Luis Alvarado Bruzual
Venezuela
He/Him
Luis, originally from Venezuela, is an International Relations professional and an experienced facilitator, advocate, campaigner, organizer and mobilizer, with over ten years of experience working in the field of social development programme planning, peacebuilding, advocacy, resource mobilization, strategic planning and social and behavioral change, with experience across 15 different countries and with different local and international organizations such as Fundación Váyalo, UNICEF and Peace Direct.
Through his work, Luis has supported the disengagement of more than 100 young people from gangs groups in the East of Venezuela, and has supported the development of policy negotiation and advocacy strategies in different matters across Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Luis was named as Young Leader of the Americas by the U.S. Department of State in 2023 and a Peace Ambassador by the European Commission in 2022.
Luis is currently studying his Master Program on International Peace Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies in the University of Notre Dame.
Steps to Liberation
To Be Free Is To Know Who I Am
Luis Alvarado Bruzual reflects on the complicated relationship between identity, freedom, and the societies that shape us. Growing up gay in Venezuela, he was surrounded by messages that told him what it meant to be a man—and that being gay was something to reject.
As a child who loved dancing, he learned to hide his movements, his interests, and eventually parts of himself. The violence and ridicule he experienced taught him that being seen could be dangerous.
That fear followed him into adolescence. At fifteen, after reaching the finals of a public speech competition, a comment about his “lack of masculinity and excessive mannerism” reinforced his belief that public visibility came with risk. He began minimizing his achievements and sabotaging his own progress in order to remain unnoticed.
Luis describes this as an internalized form of the larger systems of oppression and violence that surround people whose identities do not conform to social expectations.
His professional work has given him another lens through which to understand these experiences. For more than a decade, Luis has worked in peacebuilding and security at both community and international levels, including founding a nonprofit in Venezuela focused on addressing gang violence and strengthening community cohesion.
His academic research examines how systems of violence operate and how they might be broken.
At the same time, his personal journey has taught him that liberation also requires breaking the patterns of fear and self-denial that violence can leave inside us.
For Luis, community has become an essential part of that process. Therapy, Pride events, drag shows, friendships, allies, and LGBTQ+ spaces have helped him rebuild a sense of belonging and learn to see himself differently. He recalls that even entering a gay bar for the first time was overwhelming because of the years of fear and shame he carried with him.
Today, as a married gay man, he embraces a much more visible life—supporting gay-owned businesses, showing affection for his husband publicly, and participating in Pride.
What makes Luis’s story especially powerful is that his visibility is no longer only about himself. He writes that he lives openly for the younger and older versions of himself who once believed there was something wrong with them, and for people in Venezuela and elsewhere who are still struggling with the messages imposed upon them.
His journey reminds us that liberation can begin when we stop allowing the world to define who we are and begin, consciously and courageously, to know ourselves.
