O Lampião da Esquina was one of the first publications designed to specifically reach out to a homosexual readership in Brazil. Published between 1978 and 1981 in São Paulo, the newspaper emerged as part of the so-called alternative press, which flourished during the last years of the military dictatorship in Brazil. As the country geared towards political democratization, O Lampião set out to speak on behalf of a group rarely included in leftist discussions about what a pluralist society should be.

In its first edition, the tabloid introduced its goals: “What matters to us is to destroy the average image of the homosexual, according to which he is someone who lives in the shadows, prefers the night, views his sexual preference as a curse, is prone to affected gesturing, and always fail in any attempt to realize himself more broadly as a human being (…)” (Edição Zero, April 1978, p. 2) Among the founders and editors of the Lampião da Esquina were Darcy Penteado, Adão Costa, Aguinaldo Silva, Antonio Chrysóstomo, Clóvis Marques, Francisco Bittencourt, Gasparino Damata, Jean-Claude Bernardet, João Antônio Mascarenhas, João Silvério Trevisan and Peter Fry. O Lampião had a total of 38 editions, with an average national circulation of 10,000 to 15,000 copies.