Buenaventura, a major Afro-Colombian port city on Colombia’s western coast, has long been regarded as one of the country’s most dangerous cities. Armed groups would dismember victims and dispose of their remains in the nearby Pacific Ocean, which was where the “casas de pique” (Spanish for chop houses) operated. The conservative and machista, or male chauvinist, city of Buenaventura conducted its first LGBT Pride parade in 2019, which was previously unheard of. The event, according to John Albornoz, a homosexual man who conceived and organized it, was a watershed moment for the city’s LGBT community. In the present violent atmosphere in Buenaventura, however, Albornoz, who leads a local LGBT rights group, said he would not seek to organize a pride festival.