‘We are citizens too’: LGBTQIA+ claims for human rights in postwar Guatemala

Overview

In 1996, when Guatemala’s Peace Accords were signed, the country reaffirmed its commitments to ending gender inequality and promoting women’s human rights as part of its postwar development agenda, and in keeping with its obligations to implement the Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA). However, LGBTQIA+ rights were excluded: rather, LGBTQIA+ activists and development practitioners persistently fight for recognition of their human rights. Indeed, in the 30 years that have followed the BPfA, LGBTQIA+ groups across Guatemala have increasingly mobilised, working with, through, and sometimes in contestation with the state to challenge persisting and problematic gendered inequalities and violences. Moreover, the LGBTQIA+ community encounters extreme backlash, threats, and violence for doing so. This paper will explore the possibilities and challenges the BPfA affords for LGBTQIA+ activists and development practitioners in postwar Guatemala. Drawing on qualitative field research funded by a British Academy Knowledge Symposia follow-on award, and informed by queer feminist political economic perspectives, I will explore how LGBTQIA+ groups both engage with and challenge socially conservative and often exclusionary state institutions, to claim space within the realm of human rights agenda articulated by the BPfA. I will also illustrate how Guatemala’s commitment to human rights is instrumentalised by LGBTQIA+ to challenge conservative backlash. Ultimately, I will argue that LGBTQIA+ groups leverage Guatemala’s commitments to the BPfA to challenge unequal power structures, and to disrupt the cis- and hetero-normativity embedded within them, illustrating both the constraints and possibilities of working within, through, and against the state for a more equitable country.