“Neither Sick nor Criminal, just Homosexual”. The first commemorations of the stonewall riots in Colombia, 1978-1982

Abstract

The article studies the first commemorations of the Stonewall riots in Colombia, between 1978 and 1982. It focuses on the Colombian Homosexual Liberation Movement, the organization that proposed consolidating that tradition in the country. The study of its different actions on the basis of militants’ testimonies and texts produced by the movement evinces the project’s political intention: to establish a date in order to radicalize a sector that had been marginalized from national politics until then. The study shows that the initial phase of the Colombian lgbt movement was linked to the radical experience of the 1970s. It concludes that the efforts to establish this tradition represent an exercise of political organization “from the bottom up”, which despite its problems, reveals the heterogeneity of a movement that is usually understood as static.