Intimate Activism: The Struggle for Sexual Rights in Postrevolutionary Nicaragua - Softcover

Howe, Cymene

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822354500 ISBN 13: 9780822354505

Publisher: Duke University Press, 2013

Synopsis

Intimate Activism tells the story of Nicaraguan sexual-rights activists who helped to overturn the most repressive antisodomy law in the Americas. The law was passed shortly after the Sandinistas lost power in 1990 and, to the surprise of many, was repealed in 2007. In this vivid ethnography, Cymene Howe analyzes how local activists balanced global discourses regarding human rights and identity politics with the contingencies of daily life in Nicaragua. Though they were initially spurred by the antisodomy measure, activists sought to change not only the law but also culture. Howe emphasizes the different levels of intervention where activism occurs, from mass-media outlets and public protests to meetings of clandestine consciousness-raising groups. She follows the travails of queer characters in a hugely successful telenovela, traces the ideological tensions within the struggle for sexual rights, and conveys the voices of those engaged in "becoming" lesbianas and homosexuales in contemporary Nicaragua.

About this title

About the Author

Cymene Howe is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Core Faculty in the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Rice University. She is coeditor, with Gilbert Herdt, of 21st Century Sexualities: Contemporary Issues in Health, Education, and Rights.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Intimate Activism

The Struggle for Sexual Rights in Postrevolutionary Nicaragua

By CYMENE HOWE

Duke University Press

Copyright © 2013 Duke University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8223-5450-5

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS............................................................
ix
INTRODUCTION The Struggle.................................................
1
1. A History of Sexuality..................................................
23
2. Intimate Pedagogies.....................................................
61
3. Pride and Prejudice.....................................................
92
4. Mediating Sexual Subjectivities.........................................
128
CONCLUSION Getting the Word Out...........................................
160
NOTES......................................................................
173
REFERENCES.................................................................
197
INDEX......................................................................
221

CHAPTER 1

A History of Sexuality

How to overturn Things

The heat of the afternoon seemed to be retreating as Migueland I finished off our last gulp of sugary coffee. In the working-classneighborhood of Managua where Miguel lived, thewoman in charge of the fritanga (outdoor eatery) down thestreet was heating the grill for pollo asado while one of herdaughters arranged little plastic chairs around tables in thestreet for the night's dining. As the usual evening rituals unfolded,Miguel began to narrate how he had become involvedin the lucha for sexual rights and how this articulated with hisparticipation in the revolutionary project. After years of commitmentto the Sandinista cause and of performing his dutiesas a loyal soldier, Miguel was summarily dismissed from theSandinista army. Although the Contra war demanded massivetroop deployments and the continuation of an unpopular militarydraft, Miguel's superiors were dismayed by his behaving"like a cochón." According to Miguel, the officers thought hewas "too broken-wristed"—or, in North American terms, tooeffeminate for military service. They were worried about hisimpact on the other men in his unit and therefore asked him to resignhis post. Even after he was castigated and discharged, Miguel continuedto actively support Nicaragua's revolutionary party, the Frente Sandinistade Liberación Nacional (FSLN). He also became one of the earliest andmost declarado (declared, out) advocates for what he called derechos homosexuales(homosexual rights). Miguel understood his revolutionary commitments,whether Sandinista or within the struggle for sexual rights, asintimately linked processes. Indeed, he drew very explicit parallels betweenthese two political projects. "What the battle against the dictatorshipand the revolutionary struggle taught us here in Nicaragua," he explained,"was how to overturn things."

The history that led Nicaragua from decades of dictatorship to the Sandinistarevolution and finally to the lucha for sexual rights is marked bya series of "overturnings." Peasant revolutionaries at the beginning of thecentury, Marxist university students in the 1960s, feminists in the 1990s,and sexual rights advocates in the contemporary era have all faced bothtensions and triumphs in their political struggles. In this chapter, I describehow sexuality as a concept has been used to legitimate differentkinds of moral paradigms and political projects in Nicaragua, from theera of Somocismo (1937–79) through the Sandinista revolutionary period(1979–90) and into the neoliberal climate of the early twenty-first century.Contemporary sexual rights activism, I argue, has been fundamentallyshaped by three overlapping and sometimes competing phenomena: theSandinista revolutionary project; Nicaraguan feminism and gender advocacy;and U.S. economic, political, and military intervention. The variousways in which sexual rights advocates have grappled with these politicaldynamics illustrate how activists engage with their country's past,and present, place in the world. As political histories are rememberedand reconstructed in particular ways, significant political events and erascan provide opportunities for advocates to situate sexual rights as ethicalprojects. Activists' work in the contemporary moment is necessarilyinformed by the politics of the past, and a vital aspect of activists' interventionsis to evaluate, mediate, and craft the chronoscape of Nicaragua'spolitical history.

In different ways, and to different degrees, revolution, feminism, andthe specter of imperialism all have contributed to the shape of sexualrights in Nicaragua. It would be impossible, for example, to narrate a politicalhistory of Nicaragua without accounting for the massive influenceof U.S. intrusions in the country from the colonial era to the present. Justas U.S. intervention spurred many revolutionaries to action, the legacy ofimperialism continues to motivate sexual rights activists, in the wake ofrevolution, to emphasize their national heritage of social transformation.Political exchanges between the global North and Nicaragua do explain,in part, how liberal discourses have made their way into sexual rightsstruggles in Nicaragua. However, at the same time, the legacy of U.S. imperialismcompels Nicaraguan activists to be wary of Northern politicalforms, including liberal individualism and identity politics. Partly in responseto this history of intervention, activists have been cautious aboutadopting the sexual identities, categories, and political strategies that areoften associated with the United States.

The fall of the dictatorship and the ensuing Sandinista project providedpractical experience for a generation of sexual rights activists. Butit also—and, perhaps, more importantly—furnished a political modelthat combined diverse ideological forms, blending them into a relativelyunified vision for social transformation. Even as contemporary activistsengage with politically liberal notions of sexual subjectivity and humanrights, they draw from a national political history based on communitarianideals and a hybrid approach to social justice. Sexual rights advocateshave also been very aware of the ways in which Sandinismo failed toprovide for a full range of rights, particularly for women and sexual minorities.During the Sandinista era, political participation among Nicaraguanwomen increased dramatically. As the Nicaraguan feminist intellectualSofia Montenegro put it, women became "protagonists in their own history"(quoted in Field 1999: 132), and greater numbers of women becamemore explicitly engaged with national politics. Although some womenhad been politically active before the revolution, the new opportunitiesafforded by the Sandinista era allowed women to more fully negotiate thepolitical and bureaucratic nuances of the Nicaraguan state. As they soughtto remediate the particular forms of discrimination that women faced—includinglegal barriers and structural inequalities, as well as those seen tobe cultural, such as the abuses of machismo—many Nicaraguan womengained skills that would prove invaluable in their work with internationalallies and development agencies in the decades to come. Feminism andwomen's politicization were critical to the development of lesbian andgay politics in Nicaragua. For many activists, gender politics and sexualrights are intimately related projects, both personally and politically. Theoverlapping agendas of gender and sexual rights, as well as the tensionsbetween them, inform contemporary activist interventions in ways thatare both explicitly articulated and implicitly understood. Just as the historyof Nicaragua must be viewed in light of imperial impositions, so, too,are the politics of gender and sexuality deeply intertwined projects in thenation's history.

From Imperial outpost to Revolutionary Beacon: Sandino, Somocismo, and Sexuality

Many Nicaraguans are fond of an expression that I would often hear themsay in wise resignation: "Here in Nicaragua, we are so far from God andso close to the United States." In other words, God may be preoccupiedwith many things, but Uncle Sam seems ever vigilant, keeping Nicaraguacarefully trained within the crosshairs of U.S. military power. Fromoutright interventions—such as installing dictators sympathetic to U.S.interests or U.S. officials' making "voting recommendations" to the Nicaraguanelectorate—the relationship between the United States and Nicaraguahas been one of very uneven power dynamics. Indeed, the fledglingstate of Nicaragua was marred from the beginning by U.S. intervention.Within a few years of the country's independence (1838), William Walker,a U.S. national, trekked to Nicaragua where he managed to establish politicalleverage by taking advantage of a long-standing political rivalry betweenthe conservatives and the liberals. Walker, a "white supremacist,"seized control of the country, declared himself President of the Republic,instituted slavery, and proclaimed English the country's official language(Field 1999: 789). Walker's foray was short-lived; he was ousted andthen executed less than two years into his reign. His brief political coup,however, was a harbinger of future U.S. political, economic, and militaryinterventions. While Nicaragua is a country that has endured myriad impositions,it is also true that Nicaraguans have responded, often very profoundly,to assaults on their sovereignty.

An enduring icon of Nicaragua's anti-imperialist spirit is embodied inthe national hero, Augusto César Sandino (Ramírez 1981; Ramírez andConrad 1990). Sandino, from whom the Sandinistas took their name,continues to be memorialized throughout Nicaragua. Representationsof his oversize hat are still spray-painted on walls and sidewalks andscratched into trees and wooden benches. Sandino honed his legendaryanti-imperialism in battles against the U.S. Marines who, in an effort toprotect U.S. political and financial interests, occupied Nicaragua from1912 to 1933. Sandino rallied his peasant army in the 1920s, calling foran end to U.S. occupation. He famously declared, "The liberty and sovereigntyof a people are not matters for discussion. They are to be defendedwith arms" (quoted in Collinson 1990: 4). The guerrilla war that Sandinoorchestrated forced the Marines to withdraw, and his victory against sucha daunting enemy rejuvenated Nicaraguan national pride. Sandino alsobecame internationally acclaimed for his anti-imperialism and his adherenceto an idiosyncratic Marxism that rejected communist orthodoxy andwas uncompromisingly nationalist. Sandino's successful confrontation ofU.S. military power made him a hero throughout much of Latin Americain his time and, indeed, for decades to come. His accomplishments, aswell as his mythos, served as inspiration for the Cuban Revolution inthe mid-twentieth century, and his name continues to resonate, for example,in the political rhetoric of Hugo Chávez's Bolivarian Revolution.Sandino's effort to upset the instruments of U.S. power, though legendary,was short-lived; soon after his victory against the Marines he was assassinatedin 1934 by the U.S.-trained Guardia Nacional (National Guard).

Following Sandino's rebellion, the United States managed to maintainits grip on Nicaragua by cultivating a cozy relationship with the Somozafamily, who would rule the country for more than four decades (1937–79)through a series of dynastic dictatorships. There was little questionthat support and advice from successive U.S. administrations guided theSomoza dictatorships. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for example, ratherfamously said of the eldest Somoza, "He may be a son of a bitch, but he'sour son of a bitch." U.S. military personnel were responsible for trainingthe feared National Guard, Nicaraguan nationals who served theSomoza regime through repressive policing and the disappearing of dissidents.Over time, the Somoza family's control over the country evolvedinto Somocismo, a political institution that was characterized by liberaleconomic policies, political repression, nepotism, and the extraction ofboth labor and resources. Although U.S. interests are no longer managedthrough the dictatorial state, the ongoing political and economic influenceof the United States evokes shades of Somocismo for many Nicaraguans.Reflecting on the economic difficulties wrought by neoliberalismand structural adjustment policies in the 1990s and voting suggestionsmade publically by U.S. officials in the 2001 and 2006 elections in Nicaragua'snational newspapers, for example, several Nicaraguans pointedlynoted to me, "Here we are again, living in a Somocista state." History hasnot been forgotten, especially when it comes to U.S. power.

Somocismo codified a particular form of rule, and repression, allowingfor certain kinds of foreign intervention, investment, and extraction. Asthe dictator of a nominally democratic state, Somoza promoted a populistagenda predicated on nepotism and favors to the faithful. Some womenwho demonstrated their loyalty to the regime benefited from employmentand political favors doled out by Somoza. As Victoria González-Rivera(2010, 2011) has demonstrated, women's political participation in the nationalproject has a long and complex history. The first wave of Nicaraguanfeminism, which began in the nineteenth century, lobbied for women'ssuffrage and access to education. However, early feminist politics wouldbe appropriated over time by the partisan and non-feminist projects ofSomocismo. Successive regimes managed a state that consisted, in part,of client-citizens. Within this framework of clientelistic populism, sociallyconservative, economically elite women, as well as middle-classand working-class Nicaraguans who adhered to Somocismo, were ableto acquire benefits from the state (Kettering 1988). Somocismo's populismwas, like other Latin American states at the time, "selectively inclusive"of women and tended to reflect "corporatist favoritism" (Molyneux2000: 56). Through employment opportunities, goods, and other formsof material support, a segment of Nicaragua's female population becameinvested in Somocismo, and women came to form part of the symbolicportrait promoted by the Somozas (González-Rivera 2010, 2011). It was apoint of pride, for example—and one that followed the politically liberallogic of Somocismo—that women achieved the right to vote in 1955 duringthe first phase of the nominally democratic Somoza dynasty. Despitethese concessions, however, the majority of Nicaraguan women lived atthe bottom of a hierarchical, corrupt, and exploitative system that wasmanaged through dictatorial rule. Their status, both economically andsocially, placed them beneath their husbands, many of whom were vulnerableto the vicissitudes of abusive labor conditions and political repression.Most Nicaraguan women had few political and economic toolsthat would enable them to overcome their marginalized position. Overall,the consolidation of power in the hands of the Somozas, for both womenand men, was fraught. It was, according to Jeffrey Gould (1990: 45), both"a contradictory acceptance and simultaneous rejection of the dominantexploitative system." The specific forms of marginalization that womenendured and, more specifically, the way that women's sexuality was exploitedfigured heavily in the portrayal of a sadistic Somocismo and becamea central political trope during the revolutionary era.

Sexual commerce certainly existed in Nicaragua long before the Somozascame to power. However, the dictatorship was—and in many wayscontinues to be—profoundly linked to prostitution in the minds of manyNicaraguans. Prostitution became illegal in the 1880s (an act of vagrancy)but was legalized from the late 1920s to the mid-1950s. The elder Somozadeclared prostitution illegal in 1955 (the same year women's suffrage wasestablished) and brothel managers, male and female, risked prison sentencesfor facilitating sexual labor. However, in reality, the legal maneuverto criminalize prostitution was a ruse. By this time, the Somoza regimeand the National Guard were in full control of the prostitution industryin Nicaragua (González-Rivera 2011: 143) and only those who refused topay the appropriate mordidas (bribes) and protection payments were trulyat risk for prosecution. As one legal scholar put it, "From a legal perspectiveprostitution [was] prohibited; from a sanitary perspective, there [was]no control of prostitution, and from a policing point of view, there [was]no prosecution of prostitution" (E. Mendieta, quoted in González-Rivera2011: 144). The state's role in the sex industry was widely known amongNicaraguans and it was evident that the National Guard and senior officialswere benefiting financially, and otherwise, from what many Nicaraguansunderstood as the sexual exploitation of women who had few otherresources or options. Perhaps more nefariously, it was widely rumoredthat the Somozas tolerated prostitution within their ranks. Many accusationscirculated about prominent Somoza women, claiming they wereprostitutes or had been instrumental in the exploitation of young womenby entreating them to enter into the sex trade.

In addition to their rather explicit profiteering from prostitution, theSomoza dynasty faced further accusations of moral and sexual impropriety.The regime was known to use sexual torture against dissidents, male andfemale, to elicit information from political prisoners and punish politicaladversaries. These brutal techniques to extract information, sometimescarried out by members of the Somoza family (Heyck 1990: 64–67), wererelatively well known among the Nicaraguan population. But it was notuntil a series of high-profile rape cases that the Somoza regime encounteredmore massive public reaction and outcry. Two prominent revolutionariesand a female volunteer with the U.S. Peace Corps were raped bythe National Guard for ostensibly political reasons and their stories werecirculated in international channels (Hoyt 1996: 62; Randall 1981). However,the collective rape of almost twenty peasant women in the town ofEl Cua in 1968 likely remains the most salient reminder of sexual violenceunder Somocismo. The National Guard, in an effort to silence and punishwomen opposed to the Somoza regime, orchestrated the rape to demonstratewhat political dissent might auger. The infamous sexual violencerepresented by the attacks in El Cua, even for many Somocista stalwartsand supporters, was the final straw. Indeed, the legacy of El Cua even almosta half-century later lives on in the collective public imaginary; mostadult Nicaraguans know, by heart, the song composed by Carlos MejiaGodoy about the incident. The Nicaraguan author Viktor Morales Henríquezposited that it was sexual corruption that allowed the first Somozadictatorship to seize control of the country. Over time it would be thatsame sexual impropriety that would undermine any moral authority theregime had accumulated. As Morales Henríquez saw it, it was "plunder,sex and death" that sustained the Somoza dynasty (Morales Henríquez1980: 45). The political rapes carried out by the National Guard in ElCua, coupled with the systematic abuses and exploitation of women whoworked in the nation's state-run brothels, later proved to be precisely theimage of moral and sexual depravity that would animate many Sandinistapolicies to "clean up" the country. Sexuality, as one might predict, becamea key site for programs of moral hygiene.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822354500
• ISBN 13: 9780822354505
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 248