This just in from the Associated Press! The Mexico City local assembly voted today to allow same-sex marriage, 39 to 20. The city had already passed a domestic partnership (leyes de convivencia) bill in 2007, but that was considered a symbolic victory at best, since it provided no more rights to same-sex couples than those already [...]
Posts under ‘politics’
Responsible Tourism: Immigration Reform
Some readers might be wondering what being a responsible tourist has to do with the debate about immigration reform. Both tourism and immigration, however, are based on a certain freedom of movement, to travel, whether for a long weekend or for a lifetime, away from one’s “home country” in order to explore, to sight-see, to [...]
Food and Queers this Week in Zacatecas
This weekend, Macha Mexico is heading northward to the beautiful city of Zacatecas in order to attend to a couple of conferences that are taking place in this colonial spot. The title of the first one is The Global Food Crisis, organized by the Doctoral Program in Development Studies at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas, [...]
Keeping Perspective: Depressing Coverage about Mexico
Anyone who follows the American news media’s coverage of Mexico recently knows that the news hasn’t been pretty. The peso is trading weakly against the dollar, making daily life harder for Mexico’s middle class and near impossible for Mexico’s poor. (The recent exchange rate has been between 13 and 15 pesos to the dollar. Good [...]
Interview with Artemisa Téllez
Macha Mexico caught up with Artemisa Téllez, self-described fiction writer, lesbian, literature student, professional agitator, amateur journalist, and low-budget diva. She has published a collection of poetry, Versos Cautivos (2001), and a collection of short stories, Un Encuentro y Otros (2005), and has been published in several anthologies, including the bilingual lesbian short story anthology [...]
Responsible Tourism: Giving Back to the Communities You Visit
Anahí and I hope that the readers of this blog strive to be responsible travelers. We recognize that there are many issues involved, including economics, (U.S. and E.U.) foreign policy, the environment, and cultural relativism, to name a few. Therefore, I’d like to introduce a new series of articles about responsible tourism and what it [...]
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 [...]
The “new” Zona Rosa
On a warm Thursday evening in the Zona Rosa, a gay neighborhood on the edge of Mexico City’s financial district, day-time businesses like clothing stores, beauty spas and little restaurants frequented by office employees are closing for the night, giving way to the younger population that walks up and down the streets of the Zona [...]