As a 17-year-old, Elam Del Castillo learned about queer-friendly cafés while watching a fútbol tournament in Cochabamba, Bolivia. “They told me, ‘It’s not an LGBT café, but it is a café where they accept you,” Del Castillo tells Refinery29 Somos. “They don’t throw you out, and [the] owners know trans, gay, and lesbian people go through there.”
About a decade earlier, in 1994, Pol Martínez Peredo, general director of the Musas de Metal Grupo de Mujeres Gay A.C., and his then-partner started their search for other lesbians and bisexuals to befriend and be in community with. It was a radio program — transmitted only on Sundays, late at night — that helped them build connections to other queer folks in Mexico City. “There wasn’t the Internet or anything, so that program was the first one that I’d heard of that was openly about gays,” he says.
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Like Puerto Rican-Venezuelan activist Sylvia Rivera during New York's Stonewall riots and Mexican American Felicia Elizondo's uprising at Compton's Cafeteria in California, sapphics throughout Latin America and the Caribbean are finding community through any means and attempting to either build spaces, even if they are transient, or co-opt already-existing places and make room for themselves. While creating safe physical spaces made explicitly for Latina lesbians and other sapphics is important, the main goal is to come together to strengthen community via compassion and acceptance — leaving behind transphobia and identity policing. To defy the colonialist and heterocentric patriarchy requires a united front. This is the foundation our queer foremothers laid, and while there is still work to do, there are a lot of possibilities when we come together.
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"This is the foundation our queer foremothers laid, and while there is still work to do, there are a lot of possibilities when we come together."
Sofia Viera
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In Mexico City, for Martínez Peredo, who is transmasculine but lived most of his life as a lesbian, it was a struggle to find a way to gather with other lesbians. Looking through magazines to find queer meetups, he learned these publications didn’t cater to him. “They were for gay men, and they would sell them in newspaper stands,” he says. “There weren’t any lesbian ones. But one time, I saw this [lesbian ad] inside one of the magazines. We bought it, and we wanted to find the place [that was advertised], but… we couldn’t manage to leave. It wasn’t so easy then to leave the house or come back late.”
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But even if he had joined them, he likely would soon realize that it wasn’t an accepting place for all. “The feminist movement, especially the lesbian feminists of Mexico City, are very transphobic,” he adds. “We didn’t like that stance, so we couldn’t come to an agreement.” So in 1995, Martínez Peredo alongside Irma Magalli Piña Bedolla started Musas de Metal, a group that encourages its members to identify as they please.
Maru Rosa Hernández, along other femmes, similarly created their own space in Puerto Rico because they had never been a part of one. In 2016, they helped found transfeminist art collective Culto e’ Piña. “That would be the first queer space that I was a part of because it was created between us, by lesbians and bisexual women,” they say.
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"That would be the first queer space that I was a part of because it was created between us, by lesbians and bisexual women."
Maru Rosa Hernández
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And in Bolivia, fútbol didn’t just change the course of Del Castillo’s life. “Generally, LGBTQ resistance starts there,” she says. That space led her and others to the cafés, which only accepted the LGBT+ population on specific days. “Sunday came and it was the day for the LGTBI community at the restaurant,” says Del Castillo, the national coordinator for La Red de mujeres lesbianas y bisexuales de Bolivia (Red LB Bol). “The green light was a signal for those in the community to go and have fun there. Generally, Sunday is a family day. From a fundamentalist perspective, Sundays at 6 p.m. are when female and male family roles are reinforced.”
Being able to come together gave them the opportunity to organize and put pressure on the government to ensure they had equitable rights, too. The adoption of Bolivia’s new constitution in 2009, which added protections against sexual identity and gender-based discrimination, meant queer communities became more visible in Bolivia. In Cochabamba, in particular, they began to create their own events. Queer pageants with titles like “Miss Lesbian” or “Mister Gay” sprung up. They rented out entire boliches, or nightclubs, to celebrate themselves just as they were. And instead of passing on knowledge discreetly, they posted online to draw bigger crowds. Simultaneously, in Santa Cruz, there were also daytime activities, queer-owned restaurants, and cultural centers that popped up.
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"They rented out entire boliches, or nightclubs, to celebrate themselves just as they were."
Sofia Viera
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Still, it’s not easy to start a queer-owned space. “Permits aren’t easy to get in Bolivia,” Del Castillo says. “You have to show capital. You have to ask the Càmara of Commerce. You have to be a ‘sociedad anónima’ (a public corporation) if you are more than two owners. There’s an environmental permit, and if it’s a bar or nightclub, there can’t be a church or schools within five blocks.” And even if they’ve managed it all and started their own business — there’s still issues down the line that can threaten their livelihoods. “There are a lot of administrative fines,” she adds. “And when there is an owner who is lesbian, bisexual, nonbinary, or any other identity, then the fines will be even more direct, even worse.”
The same issues plague queer owners in Puerto Rico. Loverbar, a now-shuttered queer-owned bar and vegan restaurant that opened in mid-2020, also dealt with exorbitant administrative fines in Río Piedras.
Hernández was a frequent visitor of Loverbar. If the bar was open, Hernández was probably there. They made community, discovered their gender identity, and even met their current partner there. They loved being in the space so much, they started helping out. Eventually, the owner, Jhoni Jackson, hired them officially. Now, they’re the events coordinator for the nonprofit organization La Sombrilla Cuir in Puerto Rico. “[Loverbar] was [a space] that brought safety for people,” Hernández says. We know that not everyone feels that way, but for many people, it was a safe space that brought so much happiness and community.”
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"[Loverbar] was [a space] that brought safety for people. We know that not everyone feels that way, but for many people, it was a safe space that brought so much happiness and community."
Maru Rosa Hernández
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In July 2021, police raided the space. Ten officers with assault rifles blocked the entrance to the bar as more made their way inside. Under the pretense of checking permits, officials exerted their power, traumatizing those in attendance in the process. Officers fined the owner. The fees combined with the bar’s already-precarious economic situation forced it to close a few months later.
While the targeted attack was unfair, it revealed that behind the scenes there was potentially a toxic culture. Speculations surfaced of mistreatment with select staff, blowing up to an unprecedented degree all over social media and souring the image and memory that Loverbar cultivated.
“They understood me as a person,” Hernández says. “We would sit down to talk about our lives, about our experiences, about what hurt us, about what made us happy. That space specifically was a necessary one, and it’s still necessary because we don’t have one right now.”
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"They understood me as a person. We would sit down to talk about our lives, about our experiences, about what hurt us, about what made us happy. That space specifically was a necessary one, and it’s still necessary because we don’t have one right now."
Maru Rosa Hernández
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Instead, as Regner Ramos, associate professor of architecture at the University of Puerto Rico and creator of the queer mapping project Cüirtopia, says, “We'll be able to borrow certain spaces, and have them for a particular night. Then that space becomes a regular heterosexual space. The trade-off is that we never really own any of these places. We're at the mercy of somebody lending us a space.”
Hernández attributes the lack of spaces not to an absence of desire, but to the displacement of marginalized communities and in-fighting. “Sometimes it’s because of conflicts that happen inside the same community that don’t allow these spaces to be created,” they say.
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But Martínez Peredo’s experiences are proof that it’s possible to move forward. When he was looking for community all those years ago, it was a time when our lesbian foremothers didn’t have the words to identify themselves by the standards we have now. Instead, there were strict identities and a lack of adaptability, which led to Martínez Peredo feeling isolated. And though it’s still not perfect, things are changing with Musas de Metal forming a relationship with Red de Madres Lesbianas in the last few years.
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"I believe that safe spaces for lesbians are always under construction because while there are many challenges that we still have to overcome, we remain entrenched in the idea that loving ourselves and living sapphically is our right."
Julia Nava
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There is also a newer generation taking over legacy organizations and starting their own — all while creatively making these spaces more permanent. Julia Nava, an educator and organizer in the Espacia Lavanda, is one of them. “I believe that safe spaces for lesbians are always under construction because while there are many challenges that we still have to overcome, we remain entrenched in the idea that loving ourselves and living sapphically is our right,” she says.
Espacia Lavanda hosted workshops, meet-ups, book club meetings, dance classes, and more in the Espacio Cultural Casasola in Mexico City, but this physical safe space didn’t last long because of gentrification and safety issues. “We’re left without a physical space, but we keep building from virtual spaces and from the radio, thanks to Violeta Radio,” Nava says.
While secure and permanent physical spaces for sapphics are necessary in all of Latin America, the reality is that community should always come first. The first step to creating safe spaces is creating a community that feels safe, one that prioritizes protecting each other. Spaces mean nothing if the people aren’t there to fill them. “My refuge became my lesbian friends when we got together to go out in spaces,” Nava says. “While we stood out and were not exactly secure, we felt safe by just the fact that we were inhabiting them together.”
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