Santo Domingo’s LGBT social movement: At the crossroads of HIV and LGBT activism

ABSTRACT

The emergent Dominican LGBT movement in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, has been embedded in local and global structures and discourses related to HIV/AIDS, women’s health, and identity. This article explores how ongoing sociocultural changes, increased international HIV funding, and elite support facilitated a surge of collective actions and the institutional reconfiguration of the movement. However, the entry of new cohorts of leaders and the alignment of leaders with global discourses of gender and human rights exposed some rifts within the movement, including over the framing of identity, confrontational tactics, and the role of health issues. While creating political opportunities, international HIV/AIDS funding also consolidated the social movement around HIV at the expense of other issues. The rapid consolidation of the LGBT movement towards HIV issues in the Dominican Republic raises questions about the role of international health funding and health-related NGOs on a movement’s discourses, strategies, and consolidation, and about the recruitment of social movement leaders as public health professionals. I suggest that the trajectories of new movements, when social and political opportunities arise, are ultimately defined by their ability to bridge over generational and ideological rifts, engage in a broader spectrum of strategies, and embrace intersectional collective actions.

KEYWORDS:

• Social movements
• Dominican Republic
• LGBT rights
• HIV/AIDS

The first public gay event in the Dominican Republic occurred in 23 March 1999, in Santo Domingo, when fifteen gay men and transgender individuals marched along the main shopping street in Zona Colonial carrying rainbow flags to protest police harassment (Padilla & Castellanos, 2005). Two years later in July 2001, about 100 people paraded along the same avenue. These early actions, however, found themselves eclipsed a few years later. Windows of political opportunities sparked by sociocultural changes, an influx of international HIV funding, and support from governmental elites changed the institutional configuration of the LGBT movement by re-energizing established LGBT groups and fostering new ones. A surge of LGBT collective actions between 2005 and 2006 increased the movement’s visibility and encouraged its consolidation. As successful as these events were, they also exposed rifts within a movement deeply embedded in local and global discourses of feminism, HIV, and sexual orientation. Competing perspectives emerged on the role of new and younger leaders, mobilisation discourses and tactics, and the role of health issues.

The defiant and progressive nature of LGBT and HIV activism of the 80s and early 90s resulted in great political, medical, and sociocultural achievements for LGBT individuals, particularly in the United States and Europe. However, the current HIV political landscape has seen the transformation of HIV activists into institutional experts and increasingly shifted the focus from solidarity and justice to treatment adherence and access to pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP (Aggleton & Parker, 2015; Kenworthy & Parker, 2014). The former close connections of LGBT individuals to a ‘gay community’ and to their service organisations cannot be taken for granted any longer (Lewis et al., 2015; Rowe & Dowsett, 2008). As biomedical responses to HIV prevention (e.g. test and treat, PrEP) continue expanding across the globe, the progressive relationship between LGBT social movements and HIV organisations must be closely inspected, particularly in those countries with emerging LGBT movements and pervasive anti-LGBT policies.

Based on my involvement as a non-local activist during this period, I will examine the factors leading to the consolidation of the LGBT Dominican movement on HIV. I will also seek to examine how the stability and direction of this relatively new social movement became highly dependent on global HIV funding, local and global discourses of activism, and the historical material and ideological rifts within the Dominican society. Finally, I will explore how HIV non-governmental HIV organisations (NGOs) shaped the types of leadership, ideological frameworks, resources available, and framing and mobilisation strategies for the LGBT movement. While health-related resources and NGOs provide opportunities for the strengthening of a social movement, they also shape the discourses and mobilisation strategies of the movement into a less confrontational one, centred more on health than political or civil rights.

While attending to the particular Dominican experience, the analysis of these events draws from analytical tools and concepts from social movement theory to understand the socioeconomic and political landscape in which these collective actions were embedded (See Diani & Bison, 2004; Morris & Mueller, 1992; Tarrow, 2011; Whittier, 1997). Specifically, I used social network theory (Wasserman & Faust, 1994) to elucidate the connections among different social movement actors within the Dominican LGBT movement as well as between institutions serving, training, and engaging these leaders. The concept of discourse framing (Snow & Benford, 1988) was also key for understanding how most collective actions were framed within broader, national social and political discourses such as women’s reproductive rights, universal access to HIV medication, or LGBT civil rights. Finally, the concepts of political generations and social movement cohorts (Whittier, 1997) helped me establish qualitative distinctions in the worldviews of the various leaders. As a new wave of collective action re-started, many LGBT individuals (regardless of age) joined or returned to the movement (political generation). Equally important, new cohorts of young people entered the movement at a time in which social media and international networks were transforming the daily lives of Dominican LGBT youth.

The socioeconomic and political landscape of Santo Domingo circa 2005

Like other Latin American countries, the Dominican economy suffered sharp economic upheavals throughout the 80s (Lozano, Duarte, & Reyes, 1997). Over the next two decades, the Dominican economy would come to rely on export-lead manufacturing and tourism. By 2004, 20% of the Dominican Republic GDP came from the hosting of 3.4 million tourists a year (World Tourism Organization, 2005). The increased visibility of gay tourists and sex workers created anxiety over HIV contagion and the importation of homosexual mores (De Moya & García, 1999; Padilla & Castellanos, 2008). This created a backlash among the most conservative sectors of the Dominican society, including the Catholic Church (Padilla & Castellanos, 2008).

The LGBT movement started in the early 70s in Argentina and Mexico, and in the mid 70s in Colombia. In the case of Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia, the LGBT movements shared a historical moment with left-leaning social movements, including armed ones, emerging from struggles for more democratic processes (Amaya, 2012; Diez, 2011; Facchini & França, 2013). While similar calls for democratisation were happening in the Dominican Republic, the LGBT movement only started at the very end of the 80s. It is possible that the right-leaning democracies of the 70s and 80s and the collective discourses of hyper masculinity, homophobia, and conservatism advocated by Trujillo and his successor Balaguer, mainstream society, and the Catholic Church delayed the emergence of Dominican LGBT activism.

While the general population still had negative views on homosexuality (Corcino, 2006), societal changes were increasing the ability of LGBT leaders to obtain elite support in the legal, cultural, and media circles. Newspapers began running stories in a more neutral tone towards LGBT issues as they became more receptive to the lobbying of LGBT activists for a more positive portrayal. LGBT artists and writers also began to mobilise against the state’s and the church’s control of discourses on homosexuality. The First Anthology of Gay Literature in the Dominican Republic was presented in 2004 at a popular bookstore with the participation of 43 writers (Caballero, 2004), and the formal censorship of LGBT literature at the 2004 International Book Fair generated considerable press and an opportunity for contesting negative discourses.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic forced a public discussion on homosexuality that challenged public officials and leaders to take public health, political and legal actions. By 2000, there were 50,000 documented cases of HIV infection in the Dominican Republic, with 7.6% of them assigned to homosexual/ bisexual contact (UAIDS, 2007). However, the rate could be higher due to lack of HIV testing or disclosure among men who have sex with men for fear of stigmatisation and homophobia (Caceres, 2002). The Dominican Presidential Council on AIDS, created in 2001, coordinated the national efforts to address HIV/AIDS. Nonetheless, several NGOs had responded earlier than that to the challenge of providing HIV services, including Amigos Siempre Amigos (ASA), the only gay-identified organisation in the Dominican Republic. HIV prevention in Santo Domingo was primarily conducted at gay bars and clubs, and depended heavily on peer educators from the targeted communities. The training of peers through curricula focused on self-esteem and positive gay identity had increased the number of youths involved in the LGBT movement (field notes, discussions with NGO representatives).

In June 2004, the Dominican Republic received a 5-year grant from the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, including US$48.5 million for HIV/AIDS. Developed by the Presidential Commission on AIDS (COPRESIDA) in collaboration with other NGOs, the proposal included funding for men who have sex with men and required a strategy to create a political environment that favoured human rights for the prevention and treatment of STDs (Global Fund, 2004, 2015). Lagging behind in the implementation of this project, in early 2005 Global Fund officials increased the pressure on COPRESIDA to speed up the implementation of the five-year project (personal communication). As a result, COPRESIDA dramatically increased AIDS-related spending around June 2005, close to a year after the approval of the proposal (Global Fund, 2015).

Methodology

This article is based on my participation as an activist in the Dominican LGBT movement in Santo Domingo between June 2005 and July 2007. I did not continuously reside in the Dominican Republic but I spent approximately 8 months in total and maintained contact with LGBT leaders during this time and after. As this article is not based a research project nor was it a part of an institutional effort, there was not a research proposal submitted to an Institutional Review Board. However, I strongly argue that research methodologies can guide activists in the development and documenting of collective action, strategies, and discourses, particularly in emerging social movements. Furthermore, social movement activities are often ‘knowledge-practices,’ processes of knowledge creation, reformulation, and diffusion (See Casas-Cortés, Osterweil, & Powell, 2008).

As an insider and an outsider and as a non-local activist, I relied on intersubjective tenets for conducting engaged ethnography (Demmer & Hummel, 2017). I tried as much as possible to protect the confidentiality and safety of these social actors, including utilising private settings for interviews, de-identifying personal information, and maintaining field notes private. Methodologically, it also meant placing greater attention to member checking and triangulation, being attentive to shifting roles, and ensuring a conscious critique of my perspective as one among many others. Therefore, I tried to ensure that my interpretations were sound and grounded in local interpretations by presenting my initial thoughts privately to LGBT activists and academicians, including some whose work is cited here.

I utilised ethnographic strategies to guide the activities I was involved in and to document the processes and events taken place, including participant observations at gay-identified social venues and formal and informal interviews with LGBT leaders, gay youth, and researchers. Observations and informal interview notes were recorded in three small notebooks (approximately 160 pages). Formal 30-minute interviews with 10 young key informants on socio-cultural changes, globalisation processes, and the formation of a LGBT social movement were recorded and transcribed. I selected these informants based on their central leadership roles within the movement and their ability to provide both a descriptive and analytical perspective of the events. They were not compensated for their participation. Finally, I conducted a secondary analysis of media portrayals of LGBT issues in Dominican newspapers, published elsewhere (Padilla & Castellanos, 2008).

My involvement in the Dominical LGBT movement took a variety of forms. During the summer of 2005, I served as a foreign-student intern at an HIV NGO in Santo Domingo. I adapted and provided an HIV prevention intervention I had developed for Latino gay men in the USA. Having previously participated in LGBT activism in New York City for over a decade, I soon became engaged in similar activities in Santo Domingo. In particular, I participated in the planning and implementation of the public events celebrating the 2005 and 2006 LGBT pride. I also attended the public events organised for the 2007 LGBT pride.

As a participant, I became friends with many of the people involved in the movement, which allowed to meet many leaders within the LGBT community, including key young LGBT leaders. This role provided me with a broad range of information sources and engagement opportunities, including meetings with key informants, participation in private discussions, and access to internal documents. In collaboration with three experienced activists, I organised and facilitated a three-day Leadership retreat with 14 young gay and lesbian leaders right after the 2005 pride events. I presented initial drafts of the ideas contained in this article in Santo Domingo, including at a panel organised for the 2005 Gay Pride (presentation entitled ‘Gay Communities and Globalization’) and at a panel I co-organised at FLACSO in 2007 (presentation entitled ‘At the crossroads of feminist, HIV, and LGBT activism’). A few years later, June 2009, I was invited to facilitate and document the IV Annual Forum on LGBT Human Rights, a two-day meeting of Dominican LGBT groups held in Santo Domingo.

A new generation of LGBT leaders

The opening of the Dominican economy and the liberalisation process of the mid 90s had begun changing the Dominican society’s relation to homosexuality. As stated by a 33 -year -old gay leader,

To the extent that the Dominican Republic has opened up to the world, in the same way, it has had the chance to see other cultures, to analyse the gay issue, among other things, from perspectives different from the ones we had before these globalization processes.

These cultural and sexual exchanges fostered a different worldview on the LGBT young leaders who saw the European and American societies as models to emulate. As stated by a 27 -year -old gay man,

All those [international] tourists come here. There is a cultural exchange. There is an exchange of information; there is an exchange about the lifestyle abroad and the lifestyle here. Then we would like to not so much copy but live a lifestyle similar to that of certain countries, like in Europe, one of the places where gay life is more open.

The impact of these changes was noticeable in the adoption of more public displays of gender non-conformism, an issue noticed as well by the Catholic church (Padilla & Castellanos, 2008) and LGBT leaders.

In fact, I’m surprised the number of young people today that never went through something so common for my generation as “the crisis.” Kids today assume their homosexuality [private and publicly] in such a natural way that it does not carry any type of identity crisis (ASA volunteer, 33 years).

As LGBT youth, including young leaders, adopted a more public persona, their lived experiences would become one of the fault lines in the community as visibility became a contentious point when discussing the need for public actions.

Cohorts are ‘clusters of participants who enter a social movement within a year or two of each other and are shaped by distinct transformative experiences that differ because of subtle shifts in the political context’ (Whittier, 1997, p. 762). This was also the case for LGBT youth. By 2005, a great number of youths were visible in the Dominican LGBT movement. Colectiva Mujer y Salud and ASA, two health-focused organisations, had been producing cohorts of receptive young activists over many years.

In ‘La Urbanización de la Pobreza,’ Lozano et al. (1997) argue that in most Latin American societies, including the Dominican Republic, youth have higher levels of injustice consciousness, political militancy, and participation in community activism. Although linked to feminism and HIV prevention, the new cohorts were, nonetheless, part of networks working on a variety of issues and more sympathetic to confrontational strategies such as public kiss-ins, demonstrations, boycotts and ‘illegal’ gatherings (field work). They were also more willing to bring their LGBT identity to other social movements such as the youth and labour movement (field work). In fact, they had extensive electronic-based supportive networks which were located in what Bennett (2003) calls ‘polycentric (multi-hubbed) issue networks.’

Borrowing from the feminist emphasis on intersectionality, these networks saw the LGBT issue as one more interrelated issue connected to human rights violations (personal conversations). The issue of race, for instance, was closely related to LGBT leaders’ engagement in community activism (See Curiel, 2004) and ran deep through the LGBT young leadership. Some of them had connected their LGBT activism with ongoing struggles over discrimination based on race or Haitian descent.

Right now, the attacks on Black Dominicans, particularly Haitian Dominican, are in full force. I can't devote myself to ‘gay equal HIV’ while the oppression of Black Dominicans continues and it's not spoken in the gay community (lesbian and racial minority activist, 24 years).

In fact, they often had to battle the perception that the presence of dark-skin and gender non-conforming youth in public venues was associated with peligro social (actions or groups seemed as questioning or subverting traditional socio-cultural norms) (Tineo Durán, 2014).

Equally important to their movement, LGBT leaders saw changes happening at the societal level that created opportunities for action.

I don't think that there has been a key change in the police as an institution. I think the individuals who are in the police have changed as a result of the same changes in society. The police as an institution is still repressive, abusive, and what not. But many police officers, as individuals within the society, have changed with it (ASA male volunteer, 33 years).

The internet has helped change gay people's minds because the internet is an influential place. Information flows and you know what is happening here and internationally with respect to the gay life. And you find out how things are there and want the same things happening here. And there are many people trying to make that possible (ASA young activists, 18 years).

These societal changes, nonetheless, had also begun changing the political institutions. In 2000, as part of a larger advocacy and legislative process, the President signed the ‘Ley General de Juventud 49.2000’ (General Law on Youth), which included the creation of a Ministry of Youth and the only legal reference to LGBT protection at the time (Article 27.- Gender equality). The process led to the enactment of the law and the youth development projects of the newly created National Ministry of Youth which fostered a new generation of young leaders in the Dominican society, some of whom were gay and lesbian.

The diversification of organisational structure and event-based coalitions: 2005

With the Global Fund project behind schedule and an upcoming performance evaluation, an urgent meeting, which I attended, was arranged for 30 May 2005, with representatives from HIV NGOs in the Dominican Republic. Attendees agreed on expediting the spending in HIV activities to ensure that the funding from the Global Fund was preserved. They also agreed to create strategies for integrating civil society in the development and implementation of the Global Fund proposal to ensure its success (field notes).

The sudden influx of funding from 2005 to 2006 created opportunities for a surge in collective actions within the LGBT movement by existing groups. It also supported the strengthening of two new LGBT groups associated with HIV prevention, REVASA (Red de Voluntarios de ASA) and Trans Siempre Amigas (TRANSSA). Table 1 presents the main institutional actors involved in or associated with this surge. It also shows the interconnections between different groups, particularly in relation to HIV and leadership and volunteer development.

Table 1. Institutional landscape in the period 2005–2006.

Organization	Focus	Role in social movements	Year started	Year ended
Colectiva Mujer y Salud (Women’s Health Collective) – NGO	Women’s health; sexual & reproductive rights; and leadership development	Connected to feminist groups; trained lesbian leaders	1984	–
Centro de Orientación e Investigación Integral (COIN) – NGO	Health services to sex workers and MSM, including HIV	Developed LGBT health leaders	1988
Amigos Siempre Amigos (ASA) – Only gay-identified NGO	HIV/AIDS education Social and cultural events	Trained hundreds of young gay men as peer educators; maintained extensive social network; organised collective actions; provided institutional support to smaller LGBT groups	1989
CAP LGBTIR (Comité de Acción Política de Lesbianas, Gays, Bisexuales, Transexuales, Transgéneros, Intersexuales, Raros y Raras) – Non-partisan political group	advocating for public policies and legislation to guarantee rights for sexual minorities	Between 15 and 18 active gay and lesbian leaders; connected to the Dominican academia and research centres	2004	2006
REVASA (Red de Voluntarios de ASA) – Volunteer group	Volunteer HIV network of ASA Provided also a non-HIV social space	Over 50 active volunteers, mostly young gay men Key planner and implementer of most of the LGBT events	2005
Trans Siempre Amigas (TRANSSA) –Transgender volunteer network of ASA	Provided a non-HIV social space	Between 10 and 15 active transgendered individuals	2006
Los Muchachos and Muchachas de la Mesa de Atrás (The boys and girls of the back table, MMMA for simplicity) – Non-affiliated group	Struggled to define itself along the continuum of protest, advocacy, and service	Closed group of 12 young lesbian and gay activists; Members had participated in the Leadership Retreat aforementioned	2005	2007

In the summer of 2005, ASA and REVASA called for a coalition of gay and lesbian activists to plan a gay pride celebration, the third in the history of the Dominican Republic; COPRESIDA decided to provide funding for the events. At first, the group advocated for social events at an open-air bar frequented mostly by young gay men. After joining the coalition, CAP members demanded the inclusion of political and lesbian issues in the celebration as well as the inclusion of non-bar-oriented events (meeting notes). Through lengthily and arduous negotiations, in which I participated, the coalition decided on three events that would incorporate diverse interests and encourage participation of all LGBT constituencies: an academic event, a public celebration, and a cultural event.

The academic event, organised by ASA, featured a review of LGBT history, a discussion on LGBT youth and globalisation (which I presented), and a presentation on pre-Hispanic Caribbean homosexuality. Held at ASA, the panel attracted about 35 individuals, mostly young men. Organised by CAP and held at ASA, an art exhibit with folk singers attracted close to 50 people and included the presence of Eric T. Schneiderman, then New York State Senator. Finally, REVASA and ASA organised a public celebration at ‘El Boulevard,’ a pedestrian boulevard near a shopping area. Despite fear of police harassment, the public event attracted a crowd of close to 400 people. While initially closing the area, the police allowed it, albeit without music, after the organisers mentioned that COPRESIDA sponsored the event as part of an HIV prevention effort.

In addition, a group of young gay leaders and I developed two social marketing materials to link the celebration with national and global legal discourses on human rights. A small sticker simply stated ‘Gay Rights = Human Rights. Gay Community of Santo Domingo, 28 June 2005.’ The selection of the word gay over the term LGBT tried to address the lack of awareness in the general public about the term LGBT, but understandably slighted many of the lesbian leaders. By selecting ‘human rights’ over ‘civil rights,’ the group tried to link the sticker with ongoing national and international discussions on human rights. Over 30 young gay men volunteered to place 5,000 stickers overnight in public spaces, including the Colonial District and twelve universities. Two of these volunteers were detained by the police while doing so.

Another 5,000 small cards with the slogan ‘It’s the Law. Know it’ on the front and the text of Article 27 of the ‘Ley General de Juventud’ on the back were distributed throughout the summer at gay and non-gay venues. This card linked a legal argument to their collective actions and became a tool against police harassment when celebrating the gay pride events of 2005. Soon after, a newspaper highlighted the existence of the law in the Dominican Republic and its use during these events (Redacción Clave Digital, 2005).

Consolidation of the field on HIV: 2006

The increased funding and support from AIDS government officials provided political opportunities that motivated the formation of a coalition. The newly-formed coalition decided to formalise the annual gay pride celebrations and, after the summer, it began discussing the upcoming 2006 events. The most influential LGBT leaders advocated for shifting strategies towards collaboration with COPRESIDA and realigning themselves more closely with HIV discourses to capitalise on the increased access to political elites and HIV (personal communication). At the same time, some female leaders expressed concerns about the presence of HIV funding and governmental involvement and worried about co-optation, lack of intersectionality, and conservative strategies (personal communication).

Over time, the public and private meetings showed both a consolidation of the field on HIV and fractures in the coalition's framing and strategies. HIV-affinity groups, officials at COPRESIDA, and some academic leaders played a central role in shaping the movement’s ideological frameworks. At an organising meeting, a key leader involved in HIV work stressed his preference for a ‘more engaging path to social change through their partnership with COPRESIDA’ (meeting notes). On the other hand, leaders involved in other social issues argued for a broader agenda and confrontational strategies. A leader of CAP argued that ‘you can create social change without challenging the power of the church and the existing laws penalizing gay people’ (meeting notes).

After CAP disbanded at the end of 2005, the overtly political component of the coalition disappeared from the formal conversations. Furthermore, there were few lesbian leaders involved in the actual planning of the events, alienating and frustrating some of the remaining female activists (personal communication). Some young activists have for some time felt alienated by the lack of an intersectional approach and more confrontational strategies.

As we focus our actions around gay men's main issue, HIV, the fundamental issues impacting women, particularly lesbians, are relegated to second place. The current emphasis on gay rights as sexual expression is leaving unquestioned the patriarchal pillars of the Dominican society. The feminist struggles, since the 70s, on reproductive health, abortion, and gendered violence are not part of the current LGBT agenda (lesbian activist, 29 years).

Ultimately, the coalition decided to celebrate gay pride with a public forum to assess the status of LGBT individuals in the Dominican context and a party at a local club. Sponsored by COPRESIDA and coordinated by ASA and REVASA, the forum was held at a hotel in Santo Domingo on 23 June 2006. The forum had panelists from a variety of groups, and about 150 people attended the forum (Ortiz-Gomez, 2006). While the forum focused on human rights and diversity and political engagement, the event was still centred on HIV.

A week after the forum and again with the sponsorship of COPRESIDA, the Alianza Nacional de Hombres Gay, Transgéneros, Transsexuales y Hombres que tienen Sexo con Hombres (Alianza GTH) was formed at an event attended by the Director of COPRESIDA and with positive media coverage. Alianza GTH was charged with coordinating the national response to HIV/AIDS among sexual minorities; promoting human rights as a way of reducing risk; and providing institutional support to the groups of the coalition, including ASA, MMMA, REVASA, and Transsa (Sosa, 2006). As pointed out by several young lesbian leaders (personal correspondence), the absence of lesbians as a sexual minority in the Alianza GTH, the framing of human rights in function of HIV risk, and the incorporation of smaller groups within this Global Fund project formalised the consolidation of the field on HIV.

Generational and gender rifts: Strategies of confrontation and intersectionality

As a member of the United Nations’ Human Rights Commission, the Dominican Republic voted in 2005 to include sexual orientation as a human right, and some activists saw political opportunities in expanding the movement through the alignment of LGBT activism along global discourses on human rights (See Carvajal Diaz, 2005; Espinoza, 2005; Polanco, 2006). However, as discussed earlier, young leaders and lesbians working on other issues were dissatisfied with the strategies of collaboration with the state and with HIV as the focus of governmental responses to LGBT needs. Within this context, the generational and gender rifts among LGBT leaders became more evident.

Generational rifts: The younger LGBT cohorts challenge the old order

After Gay Pride 2005, several young leaders and I discussed the need for leadership development among young LGBT cohorts to address sources of discrimination in the Dominican LGBT movement (e.g. heterosexism, sexism, racism, classism, and ageism). With a team of three experienced LGBT leaders from ASA, REVASA, and Colectiva Mujer y Salud, I facilitated a 3-day leadership retreat on 19–21 August 2005. We explicitly recruited 6 young gay men and 5 young lesbians who were already publicly involved as activists in various social movements, including those related to youth, women’s health, HIV, and Afro-descendent rights. Although funding was a major issue, the group did not want to accept government money for fear of being co-opted. Instead, funding was obtained through our personal social networks in the United States.

After returning from the retreat, the group maintained close contact and openly challenged existing organisations to broaden the issues being addressed. However, dissatisfied with their inability to shape the direction of CAP and REVASA, eight of them created Los Muchachos and Muchachas de la Mesa de Atrás (MMMA, The boys and girls of the back table), a tongue-in-cheek comment on their resentment to the lack of opportunities to participate in decision-making processes or positions of power in the movement.

Yes, I have hope that young people will change things. I'm young. I believe that I am one of those that can help change things or that are changing them. This generation is more liberal than the previous one. They had a bad experience, and they always think that what happened before to them will happen again. We, young people, have not lived those experiences. Perhaps something will happen, but we still have to be active (ASA male volunteer, 18 years).

New cohorts also resented older leaders for the lack of strategies to contest openly broader social structures. But they also understood the challenges of the past generation and the role of youth in the new socio-political landscape.

The gay community is young because this generation is the one that has opened up (“destapado”). A new phase has begun. We understand that gay people ten years ago came from a society in which the Dominican Republic suffered the aftermath of a dictatorship and then a semi-dictatorship. We had a difficult political situation due to the lack of freedom of speech (‘expression”). Even journalists couldn't express their opinions without appearing dead on the streets the next morning. Imagine saying that you were gay. And then, we had a homophobic president, Joaquin Balaguer, for a long time. That explains a lot (ASA male volunteer, 22 years).

A week before gay pride 2006, the police had closed several gay bars and detained between 16 and 20 patrons (Redacción Clave Digital, 2006), creating fear and discontent among many LGBT individuals. As mentioned above, the central gay pride 2006 event was the aforementioned forum on LGBT Diversity, funded by COPRESIDA and with an emphasis on HIV education. Furthermore, organisers had previously eliminated street forms of celebration from the list of events out of concern to governmental reaction (private communications and meetings’ notes). At a private meeting with 13 young gay and lesbians, they expressed their dissent with the excessively conservative and narrow agenda for the events. They advocated for a stronger reaction to the recent police actions and for holding street events based on identity rather than HIV.

To take advantage of the heightened interest on LGBT activism, this small group of young dissenters, many of whom had attended our 2005 retreat, and I decided to hold a rally at Parque Duarte the same night of the forum, June 23rd. This small square in the colonial area, popular with LGBT individuals and young nonconformists, is often their place for public protests. Parque Duarte was also selected because it is a site of contention between Cardinal Nicolás de Jesús López, a main spokesman for homophobic discourses in the Dominican Republic, and LGBT individuals and youth (See Padilla & Castellanos, 2008).

The rally was kept secret until 36 h before it took place due to concerns over a lack of a permit, the risk of police harassment, and co-optation from other leaders or COPRESIDA (meeting notes). Nonetheless, youth organisers discussed and utilised mobilisation strategies from other youth movements abroad. A press release was sent anonymously to supportive media, particularly to youth-oriented electronic media outlets (See Servicios de Clave Digital, 2006). They reached out to central individuals in international organisations of Santo Domingo to serve as deterrents of police harassment at the event (human shields). They lit up their extended and dense electronic social networks through hundreds of text messages, postings in list-servers, and messages in chat-rooms sent during collective sessions at internet cafés. While several leaders publicly distanced the forum from the rally and argued against attending it to avoid police entrapment, the rally attracted over 300 people in less than 36 h.

According to Armstrong, contexts of collective creativity are ‘characterized by the intersection of multiple cultural strains, dense interaction, and uncertainty of a kind that produces optimism about the possible success of alternatives’ (Armstrong, 2002, p. 362). I argue that these young leaders were positioned within a context of collective creativity, at the intersection of multiple cultural models of organising and engaged in different fields of collective actions (e.g. women's issues, Haitian struggles, youth issues). They were able to come together as an impromptu organising cadre, bypassing some of the existing rifts between gay and lesbian leaders and co-opting their pre-existing communication networks to create alternative collective actions.

While the field was consolidating on HIV, the youth who had participated in the leadership retreat created MMMA and, later, joined others to implement the collective action at Parque Duarte. Through these actions, young leaders openly challenged Dominican society and the central leaders of the LGBT. More importantly, the adoption of information communication technologies for rapid mobilisation and multi-sector collaborations showcased the young leaders’ innovative strategies to circumvent centralised authority and obtain diverse sources of support.

Gender rifts: Feminism, HIV

Lesbian and gay leaders had for some time maintained a close relation to international social movements and organisations, particularly those related to feminism, HIV, sexual orientation, and women’s health (See Alvarez, 2000; Rohrleitner & Ryan, 2013). Dominican diasporas in New York and Boston had for some time shaped the political discourse in the Dominican Republic by creating a dialogue between Dominican feminists living or commuting within the diasporas (Polanco, 2006). A considerable number of feminist leaders had adopted intersectionality as a framework of reference for analysing the situation of LGBT activism. In particular, the new cohorts of lesbian leaders in the Dominican Republic had questioned the oversight of racism and classism in the discourses of women’s oppression and distrusted LGBT leaders and their focus on HIV and reliance on international funding.

On the other hand, the connections to international HIV networks were relatively newer to the Dominican activists and were often connected to technical assistance projects, research studies, and conferences (informal interviews). NGO leaders connected to the movement usually linked LGBT activism to community awareness, self-acceptance, human rights, and anti-discrimination efforts, often the recommended framework of international HIV funding. Since the early 90s, most gay male leaders in the Dominican Republic had been trained at ASA, the only gay-identified organisation, and fully embraced the central role of HIV in the framing of community organising and mobilisation. Through their work, they had successfully engaged large constituencies across gender, class, and race (informal interviews with young gay activists).

While transgender women had been present throughout the years in the movement’s actions, they were often absent from discussions about the role of transgender women or the direction of the movement (field observations, informal interviews, and media analysis). However, transgender women had become more and more integrated within the movement as inter-personal violence, sex work, and needle use for hormones were integrated within the broader view of HIV prevention for sexual minorities. The lack of information on transgender issues, primarily due to my limited engagement in transgender-related work and lack of primary data, constitutes a serious shortcoming of this article.

The different health issues and ideological discourses created rifts along gender lines. Many of these rifts were connected to deep historical gendered structures that favoured males, including the shift of the LGBT movement towards HIV. In a personal interview a young lesbian activist (23 years), stated,

If we [lesbian Dominicans] have to create alternative spaces for confronting the state, so be it. I don't see a role for me in a movement enamoured with COPRESIDA-sponsored events. The meetings [to organize these events] just mirror the Dominican society, silencing women's voices and ignoring our long history of resistance. I also think that those spaces are already there in the alliances that we, lesbian feminists, have established for many years with other groups here in the Dominican Republic and in Latin America.

Most of the active lesbian leaders had participated in efforts of the Colectiva Mujer y Salud to develop a social movement centred on women’s reproductive rights. Located at the crossroads of the LGBT movements and the Caribbean feminist diaspora, these leaders usually linked issues of heterosexism and gender oppression within the discourse of LGBT identity. However, while the youth were challenging the old guard, some older and younger feminists were also challenging Dominican feminism in regards to strategies to address structural inequalities based on class. As stated by Polanco, CAP founder, (2004, p. 7),

Lesbian sexual activism has been led by radical feminist women. The majority of non-feminist and moderate feminist-lesbians accept the rules of the dominant heterosexual group. Most of them are closeted. They fear the family rejection and maintain clandestine sexual relations with other women. Many of them are fervid critics of the LGBTQ movement. They reject the fact that activism breaks the class-boundary that guarantees a privileged position to the small elite in an exclusive unequal society.

CAP’s rhetoric often resembled community organising models more common in the USA, namely political action committees, and collective actions rooted in political science. CAP’s more confrontational approach, underlying class analysis, emphasis on legal action, and lesser focus on health, generated conflict with key lesbian and gay leaders (Polanco, 2006). CAP members, in particular, held a critical view of the role of these different gay groups and NGOs. As stated by a CAP lesbian activist (45 years),

We need to create and push a broad social and economic policy agenda that codifies our rights in the Dominican legal system. Other than that, we will be merely tolerated but without rights. But no one, especially the leaders of NGOs, would want to risk the breadcrumbs given through the Global Fund.

Strong disagreements over pursuing a more confrontational and political agenda had led to the folding of CAP in early 2006. Yet, the work of CAP over its two years introduced a different organisational form within the Dominican LGBT movement with a focus on class-based critiques separate from health.

Conclusions

The socio-political changes and availability of HIV funding had an impact on the institutional configuration of the LGBT movement in Santo Domingo between 2005 and 2007, including the emergence of new groups and opportunities and funding for collective actions. In this period, there was an opportunity for the LGBT movement to coalesce into a more stable and diverse coalition in the Dominican Republic. Instead, the field consolidated rapidly on HIV issues and less confrontational strategies. I suggest that this was possible because of the monopoly of the field by a few service-oriented organisations; the absence of funding to create a diversified leadership and organisational structure outside HIV; the lack of lesbian and youth leadership inside groups able to contest the overt focus on HIV; and the dependence of smaller groups to the HIV organisational structure of the movement. Like in other Latin American countries, Dominican progressive movements have struggled to address the impact of the HV epidemic and advance the civil rights for LGBT individuals, women, and racial minorities. The achievements of these progressive movements received a blow when the constitutional changes in 2010 banned abortion and same-sex marriage and stripped hundreds of thousands of Haitian Dominicans of their citizenship.

At the aforementioned IV Annual Forum on LGBT Human Rights in 2009, which I facilitated at the request of the organisers, leaders stressed the need for diversifying the movement’s agenda and strategies. In addition to affirming the term ‘LGBT community’ in a broad, diverse, and pluralistic manner, participants affirmed the need for addressing the lack of formal political power and for developing a common, multi-issue and intersectional political discourse (private final report delivered to organisers). While there has been some progress in forcing the political system to discuss formally LGBT rights, there is not currently any substantive legal protection for LGBT Dominicans. Nonetheless, leaders have been effective at increasing public mobilisation and visibility, enlisting local and international figures as advocates in local actions, and stating their case before international organisations.

This analysis of the LGBT Dominican movement does not constitute a complete narrative of the events in this period. It cannot either fully explicate the local and global processes running through them. On the contrary, this article is a call for multiple voices to document the history of the movement and for more theoretical analyses of its challenges and successes.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic definitely brought political opportunities for the development of organisations and identity discourses across Latin American (Parker, Barbosa, & Aggleton, 2000), including the strengthening and institutionalisation of the movements and professionalisation of their leaders. However, there has been a variety of ways in which the HIV and LGBT social movements interacted across countries. In Colombia, for instance, the passing of a new constitution in 1991 provided a constitutional framework and legal tools for contesting the state regarding both universal access to HIV treatment and legal protection for minorities (Maldonado, 2006). In Argentina, HIV/AIDS provided some opportunities for LGBT activists. But it was the intersectional work developed through the sustained fight against the dictatorship that brought elite support from a broad range of constituencies (Brown, 2002). In Mexico, the right-leaning social and political backlash connected to the HIV/AIDS epidemic had a detrimental impact on the visibility and agenda of its LGBT social movement (Diez, 2011). But, the political transitions in the early 90s re-energized the social movement under the more encompassing framing of identity and diversity rather than HIV (Diez, 2011). Same sex unions were legally recognised in Colombia in 2007 and in Mexico in 2010. Same sex marriage became legal in Argentina in 2010.

In their analysis of the Brazilian LGBT movement, Facchini & França in (2013) argue that there is not enough information on the recruitment of HIV activists, as public experts and managers, increasingly specialised and professionalised, and on how this recruitment impacts public policies and the advance of LGBT social movements. The rapid consolidation of the Dominican movement on HIV raises also questions about the potential of health-focused NGOs and public health officials to accelerate or hinder the efforts of non-health social movements when social and political opportunities arise, e.g. increased funding, shifts in power structures, or international pressure. Given aforementioned changes in the HIV epidemic, these questions are particularly relevant as the responses to the HIV epidemic rest more and more on biomedical interventions and prevention work is conducted within medical settings and by career health professionals.

More broadly, there is a need for a more thorough examination of whether and how social movements and health efforts can promote and sustain critical activism at times of political constraint, as well as political opportunity. As pointed out by Minkoff (1999), professionalisation and institutionalisation of social movement organisations does not necessarily entail conservatism. Given the ongoing discourses linking human rights and health deployed across the globe, there is a need for critical analysis of the spatial and temporal conditions in which health-related NGOs can support progressive social movements, particularly in countries with developing or newly emerging civil societies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

H Daniel Castellanos http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0057-6168