The letter of an "amoral" man
In the middle of a witch-hunt against 108 men, an anonymous letter to the editor dared to object. Ten years before Stonewall.
On 30 September 1959, an unsigned letter to the editor appeared in the newspaper "El País" in Asunción. It was entitled "Carta de un amoral", the letter of an amoral man. Today it is regarded as the first public voice for sexual freedom in Paraguay, ten years before Stonewall.
The background was grim. At the beginning of September, the 25-year-old radio announcer Bernardo Aranda had been found burned in his flat in Asunción. Dictator Alfredo Stroessner's police spoke of a crime of passion. They suspected the culprits were among homosexual men, even though Aranda had a girlfriend.
Raids, interrogations and torture followed. The pro-regime "El País" reported that 108 people of "dubious moral standing" were being questioned. The number became an insult. The 108 disappeared from house numbers, car number plates and telephone numbers. A satirical paper drew men with the number on their backs, driven along by police officers with truncheons.
Into this witch-hunt burst the anonymous letter to the newspaper's director. Who wrote it is still unknown today. The author accused the paper of reviling honourable people as a stain on society instead of reflecting. He and those like him, he wrote, followed an inclination as old as humanity. No one had the right to take from them the right to decide for themselves, as long as they did not disturb others. In these matters there was no collective morality, only a personal one.
The persecution did not end there. After another murder case, the next big wave rolled in in 1982. Today, Paraguay's queer movement commemorates the letter every September with a demonstration. The 108 no longer stands only for shame. It has become a sign of resistance.