Human Rights and internationalism in the Mexican lesbian-gay movement, 1979-1991

Abstract

Abstract
Since the 1970s, Mexico’s LGBT organizations have fought for their civil and political rights to be seen
by the state as human rights. The strategies that they have used to defend human rights have depended
on the political context of the time period in question. In the 1980s activists utilized a left internationalist strategy, expressing solidarity with revolutionary struggles in Central America and lending support to
leftist lesbian and gay struggles in other parts of the globe. Within Mexico, they utilized human rights
discourse to condemn repression —not limited to, but including police harassment, intimidation, extortion, and violence against lesbians and gays. However, with the Mexican state’s implementation of human
rights mechanisms in the late 1980s, LGBT activists increasingly employed a liberal discourse of human
rights. Seeking protection from the state during the planning of the 1991 ILGA conference, activists appropriated President Salinas’ own language, asserting that the protection of human rights was symbolic of
a modern and democratic state. Analyzing these changes in organizing strategies and tactics is important for understanding the institutionalization of certain sectors of Mexico’s LGBT movement during this
period.