjectivity have particular characteristics: anonymity and a performance of normality. One tactic that Nicaraguan activists have used to create queer visibility, is to erase bodies altogether. Identifiable people, actual bodies, who are easily, legally declarado about their sexuality difference are effectively disappeared. Instead, the queer subject who is heard on the radio, or appears in print, is anonymous. A strategic model of the queer subject is generated where queer or the queer-curious do not need to risk incarceration, neighborhood humiliation, or losing their jobs.[see Marike comment: June16, more silence in the family and more conflict at work, per rap group observations] Rather, those people who participate in the queer mediascape are disembodied subjects who effectively create queer visibility without placing their lives on the line. I will illustrate two of these projects here.

ANONYMITY AND THE QUEER CALLER

Every night at 10 pm, Anibal hosts a radio show called, Sin Mascaras (Without Masks). It is volunteer work, late at night on the campus of the Jesuit university in Managua. The show has a different focus every evening, often a compendium of gay/lesbian/queer news stories from all over the world that Anibal has lifted from the web. He talks about Dutch gay marriages, Romania’s anti-sodomy law, Pride marches in Ecuador. Sometimes, though rarely, he has guests on the show. Recently a member of the Sandinista Party, who remained un-identified, encouraged the Party to be more open to the rights of sexual minorities. In between reports, Anibal plays pop music: the latest from Christina Aguilera, Luis Miguel, Shakira. Anibal describes this work as a way to “make visible” the issue of “homosexuality, lesbianism and bisexuality” in Nicaragua. But his show serves another important purpose too, he says, “because it is a place for people to talk about their worries and concerns and ask questions.” And he does get questions. Men and women call from all over the country to inquire about whether it is a sin to be homosexual, whether they should tell their wife that they are having sex with other men, whether kissing a woman and liking it means that you are a dyke. Many of the calls, Anibal says, are made from phone booths so that family members, boyfriends and girlfriends are none the wiser. Many of the calls, he says, are made from the family phone, but only after everyone is asleep and the caller him/herself is carefully hidden under a desk, table or other sound-blocking devise. It goes without saying, but Anibal told me anyway, that these callers are “scared, but they are curious.” They are likely aware of the threat of state repression; they are keenly aware of the potential of losing their jobs, and facing social mockery and condemnation. However, they are curious to know more about queerness. If bodiless, these callers manage to voice issues, explore themes, and create a queered space of dialogue--one composed of thoughts and voices if not in-the-flesh people. I would add that they are queering the airwaves; if not “visible” themselves, these curious callers are making audible the issue of sexual difference in Nicaragua.

While Anibal hopes to “visibilizar” sexuality difference through the air waves, Isabel takes a more textual approach. Isabel is the founder and publisher of Humanas, a “magazine for the visibility of lesbians and their human rights.” Humanas has a full color, glossy cover, Gustav Klimt’s golden-purple divas, wrapped in each others’ arms. Inside there are articles about the right to love freely, stories of lesbian successes in other countries, lesbian erotic poetry written by Nicaraguan women. In seeking to establish lesbian visibility, Isabel does not describe leaving the closet, but instead insists that it is important to “remove the mask, to come out from behind a mask of invisibility.” This masking metaphor, like the title of Anibal’s radio show (Sin Mascaras), suggests a departure from the trope of the closet. However this visibility is limited in the sense that authors remain anonymous just as callers remain name and body-less.

Isabel and her Group for Lesbian Visibility obtained funding for Humanas at the Gay Games in Amsterdam where Isabel met with, and convinced, a Dutch funding agency to foot the bill for Nicaragua’s first, and only, lesbian magazine. Unfortunately, no follow up funds have appeared. Isabel says that she would like to send a copy of Humanas to every member of the Nicaraguan National Assembly and had she the money, she would. She is hoping for still more visibility. But, again, this visibility, this time in print, takes an anonymous form. Literally, the poems are by “anonymous” and the political/cultural articles all have pseudonyms for their bylines. The fold-out poster in the magazine’s center seam, two thin, long-fingernailed women kissing in black and white, tells us neither the name of the photographer nor the models (who appear, to my eye, to be European or North American). That Humanas exists, and is distributed around the nation, suggests that the magazine is fulfilling one of its goals of lesbian visibility. However, this visibility is only delivered through anonymity.

This anonymous form of strategic sexuality manages to project queerness into media spaces. In other words, lesbian, bisexual and homosexual subjects are, as Anibal or Isabel would say, “unmasked.” The queer subject that is manifested through these various projects may be without a body, but not without a voice. There are not actual blood and bone people to form a moving target for state repression or neighborhood harassment, but rather, an altogether removed target--dispersed through air waves and print. Instead of marking particular bodies with particular “identities,” these activist projects appear to be redefining queer subjectivity by taking identifiable people (who can be marked, mocked and incarcerated) out of the mix. Voices on the night time air waves, poets with pseudonyms and tales from the world wide web all congeal to create queer characters everywhere, who are no-one in particular; they are becoming ubiquitous if anonymous.

NORMALIDAD: TELEVISED LESBIANS AND BROKEN-HANDED HOMOS

Nicaraguan cable TV, the little screen that has come to represent so much to local media culture and knowledge is not so different from its big screen cousin. Like Hollywood-styled homosexuals, queer characters on Nicaraguan TV screens tend to have two, polar opposite, faces. As is the case in the global media of syndicated US TV shows and mass-distributed blockbuster movies, queer characters generally abide by certain, stereotypical images. There is the flaming fag or his sister in struggle the man-hating dyke. On the flip side is the hyper-normal white gay man or the professional, partnered lesbian both of whom ascribe to middle class, Northern values of home, hearth and retirement plans; their only apparent difference is their gender choice in partner. These are the “normalized” homosexuals.

During the Pride festivities that take place every June in Managua, a local NGO hosted a research presentation about young queer men. During the question and answer period, a participant suggested that now that gays and lesbians are on TV, there is no reason to worry about rights for sexual minorities. He cited the hugely popular soap-opera/sit-com Betty la Fea (Betty the Ugly) and its “gay” character, Hugo Lombardi, as evidence of this new-found tolerance for queerness in the media. Hugo, however, is outrageously “effeminate” by North American standards and “broken handed” by Nicaraguan standards. One of the panelist responded by saying, “this is not the kind of homosexual I want to be...and I don’t think that he (the TV character) represents anything good for gay people.” Hugo the Gay, then, represents the flamboyant end of the queer media spectrum and whether this representation is “good for gay people” remains contested. The issue at hand is the power of representation--how queer, or how “normal” should TV characters be—and how will their performance of non-heterosexuality address the discriminatory practices of the state and society? In Nicaragua, the strategics tend toward normalization and the creation of lesbian, gay and homosexual subjects rather than embracing the cochón or the loca (literally, “crazy”—a term often used for cross-dressing or very flamboyant cochones) or the marimacha.

Every Sunday at 4pm “El Sexto Sentido,” (the Sixth Sense) appears on Nicaraguan TVs on the country's most-watched TV channel. The show was rated the most popular program amongst Nicaraguan youth, its target audience. There is even a Sexto fan club. Produced by Puntos de Encuentro, a Nicaraguan feminist NGO and supported by funds from USAID, Sexto is a soap-opera/sit-com, which focuses on the lives of 3 young women and 3 young men. Funding requests to USAID described the show as a Nicaraguan version of the US produced situation comedy, “Friends.” Sexto’s director, Iliana, described that, “the main objective is to impact public opinion (and) promote values and relations of justice and equality.” She went onto to explain that in order to transform social values, the TV characters themselves must undergo “a process of self-discovery” that will then, presumably, be mirrored by the viewing audience. The specifics of self-discovery in the show attend to “identities, the changing roles of men and women, romantic and sexual relationships, and self-esteem.” In other words, “identities” are critical to the successful projection of values, and gender and sexuality are key elements within these identity constructs. The director went on to explain that, “by entertaining we are best able to get our message across...we have discussed the issue of homosexuality, openly, since the first episode, because one of the principle characters is gay.”

Sexto’s gay character, Angel is, as a screenwriter explained, “so damn likeable, its impossible to hate him for anything…he is the kind of gay character we have to create…one that is beyond reproach.” And Angel is pretty angelic. He is “declared” as being attracted to men and has a boyfriend. He and his boyfriend appear to embody a northern model of egalitarian, as opposed to role-based, homosexual coupling. Neither one is more “macho” than the other. Neither of them ever behaves like a loca. Angel and his boyfriend, in addition to being terribly likeable, represent a particular configuration of a homosexual subject, one that has more in common with the homosexuals familiar, for example, to the funders at USAID, than he does with the local, cochón, maricon or loca so familiar in Nicaragua. In other words, Angel performs a particular kind of queer being: the homosexual rather than the cochón. However, what is not screened also says something about the strategics of sexuality in contemporary Nicaragua. The erasure of queer subjects such as the cochón, forecloses visibility for this local queer character. In exchange for the normalized homosexual, the cochón disappears, at least in the TV serial world of Angel and his friends.

Vicki, Sexto Sentido’s cinematic lesbian, arrives on the show about mid-way through the season. She is young with long hair. She wears lipstick, hair clips, strappy tank tops and tight, hipster jeans. She is the epitome of citified youth femininity. Behind the scenes, among the scriptwriters there has been some controversy. Should Vicki have a girlfriend on the show, and if so, how should that girlfriend behave and look? Martina explained that, “we don’t know if Vicki should have a feminine girlfriend to break the stereotypes or whether she should have a more masculine girlfriend.” If Vicki has a female partner on the show who is less feminine in appearance than Vicki, this would affirm a commonly held belief in Nicaragua: only femininas couple with cochonas because only role-based genders (“feminine” and “masculine”) determine homoerotic coupling. Following the logic that purportedly reigns in the heterosexual world, femininity and masculinity create the couple...even if the couple is composed of two women. Before any girlfriend can be constructed, however, Vicki must declare herself to the viewing audience.

The unveiling of Vicki as a lesbian was of concern to the NGO who produces the show and a focus group was convened to see how Vicki might be interpreted by young viewers (15–24 years of age). The inquiry was meant to discern how well the audience had adopted a key principle of the larger campaign, “We are Different, but We are Equal" of which Sexto Sentido is a part. In the focus group, a series of clips from the show are screened for participants and they are asked to reflect on what they mean. When Vicki first appears in the series, the plot tension has focused on the friendship between Vicki and Alejandra; the subtext was that Vicki may in fact have some designs on her (heretofore heterosexual) female friend. Vicki does things like hug Alejandra for a little “too long” and she is never interested in dating men. Vicki says things like, “come on Ale, you know that guys aren’t my type.” Up until the episode being screened for the focus group, Vicki has only made innuendos, hints, and glances. But in the official “declaring” scene, Alejandra is left with no doubt that her friend is a “lesbian.” Vicki tells Alejandra, “look, I don’t want to be with guys. I like women. I mean I like women, not men. I’m a lesbian Ale.” Alejandra appears shocked by this news, and seems to want to have nothing to do with Vicki.

The seven focus group participants are asked, in turn, to comment on the characters and their behavior. One young woman said, “Well, I see Vicki as normal, and that she should be treated like a normal person, like one of us.” Another added “We should accept her like a normal person.” The facilitator, hired by the NGO, probes, “So, Vicki is not normal because she is a lesbian?” to which someone answers, “Yes she’s a normal person, the only thing is that she likes women.” But another disagrees, “In this sense, because she likes women, she’s not normal, but the rest of her, yes, is normal.” Clearly, the young women are still processing the idea of Vicki’s normalcy, they are, as a group, un-decided as to whether she is really, or only partially, “normal” in terms of her sexuality.

The next set of questions is meant to probe deeper, encouraging the participants to extend the TV lesson into their own lives. The facilitator asks, “What do you think about the way Alejandra acted toward Vicki? What would you have done?” The question causes a pause. After thinking about it for a minute or so, one young woman responds, “Ale should help Vicki to not be a lesbian anymore.” Another participant counters, “Ale should accept her.” Finally, it is suggested that, “Ale should tell her to go out with guys so that she can get rid of this lesbian thing.” When the participants are asked whether anything similar has happened to them or anyone they know, there is a round of “nos,” head shaking and silence. Finally, one young woman says:

Last year at school, there was this girl, Corelia. She always dressed like a guy and I think she was gay. And they said that she was with this other girl, Luisa, and one time Corelia, the gay girl, invited the other one over to her house and she invited her in her room... and she told her that she was a lesbian. Then Luisa took off. So Corelia left school because Luisa wasn’t into it.

While the girls in the focus group translate what happens on the small screen into real-world situations, there is a big difference between the real-life gay girl, Corelia, and Vicki, the cinematic lesbian. Corelia “dresses like a guy” while Vicki is always clad in trendy gear and lipstick. The TV lesbian does not fit the stereotype of the cochona, the marimacha, the tomboy or the dyke. She is, like Angel, a homosexual character who is not quite like the neighborhood marimacha or cochon so familiar to the Nicaraguan audience. Vicki represents a new kind of homosexual being: the “lesbian.” Indeed, more than a few times during the focus group discussion the participants begin to refer to Vicki as a “la coch—“ only to correct themselves, “I mean, lesbiana.” The final discussions and outcome of the focus group does, however, suggest that young female viewers “translate” Vicki, as a “lesbian” into the “gay girl who dressed like a guy” of their past experience. The viewers aren’t at the point of believing that a woman “liking women” is normal, but there is something that rings “normal” in Vicki. I would argue that what is normal about her is her femininity, her fit with Nicaraguan values of well groomed girlishness. Her gender then, appears normal, even if her sexuality is not. Vicki is seamlessly performed as a “lesbian,” not a cochona, tortillera or marimacha. Like Angel, she does not fit the neighborhood norm in Nicaragua of the sexually different. Whether a qualitatively different queer character, the cochona, ever makes it to the small screen has yet to be seen.

PERFORMING IN PRINT

In the circulatory paths of cable and local TV, queer personages emerge in carefully performed constructions. These strategic queer subjects also circulate in more quotidian forms of media, such as the press. In early April of 2001, El Nuevo Diario, the more progressive of the two national newspapers, became a site of homoerotic moralizing and religious/political pontificating. The paper ran news stories about Dutch gay weddings which quickly generated a series of responses. The spin included a Nicaraguan gay priest who is being “cured” of his homosexuality and an article claiming there are no lesbian or gay “couples” in Nicaragua. In the midst of this front-page negotiation of cultural morals, a European Union functionary denounced the extraordinary level of corruption in the current Nicaraguan regime. While the president, the primary thief in this case, would be expected to respond to such an accusation, instead the Catholic cardinal declared, “let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” In other words, the recent “sin” of the Europeans—to allow gay and lesbian marriages—should demonstrate that they have no right to place “moral” judgment on other nations’ corruption. The cardinal went on to say, “only in those corrupt governments, where the people are loose, could this (lesbian and gay marriages) have occurred.” In a novel rhetorical turn, the cardinal managed to seamlessly substitute so called “moral corruption” (that would be lesbian/gay marriage) for the rampant financial corruption of the Alemán regime.

The newspaper, attempting to be even-handed in its reporting, requested that a local NGO write a two page, photo-filled, article on the subject of lesbians and gays in Nicaragua. The NGO team assigned to work on the article were asked their opinions as to how the article should be focused. It was decided that “gay couples” would be the focus, in order to respond to the Cardenal’s comment that this kind of coupling is sinful. Monica, who was in charge of the project explained, “we are not going to be “apologists” for gays...but we want to critique the stereotypes.” Then there is brainstorming about what the stereotypes of lesbians and gays might be. Lila suggests that gays are thought to be promiscuous. Thus it is decided that the emphasis of the article will be on testimonials with gays and lesbians who have been in a long-term, stable relationships for years. “This is not about the “locas,” Monica says, “this is about good, stable lesbian and gay couples.” Monica, for one, is careful to distance the locas from the “good couples.” In other words, her strategics of sexuality include emphasizing monogamous commitment as a foil to “crazy” fags. Next the question of children is raised and Veronica declares, “look gays and lesbians are just like heterosexuals, they want to have families and children…we need to emphasize this.” Like stable coupledom, family formation appears to be a critical element in validating the “good” gays and lesbians that will appear in the newspaper article. However, there is a glitch. Cristian reminds the group that a recent survey of Nicaraguans showed that the overwhelming majority of the population was “very opposed” to homosexuals or lesbians having or raising children. Ultimately, the issue of queer parenting was omitted from the final version of the article. What did end up in print were testimonials, emphasizing long-term, stable, shared-living space relationships between two women or two men.

The implicit message of the newspaper article was to emphasize the similarities between “good” gays/lesbians and heterosexual couples, with all of the accoutrements of monogamy, fidelity, child rearing, commitment, etc. Rather than writing about the locas or the cochonas—it is decided that normalization is the required strategy. By devising a strategy where "gay people are just as normal as you and me," a portion of the queer population is undermined, namely those who are most marked, and fit the negative stereotypes: too flamboyant, too feminine or, too mannish, too macho. In attempting to write against the tirades of the Cardenal, queerness becomes transformed into the normalized lesbian and gay couple. This is a logical response to the fundamentalist-styled baiting provoked by the Cardenal. However, it is also a particular kind of tactic--an approach which opts for a process of normalization as a way to gain social acceptance for queer people. The trade off is that there is an erasure of the queerest end of the spectrum. As Monica pointed out, this is not about the locas.

CONCLUSIONS: AND NOW A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR

The queered media strategics of sexuality in Nicaragua operate on the principle that the meaning of sexuality, specifically negative stereotypes, must be transformed. Utilizing particular strategies, activists have appropriated techniques to bring “privates” into public display in the hopes of creating a more tolerant place for queer Nicaraguans. State repression of homosexuality, now as in the past, has shifted the sites of sexuality strategics: from the street to the screen, or from the rap group to the radio airwaves. Rather than quieting queer rumblings, a repressive state has multiplied the quantity of queer characters in the Nicaraguan mediascape. This new level of visibility has also meant a qualitative shift in meaning for queerness, which has adopted two particular styles: the anonymous queer subject or the normalized “lesbian” or “homosexual.”

I have argued that part of this process of transformation means that the cochona and her male counterpart, the cochón are, through their absence, transformed into the lesbian and the homosexual. The “cochoneros” who have sex with cochones but retain their macho status, or the feminine-looking women who sleep with other women but are considered “real women” who just “hang around” with dykes, are also un-represented in these media tactics. Queer characters are performed in a way that is familiar to the normalized models of the north. However, what may become lost in this strategy is an explicit focus on the qualities of difference. The values and critique which non-heterosexual people bring to the moral/social/political equation in Nicaragua, as in other places, may be erased in favor of “more acceptable” or more “normal” forms of non-heterosexuality. While similar debates concerning the orientation and subjects of gay/lesbian/bisexual/queer politics have occurred in the US and Europe, the South (in this case Nicaragua) offers a distinct and valuable perspective.

The south continues to labor under the economic and political imperialism of the north. Likewise the strategics of sexuality, the parameters of queerness that are constructed in the south, face the exigencies of northern funding agencies alongside age-old Catholic colonialism. Ignoring those in the non-heterosexual world who are most stigmatized: the fag, the dyke, the sissy and the butch—means exchanging certain sexual subjects for more internationally recognizable, perhaps more fund-able, characters “the homosexual/lesbian/gay.” This is not to say that some pristine form of indigenous queerness should be preserved in Nicaragua, or in other places. Rather, I hope to have called attention to the shifts of meaning that occur when “taboo and private” issues are re-cast into the media fray.

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Alyssa Cymene Howe received her doctoral degree from the Department of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. Her dissertation research focused upon the construction of political subjectivity in contemporary Nicaragua—particularly within feminist, and lesbian and homosexual activist communities in Managua. Cymene’s research (2001–2002) was funded by a Fulbright Dissertation Research Grant and analyzes the discourses of human rights activism, gender construction, and "strategic sexualities" in neoliberal Nicaragua. Her pre-dissertation fieldwork in San Francisco, CA documented the ways in which the City is constructed as a mythical homeland and pilgrimage site for constructing queer communitas.

Cymene has taught courses at the University of New Mexico and San Francisco State University in Anthropology and Women's Studies. She has also directed and produced documentary videos which have screened in festivals internationally.