A imprensa relata: a comunidade LGBT+ e a violência institucional no Rio de Janeiro e em São Paulo (1970-1980)

Abstract

What would the historical context of the LGBT+ community be like without the role of the press? At the beginning of the 20th century, the local newspapers in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo were the main platforms for reporting news to the population. By the standards of a highly conservative society and in favour of morals and good manners, newspapers also reported on people considered marginal and peripheral (blacks, women, homosexual prostitutes and transvestites) with a pejorative and stigmatized bias. There was still no humane view of these people as anomalies. From the 1970s onwards, during the Military Dictatorship, the "vagrancy law" (Decree No. 3.688/1941, art. 59, known as the Law of Criminal Contraventions) was harshly used in institutional violence in police persecutions of homosexuals, prostitutes and transvestites, and the press pushed it terribly. However, the 1980s brought channels of mobilization (independent newspapers and organized groups) in the fight for sexual freedom and, consequently, AIDS prevention. At the end of the same decade, the Federal Constitution of 1988 emerged to bring new airs to society after decades of oppression. Did it really cover everyone?