Changing Notions of Citizenship and Internationalism in Mexico City’s Lesbian and Gay Movement, 1979–91

At the 1979 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, representatives from Mexican lesbian and gay organizations carried a banner that read “Socialist Feminist Lesbians and Gay Men Against the Repression in Mexico.” During the Conference of Third World Lesbians and Gays held before the march, Mexican activists gave speeches that expressed ideals of left internationalism and challenged U.S. participants to understand the ways in which U.S. imperialism affected Mexican lesbian and gays. Since beginning to organize politically in 1978, Mexico City LGBT organizations clearly conceptualized their movement as international. They stood in solidarity with revolutionary struggles in Central America and lent support to leftist lesbian and gay struggles in other parts of the globe. Utilizing historian David Churchill’s differentiation, I contend that Mexico City lesbian and gay movements’ ideology during this time period was based in “left internationalism” as opposed to “liberal internationalism,” the former advocating for socialist politics as a means of transforming everyday life and the latter reliant on rights discourse and concepts of liberal citizenship (Churchill, 2009). Yet, it seems that by 1991, when the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) conference meets in Mexico, the strategies of Mexico’s leading lesbian and gay organizations were often reliant on notions of liberal internationalism. Utilizing human rights discourse and appeals to citizenship, activists increasingly sought inclusion within and acceptance from the state. At the same time, the platform of anti-imperialism that they had previously instilled upon international LGBT activists diminished. When appealing for international solidarity regarding the holding of the 1991 conference in Mexico, Mexican activists tended to implicate Mexican conservatism and corruption rather than forces of imperialism. This paper will consider explanations for why this shift occurred, as well as examine debates that occurred within LGBT organizing over changing relationships to both citizenship and internationalism.