Sexual Citizenship: The First Mexican Homosexual Liberation Movement and Mexican Nationalism, 1960-1985

• In Event: Mexico D.F.: Generating Cultural and Political Change

Abstract

This essay explores the first stages of the Mexico City LGBT liberation movement from 1965-1985, how this movement originated from earlier activism, and the reasons that it faltered. I argue that while the movement’s first incarnation achieved its goals of visibility and the development of grassroots alliances with other social movements, it splintered due to unresolved ideological differences that remained significant between the movement’s constituent groups. Such differences, which groups in Guadalajara and Tijuana engaged more effectively, rendered the movement impotent in the face of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and resurgent homophobia directed by the state as the Partido Revolucionario Institucional weakened. Prior to 1965, sexual minority activism in Mexico City was oriented towards defending legal rights (homosexuality was legal from 1871), mitigating repressive policies (queer men were exiled to the Islas Marías penal colony), and creating allies among the Mexican inteligensia. Tourists and foreign radicals went to Mexico, Mexicans traveled abroad, and homophile groups developed in multiple sites. However, by 1968, the student movement, related activism, and governmental repression radicalized Mexican gays, lesbians, travestis, afeminados, allies, and others, orienting them towards direct action and alliances with everyone from Trotskyest leftists to feminists and indigenous groups. The limits of such action and alliances, however, became clear, and the movement’s radical elements needed tempering in order to gain public support during ongoing socio-political crises. Mexico City ceased to be the movement’s primary center in 1985. Thereafter, the movement would gain greater recognition and rights nationally through democratic rather than direct action.

Author

• Ryan M Jones, SUNY Geneseo