Later today the United Nations will inaugurate International Earth Day with a debate headed by UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon, ministers from Ecuador and Bolivia, and North American academics. The event aims to explore and foment ideas about the relationships that exist between humanity and planet earth.

International Earth Day was conceived of in 2009 by the UN General Assembly as part of a resolution that aimed to promote harmony with nature and to “arrive at a balanced equilibrium between the economic, social, and environmental requirements of present and future generations”.

With a strong Latin American presence, the main speakers in the debate are María Belén Moncayo, minister for Coordination of Ecuadorian Heritage, Luis Acre, Bolivia’s minister for Economy and Public Finance, and Fander Falconí, Ecuador’s secretary for Planning and Development.

In addition, Ban Ki-moon has called the world’s attention to the potential devastating effects of climate change, the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources, and other key man made problems and has pledged to renew the UN’s promise to “honour and respect Mother Earth.” He averred that, “when we threaten our planet, we are not only endangering the only home that we have, but also our future survival.”

Despite the debate over the perceived versus actual risks and impacts of climate change, Earth Day 2013 is to focus the spotlight on the tangible effects of climate change thus far, including its effects on people, animals, and the natural landscape in the hopes of opening new exit routes and strategies with which to combat the phenomenon.

Ecuador is set to play a key role. In a speech titled ‘Nature as a constitutional rights holder in Ecuador and its ability to exercise [its rights] in the context of shared responsibility’, Falconí will address the assembly on natures’ rights, which are enshrined in the country’s constitution, and will present three of the country’s most recently debated environmental initiatives.

One of these includes the creation of an eco tax, called Daly-Correa, whilst project Yasuní ITT aims to preserve Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest by fighting to keep millions of petrol reserves underground – and unexploited – in exchange for global economic support for Ecuador’s development. Leaving the oil where it is would reduce net emissions by an estimated 410 million tones of carbon dioxide.

Ecuador’s current administration under Rafeal Correa holds that: “the current world method of development, based on unlimited accumulation and consumption, is leading the planet towards an unprecedented environmental crisis.”

Its capital city, Quito, has proposed the indigenous model of development, “Sumak Kawsay” Quechua for “good living” (in harmony with our communities, ourselves, and most importantly our environment) as an alternative. It insists that all countries ought to commit themselves to an ethical way of living, and that they take concrete steps towards eradicating poverty and those mechanisms which destroy the environment.

A group of deputies that opposes the current government of Sebastián Piñera introduced a bill to strengthen the right to education in Chile.

The initiative was caused by the possible closure of Chilean Universidad del Mar, which represents a big issue for its students. Given this fact, the deputies claim that according to the Chilean constitution the government must guarantee the right to education and protect it.

However, the group assures that this right is never applied in practice, and refers to endless student protests since May 2011.

Cristina Girardi, the legislator of the Party for Democracy, uses the case of students in the Universidad del Mar, who could benefit from the new bill and fight for their rights. Girardi pointed out that these students can’t utilise the legal resource to speak against the closure of their institution. The reason is that the resource is not covered by the constitution at the moment.

The story goes back to 29 October, when the Chilean Ministry of Education requested cancellation of the legal and official recognition of the Universidad del Mar. The request was caused by complaints about its accreditation process, non-payment of salaries and resignation of the university president Raul Urrutia.

Followed by those events, students of the Universidad del Mar mobilised resources to prevent its closure.

Story courtesy of Agencia Púlsar, the AMARC-ALC news agency.

Following the brutal Neo-Nazi attack of a young gay man, Daniel Zamudio in March this year, yesterday the Chilean Congress approved an anti-discrimination law.

Nationally and internationally, social organisations have been campaigning for an anti-discrimination law to be passed in Chile for seven years, heightened after the assault. The law was fast tracked by President Sebastian Pinera following the 24-year old’s death.

After seven years of opposition from Chile’s political right, the law was passed in the Senate with a 25-3 vote. Previously, the bill had been passed in the Chilean Chamber of Deputies, with 90 votes in favour and 16 against.

The new law states that it is a criminal offence to discriminate against race, ethnicity, nationality, political opinion, religious beliefs sexual orientation, gender, illness, handicap and appearance, among other motives.

The move has been criticised by certain churches, but has elsewhere been viewed as cultural leap for Chile where discrimination is prevalent.

Chilean courts are now investigating Zamudio’s death, though the four attackers have denied his murder as well as their Neo-Nazi involvement. Zamudio died after he was tortured by four attackers who branded his body with the Nazi symbol.

 

Today marks one year since the brutal repression of a peaceful roadblock by the indigenous Qom community, La Primavera, in the province of Formosa. On 23rd November 2010 after four months of protesting the construction of a university on their ancestral lands, community members were violently removed by police and armed civilians. The incident resulted in the death of Qom community member Roberto López and policeman Heber Falcón. Police also burned the community’s makeshift homes, and took their belongings and identification cards.

From there La Primavera decided to take the struggle to the capital, and installed an encampment at 9 de Julio and Av. de Mayo that lasted for five months and included a seven-day hunger strike. In May, the community ended the encampment after meetings with the Secretary of Human Rights, officials from the Interior Ministry, and the president of the National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism (INADI) that resulted in the construction of a ‘Table of Dialogue’ with the national government, the governors of Formosa, and the community in order to settle the territorial dispute.

Despite the promises, there has been little progress since May. The promised ‘Table of Dialogue’ has yet to convene, and members of La Primavera still face threats from local thugs suspected to be tied to Formosa’s governor Gildo Insafrán, who continues to deny there were any acts of repression by the part of the police.

On Monday, leader of the community Felix Diaz held a press conference in the location of the former encampment, reminding the public of the community’s on-going struggles. Accompanied by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Adolfo Perez Esqivel and members of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo Línea Fundadora, Diaz recounted the past year of the struggle and implored the government to convene talks immediately.

Formosa is a province with one of the starkest income gaps, and home to one of the poorest indigenous populations in the country. The Qom, like many other groups in the region, face grave challenges to their land-based way of life, as encroaching real estate and agricultural sectors prey upon or lay waste to their traditional territory.

Photos by Patricio Guillamón.

In a small workshop in Boedo, Buenos Aires, a group of twenty-somethings are busy at work, the air thick with paint fumes and cigarette smoke. The atmosphere is one of excitement, as one by one, artful stencils writing ‘No Means No’ are hung out to dry, and T-shirts emblazoned with the same colourful phrase are tried on for size. With just three days to go, the Slutwalk team are pulling out all the stops to make today’s march as striking as its international counterparts.

“I’ve been told not to say this, however, women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not be victimised.”

When Michael Sanguinetti took to the floor at a York University crime prevention forum in Toronto, little did he know these infamous words would reverbrate round the world, making headlines and triggering the largest feminist movement since the sixities. Nor did the organisers of ‘Slutwalk’ expect that a concept founded on a careless remark would snowball into a global phenomena. Except that this time round, no bras would be burning – they would be bared.

The founders of Slutwalk Toronto explain: “Using a pejorative term to rationalise inexcusable behaviour creates an environment in which it’s okay to blame the victim.” It is this environment that thousands have tried to dispel by brandishing pickets, taking to the streets and baring all. “Don’t tell us what to wear,” one says, “tell rapists not to rape.”

And just four months after its conception, the movement has crossed the border from North to South America, with three organised in Argentina alone – Rosario, Mar del Plata and Buenos Aires. Five young women, led by literature student Flavia Baca Hubeid from Córdoba, are responsible for mobilising the march, and are hoping today to make as great a stir as their Canadian allies. Historical homeland of machismo, the appeal and importance of the march here in Argentina is exciting, and the imminent reaction to it perhaps even more so.

And in a country where domestic violence and rape proves to be a great problem – it was reported by Amnesty International in 2008 that a woman died every two days as a result of domestic violence in Argentina, and that same year, a judicial department announced that a rape was reported every six hours – the move is welcome.

Although initially the movement demanded an apology alone from Sanguinetti, what began as an outcry against the culture of victim blaming has now widened as a concept, questioning the way women are perceived in general. Where sexual repression was the main bone of contention for sixties feminists, the hyper-sexualisation of women today is the main point of the movement modern women identify with. As the organiser of ‘Marcha de las Putas’ explains: “Every woman, regardless of age, race or city has been subject to verbal abuse in the street.” Puta, concha, zorra - a mere few of the charming array of vocabulary hurled without a second thought towards women going about their day to day business, so common they have been adopted by the umbrella term piropos, male comments to women that range from flirtatious compliments to sexual catcalls.

Just this May in Buenos Aires, El Guardían journalist Juan Terranova was given the boot after addressing an activist, who complained about these catcalls, in a less than savoury manner. Arguing that piropos were innocent and flattering to the fairer sex, and including an imagined scenario in which he seduces said activist, he concluded with a phrase that has been translated optimistically as “I’d like to give her one”, and, less so, “I’d like to break her argument with my cock”. Nevertheless, neither goal was accomplished, and he was, very publicly, fired.

Feminism, or women’s rights, are terms that seem to inspire apathy or irritation in the modern psyche, and Terranova’s comments perhaps merely scrape the surface of an endemic problem – the casualisation of sexism. Though ostentible efforts have been made to bridge the pay gap, stem domestic violence and equalise education in Argentina, there is still a long way to go, and stereotypes to dislodge, as Flavia explains: “The greatest problem is that the media collaborates a lot with the objectification of women, and women themselves join in.”

Sterotypes are perpetuated on the most basic of levels; cleaning product brands use women alone, news anchors are suspiciously decorative and you would be hard pushed to find a girl’s magazine without a feature on how to be good at sex. Flavia sums it up saying “the profile of a woman that the media perpetuate  is something statuesque, lacking in substance, controlled by men around her.” No surprise then that flippant misconceptions are rife. “Society consumes what the media puts before it, and it’s not strange that we look for or apply this image to the reality of day to day life.”

And so, slutwalk looks to debunk the most prevalent stereotype – the puta. It is women, the founders explain, that have predominantly suffered under the burden of the term. And as Flavia adds, not only is it isolating, it is indelible: “Puta is a word that is aggressive because society charges it with a dark past – from a young age these are women isolated from a good way of life and advantages, because they sleep with men without marrying them.”

The movement hopes to turn the word on its head: “Whether dished out as a serious indictment of one’s character or merely as a flippant insult, the intent behind the word is always to wound, so we’re taking it back,” the slutwalkers state. “’Slut’ is being re-appropriated.” Marchers don’t have to dress like ‘sluts’, though many do, and it is, perhaps unsurprisingly, they who receive the most press coverage.

And so how effective can running about in a pair of pants be? Indeed, the irony of parading the label to make  a point is lost on some. Feminists Gail Dines and Melanie J Murphy think an attempt to reclaim the word at all is not about achieving sexual autonomy. The word, they write, is so far rooted into the “madonna / whore” dichotomy that referring to it at all bashes the nail further in to the coffin.

Growing up in a culture in which hypersexualised images of young women are common to the point of being banal, and in which “hardcore pornography is the major form of sex education for young men”, it is no wonder then that the pressure young women feel to be sexually available is immense. The identity that they must assume as a result is contradictory, add Dines and Murphy- taught that to be valued in this culture, they must “look and act like sluts”, while avoiding the label and it’s “dire consequences”. They believe then that adopting the term in any shape or form, misses the mark and only solidifies the negative stereotype.

How well the concept will be received in a country however whose values are far more traditional than Canada is to be seen. Flavia herself adds tentatively, “I don’t know if everyone will understand.” She hopes, in any case, that the march will open the floor for debate. She is optimistic too that the message is clear, and clearly ironic; “Our clothes, and use of the word are going to flatten excuses made by society to justify aggressions towards our bodies.”

She also hopes that the government will look up and take heed. As it stands, policies that really protect the victim and focus on the abusor are weak, or non-existent, she believes. A courtcase in April serves as a dire illustration of this; the jail sentence for an evangelical priest who has sexually abused two girls, of 14 and 18 years of age, was reduced because the victims “had already had sexual relations with other men”. As it stands, the government has not made an effort to support or even contact the movement.

It is, however, a an initiative that challenges society’s perceptions rather than the government. “Laws can come afterwards, politicians always get there, but as a society we need to be conciencious and start to look at other people as humans rather than objects.”

The march, organised by Verónica Lemi, Nadia Ferrari, Victoria Sandrini, Pamela Querejeta Leiva and Flavia Baca Hubeid, will be leaving from the Obelisk at 6pm and make it’s way towards the Plaza del Congreso today, Friday 12th August. 

Congress opened the first formal debate on the legalisation of abortion last Tuesday. In a historic meeting, the Criminal Law Committee commenced a series of discussions that will seek to decriminalise abortion for pregnancies of up to 12 weeks.

Advocacy Director from Human Right’s Watch, Marianne Mollmann, was the only invited speaker to the debate. Following her scathing report issued in August regarding the implementation of abortion laws, Mollmann discussed the impact of the continued criminalisation of abortion in Argentina and answered questions from selected deputies and campaigners.

“The criminalisation of abortion is incompatible with human rights,” she stated. Current abortion laws “not only bring serious consequences to the health and life of a woman who needs to terminate her pregnancy, but also creates a public health problem,” she continued. “Unsafe illegal practices are the leading cause of maternal mortality in Argentina.”

Chairman of the Criminal Law Committee, Juan Carlos Vega, made a commitment to put the decriminalisation of abortion debate at the top of the agenda next year in the lead up to the 2011 elections. Reminding the panel that there are at least 450,000 illegal abortions each year, Vega maintained that “we must open the debate,” but asserted that he takes no position either way.

As well as elaborating on the health impact of the criminalisation of abortion, Mollmann also addressed the responsibility of the Argentine government regarding human rights issues, and to incorporate international treaties into the constitution. She explained that there is a duty to “protect the right to life, health, integrity and autonomy of women”. She also noted that the state has an obligation to provide abortion services to ensure all women have “access” to safe abortion services, not just those who can afford it.

“The suffering caused by the criminalisation of abortion…is almost exclusively experienced by the poor,” she confirmed.

Working with over 280 NGOs, many members from the National Campaign for the Right to Legal, Safe and Free Abortion were present. Having already gathered almost 50 signatures from deputies for their petition demanding the legalisation of abortion, two more names were added when Juan Pablo Tunesi and Sandra Riobó announced their commitment to the initiative.

Among the speakers were Maria Luisa Storani, Vilma Ibarra, Cecilia Merchán, Marcela Rodríguez, Silvia Storni, Juliana Di Tullio, Maria Jose Lubertino and Diana Maffía. Each were given an allotted time with which to make their opinion known and to pose a question.

Maffia restated that “if clandestine abortions continue, the danger will continue”. She was among many of the speakers to bring up financial implications, discussing the huge amount of money that is currently going straight into the hands of those who conduct illegal abortions.

Cynthia Hotton and Diputada Ivana Bianchi were the only speakers present who expressed opposition to the initiative. Negatively received by the audience Bianchi announced that she was one of the people who “gets to decide”. “In this room we haven’t yet heard about the right of the unborn child,” she commented.

Answering questions from each member of the debate, Mollmann declared that while women continue to seek abortions, whether legal or not, medical officials have the obligation to meet their needs. She elaborated that if this does not change, deaths due to unsafe abortions will continue. It was announced this week that maternal mortality figures are at a 23 year high.

Mollmann also discussed the question of conception, stating that “no society has agreed when a human being begins”. She proposed that it is a misunderstanding to think that the American Convention on Human Rights protects life from the moment of conception.

Putting the debate into a global context Mollmann discussed abortion laws in other countries where abortion continues to be illegal. Discussing how such laws are implemented internationally to prevent high mortality rates she discussed Ireland and Nicaragua, and the success of the implementation of their laws.

The debate has certainly caused a stir in the general public. Outside the front of the Congress annex where the debate was held, protests grew heated: the street was divided between pro-life and pro-choice activists, each grouped on opposing sides and loudly chanting their slogans. An altercation between anti-abortion campaigners and a representative from the Catholic Church erupted in the queue to get inside the building. Inside, however, a woman was escorted from the premises after refusing to put away a poster carrying the portrait of a foetus. Commenting on the sensitivity of the issue, and the religious and philosophical considerations of the debate, Mollmann stated that she had received approximately 850 threats in recent weeks.

Following this first open debate, the lower house pledged to continue the discussions in February following the summer recess.

Indigenous representatives in the tenth conference of the UN about Biological Diversity demand to include their claims in the law that aims to regulate the use of the trade of genetic resources and traditional knowledge.

Members of the International Forum for Indigenous Biodiversity (IIFB) expressed this Thursday their concern about the rumour of negotiations regarding the Protocol for Access and Sharing of Profits, known as the Protocol ABS. They mentioned that one of problems is to define who the traditional knowledge belongs to. According to the representatives of China and India, traditional knowledge is a public asset and therefore the profits obtained by it should belong to the State. Regarding the member of the network of indigenous women for the biodiversity of Colombia, Karmen Ramírez Boscán, affirmed that this position makes it difficult to include the claims of native peoples. They demand to be profited for the commercialization of their knowledge. Another point of discussion is the control mechanisms of bio-piracy. Northern countries are opposed to effective control rules to maintain free access to genetic resources industries and knowledge belonging to local communities. Also in question is the validity of the new law. The countries of the north want to be implemented after its approval. On the other hand, southern countries and indigenous communities demand a retroactive effect. Boscán stressed one of the few advances in the negotiations that have already taken almost two weeks. He said that Canada bowed to generalised pressure and accepted that the draft of the ABS Protocol does mention the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People passed by the UN in 2007. Story courtesy of Agencia Pulsar, a news agency run by AMARC-ALC network of community radios.

Buenos Aires is a cosmopolitan place. It described by the website www.thegayguide.com.ar as “probably one of the most open-minded cities in Latin America” and both the international press and the national government have advertised the Argentine capital as “gay friendly”. To a certain extent, this acceptance of sexual diversity does not just apply to the gays and lesbians, but also to the trans community. As Sam Walker reported for The Argentina Independent, the presence of transsexual and transvestite prostitutes in the Bosques de Palermo are a recognised, and widely accepted, feature of the city.

But despite the acceptance of trans prostitutes in certain districts, discrimination against transsexuals is still rife. María Rachid, president of the Argentine Federation of Gays Lesbians Bisexuals and Trans (FALGBT) emphasises the “extreme exclusion and marginalisation” of the trans community.

She describe how “when they’re about 12 years old they are thrown out of their homes…they are on the street and are only able to access prostitution. They can’t continue their studies. They can’t get a job. This means that they also don’t have access to public health. They have an average life expectancy of 35 years.”

Over the past 20 years, the discrimination has given birth to a political movement. The Argentine Association of Transsexuals, Transvestite and Transgenders (ATTTA) and the FALGBT are two groups that campaign nationally for transsexual rights.

Both organisations went to the national congress on the 31st March this year to lobby for the introduction of two new laws: one which would make it easier for transsexuals to change the name and gender on their official documents, and another that would broaden healthcare coverage for the community. However, despite limited progress that has already been made, Claudia Pía Baudracco, head of ATTTA, tells me: “there’s still a great fight to be fought.”

While acknowledging limited progress in the present, Baudracco is damning in her description of how transsexuals were treated in the past: “There were years of genocide, of trans-phobic deaths…the great scourge of not being able to access healthcare…today we have been able to overcome some of these obstacles that were a bane to our community.”

She describes how the greatest advances have been made in terms of the visibility of the community: “Twenty years ago we didn’t have the right to go out in public, to do what we’re doing now, to do an interview in a public space.”

There have also been improvements in access to general healthcare and HIV/AIDS treatment. However, although Baudracco acknowledges Argentina has made progress on a “social and cultural” level she also argues: “In many cases this social and cultural change, if it’s not backed up by legislation that protects it, results in obstacles.”

ATTTA, the group that Baudracco leads, fights for the rights of the trans community in three main areas: education, health and civil rights. Baudracco describes how, at present “a girl of 12, 13 or 14, when she begins to show her identity as a trans woman, is completely shut out by the system, both the education system and the health system.”

The ATTTA leader places special emphasis on the importance of improving access to education, saying that she herself was thrown out of school at 13, and only went back to complete her secondary education in 2005. Afterwards she went on to study at university, but she stresses that it is “a minority” of transsexuals who manage to complete secondary education, let alone reach university.

Access to proper healthcare is also a concern. One of the achievements of the trans movement over the past 20 years has been in improving access to HIV/AIDS treatment and general healthcare. Because most transsexuals cannot find work apart from prostitution, the community has been hit particularly hard by the epidemic. Baudracco explains that many fellow transsexuals died because they didn’t receive proper treatment. Now the access to anti-retroviral drugs has improved radically but the right to other types of health care, including feminising treatments and sex reassignment surgery, is still limited.

At present, in order to undergo a sex change operation, transsexuals still need the special authorisation of a judge and a doctor, which can take years to win. Baudracco describes how this unfulfilled need, “leads to shoddy, back street (medical) practices and… the use and abuse not just of hormones, but of hormones and silicon,” which in itself is dangerous.

Baudracco and Rachid both argue that the best way to resolve these issues is for the Argentine government to acknowledge transsexuals’ rights as citizens. With this aim in mind, both ATTTA and FALGBT went to congress on 31st March to campaign for a “law of gender identity”. The bill is modelled on a Spanish law that came into force in March 2007, which allows transsexuals to change their official details and undergo sex change surgery without the ruling of a judge.

Marcela Romero, transsexual rights campaigner, member of ATTTA and vice president of the FAGLBT argues that politicians have a responsibility to pass the bill and “to recognise us as the people and the citizens that we are.” Romero made news last year when she won a legal battle to be able to change the name that appeared on her national id card. However, although she was obviously pleased with the judge’s decision, she emphasised to the press that not many other transsexuals were in a position to appeal to the courts for their rights, and that it was “essential to resolve this legal vacuum”.

Baudracco not only agrees that she is not represented by the government, she also asserts that the state actively legitimises and participates in discrimination against transsexuals. She says that the “neo-liberal model” of Argentina politics fosters the rule of an elite and perpetuates a reactionary conservative government. She accuses religious groups of being in connivance with the political right wing, saying that they “hide behind religious fundamentalism so that the far right in Argentina can continue in power.”

Baudracco also dismisses conservative opposition as deeply hypocritical, saying that the social groups that block pro-transsexual legislation are the same ones who see transsexual prostitutes in Palermo. She says that even though Christian groups call her “‘unnatural’…for me ‘unnatural’ means being a man, the father of a family, with a typical home, and having children, and then going out to have sexual relations with a transvestite.”

She also points the finger of blame in particular at the police. She describes the security forces as rife with corruption and she accuses them of assaulting and exploiting the trans community. She also describes police negligence: “there are many cases of murders with regulation weapons issued to the security forces. The cases are never cleared up, where they always try to wipe out all types of evidence and don’t investigate them.”

Baudracco even compares the marginalisation of the trans community to “the Armenian genocide” and says that the government displays “attitudes very similar to Hitler’s”. “It would be much more direct to make us face a firing squad and kill us all, than to deny us education, work, heath and a place to live with dignity. I think that’s an even greater genocide,” she states.

With such strong language being used, it is obvious that transsexual rights are a controversial political topic. However, on another level, they are also a deeply personal issue, which don’t have to do with state, but with the individual.

Baudracco emphasises that her gender identity is up to her, and the only thing that should matter to the government is that she’s an Argentine citizen: “I can’t go through my life taking down my trousers to show whether I’m a transvestite, a transsexual or a transgender. First of all I’m a person.”

President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner signed the Egalitarian Marriage Law on Wednesday, making Argentina the first Latin American nation to fully legalise same-sex marriage. While civil rights groups are celebrating a hard-won victory this week, others accuse the federal government of pushing through the controversial legislation to rally its base and further its reelection goals.

The law grants same-sex couples all of the same privileges and responsibilities in marriage as heterosexual partners, including the right to inherit property and adopt children. The first same-sex wedding will take place in Buenos Aires on 13th August.

“It is like a dream come true,” said Esteban Paulón, Secretary General of the Argentine Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Trans (FALGBT). “It means equality…. It means that we have concrete rights.”

Fernández de Kirchner echoed this sentiment at the signing ceremony.

“Today we are a society that is a little more egalitarian than last week,” she said.

But while a survey earlier this month showed that 69% of Argentines supported same-sex marriage, many believe that the federal government had ulterior motives for passing the legislation. They accuse Fernández de Kirchner of promoting a divisive issue in order to consolidate her left-of-center supporters and demonstrate her power by taking a stand against the Catholic Church.

The law cleared the Senate at 4am on 15th July after 14 hours of debate, while protestors rallied outside in near-freezing temperatures. Similar protests were held in seven provinces on 13th July.

“The debate about marriage is not a political debate,” said Gastón Bruno, Vice President of the Cristian Alliance of Evangenical Churches (ACIERA), whose group participated in the protests. “It’s a social debate. It’s an ethical debate. But the government brought it to the political arena and lamentably put lots of pressure on the senators, who created a fictitious majority.”

Congress debated two similar laws last fall, but tabled the discussion after an important legislative session failed to reach quorum, with only one kirchnerite deputy in attendance. The president took no stand on same-sex marriage at the time. The issue regained traction earlier this year once Fernández de Kirchner came out in full support of legalisation.

While Paulón, of FALGBT, acknowledges that the administration’s advocacy was crucial in passing the legislation, he attributed the timing to the fact that the government had to build a majority, both among members of congress and the Argentine people.

“It required time to explain for the people to understand the law,” Paulón said. “It required a period of maturation. We had to work hard to build a consensus.”

While polling results support Paulón’s claim that the bulk of Argentines came to support the legislation, Bruno said that these statistics are misleading. He argued that most people favour granting same-sex couples certain rights like property inheritance, but oppose allowing them to adopt.

“After having various opportunities to talk with the homosexual community, we realized that there were some rights that they demanded that we accepted, as long as those liberties didn’t become superior rights, like adopting children, who should have one father and one mother, and as long as they didn’t alter something logical and natural, like the fact that marriage has been, historically and naturally, between a man and a woman,” Bruno said.

Indeed, the adoption issue had become a rallying cry in recent weeks for the Catholic Church and a handful of other religious organizations that opposed the measure.

These groups came out in favour of an alternative piece of legislation that would have established civil unions throughout the nation, creating a legal status for same-sex couples that would have conferred limited marital privileges while specifically excluding the right to adopt. Civil unions had been legal in Argentina since 2002, but were only recognized in four jurisdictions, including the city of Buenos Aires.

The National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism (Inadi) announced on 13th July that a civil unions law would infringe civil rights and violate the country’s anti-discrimination laws, making it unconstitutional. The legislation died shortly thereafter.

Paulón noted that the nine senators who proposed the civil unions law only did so once it became clear that the same-sex marriage bill was going to pass.

“The truth is that it [the civil unions project] started as a last-minute project by a faction who were against the law,” Paulón said. “The only reason for the promotion of civil unions was to have an alibi not to pass the marriage law.”

While the legalization of same-sex marriage has only aggravated the bitter division between the Kirchner government and the Catholic Church, some see this as a good thing.

“It was an enormous step for the separation of church and state,” Paulón said, attributing the Church’s strong opposition to same-sex marriage as an attempt to cling to its eroding social and political influence in Argentina. “They used to have control over the lives and the bodies of the people, of their sexuality. It’s [opposing legalisation] the only way left to maintain their former power. They don’t want society to change, to advance.”

The 17th May is known as ‘World Internet Day’, but this year’s celebrations could bring a new twist in the world wide web’s tale: an Argentine group is claiming the word ‘internet’ originated here in the 1950s – some 14 years before the internet as we know it was officially launched in 1969 – and wants rights over it.

In 1955 an underwear brand was launched called ‘Internet’, as evidenced in the 14th July 1956 issue of Radiolandia magazine, where an advert for a bra is clear in its titling.

And now a portal – www.internetesargentina.com – has been created to reclaim the title. With the slogan ‘Internet, since 1956 in Argentina’, it says: “We claim intellectual property rights for all Argentines! We are not going to win money, but with this we can be smug for years.”