La conquista de los corazones Historia de la protesta LGBTIQ+ en Colombia, 1979-2019

·1 hr 1 min·4 clips

Researcher Julieta Lemaitre calls it 'Colombian legalism' — the country ranks among the highest globally for LGBT rights on paper while remaining extremely hostile to gender and sexual dissidents in reality.

1. Las Voces del Libro host Luna Girón, with co-panelists Laura Álvarez and Ana García, interviews historian Felipe César Camilo Caro Romero about his book La conquista de los corazones: Historia de la protesta LGBTIQ+ en Colombia, 1979-2019. 2. Felipe holds a history degree from Universidad Nacional, a master's in history from Universidad de los Andes, and a doctorate in Latin American history from Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt in Germany; he is also an active participant in sexual and gender dissident organizations. 3. The episode opens with Lady Gaga's 'Born This Way' (2011), a song Felipe reviews in his book as a defining anthem of post-2011 social mobilization in Colombian Pride marches. 4. The book's central argument challenges the dominant Colombian historiographic tradition, which treats Constitutional Court sentences as progressive milestones on a ladder toward full LGBTQ+ citizenship. 5. Felipe invokes Julieta Lemaitre's concept of 'Colombian legalism' — the belief that having rights on paper resolves the problem — and notes that Colombia ranks among the world's highest for LGBT legal rights while 16 gender and sexual dissidents were murdered in the first 60 days of 2026. 6. He describes his book as simultaneously a history of protest and a manual for social organizations to evaluate whether their collective action tactics have been effective. 7. His insider participation in activist organizations gave him access to documentation that external researchers could not have obtained, though this created a constant tension between subjective memory and the historian's obligation to verify with primary sources. 8. He identifies the memory-versus-history tension as central to the project: organizations hold their records jealously due to justified distrust of state institutions, and much documentation was designed to be easily destroyed during periods of criminalization. 9. The construction of the book's foundation was a database of collective protest actions spanning 40 years across all of Colombia, which he then used to derive his four-stage periodization — a chronology he acknowledges conflicts with how many activists remember the movement's own history. 10. Felipe recounts the archival discovery that the first Bogotá Pride march was held on June 28, 1983, not 1982 — found through a clue in the publication of the Movimiento de Liberación Homosexual de Colombia and confirmed by reviews in Liberal Vanguardia and El Heraldo. 11. The correct date implicates the Turbay Security Statute, which the National Center of Historical Memory has confirmed was used to persecute sexual and gender dissidents and which made a 1982 march impossible; the march only occurred in 1983 after the transition to President Belisario Betancur. 12. He notified the Bogotá mayor's office in 2022 with full documentary evidence that their '40th anniversary' commemoration of Pride was dated incorrectly; the city proceeded with the false commemoration and only corrected the record years later. 13. Felipe traces the 40-year transformation of protest aesthetics from the first Colombian LGBTQ+ demonstration — a sober, suited, silent participation in a May 1st workers' march in Cartagena in 1978 — to today's events featuring voguing, carnival traditions, and genres like reggaeton and salsa, once associated with homophobia. 14. He explains that the 1980s pause in public LGBTQ+ marches resulted from the intersection of paramilitarism and drug trafficking directly attacking sexual and gender dissidents, and that the movement resumed public street action only in the mid-1990s. 15. The book identifies León Zuleta as the key ideological intellectual of the early movement, when its political tendency was unitary and aligned with the revolutionary left. 16. After the 1990s reorganization, large NGO platforms modeled on US philanthropic organizations diversified the movement's politics to the point where, Felipe notes, conservative sectors now exist within it. 17. Bogotá today hosts four separate June 28th demonstrations: the traditional Pride march, the Marcha del Sur, Yo Marcho Trans, and a counter-march — four different political visions of the same commemorative date. 18. Felipe explains that the title 'La conquista de los corazones' encapsulates his political revaluation: despite marriage equality, adoption rights, and anti-discrimination laws, murders continue because top-down institutional strategies cannot substitute for popular cultural transformation. 19. He cites the United States — now banning Pride marches at the state level — as a warning against over-reliance on institutional protections that can be reversed when executive power changes. 20. The episode is conducted with academic depth and activist urgency, appealing to listeners interested in Colombian political history, social movement theory, and LGBTQ+ rights in Latin America.

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