Queer Community and the City

Machas and gays in Mexico City have to deal with weird looks when it comes to public displays of affection. Statements such as “children shouldn’t see two men/women kissing in the subway” or “it is okay that the y love each other, as long as they do it in private” are examples of homophobia in Mexico, expressed sometimes in the shape of weird looks, open catcalls, or explicit violence.

This Friday, the Facultad de Arquitectura at the UNAM is hosting a conference called “Foro de recreación y cultura. Un estilo de vida. ‘Un camino a la inclusión’” (“A Forum on Recreation and Culture: A lifestyle, ‘a road to inclusion’”), organized by a group of young urban designers. The main subject is urban space, homophobia and the way it affects the LGBT community in Mexico City. Their goal is to show that homophobia undermines gay rights when it appears in public spaces such as parks, streets, restaurants, etc, where gay community is not allowed to express itself.

The conference aims to prove that empowerment of specific groups is hard to achieve when they are banned from public urban spaces. In this case, prejudices state that the LGBT community looks only for night clubs and bars, pushing this group into a ghetto, where they can be under surveillance of authorities and conservative groups, as if day-light open spaces were not the right place for queers.

The conference organizers point out that part of this ghettoization is related to class and social mobility, since it is easier to find an open attitude toward lesbians and gays in middle and upper-middle class neighborhoods downtown, than it is in the outskirts of the city—Ecatepec, Nezahualcóyotl, Xochimilco, and Milpa Alta. There, discrimination against the queer community is more intense.

Although I wish that this event would have had been publicized more widely in the mainstream, in the meantime at least we can spread the word among our own community and become better educated about our rights and the urban planning issues we face as queers.

“Foro de recreación y cultura. Un estilo de vida. ‘Un camino a la inclusión’”, this Friday from 5 to 9 at the Edificio de Posgrado of the Facultad de Arquitectura at the UNAM. . Copilco subway is the best option.