Hotel Luso

Anti-discrimination laws are often seen as catalysts in normalizing the taboo. But they'll always be limited by the words and concepts in the broader culture that literally speak into existence a society's acceptable range of experiences. In Mozambique, the national legislature passed some of the continent's most progressive anti-discrimination laws. And the larger conversation that centered around those laws led to the elaboration of a terminology that now allows LGBTQ people to come out, to express their sexual orientation and gender fluidity. But those terms remain static. They haven't been activated within the larger culture to expand the boundaries of its foundational concepts like family. So same sex and queer relationships remain the other. And to be the other is to face a constant threat, one that ranges in degree from the shame of 'embarrassing' one's family to the physical violence meted out for engaging in what colonial-era Mozambique termed 'vices against nature. As a result, members of the LGBTQ community often continue living in silence, in an undefined space beyond.

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To document the Mozambican LGBTQ community, then, required an interstitial space, one where the normal inhibitions necessary for daily survival in a (c)overtly hostile society could melt away. Hotel Luso is a physical manifestation of that space, an old, art deco Portuguese hotel, now an hourly motel. A place set aside to express those needs and desires society would rather ignore. For those who participated in this series, Hotel Luso allowed for a degree of self-expression often denied to them, even in their most intimate spaces. This underscores the fundamental challenge faced by not just the Mozambican LGBTQ community, but any marginalized group fighting for recognition. The act of resistance does not end just because the law is on your side.