“Lo que se ve no se pregunta”: Ana Gabriela Guevara

Some people say that appearances can be deceptive. Ana Gabriela Guevara, the Mexican track and field athlete, specialized in the 400 meters, is a good example of this. When she won the gold medal at the 1999 Pan American Games in Canada, many Mexicans were shocked by the strength and determination of this woman; her strong legs and six-pack were far from the usual characteristics that the Mexican macho audience usually sees.

Ana Gabriela was born in Nogales, Sonora 31 years ago, in the north of Mexico. Hence, her accent is louder and tougher than the more gentile chilango inflections that prevail in national television media. Because of this, and because of what most Mexicans would consider her “masculine” appearance, Ana Gabriela has faced rumors about her sexual preference and gender identity since the beginning of her career. Her success as a professional sportswoman was unbelievable, and speculations about whether or not she was lesbian—or, even “worse,” a transwoman—arose. Rather than proving that a woman could be an extraordinary athlete, Ana’s physical strength could be explained in terms of her “masculinity”, making her a potential deceiver of the entire country; one where sports fans roar to football players every weekend, a bottle of beer and greasy chips in hand.

In spite of the generalized doubts and speculations, Guevara’s constant success took her inside Mexican hearts—and government, which soon made her a national hero by supporting her with sponsorships that came through Televisa, one of the two national TV enterprises that rule the media (the other one is TV Azteca). In order to launch Ana Gabriela as the first sportswoman skilled enough to compete in international arena, Televisa shared its treasure with Nike. The latter made a campaign named “Mi héroe es una chava” (My hero is a girl) being it’s goal to make it clear that a woman—better yet, a Mexican woman—can be tough, strong, brave, and successful. In the main TV commercial there was an old guy saying that a woman could be a totally capable being to achieve her goals, and, almost at the end, Guevara appeared running in the career in which she broke the worldwide record that made her famous.

The commercial could be considered a big achievement taking into account that in Mexico, it is difficult to obtain sponsorships or any kind of financial support if you are not a money-machine football player. But more important, Ana Gabriela is an example of how hard is for a Mexican woman to show her strength and abilities. It can be a shocking action, it can disturb and agitate Mexican minds in such a magnitude that they need a TV advertisement to validate the presence of woman that “looks like a man”, but who is smarter and more physically powerful than some males here.

On January 2008, Ana Gabriela announced her retirement. Six months later, the Mexican government designated her as the official in charge of the Comisión Nacional del Deporte, the office that manages the sports across the country. Her nomination has been considered as a good call from the current government, since Guevara herself went through all the nuances of the bureaucracy involved in the sports business.

After some years of “visibility” I guess people learned to love Ana Gabriela’s shocking appearance, accepting her as a national hero, maybe the only one that could represent Mexicans abroad, aside from the football circles. Whether she is gay or not, Mexican queer community consider her part of the pantheon of gay heroes because she has had to deal with indiscrete questions and wild rumours about her private life—all of them founded on her appearance and the inability of Mexican society to trust a strong woman.