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      Identity, revolution, and democracy: lesbian movements in Central America. 


      Millie Thayer. Social Problems.  August 1997 v44 n3 p386(22).

      Author's Abstract: 
      Through case studies of lesbian movements in Costa Rim and Nicaragua, this 
      paper examines the phenomenon of identity-based movements, finding that it 
      embraces significant differences in the content and forms of collective 
      identities. New social movement theory calls attention to the role of 
      identity in contemporary movements, but overlooks variation in the nature 
      of identities. Resource mobilization and political process theories, on 
      the other hand, offer tools for explaining differences, but have not 
      generally been applied to crossnational comparisons of movements around 
      identity. Drawing on interviews with lesbian activists in Costa Rica and 
      Nicaragua, on participant observation, and on archival research, I argue 
      that three factors account for the differences in the way movements in 
      distinctive national contexts construct collective identities: 1) economic 
      structure/model of development; 2) state-civil society relations; and 3) 
      the broader field of social movements.


      Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1997 University of California Press 

      In the 1970s and 1980s, revolutionary guerrilla movements fought poverty 
      and dictatorship throughout much of the Central American isthmus. In the 
      late 1980s, a new kind of social movement was born in the region. In the 
      space of five years, fledgling lesbian movements surfaced in four Central 
      American countries: Costa Rica (1987), Honduras (1987), Nicaragua (1991), 
      and El Salvador (1992). These movements were a product, in part, of the 
      political and social upheaval of preceding decades; in part they were 
      related to underlying structural changes, to the onset of AIDS in the 
      region, and to the influence of gay and lesbian movements elsewhere. 
      Despite some common roots, however, there were striking differences among 
      the movements that developed in different countries. In Costa Rica, the 
      movement turned inward to construct its collective identity. The lesbian 
      feminist group, Las Entendidas, combined therapeutic support for its 
      members with efforts to create a larger lesbian community, and used an 
      idiom of spirituality and woman-centered culture that might be familiar to 
      students of the 1970s lesbian movement in the United States.(1) 
      In contrast, Nicaraguan lesbians took an assertive public stance, 
      insisting on their right to membership in society and on the rights of all 
      people to a "sexuality free of prejudice." Fundacion Xochiquetzal, a 
      non-profit organization founded by lesbians and gays, sought to remake 
      social mores in the sexual realm. The Nosotras collective provided 
      emotional support and education about sexuality and feminism to its 
      members, but many of them also joined in a coalition effort to fight a 
      repressive anti-gay law passed by the country's legislative assembly.(2) 
      Lesbian movements in Nicaragua and Costa Rica represent two points on 
      opposite ends of a continuum of social movements from a more internal to a 
      more external orientation. At one end, there is a stress on the 
      self-esteem and personal identity of group members that, in the case of 
      Costa Rica, extends to efforts to construct a broader lesbian community 
      out of existing social networks. At the most "extroverted" end, lesbians 
      in Nicaragua sought to revolutionize how society conceives of sexuality, 
      while simultaneously claiming a place in that society. Though both 
      orientations were founded on a concern with identity, lesbian movements in 
      these two Central American countries defined that identity and their goals 
      and arenas of action in sharply divergent ways. 
      In the following paper, I examine these contrasting approaches to lesbian 
      organizing and explain the differences in the nature of the two movements' 
      collective identities and the ways they were manifested in the social 
      origins of members, organizational structure, ideology, goals, and inward 
      versus outward orientation of practice.(3) 
      Theorizing Variation in Social Movement Identities 
      New social movement (NSM) theorists have situated lesbian movements among 
      a new genre of social movements which they see as a product of global 
      shifts from societies based on production to post-material, information 
      societies, in which states and complex systems have come to intrude on the 
      individual's very core. According to these scholars, the peace, feminist, 
      ecological, community, and gay and lesbian movements of the 1970s and 
      1980s represented means of resisting these growing threats to personal 
      autonomy (Escobar 1992; Habermas 1984; Melucci 1980, 1985, 1994; Offe 
      1985; Slater 1985; Touraine 1985, 1988). 
      The protagonists of these movements, according to NSM theorists, were both 
      those sensitized to the negative effects of modernity - the new middle 
      class - and those suffering from it; the proletariat was no longer the 
      epic actor on the stage. Unlike traditional, class-based movements, NSM 
      modes of action tended toward direct democracy, horizontal organization, 
      and a rejection of hierarchical forms of representation and 
      institutionalization. Furthermore, resistance to domination of everyday 
      life occurred on cultural, not political ground. Rather than contesting 
      for political power, or pressing demands on the state, these movements 
      struggled for the right to difference. Construction and defense of 
      identity were central concerns.(4) 
      Some recent analyses support the idea that certain elements shared by many 
      contemporary movements, such as the politicization of the private and the 
      assertion of identity as a primary goal, represent a significant departure 
      from the past (Buechler 1995; Johnston, Larana and Gusfield 1994). But 
      others criticize the reification of a category that does not take into 
      account differences among collective identities (Gamson, J. 1989; Gamson, 
      W. 1992)(5) In privileging identity-based movements, NSM theory offers 
      important insights into movements such as those analyzed here. However, 
      its sweeping structural explanations obscure distinctions among these 
      movements and overlook the historical specificities that might enable us 
      to explain why, for example, Nicaraguan lesbians constructed their 
      movement differently than their Costa Rican counterparts. 
      Theorists in the resource mobilization and political process traditions, 
      on the other hand, have been more concerned with explaining variation. By 
      situating social movements in their political and historical environments, 
      they provide a number of useful tools for comparative analysis of the 
      forces which shape different movements (Jenkins 1983; McAdam 1982; 
      McCarthy and Zald 1977; Oberschall 1973; Tarrow 1988, 1994; Tilly 1978). 
      However, much of this work rests on a definition of social movements that 
      unduly narrows the field of inquiry to what Tarrow (1994:3-4) describes as 
      "collective challenges by people with common purposes and solidarity in 
      sustained interaction with elites, opponents, and authorities." Although 
      social networks, symbols, and collective identities sometimes are given a 
      place in movement formation, these are usually viewed as means to an end - 
      the moment of overt engagement with political institutions. This exclusive 
      focus on a certain kind of social movement eliminates, as objects of 
      study, movements for whom construction of identity is an end, rather than 
      a means, and whose field of engagement does not (or does not primarily) 
      include the state. 
      There is a growing body of scholarly literature from this perspective that 
      compares social movements that have been considered "new" across different 
      national contexts (della Porta and Rucht 1995; Kitschelt 1986; Kriesi 
      1995, 1996; Rucht 1996). But, because of their bounded view of what 
      constitutes a social movement, these theorists tend to take the 
      conceptualization of goals and orientation of action as given,(6) 
      directing their attention instead to explaining mobilization, structure, 
      degree of militancy, or political outcomes. Although it offers useful 
      insights into variation among "political" movements, most work in the 
      resource mobilization and political process traditions is less helpful in 
      explaining why movements concerned with constructing identities outside 
      the institutional political arena take fundamentally different forms in 
      divergent national contexts. 
      A number of recent works, however, have begun to integrate NSM-inspired 
      concerns with collective identity and the sociopolitical factors often 
      cited by resource mobilization and political process theorists (Taylor 
      1989; Taylor and Rupp 1993; Taylor and Whittier 1992; Whittier 1995). Much 
      of this analysis focuses on changes over time within one movement, the 
      shift from Melucci's (1985) visible moment, when movements emerge to 
      confront a political authority, to what he calls "latency," during which 
      subterranean movement networks construct new "cultural models", (what 
      Taylor [1989] calls "abeyance"). While they offer an important corrective 
      to studies that recognize only the overt, political aspects of organizing, 
      there is a tendency among these authors to identify a "cultural" 
      orientation with low points in the life of a social movement, a 
      characterization that does not apply to movements, such as that of Costa 
      Rican lesbians, which are inwardly focused during their most active 
      moments. Nevertheless, these temporal analyses suggest the possibility of 
      applying political factors to explanations of differences among 
      identity-based movements. In the following pages, I will continue in this 
      spirit, seeking to extend the tools of resource mobilization and political 
      process theories in order to explain the varying orientations of movements 
      that assert identities beyond the space of formal politics. Rather than 
      comparing single movements over time, I will analyze cross-national 
      differences in the ways movements express their identities. 
      In Costa Rica, the lesbian movement looked inward toward definition of 
      personal identity, creation of community, and assertion of autonomy as a 
      sexual minority. The Nicaraguan movement took a different path, choosing 
      instead to defend the right of lesbians (and gays) to full social 
      integration, and to project to the society at large its vision of a free 
      sexuality for all. I argue that these contrasts can best be understood by 
      attention to the way three factors are expressed in a given society: 1) 
      the impact of the particular economic structure and development model on 
      social actors, 2) the relationship between state and civil society, and 3) 
      the nature of the broader sea of social movements - including political 
      parties - within which any given movement must navigate. 
      Economic Structure 
      In their efforts to dichotomize old and new movements and declare an end 
      to the dominion of material concerns, NSM theorists usually eschew 
      consideration of the limits and opportunities presented by the economy in 
      specific national contexts, preferring to remain at the level of epochal 
      transformations.(7) Resource mobilization theory generally goes to the 
      opposite extreme, focusing its analytic eye on the micro level of 
      resources available to particular movements. In contrast, I argue that the 
      class structure in a given country, while in no way determining the nature 
      of social movements, plays a role in providing or denying a potential 
      social base for different kinds of movements.(8) Costa Rica's more 
      diversified economy and sizable middle class, and Nicaragua's agroexport 
      orientation and polarized class structure, offered distinct possibilities 
      and limitations for social movements. 
      State-Civil Society Relations 
      NSM theory sees the growing penetration of the state into private life as 
      key to the contemporary creation of movements which assert the right to 
      define identities, but pays less attention to the ways distinctive 
      state-civil society configurations influence the nature of these 
      identities. Political process theorists have introduced the concept of 
      "political opportunity structures," the complex of interrelations among 
      state and party institutions, elite and oppositional strategies, as an 
      important variable in the mobilization of social movements (della Porta 
      and Rucht 1995; Kitschelt 1986; Kriesi 1995, 1996; Meyer and Staggenborg 
      1996; Rucht 1996; Tarrow 1994). However, while such an approach helps 
      analyze the behavior of movements within the formal political sphere, it 
      does little to explain the formation of collective identity among 
      movements not primarily concerned with making demands on the state (cf. 
      Rucht 1996).(9) If NSM theorists have a lens set at too wide an angle to 
      take in variations among identity-based movements, the political process 
      literature tends to locate movements too narrowly within the context of 
      political institutions. 
      I argue that it is not only these political institutions, but also their 
      relationship with civil society, the "'private' apparatus of 'hegemony'" 
      which plays a key role, not only in shaping class-based movements as 
      Gramsci argued, but in the fundamental nature of all kinds of movements 
      (1971:261). The state-civil society relationship is particularly important 
      for movements around issues, such as sexuality, that are constructed and 
      struggled over in a variety of arenas - the family, the community, the 
      church, popular culture, the economy, and others, as well as the state. 
      In Costa Rica, where the state exercised a stable form of hegemony through 
      civil society, interest groups competed within a status quo that was 
      rarely challenged, and the possibility of a unifying identity seemed 
      either utopian or authoritarian. In Nicaragua, on the other hand, a 
      state-civil society relationship that had seesawed over the previous two 
      decades, along with the heritage of a vanquished revolutionary regime, 
      left a fragile conservative state hegemony and a cadre of activists with 
      the memory of an inclusive form of social integration as a model. 
      Social Movement Field 
      In NSM theory, identity-based movements tend to spring fully-formed from 
      the fissures produced by structural transformation. There is little 
      concern with conjunctural mediating influences in the environment, and, 
      more specifically, with other movements which have left their mark on both 
      participants and their interlocutors. Political process scholars, on the 
      other hand, theorize the importance of previously existing organizational 
      resources in the development of new movements (McAdam 1982), the role of 
      "early risers" in a social movement cycle in expanding opportunities for 
      later-emerging movements (Tarrow 1988), and the mechanisms of "spillover" 
      from one movement to another (Meyer and Whittier 1994). From a symbolic 
      interactionist perspective, "frame" theorists elaborate the process by 
      which social movement "master frames" established early in a given cycle 
      constrain and influence later conceptions of organizing (Snow and Benford 
      1992; see also Snow and Benford 1988; Hunt, Benford and Snow 1994). While 
      all of these theories offer intriguing insights about the processes by 
      which one social movement affects others, they tend to treat 
      inter-movement relationships in isolation from a broader political and 
      social context, failing to link the influence of particular movements to 
      the kind of state-civil society relationship and structural environment in 
      which they are located. 
      In this paper I emphasize the relationship of new movements to a broader 
      "social movement family" with similar fundamental values (della Porta and 
      Rucht 1995), while at the same time locating these movements in an 
      expanded historical framework. In Costa Rica, lesbian organizing grew out 
      of a feminist movement with a long history and strong liberal and academic 
      feminist components; whatever small left had once existed, had long since 
      been silenced. In Nicaragua, the feminist and lesbian movements were born 
      simultaneously, led by women whose worldview and sense of politics was 
      shaped by a once-strong, class-based movement. 
      While class structure both restricts and creates possibilities, it is an 
      expanded political realm that shapes social movement orientations and 
      fundamental conceptions of goals and strategy. In the sections that 
      follow, I describe the Nicaraguan and Costa Rican lesbian movements, and 
      then show how economic structure and political context work together to 
      construct the profound differences between them. 
      Costa Rica: Circling the Wagons 
      Costa Rica's first lesbian organization, founded in March 1987, appeared 
      in some ways to be the quintessential "new social movement" described by 
      theorists. A small group, whose activists never reached more than twenty, 
      Las Entendidas never tried to recruit on a mass scale and actually limited 
      membership by criteria such as knowledge and acceptance of feminism. Until 
      1990, when its first coordinator was elected, the group had a loose 
      structure made up of ad hoc commissions. All but one of its active members 
      were professionals, members of the "new middle-class" evoked by NSM 
      adherents. 
      Theorists describe new social movements as growing out of a reaction to 
      the failures of so-called old social movements, rather than being inspired 
      by and allied with them. Whether the formation of a lesbian organization 
      responded to shortcomings of the small Costa Rican left is difficult to 
      say; what is certain is that there were no ties between the two movements. 
      None of the group's members came out of left party activism and, according 
      to its coordinator, Las Entendidas had no ongoing relationship to left 
      organizations. 
      Most importantly, the group's goals reflected the inward turn noted by 
      analysts of many contemporary movements. In an article summarizing their 
      first five years of work, members of Las Entendidas expressed their 
      ongoing commitment: "We continue giving soul and body to [our] lesbian 
      identity. . ." (Las Entendidas 1992:8).(10) From the beginning, a primary 
      objective was to build internal strength by promoting self-esteem, 
      combating internalized guilt and "lesbophobia," and developing a new 
      lesbian (and later lesbian feminist) identity. Las Entendidas functioned 
      as a support and social group for its members; time was set aside at the 
      meetings for sharing personal feelings and experiences, and members went 
      on recreational outings together. The group sought personal liberation via 
      intellectual practice, engaging in discussions of feminist literature and 
      the collective elaboration of new theories. 
      As the organization evolved, the concept of identity came to embrace not 
      only individuals, but a wider community. By the end of 1987, Las 
      Entendidas had begun to define its ideology as feminist and set itself a 
      second goal: to create a lesbian feminist community through outreach and 
      consciousness-raising among Costa Rican lesbians. With this in mind, the 
      group founded a monthly "women's night" at a San Jose gay bar, where they 
      offered speakers and workshops on topics such as sexuality, feminism, 
      self-esteem, and alcoholism, as well as theater, poetry readings, and 
      other cultural events. One historian of the movement comments: "It was an 
      activity. . .which may have made [women] feel part of a community, of a 
      larger group with the capacity to be involved in activities outside of the 
      ordinary, and the possibility of learning new things" (Serrano n.d.:8). 
      The group also conducted a survey of lesbian life, organized a therapy 
      group for survivors of incest and published a newsletter bearing the 
      slogan, "For a Lesbian Solidarity". In part with the hope of involving and 
      educating new local members, Las Entendidas hosted the Second Latin 
      American and Caribbean Lesbian Feminist Encounter in 1990. Despite an 
      extremely hostile atmosphere, the event was attended by 150 women from 
      Costa Rica and all over the continent (see Carstensen 1992; Jimenez 1990; 
      Madden Arias 1994; No author 1990). 
      A third goal articulated by members of Las Entendidas was to win space and 
      acceptance in the broader feminist movement. But this objective was never 
      fully realized. For reasons discussed below, most members of Las 
      Entendidas were reluctant to go public about their sexual orientation, 
      even within women's organizations. 
      The final set of goals claimed by Las Entendidas was "to conquer 
      invisibility" vis a vis the rest of the popular movement and society at 
      large, and to demand rights in a patriarchal society (No author 1990:1). 
      But, while these objectives were occasionally stated, it is difficult to 
      find their expression in the group's practices. Apart from their 
      appearance at a women's march against violence, Las Entendidas seems to 
      have entered the public eye only reluctantly. The international Lesbian 
      Feminist Encounter, for example, was intended more as an opportunity to 
      strengthen the different participating groups internally and establish 
      networks between them, than as an effort to confront homophobia in Costa 
      Rican society. The conference was not locally advertised outside of 
      feminist circles, and it was only when the press got wind of the event, 
      and opposition began to escalate, that members of Las Entendidas agreed to 
      meet with reporters.(11) One activist commented: "Las Entendidas" goal is 
      collective visibility of lesbians, but we continue to work internally and 
      fear coming out." 
      There are at least four possible arenas of struggle for lesbian movements 
      such as Las Entendidas, ranging from the most intimate to the most public. 
      Groups may focus 1) on strengthening and developing a sense of identity 
      among their own members; 2) on reaching and involving a wider lesbian 
      community; 3) on educating those active in the women's movement; or 4) on 
      addressing society as a whole. In the case of the Costa Rican movement, 
      the emphasis was clearly on the first two arenas. Participation in the 
      women's movement was sporadic and limited to only some members; efforts to 
      have an impact on society at large were rare.(12) 
      In an editorial on the fifth anniversary of Las Entendidas' founding, Lila 
      Silvestre wrote: "Today, although discrimination against lesbians 
      continues to affect us, we have more strength to create our own spaces and 
      new relationships because we have a support group in which we recognize 
      and nurture each other. . ." (Silvestre 1992:1). In many ways, Las 
      Entendidas presented the ideal-typical profile of a new social movement. 
      Its educated, middle-class membership, loose structure, personal identity 
      focus and lack of involvement with traditional politics of left or right, 
      as well as its efforts to create an autonomous space for difference, 
      seemed to confirm NSM theorists' predictions about the kinds of movements 
      that would arise in this period. Within this conception, Las Entendidas, 
      even at its apogee, fell at the latent, defensive end of Melucci's 
      continuum. That this form of development was not inevitable, however, 
      becomes clear when we examine the lesbian movement just across the border 
      to the north in Nicaragua. 
      Nicaragua: Publicizing the Private 
      The lesbian movement in Nicaragua in the late 1980s and early 1990s 
      consisted of two organizations which worked directly with lesbians, and a 
      number of other individuals and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), 
      which played an important role in promoting and supporting the movement. 
      Here analysis will concentrate on Nosotras and Xochiquetzal, the two 
      entities which brought lesbians together to work on issues of sexuality 
      and sexual preference. Though each had a different structure and 
      functions, their memberships and goals overlapped - in fact Xochiquetzal 
      served for three years as a kind of umbrella for Nosotras, as well as the 
      gay collective, S Homos - and, during this period, they can be considered 
      complementary parts of one movement.(13) 
      In contrast to Las Entendidas in Costa Rica, the lesbian movement in 
      Nicaragua was not an archetypal new social movement. Instead, it was a 
      kind of hybrid, combining features of both "new" and "old," in the context 
      of the construction and defense of identity. While the coordinators of 
      Xochiquetzal were middle class, the membership of the Nosotras collective, 
      some 30 altogether, was a mixture of urban working class and professional 
      women. Unlike the Costa Rican movement, Nicaraguan lesbians had close ties 
      to the left. Despite the sometimes conflictive history of FSLN-gay and 
      lesbian relations, all the members were (or had been) Sandinista 
      supporters and continued to identify with the party's revolutionary goals. 
      Several activists were party members and at least one had important 
      political and administrative responsibilities during the decade of 
      Sandinista state power. Although Nosotras had a loose structure, with a 
      rotating coordinator and no formal legal status, Xochiquetzal, which 
      provided resources and support to the collective, was a staff-based 
      institution with legal status and funding sources abroad. 
      Through their movement, lesbians in Nicaragua addressed a broader and 
      somewhat different set of goals than did their sisters in Costa Rica, with 
      Nosotras focusing more on internal identity and Xochiquetzal more on 
      outreach beyond the lesbian community, although neither confined itself 
      entirely to one end of the spectrum. Within the collective, members of 
      Nosotras sought to build self-esteem, to strengthen their identity as 
      women and as lesbians, and to "learn about our gender condition," as one 
      woman put it. The group held monthly meetings dedicated to study and 
      recreational activities. One of their main endeavors was a nine-month 
      course coordinated by Xochiquetzal on feminism, sexuality, and women's 
      health issues. 
      A second goal, this one articulated by Xochiquetzal staff, was outreach in 
      the lesbian community and support for the formation of new collectives. 
      Besides the training and logistical" support it offered initially for 
      lesbian and gay groups, the foundation organized a series of fiestas in an 
      effort to reach the broader lesbian community. However, these were soon 
      abandoned for lack of funds and because they did not succeed in drawing in 
      new activists, and plans for Nosotras to do outreach at the few, newly 
      founded lesbian social clubs were slow to get off the ground. 
      A third goal for the lesbian movement was to support and influence the 
      growing feminist movement. To this end, representatives of both 
      Xochiquetzal and Nosotras participated in meetings and activities of the 
      National Feminist Committee (CNF), a coalition of some 25 women's groups 
      who conducted feminist education and organizing projects. The two lesbian 
      organizations successfully insisted that the groups in the CNF support the 
      right to sexual preference as a principle of their educational work and 
      that the committee as a whole incorporate this as a plank in its platform 
      (No author 1992a; Blandon 1993). Xochiquetzal offered workshops on 
      sexuality to women's organizations, and staff members aggressively 
      challenged homophobia in feminist meetings. 
      A final duster of goals addressed the broader social arena. In their 
      literature, leaders of Xochiquetzal linked personal and social change, 
      defining their mission as: "Promoting the integral development of people 
      on the terrain of sexuality, through a knowledge of human sexuality free 
      of prejudices, and the creation of social conditions which favor [such 
      development]" (Fundacion Xochiquetzal n.d.:2). 
      Organized lesbians in Nicaragua went beyond defending their existence as 
      individual members of a sexual minority. Xochiquetzal made demands for 
      rights based on lesbian membership in and identification with a range of 
      other marginalized groups, including: "equal rights to participate. . 
      .without any kind of political, economic, or social or cultural 
      discrimination. . ." and "the right to peace and security" (No author 
      1993b:15). These were demands not just for space in society, but for a 
      thorough transformation of the society in which lesbians wanted to be 
      included. 
      These objectives required moving beyond the lesbian and feminist 
      communities. As the Xochiquetzal sub-director explained: 
      . . .[We] realized that if we wanted to influence the population and 
      promote respect and tolerance for sexual preference, we couldn't do it by 
      staying in the ghetto. [Also], gays and lesbians are not only those who 
      are organized, but they are in all sectors; the majority are in the 
      closet. So we broadened the groups that we worked with. 
      The foundation conducted workshops and produced radio programs, articles 
      and educational materials aimed at society at large, but in particular at 
      students, women's groups, and medical personnel. In these forums, besides 
      advocating lesbian and gay rights, the foundation sought to demystify the 
      arena of sexuality and preached a doctrine of self-acceptance, liberation 
      from the tyranny of norms, and the right of all people - gay or straight - 
      to sexual pleasure. This social orientation was shared by members of 
      Nosotras as well. Along with the foundation, Nosotras joined coalitions to 
      plan Gay Pride and AIDS awareness events designed to reach heterosexual 
      society, as well as gays and lesbians. At the first public gay and lesbian 
      celebration in 1991, organizers were explicit about this aim, choosing to 
      invite well-known straight intellectuals to make presentations, alongside 
      gays and lesbians. Perhaps most visibly, in 1992 the lesbian movement 
      participated in a "Campaign for a Sexuality Free of Prejudice" to oppose a 
      newly enacted anti-sodomy law and educate the Nicaraguan public about the 
      issue (see Andersson 1993; Bolt Gonzalez 1995; No author 1993a; Fundacion 
      Xochiquetzal 1992). More than 25 organizations were involved in the 
      campaign. When their requests to speak with President Violeta Chamorro 
      were ignored, they held public forums and debates, presented their case in 
      the media, gathered over 4,000 signatures against the law, and challenged 
      its constitutionality in court. 
      The goals and activities of the Nicaraguan lesbian movement extended 
      across the spectrum of strategic arenas, from an inward focus on its own 
      members to an outward focus on the rest of society, with much of its 
      energy going in the latter direction. While Nosotras worked to build 
      lesbian identity among its members, Xochiquetzal took on the task of 
      coordinating educational and political activities directed toward civil 
      society and, in serf-defense, toward the state. Until 1994, the two groups 
      worked together to promote awareness in the women's movement and, to a 
      lesser extent, to reach the unorganized sectors of the lesbian community. 
      In contrast to the Costa Rican experience, the Nicaraguan lesbian movement 
      combined the concern with subjectivity stressed by NSM analysts with other 
      features often associated with older, class-based movements. It was a 
      movement with both a loosely structured and an institutionalized 
      expression; with both middle-class and working-class members, and with a 
      concern for personal identity, as well as a commitment to recreating 
      society in an inclusive image. 
      If anything, this movement leaned toward the visible, political end of the 
      continuum theorists have described. Unlike some other identity-based 
      movements including Las Entendidas, Xochiquetzal and Nosotras chose to 
      enter the political sphere, not seeking to win power as "old" movements 
      had, but to defend rights and further educational goals. They sought, not 
      just to gain tolerance, but to reshape society's thinking about sexuality. 
      The goal was not primarily autonomous space, but social integration. As 
      one Nicaraguan activist told Margaret Randall: ". . .not creating ghettos 
      really is important. We need to defend our place in society as a whole and 
      make society respect us for what we are, for what we do, for our work" 
      (Randall 1992:75). 
      Costa Rica: Sex and Democracy 
      The Costa Rican and Nicaraguan lesbian movements offered a stark contrast 
      not easily explained by current social movement theory. While one 
      consisted primarily of middle class professionals, the other had a strong 
      working class representation; while one functioned in a fairly ad hoc 
      manner, the other had both informal and institutionalized components; 
      while one adhered to a radical feminist ideology, focusing its attention 
      on personal growth and building community, the other embodied 
      revolutionary feminism, building alliances within civil society around a 
      totalizing, liberatory vision. Three factors, one economic/structural and 
      the other two rooted in the political domain, seem to account for these 
      differences. 
      For a series of historical reasons, Costa Rica developed a significantly 
      different class structure than Nicaragua. A relatively wealthy country 
      with a more diversified economy, its 1992 GNP per inhabitant was more than 
      three times that of Nicaragua. Whereas 68.7 percent of Nicaraguans lived 
      in poverty in 1985, only 28.1 percent of Costa Ricans did. Though Costa 
      Rica was no more urbanized than its northern neighbor, it had a larger 
      middle class and more educated population. In 1990, higher education 
      accounted for 11.6 percent of all Costa Rican students enrolled in school; 
      in Nicaragua the figure was 2.6 percent. In 1980, professionals, 
      technicians, administrators, and managers made up more than one-fifth of 
      the economically active population in Costa Pica; these sectors in 
      Nicaragua were less than one-tenth of those employed (FLACSO 1995:36, 104, 
      113, 139, 140). 
      These structural conditions had important implications for lesbians and 
      gays, particularly in the context of urbanization, which began in the 
      1950s and reached its peak in the 1970s. For both gays and lesbians, life 
      in the city offered greater opportunities to interact, and a degree of 
      anonymity, economic independence and freedom from the constraints of the 
      extended family.(14) While there was no real homosexual "ghetto," the 
      number of gays in the growing middle class made possible a small gay male 
      culture organized around bars and private parties. Though lesbian culture 
      was much less visible and lesbians as a group were certainly much less 
      economically independent than gay men, it is likely that urban life had 
      some of the same effects on them, bringing them together and offering 
      those with the means the option of a somewhat less clandestine lifestyle. 
      From the 1950s onward, educational opportunities for women expanded, and 
      so, to some extent, did the possibilities for financial independence for 
      the educated middle-class woman. (Although in Nicaragua women made up a 
      slightly greater percentage of the working population than in Costa Rica, 
      the percentage of women in professional and technical occupations was 
      nearly twice as high in Costa Rica [FLASCO 1995: 117, 119].) All of these 
      factors laid the groundwork for the growth of an urban lesbian community. 
      This parallel culture and the availability of individual solutions meant 
      that it was possible for some lesbians to avoid direct confrontation with 
      the dominant society, and there was less sense of urgency around economic 
      and social issues that might have linked lesbians more closely to other 
      groups than there was in Nicaragua. Participation in a semi-autonomous 
      community was a viable possibility for a certain group of women. 
      Furthermore, there was a significant academic community which could 
      support a more intellectually-oriented movement than developed in 
      Nicaragua. 
      But class structure does not determine, and cannot by itself explain, the 
      shape social movements take in a given society. It is to the political 
      realm - more specifically to the kind of state and its relationship to 
      civil society - that we must turn to further understand the variation in 
      movements. 
      Since 1948, Costa Rica has had a stable, constitutional democracy with a 
      pervasive discourse of individual rights and justice. Despite moves toward 
      neoliberal retrenchment in the 1980s, Costa Rica's was a modified welfare 
      state that offered significant social protection to at least some sectors, 
      and actively promoted the institutionalization of interests. 
      This state rested firmly on a hegemony based in civil society (Gramsci 
      1971). While occasionally resorting to coercion, the state relied 
      primarily on eliciting the consent of the governed through cooptation and 
      the legitimacy of its representative political institutions (see Vilas 
      1995; Palma 1989). Clearly delineated and institutionalized interest 
      groups competed within the framework of the status quo. At the same time, 
      an internally-differentiated elite maintained control of the reins of 
      state through a long-established system of rotation of power. The overall 
      effect, according to activists, was a political culture dominated by 
      apathy, individualism, and a fear of conflict that went beyond the 
      boundaries of the hegemonic consensus. 
      Costa Rica enjoys a reputation as a leader in the area of women's rights. 
      In 1949, in response to local feminist demands as well as to international 
      pressure, the country became the first in the region to guarantee 
      political rights for women, and since then the state has continually 
      intervened in gender politics as a champion - at least rhetorically - of 
      women's equality (see Escalante Herrera 1990; Garcia and Gomariz 1989; 
      Saint-Germain 1993; Saint-Germain and Morgan 1991). In a country with a 
      sizable group of educated women and "femocrats" - female bureaucrats - as 
      well as an active grassroots women's movement, political leaders were 
      quick to try to turn gender issues to their advantage.(15) 
      On gender, as with other themes, challengers faced the sense of 
      exceptionalism fostered by the state and shared by many Costa Ricans. As 
      one feminist put it: "In Costa Rica you can"t question the venerated and 
      mythical "equality" of all Costa Ricans without running the risk of being 
      called a traitor to the country" (Facio 1988:9). But the permeability of 
      the state to women's concerns masked continuing social and economic 
      inequalities, such as discrimination in land ownership and employment, as 
      well as rape, domestic abuse, and paternal irresponsibility (Facio 1988). 
      For lesbians in particular, oppression was rooted in civil society rather 
      than within the confines of law. The first line of defense of the dominant 
      sexual order was what participants in the lesbian movement called 
      "invisibilization." As one journalist noted, the topic of lesbianism did 
      not appear in either university or public library catalogs, and only 
      entered the media in relationship to the 1990 Lesbian Feminist Encounter 
      (Mandell 1991:9). One longtime member of Las Entendidas explained one 
      aspect of social control: "Here, repression isn't carried out by the 
      police or the army, but by your neighbor. . . .It's a democratic country, 
      but all the aggression takes place in the family." Related, but even more 
      insidious, was what Mandell called "self-censorship." Another activist 
      commented: "They don"t have any army, because they don"t need one. . . . 
      Lesbophobia is internalized; people are afraid and don"t even try to come 
      out." 
      In Costa Rica, the relationship between state and civil society had been 
      stable over a long period of time. The state promoted a particular set of 
      moral values which only became visible when sexual hegemony was under 
      threat. Minister of Government Alvarez Desanti, reacting to holding the 
      international lesbian conference in Costa Rica, made this quite clear: 
      This is a democratic country, where the laws guarantee us the right to 
      meet freely; nevertheless, there are ethical and moral values which the 
      national authorities should defend. For this reason, we believe that a 
      congress such as the one which has been announced affects our lifestyle 
      and threatens the education and moral principles which we wish to 
      inculcate in our youth." (No author 1990) 
      An earlier challenge to conventional mores, in the mid-1980s, when AIDS 
      began making inroads among gays, had also produced a vigorous governmental 
      response. On the one hand, the disease's appearance drew people together 
      and sparked initial organizing efforts; on the other, it made gays visible 
      to the straight community and aroused irrational fears. The government 
      made no efforts to respond to the medical emergency provoked by the 
      epidemic, and instead moved to shut down gay and lesbian bars and harass 
      their clientele. In March 1987, police raided a bar called La Torre, 
      frequented by middle class gay men, and arrested 253 people. Meanwhile, 
      the government began requiring public employees to take AIDS tests, a move 
      criticized by gays as blatantly discriminatory and without international 
      precedent. These actions were the spark which led to the birth of a 
      movement among both lesbians and gay men.(16) By the end of 1987, four gay 
      and lesbian organizations had formed, among them Las Entendidas. 
      But these moments of overt state repression were rare, and, for the most 
      part, the illusion of a value-free democracy was preserved. The Costa 
      Rican state, with its largely invisible moral foundation and stable 
      integration with civil society, offered a slippery target for 
      transformatory challenges and discouraged a focus on politics, per se. The 
      proliferation of interest groups also left little room for inclusive 
      identities. Together, these conditions help account for the development of 
      a lesbian movement that withdrew into a semi-autonomous community founded 
      on conceptions of women's essential difference, rather than pursuing a 
      crusade to change broader social values, as the movement did in Nicaragua. 
      In the end, retreat may have seemed more attractive than participation in 
      a rejecting society that offered meager sources of common identity. 
      The third factor shaping any given social movement is also political: the 
      field of other movements within which it moves, particularly those that 
      share underlying values. In Costa Rica, the virtual absence of the left in 
      the 1980s was a product, in part, of the mediating effects of the 
      country's civilian welfare state, representative political institutions, 
      and dominant liberal discourse (Solis 1989). The resulting lack of 
      widespread experience with cross-class relations around a common political 
      project, left Las Entendidas, despite its attempts to reach working class 
      lesbians, with a professional and intellectual constituency. The unifying 
      left ideology and identity that shaped those who founded the lesbian 
      movement in Nicaragua was absent in Costa Rica, opening the way for a 
      movement that stressed difference, demanded autonomy, and retreated into 
      self-healing and self-protection, rather than seeking to reshape society. 
      In the end, lesbians became another interest group of sorts, struggling to 
      carve out a niche for yet another particularized identity. 
      Whereas, in Nicaragua, a class-based movement established a "master frame" 
      with which other movements had to contend (Snow and Benford 1992), in 
      Costa Rica, gender-based organizing set the stage. Perhaps in part 
      inspired by the state's liberal democratic discourse, in the mid to late 
      1970s, during the UN Decade for Women, an active women's movement emerged 
      (see Berron 1995; Candelaria Navas 1985; Garcia and Gomariz 1989; 
      Saint-Germain and Morgan 1991). By the end of the 1980s, Costa Rica had 
      over 150 women's groups, more than any other country in Central America 
      (Garcia and Gomariz 1989:212). Many of the women later involved in Las 
      Entendidas participated in women's organizations of one kind or another, 
      and all were shaped by the political climate this movement helped create. 
      The feminist movement in Costa Rica had three main strands in the 1980s: 
      liberal (Saint-Germain 1993), academic feminist (Gonzalez Suarez 1988), 
      popular feminist (Colectivo Pancha Carrasco 1994). The first - and 
      dominant - sector consisted of mainstream institutions, political party 
      members, government functionaries, and independent, professional women, 
      and set its scope on legislative change, an arena where there was little 
      room for addressing lesbian concerns. Academic feminists centered around a 
      gender and a women's studies program in each of the two principal 
      universities. Popular feminism was the focus of several small 
      nongovernmental organizations, staffed by middle-class women, who sought 
      to build a movement among women of the working class. Las Entendidas was 
      primarily influenced by university-based feminists, a fact that is 
      reflected in its intellectual discourse. Some members' experience with 
      popular feminism may have been expressed in its efforts - albeit 
      unsuccessful - to reach working class lesbians in the bars. 
      Although homophobia and fear of being identified as lesbians may have been 
      more widespread among mainstream feminists, it was expressed in all 
      sectors of the women's movement, reflecting the kind of internalized 
      repression in the wider society. For the most part, Las Entendidas' 
      initiatives to the feminist movement met with rejection, despite group 
      members' long history of activism in women's organizations. Feminists not 
      only failed to openly defend organizers of the 1990 Lesbian Feminist 
      Encounter when the state, the church and the media launched vicious 
      attacks, but one group withdrew its sponsorship of the lesbians' request 
      for a meeting space at the university. 
      The Encounter did force feminist recognition of lesbian existence and, 
      subsequently, Las Entendidas was invited to participate in several women's 
      events, but the reception remained chilly. After their presentation at one 
      conference, the published version of the proceedings changed Las 
      Entendidas' name to disguise the group's nature. Feminist homophobia 
      functioned as another force pushing Las Entendidas back into the 
      collective closet. If lesbians could not be confident of allies even in 
      the feminist movement, how could they make links to broader issues of 
      sexuality and take on the task of outreach to the larger society? 
      In Costa Rica, a diversified class structure, stable and hegemonic 
      state-civil society relations, and the dominance of a particular kind of 
      feminism with particular attitudes toward lesbianism combined to generate 
      a lesbian movement which resisted the imposition of dominant values by 
      reinforcing its own boundaries, rather than by seeking allies with whom to 
      reinvent society's sexual practices. 
      Nicaragua: Sex and Revolution 
      Compared with Costa Rica, Nicaragua had a much more underdeveloped 
      agroexport economy, with a class structure polarized between a very small, 
      educated upper class and a large, impoverished majority. Though 
      urbanization was no less significant in Nicaragua than in Costa Rica, the 
      middle class was too small to provide an economic base for the kind of gay 
      and lesbian community built around consumption that developed in San Jose. 
      Most lesbians continued to live with, and depend on, their families, and 
      there was little chance of individual autonomy for the majority who were 
      working class. A movement based on the creation of an enclave community 
      could have little appeal (Ferguson 1991). The structural constraints also 
      meant that it would have been difficult to create a viable lesbian 
      movement limited to the middle class and isolated from the broader social 
      issues that affected the poor majority. 
      Turning to the political sphere, both the nature of the state and its 
      relationship to civil society had undergone drastic shifts, passing 
      through three distinct phases in the 15 years prior to the movement's 
      founding: from dictatorship, to revolutionary government, to conservative, 
      neoliberal state. 
      Perched for more than 40 years atop a vastly unequal distribution of 
      wealth in an agricultural export economy, the Somoza dictatorship 
      destroyed or coopted all organized identities independent of its own 
      interests. In this way, the Somozas stunted the growth of civil society 
      and polarized the populace, managing to unify a heterogeneous opposition 
      and ultimately spelling the end of their long reign in 1979. As the regime 
      grew more repressive, it invaded the sphere of personal life in dramatic 
      ways, killing, torturing and disappearing suspected opponents. In the 
      process, new sectors, including housewives and young women, mobilized into 
      the opposition and took on unaccustomed roles as soldiers, weaponsmakers, 
      and logistical support for revolutionary forces. 
      After the dictatorship's defeat, the FSLN came to power in a country 
      without a civil society or history of democratic practice and set about 
      creating these from the top down (Vilas 1995). Throughout the eighties, 
      the Sandinistas built popular organizations and sought to draw society's 
      castoffs into the political process.(17) 
      Both before and after the taking of power, the Sandinista movement had a 
      profound impact on the personal lives of its followers. In effect, the 
      revolution too invaded the personal realm, turning traditional gender and 
      generational arrangements upside down. Young people who joined the 
      movement exchanged the structure of patriarchal authority within the 
      family for a newfound personal and sexual freedom. Mobilized to fight in 
      the army, teach literacy in remote areas, pick coffee and cotton, and work 
      far from home, Nicaragua's youth, particularly its young women, took on 
      new roles and formed new kinds of relationships. Much like the World War 
      II period in the United States (D'Emilio 1983), Nicaraguan lesbians, as 
      well as gays, found, if not social acceptance, at least greater room for 
      maneuver amidst the social turmoil. Though there was no real gay 
      "community" to speak of and the Sandinista regime had closed down the few 
      gay clubs that had existed during the Somoza period, gays and lesbians did 
      begin to find one another.(18) 
      The regime which came to power in Nicaragua in 1979, sought to bring 
      together a broad spectrum of social sectors around an interventionist 
      political project to benefit the poor and the previously powerless, 
      including women (see Chinchilla 1990,1994; Criquillion 1995; Murguialday 
      1990; Thayer 1994). The Sandinista government spoke of women's rights to 
      equal participation in society and made concrete advances which alleviated 
      some of women's burdens and allowed them more independence from oppressive 
      family structures.(19) Beyond their new freedoms, women also won 
      legitimation for their claims to be treated as integral, equal members of 
      society, a lesson not lost on the lesbians among them. 
      But, while there seemed to be consensus within the revolutionary 
      government on the subject of women's rights, at least at a rhetorical 
      level, the same was not true of lesbian and gay issues. At the end of 
      1986, a semi-clandestine gay and lesbian organization, the Nicaraguan Gay 
      Movement, formed to offer emotional support, internal education about 
      sexuality and AIDS, and discussion of sexual identity, as well as 
      opportunities for social contact (see No author 1992b; Merrett 1992; 
      Zuniga 1995). These activities came to an abrupt halt three months later 
      when the group was infiltrated by Sandinista State Security. Members were 
      taken to Security headquarters, questioned about their personal lives and 
      collective activities, and told in no uncertain terms that such gatherings 
      were considered counterrevolutionary, despite most of the participants 
      having long histories of revolutionary activism.(20) 
      Meanwhile, other parts of the state and revolutionary leadership took an 
      entirely different position. As in Costa Rica, AIDS served as both 
      catalyst to and cover for gay and lesbian organization. After their 
      organization was disbanded, Nicaraguan gay and lesbian activists formed 
      the Popular AIDS Education Collective (CEPSIDA), which eventually grew to 
      some 200 people, including both men and women. The group conducted AIDS 
      prevention workshops in a Managua park that served as the gay cruising 
      ground and among the prostitutes at a local shopping mall (see No author 
      1992b; Merrett 1992; Nicaragua Information Center 1988; Otis 1991). Health 
      Minister Dora Mafia Tellez offered support for CEPSIDA and intervened with 
      the revolutionary leadership to prevent harassment of group members. 
      Despite contradictions within the state on the issue of sexual 
      orientation, for the most part during the Sandinista period, society was 
      organized around an explicit moral and political consensus under the 
      hegemony of the FSLN. The new institutions and identities were fluid and 
      there was an ideology of makeover - the "new man" was under construction. 
      While many lesbians questioned the absence of the "new woman," and at 
      least some experienced rejection from party functionaries, the 
      revolutionary process as a whole offered the basis for a social 
      integration that had not earlier seemed possible. It also legitimated the 
      conception of a society founded on an explicit set of values which could 
      be articulated to reflect a broad array of interests. It is fitting that, 
      once the Sandinistas lost state power and commitments to the FSLN began to 
      fade, lesbians who had come of age in the 1980s should develop a movement 
      that stressed continuities as well as differences and should pursue 
      inclusion in a reconstructed society organized around transformed values. 
      With the FSLN loss at the polls in 1990, an internally divided state with 
      a neoliberal economic plan and a conservative gender agenda came to power, 
      and the fledgling civil society was on its own without tutelage for the 
      first time. The new government revamped education to reflect traditional 
      conceptions of morality: sex education was banned and new textbooks called 
      Morality and Civics were distributed. An anti-abortion campaign was 
      launched and efforts to criminalize domestic violence were defeated 
      (Kampwirth 1992). 
      The incoming mayor of Managua, Arnoldo Aleman, launched a campaign to 
      "clean up" the city and eliminate homosexual activity from public spaces 
      (Merrett 1992). One month after he assumed office the doors to the ruined 
      cathedral that had served as a gay socializing and cruising area were 
      barred and police harassment of gays in the nearby park escalated. In June 
      1992, as part of its "family values" campaign, the new legislature passed 
      what has been called the most repressive anti-sodomy law in the 
      hemisphere. According to the law, anyone who "induces, promotes, 
      propagandizes or practices cohabitation among people of the same sex in a 
      scandalous manner" is guilty of the crime of sodomy, punishable by up to 
      three years in prison (Asamblea Nacional 1992).(21) 
      Given the history of mobilization and popular education about rights in 
      Nicaragua, these moves generated a sense of outrage and generalized 
      opposition to the regime among lesbian as well as other activists and 
      reinforced ties among different groups within civil society. In fact, 
      legal attacks on gay rights only provoked a more militant opposition which 
      sought allies and defined the issues in ways that drew support from many 
      sectors of the population. In general the dramatic shift in the values 
      being promoted by those in power seemed only to serve to make clearer the 
      constructed nature of gender and to invite a movement dedicated to 
      reconstructing it along different lines. 
      Before the elections, gays and lesbians had already made their first 
      public appearance when a group of some 50 Nicaraguans and 30 
      internationalists, wearing T-shirts emblazoned with pink triangles, 
      marched and danced together at the celebration of the tenth anniversary of 
      the revolution (Matthews 1989). But the effect of the election results 
      accelerated organizational efforts, and gays and lesbians increasingly 
      claimed visibility, with a public presence at International Women's Day 
      celebrations in 1990 and 1991, and the first open Gay Pride celebration in 
      June 1991 (Merrett 1992; Quiros 1991). It was during these years that the 
      lesbian collective, Nosotras, and the gay and lesbian non-governmental 
      organization, Xochiquetzal, were founded.(22) 
      A third factor shaping the identity of the lesbian movement and linked to 
      these different relations between state and society, was the panorama of 
      social movements. In Nicaragua, a class-based, rather than a gender-based, 
      movement defined the terrain. There, a revolutionary party, which held 
      power for ten years, created a totalizing identity and culture and left 
      behind a legacy of popular activism. This historical experience shaped the 
      identity, the ideology, and the sense of goals and strategy of those who 
      ultimately became lesbian activists. The drive to integrate society, and 
      the common project around which the Sandinistas sought to organize it, 
      were based on a revolutionary framework influenced by Marxism and 
      liberation theology. The commitment to social justice for the majority and 
      to collective, rather than individual, solutions left their mark on the 
      lesbian movement which surfaced after the 1990 elections. Although the 
      Sandinista defeat discredited use of the state as a vehicle for change, 
      the lesbian and gay movement continued to work within the arena of civil 
      society, and addressed the state when necessary to defend its room to 
      maneuver. 
      The presence of a mass movement of the left also created networks of 
      people with similar ideologies and history. While in the 1980s many of 
      these people - including those who would later become active in the gay 
      and lesbian movement - channeled their energies through the state, in the 
      1990s they moved into the institutions of civil society. Whether or not 
      the FSLN as a party continued to claim their allegiance, their shared 
      world view facilitated building alliances. In the concrete case of gays 
      and lesbians, it led to a model of cross-gender collaboration which began 
      with the formation of the first collectives and AIDS education efforts, 
      and continued into the 1990s. 
      The FSLN's strategy of cross-class alliances under middle-class leadership 
      was also reflected in the lesbian movement. In an environment where 
      working class people were mobilized and active, and where there was a 
      commitment to eliminating the exclusions of class, it was not only natural 
      for middle-class activists to look beyond their own social class for 
      participants, but also for working class lesbians to respond or even take 
      leadership. 
      Finally, the strong - indeed dominant - left presence in Nicaragua in the 
      1980s attracted politicized gay and lesbian fellow travelers from around 
      the world who helped spark organizing efforts and reinforced the social 
      orientation of the budding movement in Nicaragua.(23) It also attracted 
      support from social democratic governments and progressive foundations 
      who, after the 1990 elections, shifted their support to non-governmental 
      organizations, including those, like XochiquetzaL working on issues of 
      gender and sexuality. The requirements for aid recipients in turn had 
      consequences visible in the kind of formal structure - so unlike that of 
      Las Entendidas - that Xochiquetzal adopted. 
      By the end of the 1980s, as the unifying revolutionary identity that had 
      prevailed earlier in the decade began to disintegrate in the face of 
      wartime hardships and an increasingly undemocratic style of party 
      leadership, a small but significant autonomous feminist movement had 
      developed. Its growth was due, in large part, to the contradictions 
      between FSLN rhetoric and action on women's issues (see Chinchilla 
      1990,1994; Colectivo Las Malinches 1993; Comite Nacional Feminista 1993; 
      Criquillion 19951 Murguialday 1990; Quandt 1993; Thayer 1994).(24) This 
      growing women's movement provided a space where lesbians could meet and 
      interact. Participating in a movement that questioned traditional sex 
      roles opened the possibility of challenging traditional models of 
      sexuality as well. However, while this movement fought for women's 
      concerns, for the most part in the 1980s, lesbians' concerns were left 
      unspoken. For the time being, even here, lesbians remained invisible. 
      Ironically, the FSLN's defeat at the polls gave a further impetus to both 
      the feminist, and the lesbian and gay movements, as Sandinista activists 
      were freed from commitments to suppress what had been seen as 
      particularistic needs in favor of defending an embattled revolutionary 
      project. The party leadership was exposed as fallible and newly 
      legitimized critiques began to proliferate, including those of women, 
      gays, and lesbians. 
      While in Costa Rica the feminist movement was firmly established by the 
      time lesbians began to organize, in Nicaragua the two movements came into 
      their own simultaneously, after a period of semi-clandestine gestation 
      under the revolutionary government. This created a situation of mutual 
      influence, in which it was possible to put lesbian demands on the feminist 
      agenda. Some women's organizations actively promoted public attention to 
      gay and lesbian issues, through Gay Pride celebrations and other means, 
      and there were fewer complaints of feminist homophobia among Nicaraguan, 
      than among Costa Rican, activists. Overall, feminist support made it 
      possible to forge links between concerns about the right to choose sexual 
      partners and fundamental issues about the nature of sexuality, as well as 
      a kind of collective "coming out" around these issues to the wider 
      society. 
      In contrast with the Costa Rican experience, in building their movement, 
      Nicaraguan lesbians encountered a polarized class structure, a history of 
      wild swings in state-civil society relationships, culminating, in the 
      1990s, with an unstable and only partial hegemony, and the persistent hold 
      of revolutionary ideology on the popular psyche. Together, these produced 
      a lesbian movement with broad ambitions to reconstruct society in a new 
      image. 
      Conclusion 
      In recent decades, a new collective phenomenon - the identity-based 
      movement - has made its appearance on the analytical stage. An examination 
      of lesbian movements in Central America, however, makes clear that the 
      category of new social movements is not as monolithic as it is often made 
      to seem. NSMs manifest a wide variety of expressions, from more outwardly 
      oriented to more internally focused. This raises questions about not only 
      why identity comes to be a concern, but what that identity consists of in 
      each case, and why the movements inspired by these identities take the 
      forms that they do. 
      While activist lesbians in both Nicaragua and Costa Rica shared a 
      commitment to defining and defending identity, identity itself, as well as 
      what it took to defend it, meant something different in each country. In 
      Costa Rica, lesbian identity was a relatively private affair, embodied in 
      the individual and a solidary community of peers that shared a culture and 
      world view. Las Entendidas sought to fortify individuals and the group 
      against a hostile world and, when necessary, to defend their space against 
      incursions. In Nicaragua, lesbians involved in Nosotras and Xochiquetzal 
      defined themselves as members of a larger polity and as messengers for a 
      new way of thinking about sexuality. Their goals included social, as well 
      as personal transformation, and their arenas of action extended to include 
      the whole society. 
      In explaining these differences, I have suggested that economic-structural 
      factors created possibilities and/or foreclosed options for the movements 
      in each country, but that the influences most crucial in defining how 
      members conceived of both their own and movement identity were to be found 
      in a broadly defined political space. 
      Organizing lesbian movements anywhere in Central America, and many other 
      places, requires the will to defy deeply rooted notions of sexuality and 
      personhood, and the courage to imagine different kinds of relationships. 
      But social movements are built, and collective identities constructed, by 
      particular people in particular locations at particular moments in 
      history. These movements are, as Snow and Benford argue, "signifying 
      agents" (1992:136). What they signify and why, what they struggle for and 
      how, these are questions which can only be answered by looking beyond 
      global structural shifts and the confines of formal political institutions 
      to the sociopolitical relationships that shape the lives of the human 
      beings who make them. 
      Thanks to Michael Burawoy, Laura Enriquez, and Raka Ray for repeated and 
      thorough readings of this paper; to Amy Bank, Lissa Bell, Bill Bigelow, 
      Norma Chinchilla, Ana Criquillion, Norm Diamond, Ana Quiros, and the 
      anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments on earlier drafts; and 
      to the many colleagues and friends with whom I discussed the ideas 
      presented here along the way. Thanks also to the International Gay and 
      Lesbian Human Rights Commission for the use of their archives, to Maxine 
      Downs and Judy Haier for invaluable logistical support, and, most of all, 
      to the Central American lesbian activists who shared their struggles and 
      their stories. 
      My work was supported under a National Science Foundation Graduate 
      Research Fellowship and a fellowship from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. 
      Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this 
      publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the 
      views of either foundation. Versions of this paper were presented at the 
      XIX International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association in 
      Washington D.C., Sept. 1995, and at the Conference on Feminism(s) in Latin 
      America and the Caribbean, at the University of California at Berkeley, 
      April 1996. Correspondence: Dept. of Sociology, 410 Barrows Hall, 
      University of California, Berkeley CA 94720. 
      1. On the Costa Rican lesbian movement, see Carstensen (1992); Cruz 
      (1995); Las Entendidas (1992); Madden Arias (1994); Mandell (1991); No 
      author (1990); and Serrano (n.d.). Las Entendidas roughly translates as 
      "those in the know" and is a term often used by lesbians in Latin America 
      to refer to themselves. 
      2. on the Nicaraguan movement, see Bolt Gonzalez (1995); No author 
      (1992b); No author (1993b); Fundacion Xochiquetzal (n.d., 1992); and 
      Merrett (1992). Nosotras is the feminine form of "we" in Spanish; 
      Xochiquetzal (pronounced so-chee-ketsahl) was the Aztec goddess of flowers 
      and patron of domestic labors, as well as the guardian of courtesans. 
      3. This paper is based on interviews with lesbian and feminist activists 
      from Costa Rica and Nicaragua, as well as participant observation and an 
      analysis of newsletters and other documents from the organizations 
      described here. The research was conducted during two trips, the first to 
      El Salvador to the VI Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Encounter in 
      October and November, 1993, and the second to Costa Pica arid Nicaragua in 
      June and July, 1995. 
      4. Melucci was among the first to theorize the dynamics of collective 
      identity construction. More recently, others have addressed this issue 
      from various perspectives (Friedman and McAdam 1992; Gamson, W. 1992; 
      Taylor and Whittier 1992). 
      5. Other critics of NSM theory argue that its supposedly distinct features 
      appeared in earlier movements as well (D'Anieri, Ernst and Kier 1990) and 
      may be no more than the product of a stage in a cycle of development 
      (Tarrow 1988). 
      6. Ferree (1987) is one of the few who asks why movements - in her case 
      women's movements - in different countries take divergent approaches to 
      similar issues. 
      7. Some authors, such as Melucci (1985) and Offe (1985), analyze the 
      particular actors attracted to new European movements, but generalize 
      across countries. 
      8. Rucht (1996) identifies class structure as part of the social context 
      that influences movement form, but does not link it to movement 
      orientation. 
      9. Ferree's (1987) explanatory factors go beyond narrowly defined 
      political opportunities to include both historical political 
      configurations and the discourses linked to them. Nevertheless, she 
      continues to give substantial weight to the formal political realm. 
      10. All translations are my own, unless otherwise noted. 
      11. In fact, this may have been a wise calculation, given the intensity of 
      the opposition that developed once word was out. Conference organizers 
      faced site cancellations, condemnation from church leaders, and a decision 
      by the Ministry of Government to deny visas to single women seeking to 
      enter the country for the period surrounding the Encounter. The final 
      night of the event, participants were terrorized by a group of drunken 
      would-be assailants outside the secluded estate where Encounter was being 
      held. Nevertheless, the shock apparent in conference organizers' accounts 
      of these events suggests that a particular strategic vision, rather than 
      fear of hostility, no matter how justified, dictated their initial 
      conceptions of the Encounter. 
      12. A second, fairly short-lived organization, formed by a group of 
      lesbians in their 20's, never really went beyond the first level described 
      here. Las Humanas ("the female humans") functioned primarily as a 
      recreation and support group for members. It fell apart in 1992 when 
      discussions were initiated about more public political activity within the 
      lesbian and gay community (Serrano n.d.). 
      13. Although Xochiquetzal worked on behalf of lesbians and gays, I will 
      treat it as part of the lesbian movement. The organization was directed by 
      lesbians and played an important role in the coordinating of lesbian 
      organizing. 
      The collaboration between Xochiquetzal and Nosotras lasted until 1994, 
      when the collective became independent. This recent development, as well 
      as the founding in 1993 of another gay and lesbian group, Neconi remain to 
      be analyzed, but may represent shifts in orientation based on the changing 
      political panorama of post-revolutionary Nicaragua. 
      14. See Schifter Sikora (1989) for a history of the Costa Rican gay male 
      movement, including the initial formation of a homosexual community. See 
      D'Emilio (1983) for a discussion of how similar factors operated in the 
      U.S. 
      15. To illustrate, in his successful election campaign in 1986, Oscar 
      Arias promised to bring about a "government with the soul of a woman." 
      Once in office, he launched a widely publicized "feminist offensive" to 
      put women's issues on the agenda. In 1988, the Arias administration 
      proposed a "Law of Real Equality for Women" aimed at increasing women's 
      political participation, as well as their access to social and economic 
      rights (Saint-Germain 1993; Saint-Germain and Morgan 1991). 
      16. A month after the raid, an open letter to the Ministers of Health and 
      Security criticizing government harassment of gays and calling instead for 
      preventive measures to fight the disease was published in the country's 
      largest newspaper, signed by 150 prominent intellectuals, politicians, and 
      professionals, gay and straight. The letter made full use of the political 
      discourse of Costa Rican exceptionalism noted earlier, ending: "To begin 
      to distinguish among Costa Ricans with slanderous labels is an attack on 
      all our civic and democratic traditions and opens a dangerous door to 
      arbitrariness and State terrorism" (Open letter published in La Nacion, 
      April 5, 1987, cited in Schifter Sikora 1989: 292). A few days later, a 
      sympathetic editorial echoed the letter. 
      Despite the entrenched homophobia in Costa Rican society, at this 
      particular political moment the Arias administration was vulnerable to the 
      claims of marginalized groups. In an effort to restore the country's image 
      as a neutral peacemaker and to prevent regional conflicts from spilling 
      across borders, Arias had taken the lead in Central American peace 
      negotiations and been awarded the Nobel peace prize. According to Schifter 
      Sikora (1989), Arias' role in promoting the peace plan put the focus on 
      Costa Rica as a supposed model of democracy for the region and raised the 
      level of international scrutiny of its human rights record. It was an 
      opportune moment for the fledgling gay and lesbian movement. A week after 
      the open letter was published, the government suspended mandatory AIDS 
      testing. 
      17. It is important to note that these efforts were often paternalistic 
      and frequently resisted by the groups targeted for integration. For my 
      argument, however. what is important is the way inclusiveness was 
      established as a societal goal. 
      18. The Sandinistas seem to have taken the same approach to gay 
      institutions as had the Cuban revolution earlier, classifying them as part 
      of the corruption of the defeated dictatorship, along with casinos and 
      prostitution rings, which the new Nicaraguan government also closed down. 
      19. In the first few years, the government appointed women to leadership 
      positions in state institutions, banned advertising that exploited women's 
      bodies, instituted the principle of equal pay for equal work, granted 
      maternity leave, and launched the first agrarian reform in the hemisphere 
      to recognize women as potential recipients of land. Women were encouraged 
      to organize and the new women's association, AMNLAE, fought for and won 
      legislative victories, including laws challenging patriarchal relations in 
      the family and mandating sharing domestic work. In addition, women. who 
      made up 60 percent of the country's poor, benefited from increased access 
      to state-funded health services and educational facilities, as well as new 
      job opportunities in the growing state sector. 
      20. Testimony to the group's commitment to the Sandinista state was its 
      decision not to discuss the interrogations with anyone outside the 
      organization. It was only after the FSLN's 1990 electoral loss that the 
      news spread in the lesbian and gay community. 
      21. The law went into effect in spring 1994 after a prolonged legal battle 
      over its constitutionality. 
      22. Earlier, in 1989, a non-governmental organization known as 
      Nimehuatzin, which was dedicated to AIDS prevention and treatment, had 
      been established. Although it briefly served as a center for gays and 
      lesbians, this function was later taken on by the groups described in this 
      article. 
      23. Some of these gay and lesbian internationalists came on delegations or 
      work brigades, such as the all-gay and lesbian Victoria Mercado Brigade, 
      that came to work on a construction project in a low-income Managua 
      neighborhood in 1985, or the San Francisco AIDS workers who came down for 
      an International Health Colloquium in 1987. Others came to stay, 
      integrating themselves into Nicaraguan institutions and neighborhoods. 
      Many Nicaraguan gays and lesbians later involved in organizing efforts 
      came into contact with these visitors and learned from them about gay and 
      lesbian movements around the world (Zuniga 1995). 
      24. As the 1980s progressed, Nicaraguan feminists became increasingly 
      critical of Sandinista gender policy. The government's auspicious 
      beginnings in the area of women's rights soon faded under the pressures of 
      war and the machismo of most of the party leadership. Gender-specific 
      concerns took a back seat to national priorities and an ambitious feminist 
      legislative campaign was shelved as potentially divisive. As early as 
      1983, a few Sandinista feminists, frustrated with the party's 
      foot-dragging, began to launch their own independent projects - women's 
      clinics, research teams, theater groups and legal offices - and to make 
      inroads in the press. 
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