I was born on 13 February 1969 and I grew up in a poor family of machista soccer fans. When I was little I lived my difference and suffered discrimination. While as a child I felt I was different and I explored my first erotic experiences with other boys, as a youth my homosexual desire was transformed into a process of intense searching, transforming my childhood fears into political strengths, expressed later in the battles waged alongside the Homosexual Liberation Movement of Chile, MOVILH, of which I became a member in March 1992.
My first encounter with the Homosexual Liberation Movement took place in front of the Government Palace in a march for human rights, on 4 March 1992. Overcoming surprise and vanquishing fear, I joined the homosexual group, without knowing that that instant would be transcendent for the political trajectory of the Chilean gay moment. It was its historical and public debut in my own life, because it marked the beginning of my journey as a homosexual political activist.
As part of the Homosexual Liberation Movement, I assumed various political and public responsibilities, including founding and directing the first radical program for lesbians and homosexuals in Chile, Triángulo Abierto (Open Triangle), in March 1993. From Triángulo Abierto I developed my first politico-cultural media interventions, by means of my particular radio voice, the liberationist content emitted, and a series of interventions in public space, such as the delivery of letters to international personalities, soliciting their solidarity with the struggle waged by the MOVILH to decriminalize sodomy in Chile. The public support of the Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez was the most successful initiative, as he dedicated to the homosexual movement in Chile one of his most emblematic songs: Te molesta mi amor (My love bothers you).
After developing, strengthening, and deepening an action that was controversial due to a strategic, political, and aesthetic focus more radical than the interior of the gay movement itself, I resolved to separate from the organizational dynamic of the MOVILH, assuming identity, autonomy, and independence from the organization, creating what would later be known as El Che Guevara de los Gays. A homosexual Che that seeks to reinvent metaphorically the liberatory utopia of the Latin American left, but embodied in contemporary characters, marginalized and stigmatized, including sexual minorities such as lesbians, transvestites and homosexuals.
El Che de los Gays is recognized as a performative character and one who provokes institutionality, using modes of mass communication to multiply his political message, and thus drawing attention to homosexual demands through aesthetic-political presentations in popular demonstrations and public acts. The public and visual interventions of El Che de los Gays seek to cross homosexuality with politics, problematizing the urgencies and challenges of postmodern societies, such as the issue of AIDS and its socio-cultural contagions, as the actor himself is a person living with HIV/AIDS.
El Che de los Gays was transformed into a historical documentary, traveling through different international festivals with gay, lesbian, transsexual, and queer themes, including participation in Santiago, Valparaíso, Viña del Mar, Lima, Boston, San Diego, Turín, Madrid, Valladolid, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Venezuela, Buenos Aires, Santa Clara, Barcelona and Bilbao. In this last competition, the International Festival of Gay/ Lesbian/Transexual Film of Zineagoak, the film won Audience Award for Best Documentary in January 2005. El Che de los Gays, directed by Arturo Âlvarez Roa and produced by Pamela Sierra, has been projected in important traditional festivals, including the International Documentary Festival of Santiago, the International Film Festival of Valdivia and the International Festival of New Latinamerican Film of La Habana, Cuba.
Parallel to my homosexual militancy, I began studying journalism at the ARCIS University, receiving a degree in journalism in September 2000. Seeking consistency between my life history, homosexual militancy, and theoretical studies, I wrote a graduate thesis on the Political History of the Homosexual Movement in Chile, which formed the basis of my book entitled, Bandera Hueca. Historia del movimiento homosexual de Chile (Empty Flag: History of the Homosexual Movement in Chile; 2008). The title cites one of my activist performances when, on 4 May 1994, in the middle of a Socialist Party Conference and in the presence of the ex- First Lady of France, Danielle Mitterand, I solicited her support in the struggle against Article 365 of the Penal Code which punished sodomy with jail, unfurling to the astonishment of the politicians present a torn Chilean flag with a hole in the center, symbolizing the empty space occupied by lesbians, the transgendered, and homosexuals in Chile.