Queering the State of Exception: LGBTIQ Resistance Against Carceral Regimes in El Salvador

Katherine Funes
Global & International Studies
UC Irvine

Utilizing archives, queer oral history, and ethnography, my project critically interrogates the 2022 State of Exception and argues that carceral development is an (im)mobilizing force that drives LGBTIQ displacement from multiple facets of Salvadoran society. The need to understand the carceral mechanisms behind LGBTIQ displacement in El Salvador is increasingly urgent, as the country leads the world with the highest incarceration rate per capita. This manifests in government-sponsored attacks on queer and transgender communities such as strip searches, sexual assault, forced disappearances, and indefinite imprisonment for those falsely accused of gang affiliation. The further encroachment of carcerality into Salvadoran daily life is accompanied by the continued expansion of LGBTIQ resistance, whether through organized collective action or seemingly mundane quotidian practices. This project makes visible the growing resistance among LGBTIQ Salvadorans, in turn challenging reductive framings of victimhood and offering abolitionist challenges to carceral solutions. More broadly, this dissertation considers the transnational reverberations of both authoritarianism and LGBTIQ struggle within El Salvador across Latin America and the Caribbean.