By Ernest Barteldes

During World War II, many young homosexual men and women left their small hometowns because they had been drafted or to seek wartime employment. Outside Middle America, they found a somewhat supportive sense of community that would later spark the gay movement of the late ’50s and early ’60s, which culminated with the Stonewall riots and would later make New York City’s gay population one of the largest and most vibrant in the world.

While being queer in America is now fairly mainstream, this level of tolerance is hardly the reality  across the globe. In countries like Poland, Iran, Mexico, Colombia and Brazil, among others, homosexuals are still persecuted, even if the media seems to shine a more relaxed and open-minded view toward the situation. The desire to live openly and safely has forced many to abandon their homelands and become expatriates in New York. 

In February 2000, 20-year-old Edson Neris da Silva was strolling around downtown São Paulo, Brazil, with his boyfriend and was cornered by members of a white supremacist group and beaten to death. Last April, a gay tolerance march in Krakow, Poland, was disrupted by religious groups who had the support of their anti-gay government. Tomatoes were thrown at the marchers, slurs were shouted and banners with words such as “Gays and Lesbians, Poland Laughs at You” were raised. In Iran, being openly gay is tantamount to an automatic death sentence, while paramilitary groups in Colombia, such as FARC, often go out on killing sprees, claiming they are “cleaning the streets” of “sexual deviants.”

Roberto (who, like the other subjects in this article, asked that his real name not be used) is an open and friendly Brazilian in his early forties. With light-skin and a carefully shaved head, he could “pass” as straight if he wanted to, but he certainly felt the pain of being gay before he left his country five years ago. 

“I was in Bahia during Carnaval,” he begins, “and a guy walked up to me and said, ‘Gays should be killed.’” During the same weekend, Roberto was also harassed by a biker gang as he walked down the street.

Back in Brazil, Roberto worked as a choreographer and was openly gay, though his relationship to his family followed the typical “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. 

“I would feel uncomfortable to sit with my dad and come out like that,” he says.

Marcos also left Brazil because he felt like he couldn’t be honest or open about his sexuality. “When I was younger, I would often date girls just to show my family that I could behave in a way that was acceptable to them,” he says. Once he was able to support himself, he moved out of his family’s home but, like Roberto, never officially came out to them. Now he lives in Brooklyn with his boyfriend Pawel, a quiet, more reserved, Polish immigrant who left his own country for many of the same reasons. 

“Poland was a closed, 

communist country for many years,” he says. “The people there are not tolerant, and the Catholic Church still has a strong hold over them.”

“I am afraid to go back to Poland and be openly gay there,” he explains. “As it happened with the parade in Krakow, I would most certainly be singled out and possibly hurt if I were open about it there.”

Professional stigma is another reason that many homosexual men choose not to stay back home. “In Brazil,” says Marcos, “it doesn’t matter how good you are at your job. They’d rather have a mediocre straight professional at, say a car dealership, than to have an effective one who happens to be gay.”

Roberto, Marcos and Pawel picked New York over other gay meccas like Miami or San Francisco because they felt they would have better job opportunities here.

“This city is a paradise for us,” Roberto says. “Here I can have any job without having to fall into some silly stereotype.”
He works, like many NYC Brazilians, at a shoeshine stand in Midtown Manhattan. He also participates in Mass with the city’s Brazilian community. “I had certain fears of participating in church activities in the beginning, but I felt accepted nevertheless.”

Dusty Araujo, Coordinator of the Asylum Documentation Program for the San Francisco-based International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), says many members of the LGBT community choose New York or San Francisco as new homes because they perceive it as a place with more likelihood to gain asylum or to form a community.

“Most immigrants who come to the U.S. know someone; they have a family or a community to land on,” explains Araujo. “Many who come because of their sexual orientation don’t have anyone, they’re totally disconnected.” He also points out that immigration is not a pressing issue in most LGBT communities and doesn’t get the same amount of attention as other issues.

Asylum Research, a local non-profit organization, assists foreigners in the gay, lesbian and transgender community with obtaining asylum in the U.S. if they fear for their safety back in their homelands.

Flavio Alves founded the organization after he himself was granted asylum. He had published a book, Toque de Silencio (Call to Silence), in his native Brazil about the treatment of gay men in the Brazilian armed forces and feared a backlash from the government or even violence from some of his old Navy buddies. When death threats began, he had to leave Brazil, fast.

“I was afraid of future persecution,” he explains. “I began proceedings in 1997 and was given the visa a year later.”

“After I established residence here, I began to work on a book about my story and found myself becoming an activist for the cause. I had lots of information, and a lot of people came to me for help. Today we assist several asylum seekers from around the world to get due process.”

It’s no easy task. As their clients’ court dates approach, they have to find specialists, news-paper reports and other pieces of evidence to help make the case for the plaintiffs. About 1/3 of all asylum seekers are rejected, according to the INS. While no records are kept as to how many of those are sexuality-based, the IGLHRC estimates that since 1994, of the hundreds of thousands that INS has granted asylum, roughly 700 have been gays or lesbians. 

“There is also the luck element,” Alves explains. “You never know what kind of magistrate you are going to get. I often oversee cases which I thought were impossible to lose, only to find the petitions refused. In other cases, we were sure we were going to lose, and suddenly the guy was given his visa.”

He says that most of the people that have looked for Asylum Research were from Brazil, but more recently he has gotten calls from Middle Eastern, Colombian and Mexican nationals. “There is a lot of the macho culture going on in Latin America,” he says. “And violence against gays and lesbians is pretty strong there.”