In a sunlit Santa Cruz home shared with three dogs and four cats, newlyweds Fabiana Justiniano and Scarlett Rocha still get emotional talking about their August 7 wedding. Like many couples celebrating their big day, they rushed from the civil registry to finalize hair and makeup, then danced side-by-side in their white gowns long into the night, surrounded by more than 100 loved ones. “We never dreamed our day would be this beautiful,” 29-year-old Justiniano said, looking back on the milestone that is both deeply personal and unprecedented for the South American nation. Their union marks Bolivia’s first legally recognized same-sex civil marriage, the end of a grueling four-year legal fight in a deeply religious and socially conservative country where the national constitution still formally defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman. While the court ruling that cleared the way for their marriage applies specifically to Justiniano and Rocha, LGBTQ+ advocates and legal experts say the victory could set a transformative precedent for same-sex couples across the country. When Rocha, also 29, first laid eyes on their official marriage certificate, she said a lifetime of uncertainty and exclusion melted away. “All this weight just lifted off my chest,” she explained. “I finally felt this peace, like I could let my guard down and really embrace what it means to be married.” Across majority Roman Catholic South America, Bolivia is far from the only nation that has long restricted marriage to heterosexual couples. But the continent’s most populous countries – including Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia – have recognized same-sex marriage for years. By contrast, most nations in Central America and the Caribbean remain far more conservative on LGBTQ+ rights, offering few to no formal legal protections for same-sex partnerships. For decades, targeted legal challenges brought by same-sex couples, like the one Justiniano and Rocha pursued, have driven forward marriage equality around the world, from the United States to Nepal. “What these women achieved gives hope to every other same-sex couple in Bolivia fighting to have their love recognized,” said Mateo Rodrigo, a lawyer with Igual Bolivia, the LGBTQ+ legal advocacy organization that represented the couple. “We know change is coming, it is inevitable.” The couple’s path to the altar began nearly four years ago, when civil registry authorities rejected their initial application for a marriage license, forcing them to turn to the courts to claim their right. Justiniano, a psychologist, and Rocha, a Bolivian-American neuroscientist born in Hollywood, Florida and raised between the U.S. and Bolivia, met through mutual friends in Santa Cruz in early 2020, fell in love quickly, and began discussing marriage within months. Though no same-sex couple had ever legally married in Bolivia, building a life together through formal marriage had always been a core part of their shared life plan. Before their case, some same-sex couples in Bolivia had formalized their relationships through “uniones libres,” or free unions, a legal designation for cohabiting partners that theoretically carries the same financial and legal rights as marriage. But in practice, lawyers report that same-sex couples attempting to exercise these rights almost universally face systemic discrimination and endless bureaucratic barriers. Unlike free unions, marriage offers the formal social recognition and long-term legal security that heterosexual couples take for granted, a benefit the couple wanted deeply. For Rocha specifically, formal marriage also provided certainty that their relationship would be recognized by U.S. authorities should the couple choose to relocate there. When their initial marriage license application was predictably rejected, their legal team found a critical opening in Bolivia’s own constitution: the document explicitly states that international human rights treaties take precedence over conflicting national law. The legal team cited a landmark advisory opinion from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which requires member states to extend all legal protections granted to heterosexual couples to same-sex partnerships, including full marriage rights. “We always knew this would be a hard fight, but we never imagined it would take this long,” Justiniano said, recalling years of traveling back and forth between government offices and courthouses, sorting through confusing conflicting requirements, chasing down obscure paperwork, and waiting months at a time for the process to move forward. “There were so many obstacles, so much open discrimination every step of the way,” she added. It took more than three years, two separate lawsuits, before a constitutional tribunal in La Paz, Bolivia’s administrative capital, issued a ruling siding with the couple in March 2023. The court found that the civil registry had unlawfully discriminated against Justiniano and Rocha based on their sexual orientation. Rocha left the six-hour hearing stunned, and called Justiniano immediately with the news. “Her voice was shaking when she said, ‘If I got that right, I think we won,’” Justiniano recalled. “My first question was, ‘So can we get married tomorrow?’” The tribunal ordered civil authorities to issue the couple their marriage licenses within 10 business days, but bureaucratic delays pushed the actual wedding back another five months. Now that their marriage is legally recognized across Bolivia, rights officials say the outcome is already encouraging other same-sex couples to pursue their own marriage licenses. Paola Tapia, a senior official at Bolivia’s independent Ombudsman’s Office, which is tasked with protecting human rights across the country, called the ruling a critical turning point. “This is an incredibly important precedent,” Tapia explained. “Just as these two women from Santa Cruz won the right to formalize their marriage, there will surely be many other couples that come forward seeking the same recognition.” Already, Igual Bolivia reports that multiple other same-sex couples have reached out to the organization to inquire about pursuing their own marriage licenses. Because the lawsuit centered on a proven violation of constitutional rights, the case will now move to Bolivia’s highest court, the Constitutional Court, for final review. Justiniano and Rocha’s marriage will remain legally valid regardless of the high court’s final ruling, but if the Constitutional Court votes to uphold the lower tribunal’s decision, it will create a formal nationwide legal precedent that will clear the way for other couples to marry, bringing Bolivia’s marriage equality laws in line with its more progressive South American neighbors, Tapia explained. One week after their wedding, standing in the kitchen of their Santa Cruz home while pasta simmers on the stove, the couple reflected on what their historic win means for the country of 12 million people they call home. “This fight started with us, but at the end of the day it is about equal rights,” Rocha said. “It is about all people being able to protect the love they share.” (Reporting from Buenos Aires, Argentina by DeBre)
One lesbian couple’s winding path to marriage leads to a historic first in Bolivia
