Gender, Sexuality, Film, and Media in Latin America: Challenging Representation and Structures

Latin America is a region of contradictions in terms of gender and sexual-ity. While the United States failed to elect its first female president in 2016, Latin America has seen more female presidents than any other part of the world,  starting  with  Isabel  Perón  in  1974  and  continuing  with  a  boom  in  female political leaders between 1990 and 2018. While some, such as the anti-Sandinista Violeta Chamorro in Nicaragua in 1990, represented a setback for progressive forces, others symbolized their advance. Some made women’s rights and gender equality a priority. Chile’s Michelle Bachelet worked to legalize  abortion  against  strong  opposition.  Under  Cristina  Fernández  de  Kirchner’s leadership, in 2012 Argentina passed the most progressive gen-der-identity  law  in  the  world,  requiring  doctors  to  provide  free  hormone  treatments and gender-reassignment surgery and allowing people to change their gender on official documents even without surgery.1 Since then, many laws  to  protect  LGBTQ+  communities,  among  them  equal  marriage  and  adoption,  have  been  approved  throughout  the  region.  However,  Latin  America is also home to 7 of the 10 countries with the highest rates of femi-cide and one of the most precarious regions in terms of LGBTQ+ discrimina-tion. While abortion still remains illegal in seven Latin American countries, thanks  to  the  powerful  “Green  Wave”  feminist  movement  that  began  in  Argentina in 2018 and has spread to several other countries women stand poised to win their battle (against the dual logics of Catholicism and patriar-chy) for full reproductive rights over their bodies.