Welcome to the Latin American section. Here you will find resources to help you cover the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community in Mexico, Central America and South America in a fair, accurate and inclusive way. These resources include a list of community organizations, events, publications and examples of balanced and unbalanced portrayals in the media. While the information compiled here is not extensive, it is part of a larger effort of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) to educate and hopefully transform the way Spanish-language media in the United States and Latin America portray LGBT people.

The LGBT community in Latin America has become more organized and visible in the past decade. There has been a surge in LGBT activists and organizations in Mexico, Central America and South America. Like their American counterparts, LGBT activists and organizations in Latin America have broadened their efforts beyond HIV/AIDS-related issues to include activism and the needs of youth and women. Through the years, Spanish-language media has begun to reflect the more visible face of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Latin American society. But those media representations have not improved drastically or consistently.

If Spanish-language media in the United States is about 20 years behind mainstream media in its fair, accurate and inclusive portrayal of LGBT individuals, then media in Latin America is a lot farther behind. Historically and culturally speaking, Spanish-language media has portrayed LGBT people in stereotypical and sensationalistic ways in Latin America. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are often presented in strictly male or female roles, such as the lisp-talking, effeminate male or the tough, butch-looking woman. To further complicate matters, these sensational and stereotypical LGBT images reach an immeasurable viewership because of the symbiotic relationship that exists among television networks in the United States and Latin America. Eighty percent of Spanish-language programming in the U.S. is produced in Latin America, and many of the shows produced by Univision, Telemundo and CNN en Español in the U.S. are broadcast in Latin America. This means that Spanish-speaking viewers – no matter their country of residence – are watching the same LGBT images and representations. Because of this symbiotic relationship among the TV networks, GLAAD began working with Televisa, the world's largest and most powerful Spanish-language television network, to improve the fairness and accuracy of these images. GLAAD, Televisa executives and local journalists and activists will be meeting in Mexico City on April 12 to discuss Televisa's portrayal of LGBT people and provide local resources and appropriate LGBT terminology.

The more favorable representation of LGBT images in Spanish-language media has almost been exclusive to the telenovela (soap opera) genre. Azteca América, a Mexican TV network with offices in Los Angeles and New York, is a pioneer among the Latin American TV networks because it includes more LGBT characters in its soap operas and presents their lives in a fair and accurate manner. Azteca América's soaps, such as "La Vida en el Espejo," "Mirada de Mujer" and "La Heredera," portray LGBT individuals as human beings with rich, complex lives. Other soaps like "Adrián está de Visita" (produced by a Colombian TV network and aired on Telemundo), "Clase 406" (produced by Televisa and aired on Univision) and "La Mujer de Lorenzo (produced by a Peruvian TV network) have also made an effort to include fair and balanced portrayals of LGBT people. Some television networks have ventured outside of that genre to include fair and accurate portrayals of LGBT characters in sitcoms like "Los Roldán (Telefe) and Los Sánchez (Azteca América). While others continue to rely on stereotypes in the TV sitcom genre, such as "La Parodia (Televisa)" and "La Jaula (Televisa)."

Despite the significant inroads into fairer LGBT representations in Spanish-language media, some TV networks continue to exploit the lives of LGBT people through hurtful and defamatory programming on talk shows. The ridiculing and demonizing of LGBT people has become standard fare on Spanish-language talk shows in the United States and Latin America. These programs tend to focus more so on transgender people than gay, lesbian or bisexual people because it leads to more sensationalistic content. Talk shows like "Hasta en las Mejores Familias (Televisa)" perpetuate hurtful and erroneous stereotypes about how a gay or lesbian individual is supposed to behave. But not all talk shows are anti-gay. "Laura en América (Telemundo Internacional)," which received a GLAAD Media Awards nomination in 2005, has touched on LGBT issues from a more human and personal angle.

The Spanish-language print media in Latin America also lacks objective and fair coverage of the LGBT community, especially when it relates to terminology. Newspapers and magazines in Latin America continue to use problematic terms and labels, such as sexual lifestyle or sexual preference when reporting on the lives of LGBT people. To counter the negative and unfair coverage in print media, members of the LGBT community have created their own online news services, such as NotieSe (Mexico), Sentido G (Argentina), GayLatino.com (Latin America) and Raíz Diversidad Sexual (Peru). These news services are providing informative and effective news coverage of the LGBT community in Latin America.

Over the past few years, GLAAD's People of Color (POC) Media Program has been working with LGBT organizations in Latin America to eliminate stereotypes and promote fair, accurate and inclusive representation of this community in Spanish-language media. The program also brings attention to problematic or defamatory coverage in Spanish-language media and works with media professionals to help shape the way these media outlets cover LGBT Latina/o issues.

GLAAD's goal is to empower local activists in their countries of origin to learn the tools they will need to challenge and educate their local media outlets and to serve as a resource for media professionals.