Gender identity has made its way into the electoral campaign in Mexico, where elections will be held in June to renew the Chambers, appoint 15 state governors and thousands of municipalities.
In the state of Tlaxcala, 18 men have registered as transsexual women to evade the requirements of sexual parity imposed by law on candidacies, according to LGBTI groups.
The Tlaxcala electoral body advised the Fuerza por México party that it did not comply with gender parity and the 18 candidates who could not be men were
replaced
by another 18 by way of self-ascription of sexual identity: they were already women. It was not a problem, because a paper where they declare themselves to be female is enough to allow them to present their electoral list. The matter is so crude that it has annoyed women and the transsexual community. Now everyone is looking for how to solve this in the future, because it is not the first time that happens. The same thing happened in Oaxaca in the 2018 elections, but then the electoral body prevented it.
Self-ascription, that is, the mere manifestation of a person about how he considers himself, male or female, is not posing a problem only for sexual diversity. This week, a candidate from the National Action Party (PAN) declared himself indigenous to make his way on the electoral lists. When asked by journalists which community [town] he belonged to, he did not know what to answer, he only said that he was Nahuatl. And he got involved in a blushing blah blah blah, but the journalist from
El Financiero
Verónica Bacaz was not daunted. The candidate accused her of discrimination: "An indigenous person does not have to measure a meter and have a complexion of one color," he argued. The reporter could not get her to say the name of the community: "It is a community in the State of Guerrero, it does not have to have a name," Daniel Martínez Terrazas settled. The video has been the cause of all kinds of jokes.
The parties are obliged to include in their lists a certain number of indigenous people in 21 districts, of Afro-Mexicans, people with disabilities and members of the LGBTI community, the broadest expression for anyone who does not identify as heterosexual, which includes trans, transvestites, intersex people. ... etc. In all cases, the equal balance between men and women must be respected. But how to prove that is tricky in some cases. How does a gay man show that he is? And a born man who considers himself a woman? Nor are those with disabilities happy with having to present a medical certificate. The men who, supposedly, have posed as women in Tlaxcala, have shielded themselves in the intimacy that the matter requires so as not to give their names. And the electoral body of that State, too.
The National Electoral Institute (INE) has been satisfied with the declarations of goodwill that these people are presumed to be, but such bonhomie is not always such, as has been evidenced.
Paola Jiménez Aguirre, coordinator of the Mexican Network of Trans Women AC, has denounced what happened in Tlaxcala and will rush all judicial instances.
“They are violating the principle of parity in the parties and discriminating against women in our democratic exercise.
In addition, it does not guarantee the participation of sexual diversity in Tlaxcala.
It's a shame, "he says.
And she, like others consulted in this report, suspects that the trap is repeated in all parties and in more than one Mexican state.
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Birth certificates
What steps must be taken to prevent this fraud? Jiménez Aguirre opts for the same safeguard imposed by law to change sexual identity to be complied with in electoral processes, that is, that the birth certificate has been modified in the Civil Registry. "It is difficult that once the electoral process is over, that is reversed, people know who we are and when one knows it and modifies it, it does not go back," he confides. Something more problematic is what Jazz Bustamante, a trans woman who presents herself for the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), proposes: that the civil organizations in which these groups usually participate determine together with the parties who are telling the truth before including them in The lists. "We all know each other there," he says. Certain,But that would leave out those who do not want to belong to or collaborate with these sexual diversity associations, which would also be discriminatory. "It is just a proposal under construction, just an example of how to improve this," he clarifies.
Bustamante also believes that, with the collaboration of the associations, the parties will list those people who are most familiar with the problems of these groups, not someone who is, for example, a "butcher."
So, does a lesbian or a trans only enter politics to defend those causes, or also quality education or health for all?
"The debate is very broad," he acknowledges, and although he agrees that the agenda that the institutions will defend may be varied, he says that these "affirmative actions are temporary, so that society becomes aware of diversity and non-discrimination" .
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Anyway, those who appear to be harmed in this matter that everyone suspects is very widespread in Mexico, are women, who see how men impersonate them to remain in power. Reverse cases have not transpired. "It cannot be said that this was not going to happen," begins Arussi Unda, from the Brujas del Mar collective, from Veracruz. “Feminists have already warned about it and the response was to silence us, violate ourselves and assign ourselves phobias when the only thing that we pointed out are the legal voids and the ambiguity in the identity laws that could allow what is happening, that the necessary spaces of representation destined to the women are being usurped, after a long struggle to get them. It was a lot to presume that we had already achieved equity in decision-making positions, ”he says."It is urgent to rethink these identity laws, since they end up not benefiting women or the LGBTI community because they are easily manipulated," adds Unda.
At the Tlaxcalteco Elections Institute, a counselor has voted against allowing those 18 people who previously presented themselves as men to now do so as trans women. It was Dora Rodríguez, who did not ask for names, only the number of cases of trans self-ascription in Fuerza por México: 18. Exactly the same number who were prevented from passing on the list. "That was the correction, a change of self-ascription of identity," he says. The electoral body seemed to know the controversy of the matter, because it only gave them the resolutions to be discussed a few minutes before the meeting where they had to vote. "There is a clear conflict here, because everything about the candidacies must be public, and in this case confidentiality reasons are used," he says,which does not allow us to know with certainty whether it was those same men who now want to be women.
In any case, he assures that the federal Electoral Court could take the case of Oaxaca as a precedent, where a trick like this was prevented in 2018. LGBT groups protested and they succeeded. “There are three actors who can protest about this: the parties that feel injured because others do not meet the established criteria; LGBT + groups that see their rights violated; and women, who promoted gender parity, including those from the Fuerza por México party itself. Everyone could contest ”, he says. "And the National Electoral Institute could also put some padlocks on this because among its tasks is to review the good behavior of advisers of the different electoral institutes to guarantee parity, which took a lot of work to achieve," he says."I also believe that this is happening in many places."
The president of the National Institute of Women, Nadine Gasman, has made a call to "not usurp identity or simulate compliance with parity."
Asked about this matter, Gasman has indicated that “cases of identity theft to occupy spaces that correspond to trans and indigenous women are a clear violation of the rights of women, indigenous peoples and the LGBTI community.
Women in their broadest diversity must be present in the construction of democracy ”.
The same is true for Jazz Busdamente, the PRD trans candidate: "This has happened and it will continue to happen, we must look for measures that are not just self-enrollment."
And that they are compatible, he says, with the search for an increasingly equal participation of the most vulnerable and discriminated groups in political life.
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