The weekly newsletter of the México Solidarity Project

August 25, 2021/ This week’s issue/ Meizhu Lui, for the editorial team

What if life brought us only bright daylight and total darkness? That would be an incredibly boring world, without the magnificent colors, the pinks and purples, that grace our dawns and sunsets.

European culture has historically stuck us in either/or thinking. Our only choices: x and y. Any “g” — let alone any “t” — must be shunned and shamed, banned and eliminated. In medieval times, the powers-that-be used gays as “faggots,” tinder for starting the fires that burned other transgressors at the stake. Today, in the US and México, many around us still see those who do not present as clearly male or female as willful deviants, flawed souls who need medical interventions to make them “normal” — or dangers to society who need to be locked away or even shot for the crime of nonconformity.

Feminists, in challenging the role of women in society, have opened the door to new questions about the meaning of gender. If women don’t need to stay in their place, if they can hunt and not just gather, why shouldn’t LGBTQ people also not challenge their assigned “throw-away” role? 

In México today, thank goodness, the dawn has finally broken. In our interview this week, Irving Radillo Murguía describes the gradual lightening of the Mexican sky. Beautiful and diverse colors no longer remain just forever on the horizon. They are spreading across the country. May we all accept this new spectrum, this wonderful gift, with gratitude.

We’re dedicating this issue to our fellow México Solidarity Project activist Badili Jones, a gay, bilingual, African American builder of bridges between Black and Latinx peoples. He died unexpectedly this past June.

Irving Radillo Murguía teaches social sciences in Colima, Mexico. He’s currently channeling his activism through the LGBT+ group Orgullo Disidente — Dissident Pride — and the socialist organisation Coordinadora Socialista Revolucionaria.

When did the gay liberation movement begin in México?

The first open demonstration came in 1978 during a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Cuban revolution. The same year, another demonstration commemorated the Tlatelolco massacre in 1968, where the government gunned down hundreds of protesting students.

Haga clic aquí para leer más!