Jaime Nazar (L) and Javier Silva with their two children shortly after they married in Santiago, Chile, on March 10, 2022. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
Editor’s note: Washington Blade International News Editor Michael K. Lavers is currently on assignment in Chile.
SANTIAGO, Chile | Two gay men became the first same-sex couple to legally marry in Chile March 10.
Javier Silva and Jaime Nazar, who have been together for seven years, married shortly after 7:30 a.m. local time (5:30 a.m. ET) at the Chilean Civil Registry and Identification Service office in the Providencia neighborhood of the country’s capital of Santiago as their two young children watched.
Justice Minister Hernán Larraín, Deputy Human Rights Secretary Lorena Recabarren, the directors of two Chilean LGBTQ rights groups — long-time Movimiento de Integración y Liberación Homosexual (Movilh) Director Rolando Jiménez and Fundación Iguales President Isabel Amor — and Hunter T. Carter, a U.S.-based lawyer who advocates for marriage equality throughout Latin America, are among those who also attended.
Consuelo Morales and Pabla Heuser, a lesbian couple who has been together for 17 years, married in the Civil Registry office less than half an hour after Silva and Nazar tied the knot.
“It is a terrific moment for us as a couple,” Silva told the Blade during a brief interview immediately after he and Nazar married. “This act will be felt across Chile.”
Outgoing President Sebastián Piñera late last year signed the marriage equality law after the Chilean Congress passed it.
Movilh in 2012 filed a lawsuit with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on behalf of three same-sex couples who were seeking marriage rights.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights that same year ruled in favor of Karen Atala, a Chilean judge who lost custody of her three daughters to her ex-husband because she is a lesbian. The landmark decision established a legal precedent that has been used to advance marriage equality throughout Latin America.
Same-sex couples in Chile have been able to enter into civil unions since 2015.
The government of former President Michelle Bachelet — who is now the U.N. high commissioner for human rights — in 2016 said it would introduce bills to extend marriage and adoption rights to same-sex couples as part of an agreement between it, Movilh and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Movilh in 2020 withdrew from the agreement after it accused Piñera of not doing enough to advance marriage equality in Chile.
Piñera last June announced his support of the issue. He met with Silva and Nazar on Thursday at the Presidential Palace in Santiago after they married.
Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and Colombia are among the other Latin American countries in which same-sex couples can legally marry.
