Plaza de la Diversidad Sexual

In a pedestrian lane off Sarandí in Montevideo's old city stands a granite monolith topped with an inverted triangle of pink-and-black veined marble — a deliberate echo of the pink and black triangles of the Nazi camps. Its inscription reads: 'Honrar la diversidad es honrar la vida' — to honour diversity is to honour life. Inaugurated in February 2005, the Plaza de la Diversidad Sexual was the first of its kind in Latin America (and only the fourth anywhere), placed by a city then legislating its way to the region's most complete set of LGBTQ rights: Uruguay went on to civil unions, adoption, and in 2013 marriage equality. The plaza is the traditional rallying point of the Marcha por la Diversidad, which fills 18 de Julio each September. What you see today: a small, easily missed lane square amid Ciudad Vieja's galleries and cafés — the monolith, the triangle, the inscription. Two quiet minutes on any old-city walk, for the continent's first official acknowledgment that queer lives belong in public stone.