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HOW WAS LESLAC BORN?
The struggle for the rights of LGBTIQ+ people in Latin America and the Caribbean has been intense in the last two decades, and we have been pushing and pushing this struggle side by side with other identities, however lesbians who do militancy for lesbian rights in lesbian and bisexual women's organizations have been claiming for a considerable time the need to continue reflecting on the issues of each identity in their own spaces, That is why for years many lesbian feminist activists and lesbofeminist activists have made every regional meeting, every meeting, every congress, opportunities to dream of building a network or a platform for the articulation of lesbian and bisexual women's organizations in the LAC region.
On May 23, 2018, the Fundación Mujer & Mujer of Guayaquil (Ecuador), the Network of Lesbian and Bisexual Women of Bolivia - Red LB Bol and the Lesbianas Independientes Feministas Socialistas - LIFS of Lima (Peru) met in Lima, Peru on the occasion of an LGBTI event, making clear their purpose to constitute themselves as a network of lesbian and bisexual women's organizations.
From left to right Wendy Molina of the Bolivian Network of Lesbians and Bisexual Women, Lía Burbano of Fundación Mujer & Mujer, Gina - Gissy - Cedamanos and Luisa Zanabria of Lesbianas Independientes Feministas Socialistas - LIFS.
Flyer by Corporación Femm inviting Lesbian and BQ organizations attending the Third International Les-bi-inter-trans Feminist Meeting “Venir al Sur” in Mexico City in 2018 to create a Platform of organizations Violence in lesbian couples.
In November 2018, the Third International Les-bi-inter-trans Feminist Meeting “Venir al Sur” was held in Mexico City, and the Femm Corporation of Bogotá, Colombia, wanted to take advantage of its participation in that meeting to create a Platform of lesbian organizations that were interested in working on the issue of Violence in lesbian couples and couples formed by women, that is how Femm distributed during the Third Meeting Venir al Sur, the following flyers on paper.
Also attending the Venir al Sur Meeting were the organizations Fundación Mujer y Mujer, the Bolivian Network of Lesbians and Bisexual Women, and A.C Musas de Metal among others, and so it was that on November 28, 2018 they held a meeting to discuss Corporación Femm's proposal.
From left to right Cristina González of Corporacion Femm, Nella Hidalgo of Fundación Mujer & Mujer, Silene S. Huarita of the Bolivian Network of Lesbians and Bisexual Women, Jessica Agila of Fundación Mujer & Mujer and Marcela Briceño of Corporación Femm.
The banner that appears behind the Jessica Agila is the same image above and corresponds to the paper flyer that was distributed during the Venir al Sur Meeting with the proposal to consolidate a regional platform.
At that meeting on November 28, it emerged and became evident that the lesbian and bisexual women's organizations gathered there had many more issues that we wanted to include and work on in an articulated manner, that is how we decided that day to meet again on November 30, 2018 when the Venir al Sur Meeting would end.
And it was on Friday, November 30, 2018, the last day of Venir al Sur, that some of the organizations participating in this photo meeting agreed to join efforts to consolidate a network, platform or articulation of lesbian organizations and independent lesbian activists. As one of the commitments of this meeting Cristina González Hurtado - La Pochi from Corporación Femm was designated to create a whatsapp group (it worked from November 2018 to January 2021 under the name LESLAC 2018-2019), a mailing list in google groups and define a secure hosting to store all the information of what was later called LESLAC.
Corporación Femm in December 2018 proposed the graphic identity, logo and name of LESLAC, which are maintained to date.
From left to right Pol Martínez of Musas de Metal, Karen Garita, Jessica Agila and Lía Burbano of Fundación Mujer & Mujer, Silene S. Huarita from Red Boliviana de Lesbianas y Mujeres Bisexuales, Gabriela Blas from Colectivo Wiñay Wara D.S.G from Bolivia, Alhelí Ordoñez from LEDESER Mexico and Cristina González Hurtado, La Pochi from Corporación Femm among other compañeras representing organizations and independents.
Handwritten attendance list of the meeting of Friday, November 30 in which it was decided to create the Working Group of Lesbian Organizations and Activists LESLAC, which later became LESLAC- Network of Lesbian and Bisexual Women's Organizations.
This is how the hosting consolidated by Corporación Femm with all the information from LESLAC looked like
Through the whats app group created by Corporación Femm, the minutes of the first LESLAC meeting of November 30, 2018 and the list of attendees were socialized.
That November 2018 meeting was followed by VIRTUAL meetings in 2019.
(a) January 30, 2019 LESLAC meeting attended by the following lesbians:
At this second meeting, Corporación Femm presented the graphic identity that they developed as a contribution to LESLAC, which included: logo, profile photo for Facebook, cover photo for the Facebook group, letterhead, template for power point presentation.
b) The third and last LESLAC meeting in 2019 was held on May 29 and was attended by the following participants
ILGALAC 2019 Regional Conference - From left to right Cristina González Hurtado of Corporación Femm, Nella Hidalgo and Lía Burbano of Fundación Mujer & Mujer, Luisa Zanabria of Lesbianas Independientes Feministas Socialistas - LIFS.
During the months of November 2018 and June 2019, LESLAC published the survey Where are the lesbians? That survey was systematized by Corporacion Femm and an analysis document was produced by Alinx of Musas de Metal. After June 2019 the LESLAC 2018-2019 whats app chat was not moved again except to share information of the work of activists and their organizations.
Corporación Femm was the host organization of the VIII Regional Conference of ILGALAC 2019, held in Bogotá in November 2019; and it was there that some of the lesbian organizations that had met in LESLAC and that would be participating in that ILGALAC Conference, self-convened again in Bogotá to discuss why the LESLAC initiative had been frozen or stopped. There was no further elaboration or progress at that meeting in Bogota and LESLAC's work remained paralyzed, to the point that even the chat room was no longer active. At this conference the Guatemalan lesbian organization Vidas Paralelas, the Network of Lesbians and Bisexual Women of Cuba, Lesbianas Independientes Feministas Socialistas - LIFS of Peru, and the Chilean lesbian organization Rompiendo el Silencio expressed interest in being part of LESLAC and it was agreed to resume the conversation and think about strategies to reactivate LESLAC in 2020.
Screenshot of the virtual meeting by Jitsi on Saturday, April 25, 2020.
A new effort to bring together lesbian and bisexual women's organizations was made on April 25, 2020 by a provocation of Claudia B. Macedo from Coturno de Venus (Brasilia, Brazil), Cristina González Hurtado, La Pochi from Corporación Femm (Bogotá, Colombia), and Claudia Castro from Argentina, on the occasion of Lesbian Visibility Day - April 26th.
These lesbian colleagues proposed a meeting by jitsi, and about 30 Latin American lesbians from both lesbian organizations and individuals joined this meeting. It was decided at that meeting to launch a communiqué for international funders and donors, pointing out the challenges that lesbian organizations faced before the COVID-19 health crisis and during the pandemic. This communiqué was worked on collectively in meetings held on May 2 and 3, 2020 and was made public to seek signatures and endorsements during that week. There are no minutes of these meetings.
Corporación Femm, Fundación Mujer & Mujer, Red Boliviana de Lesbianas y mujeres bisexuales, Musas de Metal and Lesbianas Independientes Feministas Socialistas - LIFS promoted four more meetings on Saturdays May 9, 16 and 23 and June 6, 2020 (minutes and recordings of these meetings exist), which were randomly attended by some lesbians and women from LGBTI organizations, sexual and reproductive rights organizations, other organizations and individuals (or independent activists), but beyond the attendance to the virtual spaces, it was very complex to encourage balanced or egalitarian work dynamics because the few activities proposed ended up being carried out by a small group.
The five lesbian and bisexual women's organizations that had previously agreed on the purpose of consolidating a working group and a network of organizations in the region, we again took the initiative to self-convene in September 2020 to initiate a cycle of dialogues with cooperation agents and funders, an initiative that always made transparent our interest in working for lesbians and bisexual women in the region since all events were held as facebook lives. The five organizations temporarily chose to call ourselves LESLAC Coordinating Group to retake the name of the network that we already had and in which we had been working since 2018.
The lesbian and bisexual women's organizations Fundación Mujer & Mujer, Red Boliviana de Lesbianas y mujeres bisexuales, Corporación Femm, Musas de Metal and Lesbianas Independientes Feministas Socialistas - LIFS we reappropriate the name LESLAC and reaffirm ourselves as a feminist and intersectional network, active throughout Latin America and the Caribbean since 2018, with activities developed since 2019 with the aim of creating spaces for reflection, dialogue and work to articulate actions to address the effects of discrimination and violence in the public and private spheres against adolescents, young women, adults and older adults who identify, or name themselves, or are visible as lesbians and bisexual women in Latin America and the Caribbean.
LESLAC's path has not been short or smooth, we have invested a lot of work and hopes and in March 2023 we held our first Annual General Assembly - AGOA in the city of Villavicencio, Colombia, during which we adopted the network's statutes, the governance manual and other organizational management tools that provide structure and certainty to the network and its member organizations.
As you read, on this road we have met many Latin American compañeras and we will continue to meet many more, and hopefully we can continue to coincide with you in our journey.
Last day of LESLAC's Annual Ordinary General Assembly -AGOA in March 2023, in Colombia.
LESLAC Permanent Steering Committee meeting in September 2023, in Colombia.