Jesusa Rodríguez and Liliana Felipe after formalizing their union through the Ley de Convivencia in 2007, via La Jornada

Jesusa Rodríguez and Liliana Felipe are a legendary couple in the history of Mexican culture and Mexican lesbianism. Rodríguez, a Mexican actress, playwright and social activist has a long career as an artist who experimented with opera, theater, cabaret, as well as other forms of popular theater such as a style of Mexican vaudeville called carpa. Felipe is an Argentinian singer and performer who has lived in Mexico as an exile after the dictatorship in Argentina began in 1976. She experimented with different rhythms such as tango and danzón, composing funny but witty songs about love and life between women.

During the nineties Felipe and Rodríguez opened El Hábito, a bar in Coyoacán, and the restaurant Teatro La Capilla, where protests against the government and the church in the form of cabaret always had a venue. Rodríguez and Felipe supported independent cultural groups and projects, and always committed themselves to political causes of national interest, but focusing in gender and GLBT issues. In 1991 they got married in a symbolic ceremony as a protest against the Catholic Church, and as a display of public support for Mexico City’s Leyes de Convivencia, the law that preceded this year’s gay-marriage bill. Unfortunately, Felipe and Rodríguez decided to retire in 2005. El Hábito is now run by a lesbian performance group, Las Reinas Chulas, under the name El Vicio.

Today Rodríguez and Felipe, after the good news of gay marriage in DF, wrote an open letter to La Jornada that Macha Mexico considers important to translate here:

Happy 2010 in a city that is a little bit more egalitarian!
Due to the lack of laws in this matter, we did not have other option than to live 30 years as simple lovers; but now that we finally have the same rights and obligations that every one else, Jesusa Rodríguez and Liliana Felipe would like to announce our upcoming marriage in Mexico City.

We also want to adopt two homeless girls in order to give them the education that they never had, they are: Mariana Gómez del Campo and Gabriela Cuevas [homophobic members of the conservative PAN party]. In spite of how difficult it is to reeducate an adult, we think that with patience and love everything is possible.

To Onésimo Cepeda and company, we ask them: and the kids raped by Maciel, who will they call father, who will they call grandfather, who will they call saint pedophile?

To all those who have not done it yet, we wish you that you come out of the closet this 2010 and enjoy your life more fully.

Long live equality!

Jesusa Rodríguez and Liliana Felipe

Gertrudis Bocanegra as portrayed by Ofelia Medina

Gertrudis Bocanegra, known as “La Heroína de Pátzcuaro” was a criollo woman born to wealthy peninsulares (Spanish born parents) in Michoacan in 1765. Although her husband was originally a soldier in the Spanish army, when the War of Independence began they both joined the fight against Spain. She worked as a messenger, aiding communication between different fronts, but was finally captured in her hometown of Pátzcuaro. The myths around her execution include the claim that although she was tortured, she never gave up the names of her fellow rebels, and that she continued ranting against her executioners until she was shot by a firing squad. In the 1992 Spanish-language bio-pic Gertrudis, she was portrayed by Ofelia Medina, who also co-wrote the screenplay. A library named for her stands in Pátzcuaro, and contains a mural by Juan O’Gorman depicting Mexican history from the pre-Hispanic era to the Mexican Revolution.

Maria Josefa Ortiz de Dominguez

Maria Josefa Ortiz de Dominguez, known as “La Corregidora” (the corrector), was a wealthy criollo woman born in 1768. Although her parents died when she was still a baby, she was raised by her older sister, and educated at the then-prestigious Colegio de las Vizcaínas. As an adult, she hosted secret literary salons to read and discuss works of Enlightenment philosophy banned by the Catholic Church. Although her husband had been appointed a corregidor (magistrate) in Querétero, Josefa Ortiz maintained close ties with rebel organizers. The rebellion wasn’t scheduled to begin until December, but Spanish Royal troops began searching Querétero in September, where Miguel Hidalgo was hiding. Already suspected to have sympathies with the rebels, Josefa was ordered locked in her bedroom during the search, but she managed to get a message out to the mayor of the town. A rebel supporter, he informed Hidalgo of the search, effectively moving up the start of the revolution by three months. As punishment, Josefa was incarcerated in a convent until the end of the war. After independence, when Agustín de Iturbide became the emperor of Mexico, Josefa was offered the position of lady-in-waiting to the empress. A total badass who supported a Mexican republic instead of an empire, she rejected the position, as well as the imperial title “woman of honor.” A sculpture of Josefa Ortiz de Dominguez stands in the Plaza de Santo Domingo in the Centro Historico.

Leona Vicario

Leona Vicario was born to a rich criollo family in Mexico City in 1789, but was placed in the charge of her uncle after her parents died when she was a teenager. After he forbade her to marry insurgent Andrés Quintana Roo because of political differences, she fled to Tacuba, then a small down outside of the city, where she founded a group of women supporters of the independence movement. Later, she used her fortune to help fund the rebellion, and transmitted information to the rebels, acting as a spy through her connections in Mexico City, and co-founding a secret organization known as the Guadalupes. She was imprisoned in a convent for her involvement in the War of Independence until she was able to escape to Michoacán, where she was finally able to marry her husband. Her remains are easy to visit where they are interred within the column of the Ángel de la Independencia.

These are only three of the countless women who were no doubt involved in the struggles for Mexican indepedence, most of whom will never be recognized for their contributions. Of course, it’s no coincidence that the three most well-known women were wealthy and of Spanish (not mestizo or indigenous) ancestry. Additionally, it’s worth noting that although Mexico’s independence from Spain granted rights to criollos and some mestizo Mexicans, for poor and indigenous Mexicans, many of whom were still enslaved through indentured labor, things didn’t get too much brighter when “New Spain” became Mexico. In that spirit, I’ll be spending this Dia de la Independencia thinking about contemporary justice movements and whose voices continue to be erased.