ABSTRACT
As mentioned in the previous chapter, it is crucial that any discussions of a queer agenda are contextual and take into account the varying needs and experiences of individuals around the world based on their geographical location. Moreover, it is also important to examine the ways that policies and laws enacted in one country can cause backlash in other countries around the world. In this chapter, Rivera and Sanchez posit that in Latin American countries, like Brazil, Chile, and Perú, dominant U.S. frameworks adversely contributed to an increase in bigoted discursive practices due to the vulgarization of queer issues. In the aftermath of the 2015 legal approval of same-sex marriage in the in U.S. Defining progressiveness in the Americas in regards to Queer Human Rights (QHR) is a paradoxical challenge when considering the marked increase in violence and intolerance against queer people in Brazil, Chile, and Perú. The health and wellbeing of queer people in Brazil, Chile, and Perú on the surface, suggests progress. Yet when viewing the increase of statistical and trackable records of violence against queer people, Rivera and Sanchez argue that this sense of progressiveness then leaves the realm of the real and enters the realm of the imaginary. Attempting to define progressiveness, requires navigating between the ambivalence of how real progressiveness is defined in international law and how imagined progressiveness has driven social perceptions founded on heteronormative assumptions. Brazil for its size, Chile for its economic development, and Perú for its economic rebirth, are idealized as among the most progressive countries in Latin America with regards to Human Rights; additionally, based on the fact that all three countries were original members of the General Assembly of the United Nations, this membership directly attests to the imagined potential of progressiveness that these Latin American countries sought to represent. Therefore, these three countries are identified as offering real progressiveness to the queer community when in actuality Rivera and Sanchez argue that the concept of progressiveness in Brazil, Chile, and Perú is imagined. Without any rights attached to this imagined state of progressiveness there can be no guaranteed allocation of benefits or protections under the law for queer individuals in these countries. Finally, this chapter like others in this volume shows us that many queer and trans people are facing issues of life and death—issues that marriage rights do not address.
