MEXICO CITY (AP) — Guillermo Barraza buzzes with nervous energy as he watches himself change.
As newscasters and makeup staff hustle around Barraza, hands delicately draw stripes of bright pink eyeshadow across her angular face.
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Tonight, in a small studio in the heart of Mexico City, Barraza will make history.
Through her drag character Amanda, the 32-year-old journalist became the first drag queen to host a Mexican television news show.
By stepping outside under the glow of studio lights, Barraza has sought to push social boundaries in a place where both LGBTQ+ people and journalists are targeted for violence. And he’s doing it at a moment when one of the guests on his show, one of the country’s most prominent queer figures, has died in an act of outrage and the issue has been brought back into the public spotlight. He was later found dead along with them. My partner had dozens of cuts all over his body.
A news anchor performing in drag is making history in Mexico’s historically conservative society.
“Having an alter ego makes it less of a problem because you can’t harass the characters. You have more freedom to speak out,” he says. “There’s a lot of things that Guillermo didn’t do and Amanda didn’t think about.”
As he says this, a makeup artist helps him put on a bright blonde wig and Barraza shrugs off a purple sequined blazer. Each piece is like another layer of glitter-encrusted armor, until all that’s left of Barraza is a playful smile beneath purple lipstick.
“Let’s go, let’s go,” Barraza said as he strode down the hall, the clatter of his leather boots sounding like an act of defiance against a society that had long rejected people like him.
“I’m a rock star,” he added, pushing through a heavy metal door onto the set.
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From its inception, the program “La Verdrag” was intended to fundamentally change the way Mexican society views the LGBTQ+ community. The show, which first aired in October, defies conventional wisdom in a highly “macho” country where nearly four in five people identify as Catholic.
The show, a play on words in Spanish that combines the words “truth” and “drugs,” was created by Barraza, who has been a journalist for a decade, and who wrote news stories for his public television station “Canal Once” during Mexico’s war. It only happened when I took over the helm of the program. Celebrate Pride in drag in June.
Barraza, who had previously received two death threats while working as a journalist in northern Mexico, was horrified by the amount of hateful comments that followed. But soon he and the network were inspired to create a show to discuss LGBTQ+ issues in a serious tone.
“Talking about transsexuality, gender and drugs was completely unthinkable just a few years ago,” said Vianney Fernandez, news director at Canal Once. “We want to open spaces for the LGBTQ+ community, and we need to do it in a serious light, recognizing not only their rights but also their abilities.”
In Mexico, drag (the act of wearing exaggerated clothing that challenges gender stereotypes) is often seen in entertainment shows and sitcoms such as “El Show de Francis,” “Las Hermanas Vampilas,” and “Des de Gayola.” It has been used on the show for many years.
The show often used gay slurs and cartoonish stereotypes. Still, they took important steps in carving out a space for Mexico’s gay community, said Jair Martínez, a researcher at Mexican LGBTQ+ rights group Letra S.
“They are trailblazers, showing how victims can transform into people with agency and the ability to resist.”
Growing up gay in the conservative northern city of Culiacan in Sinaloa state, Barraza never saw on a deeper level the gay characters who stared at him from his family’s shoddy TV screen.
The only time gay people were featured on news channels was when they were covering hate crimes or brutal murders. At school, people do everything they can to avoid being seen as gay. Barraza, whose family continues to struggle with accepting his public gender expression, said he first grew into himself by joining the theater community where the character of Amanda was born.
“In Sinaloa, you are taught not to be gay,” Barraza said. “Historically, we have always been the subject of ridicule and entertainment.”
In other countries, drag has gradually blended into mainstream culture with the rise of shows like “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” But Michael Moncrief, a University of Geneva researcher who studies the history of drag queens, explained that drag has long been used as a means of resistance and resistance when the LGBTQ+ community is “under attack.” did.
Early examples date back to the 18th century “Molly House” in England. This was a secret meeting place where people dressed as women and was frequently raided by authorities when homosexuality was still a capital crime. Drag would later become an integral part of the so-called Harlem Renaissance, becoming the face of resistance during key moments such as the McCarthy era.
Moncrief said the practice has spread around the world in the past 15 years, from Israel to Moscow to parts of Africa, and is still used in the United States to combat a wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and bans. It is said that it continues.
“These are community warriors,” Moncrief said. “Drag queens were willing to do things that no one else wanted to do.”
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Standing on stage surrounded by three large broadcast cameras and producers wearing earphones, Barraza begins the show with a unique flourish, counting down to “4, 3, 2, 1.”
Today, Barraza, dressed in a fluffy blue and purple ballgown, spins around, tilts her chin up and looks into the camera, saying, “Welcome to La Verdrag, the program where minorities become the majority.” Say.
Barraza’s show is 40 minutes long and cycles through the day’s biggest headlines, including gender in Mexico’s 2024 election, human rights in historic immigration to the United States, and anti-gay violence. He pivots the rest of the show to deeply reported articles and interviews that bring out different layers of the world of Mexican queerness.
One week it’s an in-depth look at transgender youth in Mexico, and the next week it’s an interview with Osiel Baena, the first openly non-binary person in Latin America to serve in the judiciary. One of the country’s most famous LGBTQ+ figures, Baena has broken barrier after barrier and become a symbol of the fight for visibility that drag queens of the past have long championed.
“The hate speech against me continues to increase. I have seen it on social media. The most disappointing thing is the death threats I have been receiving recently,” Baena said. “They are the ingredients that create a breeding ground for murder.”
Wearing a blazer, silver pumps covered by a white skirt and her signature rainbow-colored fan, it will be the judge’s last television interview. Just a few weeks later, Barraza would be reminded that breaking out of that box in a place like Mexico could have deadly consequences.
Baena was found dead next to her partner in their home in central Mexico’s conservative Aguascalientes state. Their bodies were left with what appeared to be nearly 20 razor cuts, a problem that plagued many homosexuals in Barraza and Mexico.
Just hours after Baena’s body was discovered, local prosecutors quickly announced the cause of death as a murder-suicide, in a country where almost 99% of crimes go unsolved. A common move is to label the incident a crime of passion and immediately shelve the case.
Local prosecutors said Baena’s partner apparently killed the magistrate and then committed suicide, but this theory was quickly rejected by other Mexican officials and the country’s LGBTQ+ community, which called it an act of violence against them. He claimed it was just another attempt by the authorities to ignore it.
Activists continue to demand a deeper investigation in light of increased death threats against Baena and historical violence against LGBTQ+ people. In the first months of 2024, authorities and rights groups recorded the killings of at least three more transgender people.
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Gathered with a group of friends in an apartment in Mexico City after watching the first episode of “La Verdrag,” Barraza flicks through the rows of hateful comments flooding Canal Once’s social media. The number of comments continued to increase with each broadcast.
“‘God forbids perversion, but Satan is the only one who delights in the corruption of this world. What a creep,'” Barraza recited with a burst of laughter, joking with his natural ease. .
There’s a side of fear behind it, a reminder of the weight of what he’s dealing with.
In addition to being one of the most dangerous places in the world to work in journalism, Mexico has one of the highest rates of violence against the LGBTQ+ community in Latin America, and the region is already plagued by hate crimes and gender violence. Violence based on this is occurring frequently.
“I won’t be the first journalist to be killed, and I won’t be the last,” he said. “My biggest fear is that what I’m doing will hurt other people, my partner, my mother, my brother.”
In the past six years, rights group Letra S has documented at least 513 targeted killings of LGBTQ+ people in Mexico. Martinez, a researcher at LetraS, which tracks death tolls, said violence has only increased in the past year.
The killings of gay and transgender people are often characterized by a particular type of brutality, with the bodies left mutilated by the victims. Unlike ordinary murder victims in Mexico, who are stabbed once and still show signs of a beating, Martinez was involved in a case in which a gay man was stabbed up to 20 times, his genitals cut off, and hateful messages written all over his body. He said he had seen it.
“They’re not just trying to put an end to the victims, but rather to send a message to the entire nation that this atrocity should provide some kind of discipline, or what can happen to other LGBTQ+ people.” The purpose is to set an example,” Martinez said. .
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In mid-November, Barraza looked out over a sea of thousands of mourners holding candles and pride flags, a somber expression on his usually lively face.
Almost every surface has a speckled photograph of the Baena magistrate. Just a few weeks ago, Judge Baena sat across from Barraza and spoke about the increasing death threats he has received as an activist.
Their violent deaths shocked Mexico’s gay community, which had once looked to Baena as a vocal leader in the fight for attention. Shouts of “Justice, Justice!” What flashed through Barraza’s mind were the hateful comments that appeared on La Verdrag’s social media.
“They’re both crazy,” one article read. “God’s justice.”
“The world would be a better place if we got drunk for a week and celebrated their murders,” one read.
In a flash, he saw Baena smiling and laughing next to him, behind the camera in the studio.
“My mom wrote to me this morning, very worried. Some friends wrote to me and said, ‘Hey, stay out of the spotlight. Don’t talk politics, take care of yourself. ‘Protect us with this,”’ Barraza said. “I don’t want her mother to be the one marching here.”
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Tears began to stream down Barraza’s face as he marched with thousands of others winding through Mexico City’s main artery. His partner, Francisco, put his arm around Barraza and they walked hand in hand until the wind dried their tears.
“No one is safe in this country,” Barraza said. “The more we stand out, the more we want to fight for change and the more we put a goal on our chest. And if we have to risk our lives, that’s what we’ll do. Because we won’t give in.” Don’t give in to fear. ”
