The country has become the destination and a transit area for more and more people fleeing violence against them in their countries of origin.
Mexico has transformed its migratory vocation and has gone from being mainly a country of expulsion of migrants to a country of transit and destination for thousands of people. Within this group, people who are part of the LGBTTTIQ population form an increasingly large percentage.
LGBT migrants, according to the migrant affairs program of the Universidad Iberoamericana, “are a person on the move who has decided to transcend their sexual orientation and gender identity (man, woman) that govern contemporary societies. It can be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, transvestite, intersex, intersex and queer”, although there are more identities that can be integrated into the group.
Mexico has transformed its migratory vocation and has gone from being mainly a country of expulsion of migrants to a country of transit and destination for thousands of people. Within this group, people who are part of the LGBTTTIQ population form an increasingly large percentage.
LGBT migrants, according to the migrant affairs program of the Universidad Iberoamericana, “are a person on the move who has decided to transcend their sexual orientation and gender identity (man, woman) that govern contemporary societies. It can be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, transvestite, intersex, intersex and queer”, although there are more identities that can be integrated into the group.
Mexico does not have much official and precise information on the situation of LGBT migrants transiting through the country, indicates René Tec-López, program officer of the Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration (ORAM) in Mexico, although in its work has detected some trends.
As with the rest of the migrant population, Mexico has become an attractive destination for migrants looking for an alternative to the United States. For LGBTI people, Mexico City is the most interesting destination.
“The LGBT population that is fleeing their countries due to situations of violence or forced displacement is in Mexico City in a city where there are rights for the LGBT population, there are legislative advances,” he explains in an interview with Expansión.
Central American countries, such as Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, are very conservative, so sometimes LGBT people suffer discrimination even within their families, which complicates their situation.
In addition, they also suffer from gang violence and organized crime. “Especially because (gangs) recruit trans women and practically become sex slaves,” a reality from which they flee, he points out.
This combined with other circumstances forces many people to leave their place of origin.
Tec-López points out that although migrants from Central America are the majority arriving in Mexico, there are also more and more migrants arriving from other latitudes that are hostile to its population, such as Russia, where the LGBT movement was declared a terrorist organization in November. of 2023.
He also points out the situation in several African countries, where homosexuality is still punishable, even with death in some cases.
A double vulnerability
Mexico offers some advantages for the sexually diverse population compared to some countries in the region. Same-sex marriage is legal throughout the country and conversion therapies were recently criminalized, a practice that can amount to acts of torture, according to the United Nations.
Persecution due to sexual orientation and gender expression is one of the causes contemplated by Mexican law to grant refuge to migrants.
In addition, there are local organizations and exclusive shelters for the LGBT population, especially in Mexico City, because although there are many migrant shelters in the rest of the territory, there are few that have this perspective.
However, not everything is positive for the LGBT migrant population once they set foot on Mexican territory. Tec-López recalls that Mexico is still a very conservative country and one in which the most hate crimes against the sexually diverse population occur.
According to a report by the organization Amnesty International published in 2017, two-thirds of the LGBT refugees from Central America with whom it spoke between that year and the previous year reported having suffered sexual and gender-based violence in Mexico.
“There is a society in Mexico that tends to reject the other, otherness, in this case the migrant foreigner, but not just any migrant, but the migrant who has to flee their countries of origin due to violence or precarious situations” , points out López Tec.
This also means that LGBT citizens experience a double vulnerability: that experienced by migrants, who lack support networks and have problems of cultural adaptation, and that of the LBGT population, who become victims of various types of violence. just because of their sexual orientation and identity.
In recent years, cases of hate crimes have grown, regardless of people’s level of recognition. Enrique Torre, activists in favor of the rights of LGBT people and promoter of a fundraising campaign for ORAM, remembers the case of Magistrate Ociel Baena, who was murdered last year.
“I think that this will be the task of the next six-year term and it is also the task of local governments.
Because just as we are moving along a good path in terms of legal protection and again what is on paper and creating certain institutions and so on, on the other hand something is failing in a very obvious way if violence is increasing in general, but also homophobic, transphobic violence, etc.,” says Torre.
The activist with 16 years of experience points out that the spaces to serve the LGBT and migrant population are insufficient, so together with ORAM Mexico he launched a campaign through Go Fund Me—a crowdfunding platform recently arrived in Mexico—with which seeks to provide safe shelter, food and transportation for a month to 100 refugees or asylum seekers in Mexico City.
“Not only is it simply providing them with shelter, food and transportation, but also during that month that they may have, they can not worry about these basic elements to be able to attend to their other concerns, such as the processing of the application for refuge or being able to look for a decent job,” says Tec-López.
Source: expansion
