(Expansión) – Undoubtedly, two of the most talked about issues in Mexico during this month of June are the elections and LGBT + pride. Following the principle of democratic representativeness, in 2020 the Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Power of the Federation (TEPJF) ordered the National Electoral Institute (INE) to adopt inclusion policies and guidelines for electoral candidacies, specifically from the LGBT + community, people with disabilities, indigenous and Afro-descendants.
This decision does not create new rights, but rather recognizes and promotes the participation of minorities in electoral processes and, therefore, their inclusion in the creation and application of public policies that guarantee rights for them.
On June 6, 44 candidates belonging to the LGBT + community (a historical figure in the country) were present, which puts Mexico -and the INE-, a “little star” on the forehead, in the eyes of the international community when adopt new rules of diversity and inclusion in the country’s democratic processes.
There are a number of international provisions on human rights and non-discrimination that are an essential part of this change. The most significant, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Montreal Declaration and the Yogyakarta Principles.
Another great victory for the LGBT + community was the triumph of Adolfo Cerqueda in Nezahualcóyotl, in the State of Mexico, when he became the first openly gay candidate to win a popular election process in this municipality. This indicates that there is an important social change, since the candidate’s sexual orientation took a back seat and was not a determining condition for his election.
With these data we could assume that our society and our institutions are progressing more and more towards an inclusive democracy and politics. But what about the initiatives that safeguard the rights of the community?
We have the case of the famous “conversion therapies” (ECOSIG), which has become very popular in recent days, due to the statements in favor of them, by the editor of a well-known international fashion magazine in its Mexican edition. . The initiative to prohibit them has been in the Senate for a long time.
Another example is equal marriage, which since 2010, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) determined that marriage, defined as the union exclusively between a man and a woman, for procreation purposes, was unconstitutional and promoted the inequality; and that, although some States such as Sinaloa (recently) have already approved it, there are still States that have not reformed their Family Codes to recognize them.
Substantial changes don’t happen overnight, they take time. In Mexico, the first LGBT + march took place in June 1978 (almost 10 years after the Stonewall riots), and it was not until the 1990s that we began to include the LGBT + community in our public policy. There are still many challenges and as a society we have to demand that our political parties and representatives stop seeing issues related to diversity and inclusion as “unprofitable”.
It seems that we take, as they say, “crab steps” – we walk two, and we go back one. Clearly, there is still a long way to go. We live in a country that has historically stood out for being united in the face of adversity; let’s put aside discrimination against minorities because of their skin color, origin, identity and sexual orientation and even their social class. Let us once again show our strength and pride in being, before anything else, Mexican.
Editor’s Note: Arturo Guadarrama Garza is an entrepreneur for the LGBTQ + brand, BE PREPARED. Follow him on. The opinions published in this column belong exclusively to the author.
