Bar Abanicos police raid

The Bar Abanicos police raid took place on the night of June 14, 1997, in the city of Cuenca, Ecuador. During the raid, the police arrested homosexual and transgender people who had come to the bar for the election of the city's first gay queen. The detainees were tortured and raped inside the jail, with the consent of the police.

The event generated reactions of rejection at the national level and was the trigger for different LGBT sectors to organize for the first time in the country and initiate a campaign for the decriminalization of homosexuality in Ecuador, which in November of the same year achieved its goal when the Constitutional Court declared that the first paragraph of Article 516 of the Criminal Code, which criminalized homosexuality with a sentence of four to eight years, was unconstitutional.