Global LGBT Politics at Scale

Abstract

This chapter illuminates one dynamic of the global emergence and successes of LGBT politics in the early twenty-first century: how LGBT communities remember and narrate the emergence of LGBT politics and the historical antecedents they use to contextualize contemporary LGBT rights claims. In juxtaposing a nationally circulating narrative with a regional one, the chapter suggests that how narratives about the emergence of LGBT politics circulate is a function of scale. For example, both national and regional LGBT rights efforts take note of events in the city of Tarapoto, located in Peru’s Amazonian region. At the national level, the violence that occurred in Tarapoto during Peru’s internal armed conflict helped link LGBT rights claims to the country’s broader human rights movement. Yet in Tarapoto interlocutors emphasized a municipal anniversary parade as a starting point for recounting the successes of LGBT rights in the region. Whereas analyses at the national scale may indicate a less successful record of LGBT rights in Peru in comparison to other Latin American countries, shifting analysis to the regional scale reveals an alternative account.