On the night of July 8, 1984, Mónica Briones Puccio was brutally murdered in Santiago, Chile, after celebrating her 34th birthday in a bar. What the police first simply dismissed as a hit-and-run car accident would later be recognised as Chile’s first documented lesbophobic hate crime.[1] At the time, however, her death went almost unnoticed by a society that had little interest in protecting queer lives. While Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship (1973-1990) cannot be held solely responsible for this event, it facilitated violence against queer individuals throughout the whole country. This murder, although first overlooked, later resonated and became a moment for reflection, collective mourning, and eventually, organisation among queer women living under Pinochet’s oppressive regime. A new efflorescent climate of solidarity and resistance mixed with fear and repression emerged: Ayuquelén, Chile’s first lesbian feminist collective.
The history of Ayuquelén offers a meaningful case study for examining queer resistance within authoritarian contexts in Latin America. Created during the years of the Pinochet regime, Ayuquelén not only provided a space of support for lesbian women, but it also characterised lesbian identity as a political position. Joining and becoming a member was directly and deeply political. Furthermore, the group demanded inclusion within broader and international feminist movements that often marginalised, silenced, or simply did not take into consideration queer voices.[2] Yet, despite its historical importance, Ayuquelén remains understudied, appearing only briefly in broader histories of Chilean feminism or queer activism.
Repression under the Pinochet Dictatorship
The military coup of 1973 that brought Pinochet to power is synonymous with a period of strong political repression in Chile. While the regime is most commonly remembered for its systematic persecution of leftist militants, students, and union leaders, its authoritarian ideas also relied heavily on controlling sexuality and gender. The dictatorship promoted a conservative conception that was mainly grounded in Catholic values and the heterosexual nuclear family.[3] Within these interpretations, deviations and modifications from normative gender roles and sexual practices were framed as threats to the Chilean national identity.
Legal mechanisms played an important role in reinforcing this moral discipline. Articles 365 and 373 of the Chilean Penal Code, which criminalised sexual relations between men and so-called “outrages against good morals,” remained implemented throughout the dictatorship.[4] Although lesbianism was not explicitly criminalised, lesbian women were nonetheless subject to stigma, police harassment and violence, and societal invisibility. Indeed, the absence of direct legal prohibition did not translate into safety; rather, it made lesbian lives unrecognisable within the broader legal and political system.
This environment made queer political organising rather difficult. Public expressions of queer identity came with a risk of surveillance, arrest, or violence. In fact, while more and more queer organisations were being created in North America and Western Europe during the 1970s and 1980s, similar movements were difficult to organise in Chile in the same period.[5] While the Pinochet regime had a strong impact, repression started even before. In fact, the first public gay march took place in 1972, a year before the military coup, and was broken up by the police, who threatened participants with violence and arrest if they did not disperse.[6]
Despite these constraints, the 1980s marked a period of slow but significant change. Indeed, the late 1970s and early 1980s saw the progressive emergence of hidden and clandestine queer networks. Furthermore, as protests against the regime intensified, new actors began to build their own spaces for expression. The implementation of neoliberal economic reforms paradoxically enabled the emergence of semi-public gay nightlife in Santiago, even as police raids remained common.[7] It is within this contradictory context of repression yet openness that lesbian women began to bring forward political demands that insisted on visibility, autonomy, and feminist recognition.
The Emergence of Ayuquelén
The Colectiva Lésbica Feminista Ayuquelén (Ayuquelén Lesbian Feminist Collective), usually called Ayuquelén, was founded between 1983 and 1984 by Susana Peña, Cecilia Riquelme, and Lilian Inostroza, making it the first public lesbian feminist organization in Chile.[8] Its creation was shaped by both international inclusion of feminist exchanges as well as local experiences of violence. For instance, a key milestone in its creation was the Second Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Meeting held in Lima, Peru in 1983, where a workshop on lesbianism provided a rare space for collective meeting and discussion on sexuality within feminist politics.[9]
The murder of Mónica Briones Puccio in July 1984 gave this emergent political group a more urgent and tragic impetus. She was assaulted by a man who reportedly hurled homophobic slurs before killing her.[10] The police’s decision to frame the crime as a traffic accident shows the state’s refusal to acknowledge violence against queer people. For many lesbian women, this denial made clear that silence was no longer an option, as their safety was not assured in any way.
Ayuquelén emerged in response to this moment. It brought together women who shared a sense of vulnerability and fear, but also a strong desire for political and societal change. The collective adopted a non-hierarchical structure and emphasized shared reflection rather than formal leadership.[11] This approach made Ayuquelén accessible to women who had little prior experience with activism.
The name Ayuquelén comes from the indigenous language Mapudungun, and means “the joy of being.”[12] It reflected a direct attempt to reclaim lesbian identity from narratives of shame and hiding. While violence and political repression were central to the collective’s motivations, its members also wanted to acknowledge notions of pleasure, desire, and joy as political acts. In doing so, Ayuquelén challenged the dominant and traditional portrayal of lesbian existence as invisible or pathological.
Furthermore, Chilean feminism in the 1980s played a crucial role in opposing the dictatorship, particularly through its emphasis on human rights and women’s roles as moral guardians of society. However, this framework often relied on heteronormative assumptions about womanhood and motherhood, leaving little room for lesbian experiences.[13] Ayuquelén sought to disrupt this silence by insisting that lesbian issues were feminist issues. Its members framed certain broader feminist values as a system of oppression that shaped women’s lives and constrained other different political ideas. By foregrounding lesbian existence, this collective exposed the ways by which even progressive movements could still reproduce exclusion.
In 1987, Ayuquelén gave an interview to Apsi Magazine under the provocative title “We Are Lesbians by Choice.”[14] Although the interview avoided publishing names or photographs, its content represented a bold and new assertion of lesbian agency in a Chilean media landscape shaped by censorship and moral conservatism. Moreover, various international media engagements further expanded the collective’s political reach. Ayuquelén participated in regional and global networks, including lesbian and gay conferences. This allowed its members to share and acknowledge their struggles within broader Latin American and international movements. For several years, the collective functioned as the sole lesbian voice representing Chile abroad.
Memory, Violence, and Historical Absence
The story of Ayuquelén also raises important questions about historical memory, archival absence, and recognition. Much of what is known about the collective comes from journalistic accounts, interviews, and later scholarly reconstructions, all of which are fairly rare. This scarcity of sources is surely not accidental and reflects the conditions under which Chilean lesbian activism took place. Secrecy, fear, and marginalisation influenced what could be documented and preserved. The murder of Mónica Briones Puccio has become a key reference point in Chilean queer memory, symbolising both vulnerability and resistance. Yet even this event was almost erased from public record. The process through which it has been reinterpreted as a hate crime from the police and thus the media, speaks to the ongoing struggle to name and remember queer violence in contexts where the state actively denied its responsibility. According to performance artist and transdisciplinary academic researcher, Rox Gómez Tapia, Ayuquelén is the first activist organization of its kind because it generates “critical points of departure” within geographically broader activist movements.[15]
Conclusion
Ayuquelén takes up a foundational space in the history of queer activism in Chile. Appearing in the final years of the Pinochet dictatorship, the collective transformed the vulnerability and fear of the regime into political action. It articulated a lesbian and feminist critique that not only challenged authoritarian power, but also feminist exclusions. Through workshops and meetings with an emphasis on care, reflection, visibility, and most importantly joy, Ayuquelén redefined what resistance could look like under conditions of repression in Chile. The group demonstrates how lesbian activism in Latin America cannot be understood solely through legal reforms or post-dictatorship developments. Instead, it must be traced to earlier moments of organizing that unfolded in secrecy, risk, and creativity.
Bibliography
Edwards, Fernanda Carvajal. “Sexopolítica En Los Inicios de La Dictadura de Augusto Pinochet: El ‘Cambio de Sexo’ de Marcia Alejandra En Los Discursos de La Prensa.” Sexualidad, Salud y Sociedad (Rio de Janeiro), no. 24 (December 2016): 103–29. https://doi.org/10.1590/1984-6487.sess.2016.24.05.a.
Gómez Tapia, Rox. “Emergencia de Las Disidencias En Chile: Una Política-Ficción Para El Estallido Lesbofeminista y Sus Estelas Performativas (1983-2010).” Nomadías (Ñuñoa, Chile) 27 (2019): 95–122.
Hugo Robles, Victor. “History in the Making The Homosexual Liberation Movement in Chile.” NACLA Report on the Americas 31, no. 4 (1998): 36–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714839.1998.11725707.
Pierson, Stephanie. “Queer Resistance in Pinochet’s Chile: Exploring the Origins of Queer Liberation in Santiago, 1973-2000.” University of North Carolina, 2024.
Schulenberg, Shawn. “LGBT Rights in Chile: On the Verge of a Gay‐rights Revolution?” Sexuality, Gender & Policy 2, no. 2 (2019): 97–119. https://doi.org/10.1002/sgp2.12009.
Vodanovic, Milena. “Somos Lesbianas Por Opción.” Apsi Magazine (Santiago, Chile), June 22, 1987.
Notes
[1] Stephanie Pierson, “Queer Resistance in Pinochet’s Chile: Exploring the Origins of Queer Liberation in Santiago, 1973-2000” (University of North Carolina, 2024).
[2] Pierson, “Queer Resistance in Pinochet’s Chile.”
[3] Fernanda Carvajal Edwards, “Sexopolítica En Los Inicios de La Dictadura de Augusto Pinochet: El ‘Cambio de Sexo’ de Marcia Alejandra En Los Discursos de La Prensa,” Sexualidad, Salud y Sociedad (Rio de Janeiro), no. 24 (December 2016): 103–29, https://doi.org/10.1590/1984-6487.sess.2016.24.05.a.
[4] Edwards, “Sexopolítica En Los Inicios de La Dictadura de Augusto Pinochet,” 107.
[5] Shawn Schulenberg, “LGBT Rights in Chile: On the Verge of a Gay‐rights Revolution?,” Sexuality, Gender & Policy 2, no. 2 (2019): 97–119, https://doi.org/10.1002/sgp2.12009, 99.
[6] Victor Hugo Robles, “History in the Making The Homosexual Liberation Movement in Chile,” NACLA Report on the Americas 31, no. 4 (1998): 36–44, https://doi.org/10.1080/10714839.1998.11725707.
[7] Hugo Robles, “History in the Making The Homosexual Liberation Movement in Chile,” 37.
[8] Rox Gómez Tapia, “Emergencia de Las Disidencias En Chile: Una Política-Ficción Para El Estallido Lesbofeminista y Sus Estelas Performativas (1983-2010),” Nomadías (Ñuñoa, Chile) 27 (2019): 95–122, 97.
[9] Gómez Tapia, “Emergencia de Las Disidencias En Chile: Una Política-Ficción Para El Estallido Lesbofeminista y Sus Estelas Performativas (1983-2010),” 97.
[10] Pierson, “Queer Resistance in Pinochet’s Chile,” 20-22.
[11] Pierson, “Queer Resistance in Pinochet’s Chile,” 22.
[12] Pierson, “Queer Resistance in Pinochet’s Chile,” 20; Gómez Tapia, “Emergencia de Las Disidencias En Chile: Una Política-Ficción Para El Estallido Lesbofeminista y Sus Estelas Performativas (1983-2010),” 97.
[13] Hugo Robles, “History in the Making The Homosexual Liberation Movement in Chile,” 37; Pierson, “Queer Resistance in Pinochet’s Chile,” 22.
[14] Milena Vodanovic, “Somos Lesbianas Por Opción,” Apsi Magazine (Santiago, Chile), June 22, 1987.
[15] Gómez Tapia, “Emergencia de Las Disidencias En Chile: Una Política-Ficción Para El Estallido Lesbofeminista y Sus Estelas Performativas (1983-2010),” 97.
