Qualla: Bar Abanicos police raid

Bar Abanicos police raid: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On the night of June 14, 1997, at a bar on the corner of Vargas Machuca and Juan Jaramillo streets in Cuenca, Ecuador, four candidates competed to be the first gay queen elected in the city. Patricio Cuéllar, known by the name Brigitte, won. A party followed. Just after eleven o'clock, police officers under the command of Mayor Diego Crespo forced their way into the bar. They arrested the people inside - homosexual men and transgender women who had come to celebrate a small, precious first in their city. Some escaped through a back window. Those who did not were taken to a jail where, with police consent, they were tortured and raped. The raid was the low point of what became, within five months, a high point: the decriminalization of homosexuality in Ecuador.

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Bar Abanicos police raid: The Letter and the Law

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Article 516 of Ecuador's Criminal Code, in its first paragraph, made homosexuality a crime punishable by four to eight years in prison. Two weeks before the raid, on May 30, 1997, the police received a letter asking that Bar Abanicos be closed. The letter carried signatures from ...

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Bar Abanicos police raid: The Night and the Jail

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The numbers vary by source. The OutRight Action International reported 14 people imprisoned that night. Years later, Cuéllar reaffirmed a figure of 63 detainees. Either number describes a group of people who had gone out to celebrate and who were dragged into a jail where officer...

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Bar Abanicos police raid: Jaime Terreros Files the Complaint

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The day they were released, Cuéllar and a friend met Jaime Terreros, a local LGBTQ activist in Cuenca who went by the name Terri. They told him what had happened. Terreros made a choice that in 1997 Ecuador was genuinely dangerous: he filed a formal complaint with the Human Right...

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Bar Abanicos police raid: The Unconstitutionality Action

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

News of the raid reached FEDAEPS - the Fundación Ecuatoriana de Acción y Educación para la Promoción de la Salud - through a member of the Cuenca organization La Pájara Pinta, led at the time by Azuay's then-governor Felipe Vega de la Cuadra. Activists Orlando Montoya of FEDAEPS ...

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Bar Abanicos police raid: What a City Remembers

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Cuenca is known internationally for its colonial architecture, its four rivers, its UNESCO World Heritage center. Visitors come to see the cathedral, the red-tiled roofs, the Tomebamba riverfront. Most never hear of Bar Abanicos. The bar is gone; the streets where it stood, Varga...

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