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A few years ago, I was looking for a found-family LGBTQ+ story and stumbled upon ‘Cantoras’ by Carolina De Robertis. Now every summer I re-read the novel, and it’s quickly become one of my favorites. The book always moves me to tears and makes me celebrate all the brave queer people who came before me.

The novel is set in Uruguay, and the first part of the book takes place from 1977 to 1979, during the height of the dictatorship known as the “Torture Chamber of Latin America.” Somehow, against all odds, five lesbian women find each other, even in this environment of fear, silence, and secrecy. As the book says, “it was remarkable how hidden people found each other.”

This book is, of course, fiction, but after reading it so many times, I wanted to explore how accurately it depicts the time period it’s set in, examining how LGBTQ+ folks were treated during the dictatorship.

First, though, I want to give a basic summary of this book. I will try not to spoil too much, but if you haven’t read it, you may want to read the novel before reading the rest of this article.

The Book Summary

‘Cantoras’ is broken into three parts: 1977-1979, 1980-1987, and 2013. It follows the lives of five women: Flaca, Romina, Malena, Paz, and La Venus. Somehow, these women all find one another during the height of the dictatorship, and they discover that they share the same secret: they all love women.

Flaca and Romina have a history of previously being together as teenagers, and Romina and Malena eventually end up together for a time. However, the focus of the tale is less on these women and their romantic relationships with one another. In fact, various partners come and go throughout the book. However, the central theme is about these five women and the unbreakable bond and community they share. That bond grows and develops as they endure moments of joy as well as unthinkable horror.

One of my favorite elements of the book is how well-developed every character is; each woman undergoes incredible character growth over the course of the novel. Flaca is a butcher; she lives with her parents and helps run their shop, and she is very masculine and appears confident. Romina is an educator and is involved with resistance groups; her brother is imprisoned for most of the book for his involvement in political resistance. Malena is quiet, but as her story unfolds, it’s one of the most devastating things I’ve ever read. She always knew who she was, but suffered immensely for it. La Venus started the book as a housewife and ended it as an openly lesbian painter. Finally, Paz starts the book as just a teenager who knows she’s different. As time goes on, she embraces her masculinity and her sexuality, thanks in part to the community of four women surrounding her. In ‘Cantoras,’ each woman is on her own journey, but they lean on each other as their lives grow and change under the dictatorship, and eventually, when they’re free from it.

These five women create a space for themselves to just be in a tiny shack on a remote beach. Early on, they discover what they all have in common. However, they lack the language to describe themselves, so they call themselves ‘cantoras,’ which is the Spanish feminine word for singer, because after all, these women know how to make other women ‘sing.’ Over the course of the book, spanning almost 40 years, these women weave in and out of one another’s lives, always tethered by the shack on the beach and their bond as cantoras.

The History

‘Cantoras’ is set in the height of the military dictatorship, which began in 1973. While homosexuality wasn’t officially criminalized during this time, LGBTQ+ folks were targeted in a variety of ways, and it certainly added to the culture of fear that queer folks were living under during this time.

A talk at Christopher Newport University highlighted that the “dictatorship actually committed a host of other rights violations as well, particularly against Afro-descendants and gay and lesbian people within the country.” This showcases the novel’s accuracy in depicting the pervasive fear the women faced and their deep desire to find a place where they didn’t have to hide.

Also, during this period of Uruguayan history, transgender people in particular were targeted. While none of the women in this novel are explicitly transgender, two of them, Paz and Flaca, are very masculine in how they present themselves, and this likely would have caused them additional fear.

“They [trans people] are a vulnerable community and the police and the state detained and tortured trans people during the dictatorship of the 1970s and 80s and these tactics continued into the democratic era,” Tania Ramirez, from the Ministry of Social Development in Uruguay, said.

Another group of people targeted under the dictatorship were homosexual teachers; they lived lives of increased secrecy and likely experienced a lot of fear that their secret would be found out and they’d lose their job, or worse. As you may recall, Romina in the novel is an educator, which, combined with her political resistance work, likely contributed to her fear and her hiding throughout the story.

Also during the period of the dictatorship, “116 Uruguayans died in state prisons or in clashes with state forces, 175 were disappeared, 6850 were detained, and thousands more were forced into political exile.” During this time, countless women were raped in prisons. In the novel, this is seen twice, once when Romina is arrested and is raped by three men, and another time when Paz is arrested, and there is fear that she will be raped. This element of the novel was incredibly accurate to what actually happened in Uruguay at this time.

Nowadays, things in Uruguay are completely different; Uruguay is a leader in terms of LGBTQ+ rights, especially transgender rights. This also reflects the novel, which ends in 2013. Without giving the ending away, it accurately reflects the accepting attitudes and policies.

So many key elements of the novel (even the women’s internal struggles) fit with the time period in which the story is set. While the story itself is fictional, given what we know about the time under the dictatorship, it certainly feels, in many ways, like an accurate portrayal of LGBTQ+ Uruguayan history.