—  Arnold Wayne Jones

A Mexican lawyer and gay activist is facing 14 months in prison for defending a victim of homophobia. In 2009 Jaime López Vela was physically assaulted and then arrested and charged with “insult to police and obstruction on the road” by police in the State of Mexico (in South-Central Mexico) on the orders of State authorities.

Jaime López Vela was the first to be married in Mexico City (by its Mayor) after the city approved same-sex marriage in 2010 and is planning to run to be a member of Parliament on the list of the PRD.

Jaime López Vela

A human rights lawyer, he is the director of the LGBT rights group Agenda LGBT.

On May 7, 2009, López Vela and Agustín Estrada Negrete went to the offices of the Government of the State of Mexico in Toluca for a scheduled meeting with the Deputy Secretary General of State, Luis Felipe Puente. Negrete was forced to step down from the position as director and founder of a local school, Centro de Atención Múltiple (CAM), for disabled children in 2007 due to false allegations by fellow staff against him that he had gone to the school dressed as a woman. He had in fact been pictured in newspapers at a LGBT rights march in the nearby city of Ecatepec de Morelos dressed as ‘Alban’ in La Cage Aux Folles.

“I offered to defend him because he was asked” to give up his sexual orientation “to be reinstated,” said López Vela.

Several parents of children who attended the school accompanied them to support the call for Negrete’s reinstatement but they were not allowed to participate in the meeting. Parents and students had organised 17 rallies asking the authorities to reinstate Negrete as director of the CAM.

The parents group was preparing to stage a protest in front of the building when a civil servant, Humberto Rodríguez Suárez, ordered police on patrol outside the buildings to arrest López Vela. He was forced into a police van where he was beaten. The police officers told him that “el Gobernador Peña Nieto no quiere maricones en el Estado de México” (State Governor Peña Nieto doesn’t want faggots in the state of Mexico).

Peña Nieto, is the current favorite for the 2012 presidential election in Mexico.

López Vela was taken to a police station, put back in the police van and finally brought to the office of the Ministry of Justice, where he was informed that he was under arrest for the obstruction of traffic. Negrete was also arrested and driven to the Ministry of Justice in an ambulance. He was physically assaulted throughout the journey.

Other protesters – among them, mothers and children – had been beaten as they tried to prevent the arrests. (In July 2009, State authorities sought arrest warrants for Negrete, his sister, three teachers from his school and 13 mothers of his former pupils on charges of the illegal occupation of property based upon the protest that they had staged against Negrete’s dismissal.)

Agustín Estrada Negrete, moments before being arrested by police in 2009

Negrete and López Vela were taken to the basement of the Ministry of Justice where they were both verbally and physically assaulted again. They were repeatedly told that “Nuestro Gobernador Peña Nieto no quiere maricones, tratados de putitos y jotos” (our Governor Peña Nieto doesn’t like gays and faggots).

López Vela was released on bail the following day. He was told that Negrete would be brought to a court in relation to other legal matters connected to the case for his reinstatement that were still pending, and that he would be then released on bail. But instead Negrete was beaten again and then taken to nearby Almoloya de Juárez, a maximum security prison where drug cartel leaders, kidnappers, and murderers share space.

Negrete was told that “El Gobernador del Estado México no te quiere por maricon, te vamos a desaparecer” (the Governor of the State of Mexico doesn’t like faggots, we’re going to make you disappear”). At the jail he was verbally and physically assaulted again and then sexually assaulted by men who covered their faces so as not to be identified.

Two days later Negrete was released. He continued to receive death threats and four months later men broke into a house he was in hiding in and he was raped with a metal tube and left for dead, a plastic bag over his head. The next week he was stabbed by men wearing State police uniforms. The following day he reported the incident to the authorities, who closed the door when they saw him arriving. On 22 November 2009 unknown individuals spray-painted the wall beside his sister’s home with messages saying “Agustín vete, vas a morir putato” (Agustín leave, you are going to die whore).

He subsequently fled to the United States and claimed asylum. US asylum is reportedly becoming harder for LGBT Mexicans because of a perception amongst US authorities that legal progress, such as gay marriage in Mexico City, means that the country is safe for LGBT. It is unclear whether Negrete has faced problems with his asylum case because of this changed attitude.

Negrete in an interview with French gay magazine Tetu claimed that his former lover was the State of Mexico politician and candidate of the right-wing PRI for State Governor Eruviel Ávila Villegas. “They did everything to silence me because it is important that Eruviel Ávila is not out of the closet,” he said. He said that he was approached to negotiate his silence, “but after the rape I suffered, I do not want to negotiate.”

Both men reported the assaults and called on the National Commission for Human Rights, Consejo Para Prevenir la Discriminación- CONAPRED (the Council for the Prevention of Discrimination), the Minister for Education and the Minister for Health, among others, to take action. But the complaint wasn’t accepted – Negrete was told “we are not allowed to take any declaration from you” – and they were warned not to continue with the particular complaint if they wanted to remain alive.

López Vela, although winning on his final appeal against the charge of ‘insult to police’, now faces a 14 month sentence for ‘traffic obstruction’ and said in a press statement last week:

“I am very upset because I am very afraid that this sentence is confirmed, even though I immediately appealed.”

He has called for protests from human rights NGOs, including Amnesty International.

Referring to his plans to stand as a candidate for Parliament, he said “If the sentence is confirmed, I can not of course introduce myself.”

• Petition for Lopez Vela

Source: AMIKEMA

This video tells the story of Jaime López Vela and Agustín Estrada Negrete.

HT: Tetu

by Louise Dewast, 26 July 2011.   THE ARGENTINA INDEPENDENT

Malva (Photo: Marieta Vazquez)

Recently published autobiography ‘Malva, mi recorrido’ could be a take on Argentina’s recent history through a transvestite lens, giving the word to a community segregated for many years.

According to statistics from transvestites’ organisations, this community has an average life of 35 years, giving Malva, a 90-year-old transvestite, the opportunity – if not the need – to recall a collective memory that has nearly vanished.

Malva would not be your typical history teacher, but her life story as a transvestite in the 40s and 50s in Argentina is certainly an eye opener on Argentina’s complex history. When I came across Malva’s story through a Centro Cultural Rojas (CCR) programme and saw that she was signing her autobiography, I immediately contacted her for an interview.

You have just published your autobiography, how did this project come about?

I am proud to say this is my book; this is my story, my life story. I could not get my book published for a year and finally Centro Cultural Rojas opened its doors to me, their communication project Technology Gender coordinated by Paula Viturro was interested in publishing my book. They are great people and I am very thankful for their collaboration. The book was published on 27th April and we had a presentation to the public on 15th May. It was wonderful. I have been writing my journals for some time, but this book took me a lot of time and thought, recollecting all the bits and pieces of my memory to make it what it is and what I wanted it to be.

So what is it about, what did you want it to be?

Well, it is the story of my life in Argentina, specifically from 1943 to 1955. This not a political history book, it is simply the memories of my path. But living under Perón has had an influence on my living conditions so I reflect on that. The book starts with my up-bringing in Chile and how I eventually decided to cross the Andes and come to Buenos Aires. I could say there are two parts in the book; firstly from 1943 to 1947 when I left home, my first experiences and my settling-in in Buenos Aires. In the second part I talk about the period that starts and finishes with the presidency of General Juan Domingo Perón; from 1947 to 1955.

In what way was Perón a turning point in your life?

Perón was elected democratically but the system and society he forged was one that segregated us and many others completely. Of course he did some good things. But for people like me, no, his policies gave a disastrous turn to my living conditions. He did a lot of very good reforms for the workers, very important and good reforms, because there was no social security whatsoever before him. So people liked him because of that. But he was a fascist, completely homophobic and against any kind of behaviour deemed excessive. He installed a system that prohibited a lot of things and excluded a lot of people, he censored speech and thought, and you couldn’t say anything against Perón or his wife Eva. He had a police like the Gestapo to control everything that would be against the system. There was the Alianza National Libertadora, adulators of Mussolini and Hitler, completely anti-Semitic. He did well because he was re-elected democratically and because of a few reforms he did people loved him (pension fund, social benefits, work benefits, paid holidays, and education). But gradually people got tired, well, at least the military. It was ten years of authoritarianism, violent abuses and restriction of speech and thought, slowly shifting his personal cult into something pathological.

Malva and the girls all dressed up. (Photo courtesy of Malva)

What was your living conditions in Buenos Aires during those times?

I did many things, from waiter, to chef, to couturier. Buenos Aires was an exciting city to live in where interesting people lived. I heard Gardel, Troilo and Pugliese live; I would go to the cabarets, cafes and other nightlife places. The city was very different from today. But it was also very difficult and restrictive, in 1947 almost every night there were arrests of transvestites and homosexuals, we would not spend more than 30 days without a judicial cause. [Malva’s several arrests and imprisonments in the Villa Devoto Prison are described in the book]. We were prisoners because we liked men, because we were “disrupting the public order”. At one point we reunited in ‘Maricas Unidas Argentinas’ as a social and political organisation but our group was quickly dismantled. Most of us lived in slums or in terrible conditions. We were subjected to constant judgement, treated brutally and humiliated for the sake of not fitting in the system. I just want homosexuals from today; and the society in general to know about the way we lived and were treated.

With the change of governments did your living conditions change?

It was the same situation, worse actually during the dictatorship. We had a community but it was very disparate, we had to hide. All the censorship, control and exclusion continued and worsened but it wasn’t just us anymore, it was generalised. There was no human rights organisations to defend anyone. The only one who wasn’t homophobic was Agustín Lanusse but other than him it was constant reprisal and repression. [Malva’s travels to Brazil and other South American countries are described in the book]. In the 60s and 70s our lifestyle became more widespread and a transvestite artistic movement started to develop with a lot of carnivals taking place. Then Perón was re-elected for a third time, after which I left to Brazil. Following the summer carnivals I came back to Buenos Aires; where my heart stands.

Since the restoration of democracy how did your situation improve?

Today we have the first government in our history that actually gives us a place in society. Any gay person can freely get married! That’s a huge step. Transvestites can dress up freely, protest, organise reunions, we are accepted and tolerated in today’s society thanks to the current government. Of course as any government there are problems in the system and negative aspects to its policies, but for us as a community the situation has gotten much better. Under Alfonsín as well our living conditions got better but it didn’t last.

In comparison to other South American countries, how does Argentina fair?

There are still quite a lot of restrictions in Brazil and even more in Peru. Venezuela is pretty restrictive as well. Uruguay and Chile are more liberal. Colombia is very free and so are Mexico and Paraguay. Argentina is definitely leading the way in terms of sexual tolerance and freedom. However our democracy is young and I think that we need to sustain it; everyone needs to participate and maintain the freedom we have acquired.

Pride March in Buenos Aires – ‘We are all equal in a different way’ (Photo: Beatrice Murch)

What would be your message to younger people?

I think young people, transvestites, gay, people like us, should get politicised. I think that is very important. To sustain and enhance what has been achieved until now because we don’t know what might happen tomorrow. I am not saying transvestites should have a political party as such, I think people should join whichever party they support. But younger people should strive to represent us as a community at a political level, as governors and senators.

How could the current situation continue to improve?

I am so happy that the situation is what it is today. When the equal rights law was voted we were all invited at the Casa Rosada. It was a way of saying to us that we are human beings and that we are part of this society. I went inside the Casa Rosada! Never have I thought such thing would be possible. I was scared when I went in. When I arrived, a guard said to me “Go ahead, Madam” before, it would have been “Go away, fucking bitch”. This government has done a lot in terms of human rights and in terms of gay rights. Before we would get assaulted or killed in the street, today young transvestites are free to do anything anytime.

As of challenges to come, I think we should press on the change of sex. Lawyers do not understand what it is like; they only take a medical point of view. I think we should also fight for the right of adoption. Why wouldn’t we be able to give love to a child? So many children are abandoned or mistreated. Who says we can’t have children? Who says we can’t dress them, feed them, and love them? People often see us as exuberant people, who live in debauchery, but it is really not true, we are more tamed and probably more moral than our neighbours! It is a stereotype we should confront. There are still some wars to be won but we are definitely making improvements. I wrote an article on what family is in El Teje [see below], this would never have been possible a few years ago.

The magazine El Teje, which is published in Buenos Aires and presents itself as “the first transvestite publication in Latin America”, has been fighting the stigmatisation of the transvestite community since 2007. The magazine was born after the first journalism workshop for transvestites and transsexuals was given by Alejandra Dandan at Centro Cultural Rojas and is now a twice-yearly publication distributed free. Marlene Wayar, editor in chief, wrote the prologue of Malva’s autobiography in which she says: “We are reduced to simple subjects of simplicity that sustain our status of sissies. We are in infinite ways radical queers, with a dissident and manifest sexuality” and as many others, has been “dehumanized with the action of hegemonic thought, chained to a grim consistency: demonisation, criminalisation and pathologising”. It has been one year since Argentina became the first country in Latin America to legalise same-sex marriage.

It’s been more than 10 years since our last kiss of Latino gay lit.Writer Charles Rice-González says the last time a group of Latino gay fiction appeared in print was the 1999 collection “Bésame Mucho,” edited by Jaime Manrique. A flurry of other anthologies of fiction, nonfiction and poetry followed.

And then nothing.

So like a man – gay or otherwise – who comes back into our lives as if nothing happened, that’s how it seems with the new book “From Macho to Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction,” edited by Rice-González and Charlie Vázquez, both from the Bronx.

Though billed as “new,” much of the writing feels familiar, picking up on classic narrative themes like the coming-out confessional and tales of unrequited love.

It’s like “he” never left – the collective “he” composed of 29 gay, male, Latino writers who come from across the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Nearly half of the contributors live in the New York area. A local reading is set for Sept. 20 at 6:30 p.m. at the LGBT Center, 208 W. 13th St.

The stories vary – from a 7-year-old boy’s birthday party to the searing account of two gay teens crossing from Guatemala, through Mexico and into the United States – but Rice-González, 47, who was born in Puerto Rico, finds a common thread.

“There’s a lot of longing – wanting and not getting,” he says. “A lot of the stories deal with families and neighborhoods. That’s what I find with gay men of color in general.”

But this latest survey of Latino gay fiction also seems strung together by a knotty thread of violence. Kids are abused. Thugs on street corners threaten.

That 7-year-old birthday boy, emotionally battered by his father, turns into the chilling lead in a revenge drama usually reserved for TV movies of the week.

Even the fizzy, fiercely funny account “Orchard Beach, Section Nine,” about Joey, or La Joey, “one of the Bronx’s true reigning cha-cha queens,” is about a street fight. After he rearranges a straight boy’s face when he gets all up in his, La Joey announces, “Remember. I was a man before I was a lady.”

erasmoguerrajr@gmail.com

The Museum Chopo, a contemporary and experimental space that looks more gothic cathedral building built in 1902.  The Chopo museum has always been home to Mexico City’s GLBT artistic community, with the Chopo having annual GLBT events during México City’s Pride Week festivities.

This week the Chopo has already had several GLBT culture events, such as a contemporary dance performance by the gay dance company La Cebra, directed by well-known gay contemporary gay dancer José Rivera.    La Cebra celebrated 15 years of the gay dance company’s existence by performing “No Soy Pancho Villa, ni me gusta el futbol,” (I am not Pancho Villa nor do I like soccer).

Wednesday, June 22, 2011, the Chopo opened with México’s longest annual GLBT art show: XXIV Festival Internacional de la Diversidad Sexual (International Festival of Sexual Diversity).  This year’s exhibit “Diferente,” (Different) of paintings, photography, collages and items very that are most sexual diverse was well attended.   Art exhibit runs, through October 19, 2011, at the Chopo Museum, located at Dr. Enrique González Martínez 10, Col. Santa Maria la Ribera, Mexico City.

Click photo above to view a slideshow

title, “1169,” by Eder Tabla, Puebla, MEXICO.  From the series Unos Sexuales

Click photo above to view a slideshow

Here’s a snippet from The Miami Herald:

WSVN-7 in Miami has dropped the Spanish-language talk show, Jose Luis Sin Censura, following complaints from national gay activists and an Hispanic media coalition.AT&T and Time Warner Cable also stopped advertising on the program after the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and the National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) filed a complaint this year with the FCC.

Last year, the show broadcast sexual situations and anti-gay and anti-Latin slurs “never displayed or is bleeped out of pre-taped English-language programs. … Many episodes showed the audience standing and shouting anti-gay epithets and profanity at guests,” according to a GLAAD news release.

Moving forward as a society we need everyone — gay, straight, Latinos, non-Latinos, tall, short, etc. — to be in on the plan. We all need to be working to move the U.S. forward in a global marketplace. So, honestly, I think censoring shows like this one, removing them from airing, is the right thing to do. What do you think?

Follow Sara Inés Calderón on Twitter @SaraChicaD

[Screenshot Courtesy José Luis Sin Censura]

Enjoy

Santo Gay

——————-

Gay Latino Studies

Re-Membering la Voz del Joto

tatiana de la tierra

I breathe a sigh of relief with the publication of Gay Latino Studies: A Critical Reader. Even before it existed, it was missing. It’s not that Chicano and Latino queers haven’t been researching, theorizing, writing, dreaming, performing and sweating it out in the academy. I know otherwise. I’ve seen some of these guys (and girls, for the femme-identified) in action at conferences, universities, and political and cultural events. I’ve noted their monographs and their contributions to journals and anthologies. I won’t be one to ask, “Where were these academic jotos before Gay Latino Studies?”

Co-editors Michael Hames-García and Ernesto Javier Martínez introduce the book by citing Gloria Anzaldúa’s plea that Chicana lesbians open their hearts to their joto brothers. They write, “We have been motivated less by histories of separation and isolation than by a commitment to the kind of deep solidarity modeled by Anzaldúa, a sense of remaining incomplete so long as the liberationist agenda that includes Chicanas and Latinas does not also include jotos, and vice versa.” Instead of framing the collection as an way of “not forgetting” gay Latinos, they frame it in a sense of “actively re-membering,” referring to M. Jacqui Alexander’s work. They write, “We invoke gay Latino studies as an act of re-membering, as a gesture toward what has been and what might still be possible, even if it is only provisionally named.”

A lot of thematic terrain is covered in this 360-page book. Topics include queer theory, drag artists, lowrider magazines, HIV prevention ads, dance culture, gay pride parades, sexual identity, performance, literature, shame and shamelessness, history, masculinity, and discussions of terms of the trade: queer, gay male, identity, visibility, and so on. Michael Hames-García provides a queer colored timeline, which begins with James Baldwin’s Another Country in 1962 and includes names I grew up with in my queer evolution. While working on the book, the editors (successfully, in my view) “sought to work against the whitewashing tendencies of queer academic theorizing and against the deep suspicion of identity categories that too often serve as a crutch for white academic racism.”

On the cover, birds, butterflies and flowers stream out of the mouths of mystical men. This is “La Voz del Poeta,” a painting by Tino Rodriguez, who writes on his Artist Statement, “I am fascinated by the complexity of human sexuality, transformation, longing and transgression.” It’s a beautiful and philosophically-compatible selection for the cover because of the way essays are paired with response pieces. The chapters are speaking to each other, having conversations. This format invites readers to listen and chime in.

In order of appearance, the twenty-one Latino, Caribbean and Chicano scholars from universities all over the U.S. who contributed to this reader are: Michael Hames-García, Ernesto Javier Martínez, María Lugones, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, Ramón García, Antonio Viego, Luz Calvo, Catriona Rueda-Esquibel, Richard T. Rodriguez, Daniel Enrique Pérez, Lionel Cantú, Tomás Almaguer, Horacio N. Roque Ramírez, Ramón A. Gutiérrez, José Esteban Muñoz, Ricardo L. Ortiz, Paula M. L. Moya, Ramón H. Rivera-Servera, Daniel Contreras, David Román, and Frances Negrón-Muntaner.

A few things jumped out at me while perusing Gay Latino Studies. I caught sight of Luz Calvo and Catriona Rueda Esquibel devouring Michael Nava’s mysteries, hooked, taking turns reading them and, at some point, reading the last few chapters aloud. They write, “… We turn to gay Latino literature and scholarship, to our queer kin, to decode the past, to influence the future.”

I couldn’t help but crack a smile (pun intended) at one of José Esteban Muñoz’s subtitles: “This Bridge Called My Crack.” He is playing around, he says, in an attempt to “highlight the thematics of anal eroticism and recreational drug use (crystal methamphetamine)” and calling attention “to the continuation of the radical women of color project by gay men of color.” This reminded me of similar playing around with words at a reading I did in El Paso, Texas, a few years ago with some friends, “This Frontera Called My Lengua: A Reading by Linguistic Terrorists.”

Estevan Muñoz’s chapter, “Feeling Brown: Ethnicity and Affect in Ricardo Bracho’s The Sweetest Hangover (and Other STDs)” took me back to San Francisco’s Brava Theater in 1997. I was in town, hanging out with Juana María Rodriguez, whose work is also referenced in the book, trying to score tickets for the play’s sold-out premiere. We got in and soon after, I was in Bracho’s planetary dream, a nightclub called Aztlantis, a name “which signifies both the lost Chicano homeland and the lost city of myth.”

On a more carnal plane, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes’s chapter, “Gay Shame, Latina- and Latino-Style: A Critique of White Queer Performativity” reminded me of “Las Sinvergüenzas,” the Latina lesbian anthology, which he references, that I tried to get published (unsuccessfully) a few years ago. Whatever’s left of that project is now hanging out in a box in a garage somewhere. My sinvergüenza identity, from the good old days, is aptly summed up by Larry’s definition: “To be a sinvergüenza is to have no shame: to disobey, break the law, disrespect authority (the family, the church, the state), and in a perverse and curious way to be proud of one’s transgression, or at the very least lack a feeling of guilt.”

Finally, Gay Latino Studies took me to Hato Rey, Puerto Rico, to Boccaccio’s, a lesbian bar. In David Román’s “Dance Liberation,” Román goes to a gay disco for the first time in Madison, Wisconsin with a female friend who proposes the outing as a fun idea. The scene is thrilling and terrifying and he leaves, only to return by himself a few nights later. He wrote, “That night I stood on the sidelines and watched as gay men in front of me danced in what seemed to me to be nothing short of a state of joy.” In response to his essay, Frances Negrón-Muntaner recalls Boccaccio, the bar in San Juan owned by two Cuban lesbians with an “oversized figure of Santa Barbara-Changó as half-man and half-woman right at the entrance.” I remember that bar. I was there once. I have my own story to tell, and it resonates because I know many of us have passed through those same doors. We have rubbed elbows or other body parts, we have been figures in that smoky haze of clubs, our queer cribs.

And that’s what’s so cool about Gay Latino Studies for me. It feels familiar, like I know these brothers, and I do. Like I’m in those pages here and there, and I am.

Gay Latino Studies: A Critical Reader. Michael Hames-Garcia and Ernesto Javier Martínez, Editors. Duke University Press, 2011.

Well, my yearning for Mexico City has taken its toll for I am going back to Mexico City for the summer, arriving in late June 2011 and staying until the end of September — maybe longer.  Looking forward to a fill of  daily Vitamin T: Tostadas, Tamales, Tacos, Tortas, Tlacoyos, Tlayudas, Tortillas, Tinga, agua de Tamarindo, Tesgüino, Tejate, Tepacheand of course TEQUILLA.

Will be arriving in Mexico City in time to attend the largest GLBT Pride Parade in Mexico – June 25, 2011.  I will be in Mexico at least until the end of September.

Take care,  and until the next time SURETE

Santo Gay

He writes:  LAS DIFERENCIAS NO SÓLO DE PREFERENCIAS SEXUALES SINO LAS DIFERENCIAS EN GENERAL NO EMPOBRECEN AL MUNDO, LO ENRIQUECEN. UN LLAMADO A LA TOLERANCIA.

The world is changing for the the good.

Enjoy