Shortly after arriving in Santiago, Chile for my semester exchange, there was one pertinent observation I made: that here there is an abundance of PDA (public displays of affection). In the park, on the train, on the street, in the supermarket, lovers young and old share kisses and cariño in public. To this, no one bats an eyelid, evidently accustomed to such displays of intimacy and affection. But what was more striking was that all this touching wasn’t reserved solely for heterosexual presenting couples. Queer lovers lay close in the park and walk arm in arm. In hindsight, I am embarrassed to admit that I was initially shocked by this. Shocked because before arriving in Chile, I knew very little about this place. Driven by my desire to learn Spanish and brought here by the fact that there were only two Spanish speaking countries on offer in my university’s exchange program, Chile seemed like a foot in the door to this world I wanted to be a part of. Yet, like so many other Australians, I knew very little about it. Despite studying a Bachelor of International Relations, this region barely received a mention in the international sphere. Plagued with media-driven stereotypes of cartels and Catholicism and instability, along with my knowledge that the Spanish language was a gendered one that may enforce the gender binary, I certainly had preconceived expectations of this place as a more conservative, traditional, and unsafe one. Yet on my third day in the city, seeing a queer couple closely and lovingly intertwined in a bustling city park, I realised I had a lot to unlearn.

Despite the historically strong catholic influence in this region, and the fact that Chile’s population is still statistically more conservative, there is currently a major shift occurring. The incumbent left-wing government brought in a cabinet with one of the highest numbers of female and LGBTQ+ members in the world. The president has spoken openly about transgender rights. I see signs on the street calling for the protection of trans women. The binary nature of the language is shifting too, and there is a wider understanding here that language is not a fixed thing. People change, and the words we use to explain phenomena change too.

When people in Chile fight for something, it seems they fight hard. Much harder than we [Australians] do. I’ve seen posters publicly doxing politicians for sexual assault and pedophilia, their names and faces unavoidable, forcing passersby to confront the problem. The fight for LGBTQ+ rights is no different. People show up to queer marches in the hundreds of thousands, people plaster busy city streets with graffiti calling for more action. In Australia and much of the English-speaking world, whether consciously or not, we tend to view ourselves above other places in the fight for moral causes. But I wonder if back home a queer couple could kiss in broad daylight on the train or lay together in the park without fear of getting chastised?

Ultimately, I am living here in the big city which typically tends to be more progressive than other places anyway, and I can only speak from my observations and experiences. Perhaps I don’t know the hardships for queer people here now and historically because I have not had to face them. Chile is a singular country in a vast and diverse region and Latin America should not be referred to as a whole. But I do know that here, seeing queer people openly display affection to one another without being given as much of a second look, it is beautiful - and a world away from the one I previously knew.