MEXICO.- Six months after the border state of Chihuahua raised a woman as governor for the first time, María Eugenia Campos today faces one of the most complicated gender challenges in the state than during decades was the terror of women due to serial femicide.
It is about the dismemberment of two lesbian women, the past 16 from January. The murder has shaken local and national society to such an extent that the Committee for Sexual Diversity in Chihuahua had to request that it be classified as a hate crime.
The case remains unsolved until the moment but put the focus on a subject that is rarely talked about: lesbophobia.
Of the eight crimes that occur each month for reasons of sexual diversity in Mexico, 8% are against of homosexual women to which other types of discrimination documented by the National Commission to Prevent Discrimination (Conapred) and the National Observatory of Hate Crimes against LGBT People are added.
Nohemí Medina Martínez and Julissa Ramírez, the couple murdered in Valle de Juárez, Chihuahua, a dusty region fought over by cartels for drug crossings, were viciously killed, in pieces, without caring their social context.
According to information from the profile of their social networks, the women were a stable couple with a four-year relationship and had adopted three orphaned children.
The adoption of children in the Juárez Valley is an act of love of great value. Due to the war of cartels, the region has left thousands of children without parents and homeless: criminals reduce the houses of rivals to ashes.
“This murder cannot go unpunished”, demanded Conapred through a press release addressed to the authorities; the local authorities promised that there would be no impunity, but at the end of this article the prosecutor’s office only reported that they had arrested the alleged murderers, without giving details.
Days after the murder, feminist groups carried out the protest to Mexico City, where they painted walls and windows of various buildings, did a batucada, dances and threatened to return.
“We call on all lesbian and trans women to reinforce our speeches. We call on strengthening networks and security mechanisms, so that fear changes sides, to make it a place of fear for them, for the sexists, for the femicides, for those who hate women”, read Sonia Larios, one of the protesters
Data from various groups pro gender diversity agree that lesbophobia is not an officially accepted concept.
The case of the murder of the Guanajuato activist Guadalupe Hernández Flores in 2018, is an example. Despite the fact that she was a well-known activist for the rights of the LGBT community and openly homosexual, the prosecutor’s office did not classify it as a crime for reasons of gender.
OTHER BLOWS
Lol Kin Castañeda, a feminist and social psychologist from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, warns that The issue of lesbophobia implies a double discrimination, first for being a woman (misogyny) and then for being a lesbian, that is, for not being attracted to men. In short: I hate the female gender.
“Lesbophobia and misogyny are issues that have to be socially destructured based on the recognition of fair and equal rights and the implementation of affirmative actions through public policies that result in the necessary social transformation to recognize diversity as a value of our society”, he detailed.
In Mexico, it was approved unanimously in the Chamber of Deputies in November 2006 institute the 17 of May as the National Day to Fight Homophobia, but the same agreement had to have an exhortation to the federal Executive a year later to be published in the Official Gazette of the Federation.
It was achieved until 2014, eight years later!
But the cases of hate crimes continue. Lol Kin Castañeda, who was the first lesbian woman to officially marry in Mexico City, observes that it is not enough to decree a day, but to stop attitudes of discrimination from the root, from derogatory comments, ridicule or censorship.
Last February, for example, a policewoman censored two lesbians kissing in a park. “Have more discretion,” he requested.
The veto sparked a protest on networks that later translated into a “kissing,” a public demonstration attended by dozens of people from the LGBT community to kiss with their partners in the same park of censorship.
In another case from last year, in Puebla, a hotel denied its facilities for a women’s wedding. The complaint on networks grew until Conapred had to intervene to request attention. Grupo Habita, owner of the place, finally apologized.
The couple from Puebla became famous in 2017, when in 2011 one of them published the marriage proposal to his girlfriend in front of the Palacio de Bellas Arts.
In 2020, the Homosensual network recorded seven cases that went viral on social networks as a protest against lesbophobia.
Among the complaints were added complaints because in some discos, bars and restaurants they have prevented the passage of some lesbians; because they are not allowed to exercise their role as mothers; because they are the target of street beatings and insults and are even prevented from donating blood.
They highlighted the case of Karla Castillo Murillo who, tired of suffering harassment and violence, decided to make the cases of lesbophobia public through harassment and ridicule by managers in the Family Medical Unit 80 from the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS) in Morelia
Another complaint that came to public life was that of Anayansi Parra, married to a man who beat her. After separating from him and acknowledging his homosexuality, a judge from Guasave, Sinaloa, denied him custody of the minor due to her sexual orientation, as reported in an interview.
“I went through the assessments psychological tests that established that I am suitable to take care of the girl and gave him custody, despite the fact that they have complaints of domestic violence, “he explained. “They only cared about my sexual orientation”.
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