hello

`The only fight we lose is the one we abandon’

Mexico’s first openly lesbian MP on LGBT rights
and people’s power

Patria Jiménez. Photo by Rachel Evans.

By Rachel Evans

May 21, 2009 -- Coyacan, Mexico -- I interviewed Patria Jiménez in Coyacan’s normally bustling markets. The onset of the swine flu crisis had emptied the streets and enforced a stiffness into Mexico’s normally effusive greetings tradition. No kissing hello or shaking hands was encouraged. Jiménez ignored swine-flu protocol and greeted me warmly.

In 1997, Jiménez made history by being elected the first openly lesbian member of Mexico's Chamber of Deputies. Representing the Workers Revolutionary Party (PRT), which was in an alliance with the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), Jiménez was also the first openly lesbian candidate to be elected in Latin America. She is standing again within a coalition, Salvemos a México (We Will Save Mexico), for the July 2009 federal elections. She remains a member of the PRT.

In 1997 the PRD had won control of Mexico City, opening up significant space for left-leaning projects. Jiménez's election was based on decades of campaigning around lesbian, gay, feminist and Indigenous people’s rights, and her work gathered her international recognition. She was nominated in 2005, along with another 11 Mexicans, for the Nobel Peace Prize, inside the Project 1000 Women for Peace

Born in San Luis Potosí in 1957, Jiménez’s political activism began at high school, around the issues of lack of resources in secondary schools.
Read more