“Un beso político:” the Chilean Queer Political Movement from Dictatorship to Democracy, 1973-1994

In 1992, a year after the democratically elected president Patricio Alwyn officially received the Rettig Report on the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship’s human rights abuses, a commemorative human rights march paraded through Santiago. After the Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos (AFDD, the Association of Families of the Detained-Disappeared), Comisión Chilena de Derechos Humanos (CCHDDHH, Chilean Commission of Human Rights), and other prominent human rights organizations passed, a dozen or so masked gay men appeared at the end of the parade and held up the banner “For our fallen siblings, MOVILH Homosexual Movement of Liberation (Por nuestros hermanos caídos, MOVILH Movimiento de Liberación Homosexual).” The groundbreaking appearance was the first time a queer organization in Chile publicly linked itself to an ongoing and politicized human rights struggle.