| | |  Editorials | Issues 
Mexico's Gays Live in a Bell Jar
 Michael Stuerzenhofecker - Earth Times
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September 02, 2010
| | Jorge Saavedra, a Mexican federal official, reads a gay magazine in Mexico City. Saavedra's moment of truth came in the middle of an impassioned speech to 5,000 people at the 2008 International AIDS Conference about the paltry amount of money being spent to stop the spread of AIDS among gay men, when he said publicly for the first time that he was gay. (AP/Marco Ugarte) | |
Mexico City - Juan keeps looking nervously at the door as he talks about his homosexuality: Most of his Mexico City neighbours do not know that he is gay.
However, the 24-year-old chemist says "When they ask me, of course I tell them."
Nonetheless, Juan has had unpleasant experiences when it comes to his sexuality and he would rather be cautious.
Attacks on gays and lesbians are not frequent in Mexico, but only a few homosexuals display their sexual preference openly. There is still great prejudice in this country where the majority of the population is Roman Catholic.
The Mexican church hierarchy describes homosexuality as abominable, while one politician from the central Mexican state of Queretaro recently asked that special rooms be reserved for gays and lesbians in bars and cafes, so that other customers can be spared "shows."
And yet Mexico City last year became the first city in Latin America to allow homosexual marriage, granting them full rights including adoption. A complaint was filed before the Supreme Court against homosexuals' right to adopt children, but the tribunal validated their right to adopt.
There has been intense debate in recent weeks and months.
Jorge, a 31-year-old gay man, shocked the country and caused major controversy because his mother is to be both the grandmother and the mother of Jorge's child. She agreed to bear his son as a surrogate mother and is now five months into her pregnancy.
Jorge, who is from the Mexican city of Guadalajara, wants to travel to San Francisco in order to take a course for homosexual parents. There are currently no such courses within Mexico, although this too might change in the coming months.
The court decision over adoptions by homosexual couples was rejected by conservatives, but it launched great joy in the Zona Rosa (Spanish for the Pink Zone), the focus of homosexual life in the centre of Mexico City.
"Sooner or later all homosexuals come to the Zona Rosa," says Juan.
The neighbourhood, also very popular among heterosexual tourists, is the capital of gay and transsexual Mexico, and increasingly also of neighbouring countries. Everyone can freely act upon their sexual preferences in the Zona Rosa, something which cannot be taken for granted in most of Latin America and even in parts of the United States.
But the Zona Rosa is a bell jar, Juan stresses. Many heterosexual Mexicans avoid the area, particularly at night, when sex shops, bars, restaurants and nightclubs are in their full splendour.
Beyond these streets, however, there is a wholly different world.
"When my boyfriend and I leave the Zona Rosa, I instinctively let go of his hand," Juan says.
On paper, homosexuals in Mexico City have a lot more freedom than they have in most other cities across the Americas. But in real life they do not really have the same rights as their heterosexual neighbours.
For Juan, there is no open dialogue between homosexuals and heterosexuals. The law has strengthened the homosexual community in its ghetto within the Zona Rosa, but the goal remains to do away with such bell jars altogether. For that to happen, dialogue is essential.
"Most of the time we talk about each other, but not to each other," Juan says. |
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