LGBT in Mexico

Familias por la Diversidad Sexual, the banner reads: "Homophobia provokes instability (alternative, insecurity) at home and destroys the family".

Some 71% of Mexican youth would not approve if the same rights were given to homosexuals as heterosexuals.[13] A 2006 survey states that 33% of Mexicans feel aversion for homosexuals, some 40% don't like politicians who emphasize homosexuality, and some 32% don't like homosexual neighbors.[14] Homophobia is also deeply rooted in the family. In 2004 only four families of those murdered in homophobic crimes, of a total of 26, offered to give information on the matter to an investigation commission.[14]

In Mexico City, in 2004, of 125 corpses of homosexuals, only 75 were claimed by their relatives; for thirteen others, the family came only to the identification; the family of the rest did not approach the funeral home, despite having been informed.[14] There exist signs that Mexican youth are being committed to psychiatric clinics after coming out to family. Some 16% have been rejected by family, and a greater percentage have been physically attacked by relatives.[13]

Popular culture encourages this attitude. The rock group Molotov released the song "Puto" on their 1997 album ¿Dónde Jugarán las Niñas?. The lyrics of the song contain phrases like "Marica nena mas bien putín, Puto nace, puto se muere, Amo a matón / matarile al maricón / ¿¡y que quiere este hijo de puta!? / quiere llorar, Puto, le faltan tanates al / ¡puto! / le falta topiates / ¡puto! / le faltan tanates al puto puto".[15][16] The producer, Gustavo Santaolalla, in some statements to the magazine Retila, stated that the word "puto" had not been used in the sense of "gay" but in the sense of "coward" or "loser", which is also used in Mexico.[17]

The consequences for the LGBT community are shown in the UAM study, which states that 27% of LGBT persons studied suffer mental disorders and risk of alcoholism, some 40% have thoughts of suicide, and 25% have attempted it.[18]

Participants at the 2012 Gay Pride Parade in Mexico City.

According to Andrew A. Reding, homosexuals remain for the most part invisible, for two reasons. The first, which helps explain why there are no residential gay districts in Mexico, is that Mexicans tend to reside with their families far longer than their counterparts in the US.[19] This is in part for economic reasons. Low incomes and scarce housing keep many living with their parents. So does the fact that in the absence of a government social welfare system, the family is the primary bulwark of social security. Even wealthy Mexican homosexuals often continue to live at home, acquiring a separate lodging as a meeting place for their sexual partners.[19]

The second major reason gay men and lesbians remain invisible is the strong social stigma attached to homosexuality, particularly where it comes into conflict with the highly accentuated and differentiated sexual roles prescribed by machismo.

"The Mexican mestizo culture places a high value on 'manliness'. A salient feature of the society is a sharp delimitation between the gender roles played by males and females. In general, men are expected to be dominant and independent and females to be submissive and dependent. The distinct boundary between male and female roles in Mexico appears to be due in part to a culturally defined hypermasculine ideal referred to as machismo."

— Joseph M. Carrier.[20]

But machismo is as much about power relationships among men as it is about establishing the dominance of men over women.

"It is not exclusively or primarily a means of structuring power relations between men and women. It is a means of structuring power among men. Like drinking, gambling, risk taking, asserting one's opinions, and fighting, the conquest of women is a feat performed with two audiences in mind: first, other men, to whom one must constantly prove one's masculinity and virility; and second, oneself, to whom one must also show all signs of masculinity. Machismo, then, is a matter of constantly asserting one's masculinity by way of practices that show the self to be 'active', not 'passive'... yesterday's victories count for little tomorrow."

— Roger Lancaster.[20]

Individuals dressed as El Chapulín Colorado at the 2012 Marcha Gay

Machismo has important implications for how most Mexicans view homosexuality. Homophobia is far more intensely directed against those who violate norms of male and female conduct. That is especially pronounced among men, where effeminate behavior elicits far greater levels of social disapproval than does homosexuality per se.[20] In the machista perspective, a man's greatest offense against the norm is to not act like a man.[21]

Effeminacy and cross-dressing are serious violations of the masculine ideal. But the greatest transgression is for a man to assume the sexual role of a woman in intercourse. The man who penetrates another man remains masculine. The man who is penetrated loses his masculinity and incurs by far the greater social stigma.[21]

The focus on masculinity has serious consequences. It means that most Mexican gay or bisexual males, regardless of the sexual roles they assume in private, are at pains to project a manly image in public. The relative few who are unable to do so are therefore highly exposed and subject to ridicule and harassment, to say nothing of discrimination in employment.[21]

Because the vast majority of the homosexual population remains hidden from view, homosexuality becomes identified in the minds of many with prostitution, disease, and cross-dressing. That reinforces a vicious cycle, as prejudice keeps homosexuality underground and the few surface manifestations of homosexuality reinforce prejudice.[22] It also means that transvestites are subject to hatred, harassment, and police abuse. Police abuse stems not only from popular prejudice but also from the fact that street prostitution is illegal in certain jurisdictions such as Mexico City. Mexican police, whose wages tend to be very low, are notorious for corruption, extorting money from citizens.[22] The notion of transgender, understood in terms that go beyond the demeanor-based identities of transvestites (vestidas or travestis), is of recent arrival in Mexico.[12]

In the gender-based classificatory system in Mexico, masculine women typically have been assumed to reject men or to want to be like them. This notion is captured in derogatory labels such as machorra and marimacha.[11] Other derogatory terms, such as chancla or chanclera and tortillera, denote the perception that "real" sex cannot happen in the absence of a penis.[12] Because machismo is by definition male-oriented, and is premised on male dominance in relations between the sexes, lesbian relationships are generally perceived as far less threatening to society. That is, to the extent that they are perceived at all, because to a great degree they remain invisible in a cultural context that gives little recognition to female sexuality in the first place.[23]

"One of the cultural factors that has had the greatest impact in making lesbians invisible is the notion that we women do not have our own sexuality [...] people continue to think there's no such thing as lesbian women, they don't understand what happens sexually between lesbian women [...] that has made the culture much more permissive towards female partnerships. It would be difficult for two men to live together by themselves without giving rise to rumors; but for two women to accompany each other how beautiful it is that the poor things have found company to avoid loneliness!"

— Claudia Hinojosa.[23]

That helps explain the view often expressed among Mexican men that lesbians are just women who have not experienced "real" sex with a "real" man. In that sense, lesbians suffer much the same treatment as other women in a society that so exalts the masculine over the feminine.[24]

A street vendor selling rainbow flags, 2009.

Homophobia is very widespread in Mexican society. Statisticians show that between 2002 and 2007 alone, 1,000 people have been murdered in homophobic crimes, as the Chamber of Deputies revealed in May 2007, making Mexico the county with the second-highest rate of homophobic crimes in the world (after Brazil).[25][26] In a journalistic study by Fernando del Collado, titled Homofobia, odio, crimen y justicia (Homophobia, Hate, Crime, and Justice), there were discussed 400 dead between 1995 and 2005, that is to say, some three murders a month.[14] The City Commission Against Homophobic Hate Crimes calculates that only one in four crimes is reported.[27]

From January to August 2009, 40 gay people were murdered in Michoacán alone, nearly all of them in the Tierra Caliente area.[28] The great majority are against gay men; from 1995 to 2004, "only" sixteen women had been murdered.[13] The crimes are often ignored or investigated with little interest by the police forces, who give impunity to the criminal in 98% of cases.[14][27]

Other forms of less serious violence are classified into the following types, according to a 2007 study by the Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM) Xochimilco campus: verbal attack in 32% of cases, sexual harassment in 18%, harassment in 12%, following or pursuit in 12%, and threats in 11%. According to the UAM study, the most frequent types of discrimination "were not hiring for a job, 13 percent; threats of extortion and detention by police, 11 percent; and abuse of employees, 10 percent".[18]

Reinforcing attitudes toward homosexuality in Mexican culture is the stance of the Roman Catholic Church. Mexico City's Cardinal Norberto Rivera denounces "euphemisms" that contribute to "moral disorientation". "The arguments expressed by those who sympathize with this current that favors sexual libertinism, often appear under humanist banners, although at root they manifest materialist ideologies that deny the transcendent nature of the human person, as well as the supernatural vocation of the individual." The complementary union of man and woman, he says, is the only relationship capable of generating "true conjugal love."[29] Anti-gay rhetoric is still acceptable in parts of the country where the influence of the Catholic Church is strongest.[9]

The new Catholic Catechism describes homosexual acts as a "grave depravity" and "intrinsically disordered". It states that lesbian and gay relationships are "contrary to natural law [...] they do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved." Recognizing that "the number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible", it specifies that "they must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity," avoiding "every sign of unjust discrimination." Yet it mandates that "homosexual persons are called to chastity."[29]