Queer Communism: Perspectives from Latin America

The paper develops a theory of queer communism from a Latin American perspective. Queer and communist politics are frequently positioned as incompatible. One presents itself as a mass movement oriented toward collective emancipation; the other, by contrast, is frequently cast as identitarian and particularistic. One is imagined as proclaiming the end of capitalism whilst the other is sometimes dismissed as one of its decadent symptoms. Their historical trajectories reinforce this separation: as communist projects faltered in the twentieth century, queer gained visibility with the emergence queer theory. And yet, the paper argues that the version of queer that dominates such readings tends to be rooted in the geopolitics and temporalizations of US imperialism. Through the lens of Latin American politics and activism, the paper explores the historical entanglement between queer and communist projects. Focusing on Brazil, Argentina, and Chile, the paper revisits figures and movements such as SOMOS and Herbert Daniel in Brazil, Lohana Berkins in Argentina, and Víctor Hugo Robles (El Che de los Gays) in Chile, who articulated queerness as inseparable from revolutionary transformation. These activists did not simply insert queer lives into leftist movements but redefined the terms of revolutionary struggle itself, revealing how heteronormativity structures capitalist exploitation and colonial power. SOMOS’s slogan, ‘sexo anal derruba o capital’, for instance, crystallizes a vision of queerness as an insurgent material practice rather than identity politics - a direct confrontation with the capitalist organization of life, work, and desire. The paper also considers the social worlds that made such politics possible - such as Ferro’s Bar in 1970s São Paulo, a lesbian gathering space that doubled as a hub for Communist organizing - demonstrating how queer and communist life have coexisted and cross-fertilized in everyday, affective, and spatial forms. In so doing the paper develops a theory that challenges Eurocentric notions of both ‘queer’ and ‘communism’. In dialogue with contemporary decolonial queer perspectives (eg. Teoria do cu/ir) and queer Marxist perspectives from Brazil (eg. Marxismo transviado), the paper reclaims queer communism as a living horizon of liberation that dismantles capitalist/colonial orders.