page '4 - Out in the Mountains  

Being an American homosexual in Paraguay

by Carrie Coy

While I was living in Paraguay last
year, the Bowling Alley - a Favorite
dancing spot for Peace Corps volunteers

,- was shut down by the government on

the grounds that it was a haven for
‘drug addicts and homosexuals.‘ The
move surprised no one, least of all
volunteers who for the most part
shrugged and danced elsewhere from
then on. Whether the change was
legitimate or whether there was a
qualitative difference between a drug
addict and a homosexual hardly seemed
to matter.

Homophobia is such a pervasive,
accept aspect of Paraguayan culture
that being gay and being communist
are considered the country's two
greatest sins - both ample grounds for
imprisonment or exile. When Aldo
Zuccolillo, editor of the country's most
popular, suspended newspaper, received
a prestigious journalism prize in New
York last October, the nightly
state-sponsored radio station
congratulated him for receiving "an
award from the association of
homosexual Latin American journalists"
and suggested he might also have
AIDS.

Obviously the much-touted abandon
with which Latin Americans,
specifically Paraguayans, kiss and touch

f’°"'P"g"3 Eleanor Smeal

In Vermont, for instance, the
"bottom line [of inequality for women].
is divorce." She noted that a man's
buying power rises by 120 percent only:
one year after divorce, while his wife’s
decreases by 30 percent. This far;
exceeds the national average, in which
men's buying power rises by 70 percent,
she said. Alimony awards in Vermont
are also poorly enforced and below the
national standard.

"If the ERA passes, interpretation
of famiéy law will have to get at this
disparate impact by reexamining.
discrimination against women and
disparate incomes.‘

A lot of women and children will
be saved from pain, she said, including
the sons of divorced mothers.

“Young men have come up to me

and told me their moms had to work
two jobs and had to struggle to put
them through school. They can't
compete with their male counterparts.
They've had it tougher.‘

Smeal has been cautioned not to
talk about divorce or the opposition
role of big business in her speeches for
fear she would lose votes. She has
ignored the advice.

"I don't want to back off any
issue," she said. As for divorce, "If a
man wants to rip off his wife, that's
his_business. But there are a lot
fair-minded men out there. And so
many women with something to gain.‘

each other does not reflect any
open-mindedness toward homosexuality.
In fact, it is probably only because
being gay is so unthinkable that being
demonstrative is as safe.

But gay Peach Corps volunteers
have lived and worked productively in
the face of this rampant homophobia
for many years - probably since the
program's inception in 1967. How do
they do it? Unquestionably the answer
is the informal support networks that
spring up, evolve and thrive as groups
of volunteers rotate in and out of the
country every six months; friends who
ride hours in dusty buses and walk
kilometers in mud on closed roads to be
there when they said they would.

Being gay in such a culture - even
with the relative freedom of a
foreigner - is not easy. The price paid

‘is remaining completely in the closet in

one's community the whole two years.
In other words, the motivation for
joining and staying has to be something
other than a desire to affirm one's
identity.

While I was in Paraguay, the U.S.
staff was relatively open-minded and
supportive. Through the staff, names
of gay contact volunteers were available
to any interested new volunteer.
Unfortunately, the climate was
changing when I left in October. The
leadership had recently changed
(Directorships are political
appointments) and the program was
being energetically whipped into
Yuppie-like condition - much to the
resentment of most volunteers.

But we do survive and even grow
in spite of or because of the obstacles
encountered. One pair of my friends
ended up in the same small town
together and successfully masqueraded
as a couple for two years, walking arm
in arm in the streets. Their
relationship baffled the town who
couldn't understand why she played
basketball with the Mormons and swam
in the river and why he loved to cook
and write long letters home. “But you
are so different‘ people constantly told
them, to which they could cheerfully
respond, ‘we're just from a different
culture."

All volunteers live in a fishbowl
and must endure constant scrutiny and,
for men in particular, intense interest
in their sex lives. Inventing faithful,
endlessly patient boy/girlfriends back
home is an easy way to explain
disinterest in local prospects - it is also
a good way to skip Saturday night
fiestas where men and women form
separate lines and shuffle their feet for
hours.

Although ‘volunteers might spend
lots of time fantasizing about coming
out to campesinos, no one I know ever
has. The opportunities to enlighten or

even understand the mentality of one's~

new friends are rare. After people in

Paraguayans.

her site saw the Newsweek cover,
"Being Gay in America,‘ one woman
discovered they thought homosexuality
was something vaguely hermaphroditic.

I had an unexpected opportunity
one day to see into that world. My
work consisted primarily of teaching
farmers basic accounting and inventory
management techniques to improve the
operation of their small food coops. I
heard through the grapevine one day
that a key farmer had angrily quit his
job and would not return. The only
explanation for his sudden departure
the other farmers would give me,
red-faced and cryptically, was that he
was a "homosexual." It dawned on me
then why this suspiciously respectful,
unmarried farmer/accountant was so
marginally tolerated - in spice of his
competence. Regardless of who he was
or was not, his isolation enforced by
the other farmers was almost compl'ete.

There is a huge difference,
obviously, between our lives as gringo
gays and lesbians and the lives of gay
I think there is a level
on which the way we are accepted by
our adopted families transcends cultural
expectations. This fact was brought
home to me when a close relative of a
friend was injured and died suddenly
back home. She and her lover pieced
the story together through numerous
emotional phone conversations in her
Paraguayan mother's tiny shop. They
returned immediately to the States
leaving me to deal with those left
behind. Shaken and trying to
understand the interaction between the
two women, Kathy's mom repeatedly
asked me, ‘son amigas intimas, no?“ I
knew that on some gut level she
comprehended their relationship though
she never stopped scheming of ways to
get to the U.S. to meet Kathy’s
fictitious boyfriend.

Another distinction - harder than
being a gay/lesbian volunteer is coming
out as one, in the solitude of one's tiny
community. There is a certain resolve
and energy that comes from voluntarily
sacrificing one's support network that a
new convert does not have. Motivated
by ill-defined notions of escape and
altruism, they are suddenly "out" in the
middle of nowhere with a long time to
wonder what next. Cutting ties to
fiancees and straight lovers long
distance might appear to be easier only
at first glance. In reality it is a
slow-motion exercise in frustration,
crossed letters and bad feeling.
Luckily friends are there - whether
they are incarnated in the shape of
cooks, tapes, telegrams, or exist in the
flesh.

To end on a positive note, there
are deserved benefits to being gay as a
volunteer. One admittedly debatable
advantage is the ability to avoid the

continued, page 5