Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 12:06:41 -0600 From: cblanca@sol.racsa.co.cr (Hotel Casa Blanca de Ml. Ant. S.A.) Unfortunately it's a long mail again, but things move fast down here just now, and for being our supporters (and our hope) you should know the whole story and not the "short version". 1.) fight update Thanks to the big international support provided by all of you we achieved the first step for a successful ending of the homophobic wave in Costa Rica: Yesterday "La Prensa Libre" published the resolution of our g/l/b/t movement without changing or cutting it! The resolution was published as a letter of opinion underneath the daily opinion section of the newspaper. -------------------------------------- English translation of the resolution: -------------------------------------- A final stop to homosexual discrimination in Costa Rica - The human being is an agressive animal and the enormous cruelty with he is treating others of his kind, by destroying them physically, morally and intelectually, is beyond the limits of imagination. Just recently this was proved by the speculative publications of "La Prensa Libre" made by its reporter Rosibel Mena June 13,14,15 and 16, which, beside that they were made to raise the number of the daily edition, together with other media joining in later, damaged the image of our Costa Rica seriously, which is wordlwide recognized for its hospitality, natural beauty, its tolerance and respect for individual difference. The nature of the articles from Rosibel Mena is not only offending the tourist activity of Costarican hotels but also our nation in general, for being far from being one of the communications media, which inform in a true and objective way over subjects of general interest. The reporter Rosibel Mena unfortunately connected the term homosexuality with prostitution, presenting to the world a vulgar image of our country as "sexual paradise". The media of communications, publications en general as well as the mass media always have glorified the heterosexuality. Heterosexualty keeps the power and for that reason homosexualtity has to play the role of the negative, the offense against institutionalized "normality". In the heterosexual society they promote a kind of "racisme" against gays, lesbians and all which is different. Always in line with desinformation to create scandales they atack and discriminate homosexualtiy by forgetting the following: - that in Costa Rica every third death of a woman is caused by violence inside the family committed by the own husband or other male family members. They associate love and sexual desire of persons with the same sex with prostitution. In the eyes of the mayority the heterosexualtity is the "holy procreation" and homosexualtiy is sin and depravity. Informed people know that a homosexual is not an individual who is committing obcenities or who is bothering kids and youngsters in parks and exits of educational centers, all the contrary: one of every four girls en Costa Rica is victim of incest and in 100% of all cases the violator is the heterosexual man (father, uncle, brother,stepfather, grandfather or great-grandfather). Gays and lesbians are carrying a stigma for something very simple: their differnce, for which they get insulted, for which they get mocked, and reprimanded. God is love and is not accepting the promotion of hate, rivality, lie and the discrimanation of disadvantaged groups. History shows that the extermination of homosexuals in the past was done by ecclesiastic authorities at the side of civil authorities and today the Catholic Church is responsable directly or indirectly for the repression against gays, for being tied to their conception of "moral", which considers homosexuality as sin and which condems it with sacramental penitences. Beside violance, corruption of the police and the severity of justice, the existence of antigay accions causes a permanent threat and reforces the discrimination which a gay person has to face every day. For example it is very difficult for gays or lesbians to find a job if they don't hide very successfully their sexual preferences and if they get a job, they have to live in fear of being discovered and fired, with very few chance to ever get employed again somewhere else. It is not acceptable at all that 50 years after the biggest horror in history of discrimination committed by the nazis in Germany, antigay actions like the actual ones are happening in our country. Knowing about the Costarican reality, worldwide actions were taken refering to the bad intentions of the articles of the reporter Rosibel Mena, shown by thousands of letters of protest and phone calls, giving support to the gay/lesbian movement of our country and to the legal actions taken by the direct victims of the articles. Worldwide organizations protested energically against the discriminative and unconstitutional campaign of "La Prensa Libre" to guaranty that this will be the last campaign of that kind in our beloved Costa Rica. For being arbitrarily involved in activities far beyond from the tourisme reality in Costa Rica, the owners of the hotels, to which the pathitic articles refer to, are proceeding the corresponding legal actions against the direct responsible persons. Ricardo Calvo N. (member of the g/l/b/t movement) ----------------------- end of translation ----------------------- It seems that "La Prensa Libre" is willing to try to end the fight without being brought to court. But still, neither "La Prensa Libre" nor the Costarican government made any official declaration stating that any kind of discrimination against g/l ist against constitution, laws and Human Rights and that discriminations of that kind will not be tolerated anymore. And "La Prensa Libre" still has to withdraw officially from the discriminative articles. Or in other words: for not having any official statement from the government, nor excuse and acclaration from "La Prensa Libre", still g/l/b/t discrimination is not outlawed which means that at anytime anybody can and will start a new homophobic wave over again. Therefore our movement insists in these acclarations for putting a final end to the long history of g/l/b/t dicrimination in Costa Rica! Therefore we kindly ask you to keep your support up!! 2. Positive reactions in Costa Rica caused by our fight: Johnny Mora, Costarican author sent us a letter of support. He outed himself just recently and his all gay book of poems won the first price in last weeks national contest for literature!!! Even "La Nacion" published last week one of his poems! As reasons for outing himself, he wrote that it's about time that Costarican gay/lesbians wake up out of the sleep dreaming still from 100 years democracy, a democracy in which you can still be easy victim of actions authorities take at their own will. He states, too, that he wants to be an example like our g/l/b/t movement is for our g/l/b/t society to stand up, taking the risk of being discriminated for being openly gay or lesbian. 3. Negative reactions: 3.1 The "Miller" owned brewery "Cervezeria Americana" denied the offer from Cost Rica's gay/lesbian Magazine "Gente 10" to advertise in the magazin. Promotion of the brewery in a g/l media is counterproductive and not wanted, stated the PR agency of the brewery! 3.2 The only other (states owned) brewery "Cervezeria de Costa Rica" had a full page advertisement on the backside of the cover from the last edition of "Gente10". Breweries management got very upset for having that ad and refused to pay the page first and then decided to let the reponsible sales person of their company pay it personally. It seems that this poor guy will be fired for having approved the contract for the ad with "Gente 10". "Gente 10" asked me for your support to get in contact with companies which are interested to support the magazin by buyng space for advertising (without this support "Gente 10" will not be able to survive!)! Perhaps "Miller" in the US is interested to make an ad (imagine the postive effect that would have for companies in Costa Rica!!). So if you know somebody please tell him to contact: Gente 10 Mr. Jose Carrasquero Diaz Phone and Fax: (+506) 285-5368 That's all for this update. Thank you very much for your patience with me. Very kind regards and again thank you for your support Harald ****************************************************************************** To send a message to the entire list "queerplanet", email queerplanet@abacus.oxy.edu This list is run by the program MAJORDOMO@abacus.oxy.edu. *******************************************************************************