Breathe
By Gloria Piña
Nimoderrimo and the one I support, Wendy Guevera has already made history in Mexican television. With more than 18.2 million votes she was named the first winner of the reality show "La Casa de los Famosos Mexico" which was watched by more than 21 million people nationwide.
It is not a minor recognition, since it comes from Televisa, the most important television station in Latin America, where historically, masculinized, misogynist, caricatured and stereotyped narratives about homosexuality have been maintained, without including transgender people or people of diversity in their content.
It is an achievement of visibility and resistance. Where the power to name and recognize is just one of the many pending issues in favor of the transgender community and all diversity. In the face of transphobic political positions, and even feminist branches, who refuse to name them by their gender identity.
The talk of transsexuality began to be strongly mediatized since 2015, when the athlete Bruce Jenner, father of models Kylie and Kendall Jenner, decided to name himself as a transgender woman. "Call me Caitlyn" was the title of the Vanity Fair cover where, for the first time, he made public his identity. From that moment on, she became an icon of the trans community worldwide.
However, this does not mean that transsexuality did not exist in Mexico. Figures in the show business, such as actresses Alejandra Bogue and Libertad Palomo, were resilient in the face of conservative positions even when neither equal marriage nor gender identity was recognized.
Wendy Guevara, born in 1993 in Leon, Guanajuato, began her transition in physique and aesthetics at a very young age. In 2017 that rose to fame with the video of "Las Perdidas", since then she positioned herself as a beloved influencer on the internet who now has more than 6 million followers on Instagram and 2.6 million on TikTok.
She is a trans woman, racialized, brown, a former sex worker, a survivor of abuse and from a precarious background. In fact, in the selection of members to "La Casa de los Famosos", Wendy was the only member who did not fit the economic, family lineage or fame standards of her peers, which also evidenced their classist, transphobic and homophobic biases.
"She is teaching me to be an earthly person, from the underworld", was the comment about Wendy made by singer Apio Quijano, drawing criticism for his classist and discriminatory intention.
That is why Wendy represents the struggle of thousands of transgender women and men in the country with stories drawn in economically scarce environments, violence and lack of opportunities. Hence lies the importance of her achievement and putting people who have historically been segregated at the center.
Hundreds of people celebrated Wendy's triumph at the Angel de la Independencia and the Zona Rosa in Mexico City, but also from the Coecillo neighborhood in Leon, Guanajuato, where the celebrity is from.
In this entity, the trans activist Devanny Cardiel was murdered in 2021, in the same year Saulette was found dead and with traces of violence, the following year the transgender woman Isabella Alvarez was murdered; while so far this year Pamela, Divina Jhons and Fede were killed.
Mexico has become the second country with the most transfeminicides in Latin America, only behind Brazil. From 2018 to 2022, 48 murders of trans people were committed, according to the organization Letra S.
The state of Guanajuato, where Wendy Guevara is from, has refused to approve a regulatory framework in favor of the human rights of the LGBTI+ community. It was legislators from the National Action Party who have prevented the approval of the Sexual Diversity Law for the creation of a specialized body for the attention of this population.
This entity also does not have laws recognizing transgender identities. Across the country, 14 entities still refuse to endorse the self-chosen identity of transgender persons over 18 years of age.
The lack of public care for transgender people also remains one of the main debts. Because they do not have access to hormone treatments, hundreds of trans women live with injuries, wounds and burns caused by the application of modeling injections of vegetable and car oils. A public health problem that remains unaddressed.
Nearly half a million people in Mexico (908,600 people) identify with a gender different from that of their birth, according to INEGI's latest National Survey on Sexual and Gender Diversity.
The success and affection shown to Wendy Guevara is an example of how far Mexico has come in favor of the trans community and diversity, but it is also a reminder of the historical debt owed to them in protecting and recognizing their rights.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of Opinion 51.
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