LGBT Memory Project: A ‘Queer of Colour Critique’ Approach in Latin America and Caribbean Museums

Abstract

This article presents the LGBT Memory Project and a mapping of institutions currently constructing a Latin American, LGBTQI+ Museology. The need to reflect on the current conjuncture in Latin America is justified in view of the ultraconservative turn in the political and social fields: one that has affected how museums and museology are constructed and conceived of. We understand LGBT Museology as a concept particular to a museology made by LGBTQI+ people from low-income, working-class communities, who are non-white, Afro-Indigenous and/or live in favelas, especially when it is interested in associating museology with public policies from a Queer-of-Colour-Critique perspective, therefore considering sexuality as well as questions of race, economy, colour, and belonging. Finally, we consider that the aforementioned institutions work towards the construction of a museology capable of overcoming the discipline: one historically practiced by the white elites of Latin America, who are generally invested in making LGBTQI+ communities invisible, and oppressing them by means of several forms of epistemological violence.