Tarapoto massacre

The Tarapoto massacre, also known as the Night of the Gardenias (Spanish: Noche de las Gardenias), was a selective massacre against LGBT people that took place on May 31, 1989, during the period of terrorism in Peru. A total of eight people were killed, who were captured in the Las Gardenias discotheque in the Peruvian city of Tarapoto (San Martín). The attack was perpetrated by members of the subversive group Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) and took place as part of the “crusades against vice”, campaigns of “social cleansing” that the group carried out in the Northeastern Front.

The attack was the largest hate crime against transgender people in the history of Peru. and the largest kidnapping of non-heterosexual people until the one carried out in December of the same year in Picuruyacu (Huánuco) by another subversive group operating in Peru, Shining Path, against twelve young transgender people. One of the consequences of the massacre was the increase in internally displaced persons and LGBT migration as they fled the conflict to areas controlled by the weak first Aprista government of Alan García, while those who did not leave the city opted for pairing up with heterosexual women to demonstrate their “dehomosexualization” and not be murdered.

After the massacre, the harassment and persecution in Tarapoto, as well as throughout the Peruvian Amazon, of people because of their sexual orientation and gender identity, continued into the 21st century until the defeat of the subversive groups by the Peruvian Armed Forces in 2014. During the judicial proceedings against the accused, the leadership of the MRTA never acknowledged their formal responsibility for the massacre. Several organizations agreed to institutionalize May 31 as the “National Day to Combat Violence and Hate Crimes against Lesbians, Trans, Gays and Bisexuals“, commemorating it for the first time in 2004.