Gender identity has slipped squarely into it
Mexico electoral campaign, where elections will be held in June to renovate the Chambers, appoint 15 state governors and thousands of City Councils. In the State of Tlaxcala, 18 men have registered as transsexual women to avoid the sexual parity requirements imposed by law on applications, according to LGBTI groups. The Tlaxcalteca electoral body warned the Fuerza party for Mexico that it did not comply with gender parity and the 18 candidates who could not be men were
substituted by another 18 through the self-enrollment of sexual identity: they were already women. It was not a problem, because a role where they declare themselves female is enough to allow them to present their electoral list. The matter is so crude that it has bothered women and the transsexual collective. Now everyone is looking for how to solve this in the future, because it is not the first time it happens. Occurred
the same in Oaxaca in the 2018 elections, but then the electoral body prevented it.
Self-enrollment, that is, the mere manifestation of a person about how they consider themselves, 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 to which community [people] he belonged, he did not know what to answer, he only said that he was Nahuatl. And she got into a blah blah blah blush, but the journalist from
The Financial Verónica Bacaz did not shy away. The candidate accused her of discrimination: "An indigenous person does not have to measure a meter and have the complexion of a color," he argued. The reporter did 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," said Daniel Martínez Terrazas. The video has been the subject of jokes of all kinds.
Parties are obliged to include in their lists a certain number of indigenous people in 21 districts, 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 ... etc. In all cases, the parity balance between men and women must be respected. But how to prove that is tricky in some cases. How does a gay man prove he is? And a born man who considers himself a woman? Those with disabilities are also not happy to have to present a medical certificate. The men who are supposed to have posed as women in Tlaxcala have shielded themselves in the intimacy that the matter requires in order 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 good will that are presumed to these people, but this bonhomy is not always as it has been evidenced. Paola Jiménez Aguirre, coordinator of the Mexican Network of Trans A.C. Women, 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. Furthermore, it does not guarantee the participation of sexual diversity in Tlaxcala. It is 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.
Birth certificates
What measures must be taken to prevent these frauds? Jiménez Aguirre chooses that in electoral processes the same safeguard that the law imposes to change sexual identity is complied with, that is, that
the birth certificate has been modified in the Civil Registry. "It is difficult that once the electoral process is over, that will be reversed, people know who we are and when you know it and modify it, you do not go back," he trusts. Something more problematic is what Jazz Bustamante, a trans woman who is presented by 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. True, 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 take on their lists those people who know the problems of these groups the most, not someone who is, for example, a "butcher". So, a lesbian or a trans only go into 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 they will defend in the institutions can be varied, he says that these "affirmative actions are temporary
so that society becomes aware of diversity and non-discrimination ”.
However, those who appear harmed in this matter that everyone suspects very widespread in Mexico, are women, who see how men pose as them to continue in power. Converse cases have not transpired. "You can't say this wasn't going to happen," begins Arussi Unda, from the Bruges del Mar collective, from Veracruz.
“Feminists have already warned us and the answer was to silence us, violate us and claim phobias when the only thing we point out are the legal gaps and the ambiguity in the identity laws that could allow what is happening, that the necessary spaces of representation for women are being usurped, after a long struggle to achieve them . It was a lot to presume that we had already achieved equity in decision-making positions, ”he says. "Urge
rethink these identity laws since they end up benefiting neither women nor 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 introduced 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-registration in Fuerza by Mexico: 18. Exactly the same number that were prevented from entering the list. "That was the correction, a change in identity self-enrollment," he says. The electoral body seemed to know the controversy of the matter, because it only gave them the resolutions to deal with 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 reasons of confidentiality are used," she says, which does not allow us to know with certainty if it was those same men who now want to be women.
In any case, it 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 succeeded. “There are three actors who can protest this: parties that feel injured because others do not meet the established criteria; LGBT + groups that see their rights violated; and women,
that promoted gender parity, even those of the Force for Mexico party itself. Everyone could challenge, "he says. "And the National Electoral Institute could also put some locks on this because among its tasks is to review the good performance of advisers and advisers from 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 parts.".
The president of the National Institute for Women, Nadine Gasman, has called for "not usurping identity or simulating compliance with parity.". Asked about this matter, Gasman has pointed out that “the cases of identity usurpation to occupy spaces that correspond to trans and indigenous women are a clear violation of women's rights, of indigenous peoples and the LGBTI community. Women in their widest diversity must be present in the construction of democracy ”.
Jazz Bustamente, the PRD trans candidate, believes the same: "This has happened and will continue to happen, we must look for measures that are not just self-registration.". And that they are compatible, he says, with the search for a participation of the
most vulnerable and discriminated groups increasingly egalitarian in political life.
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