Drag news anchor makes LGBTQ+ history on Mexican television

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MEXICO CITY (AP) — Guillermo Barraza vibrates with a nervous energy as he watches his transformation.

Hands delicately paint swathes of bright pink eyeshadow across Barraza’s angular face as news anchors and a makeup team dance around her.

Tonight, in a television studio located in the heart of Mexico City, Barraza makes history.

Through Amanda, his drag character, the 32-year-old journalist becomes the first drag queen to host a news program in the history of Mexican television.

By stepping under the glare of the studio lights, Barraza has sought to break with the establishment in a place where both LGBTQ+ people and journalists are brutally murdered. And he does so at a time when the issue has returned with force to the public debate after the violent death of one of the guests on his program, one of the most prominent queer figures in the country who was later found dead with his partner. with dozens of razor cuts all over his body.

“By having an alter ego you have fewer problems because they can’t harass a character. You have more freedom to speak,” she said. “There are many things that Guillermo would not do or say and that Amanda does not think twice about.”

As she says it, her makeup artist helps her put on a wig with blonde curls while Barraza slips into a purple blazer. Each piece is like another layer of sequined armor, until all that’s left of Barraza is a playful smile under purple lipstick.

“Come on, come on,” Barraza says as he walks through hallways where each thud of his high-heeled boots sounds like a challenge to a society that has long rejected people like him.

“Rockstar,” he adds as he pushes the heavy metal doors into the set.

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Since its inception, the “La Verdrag” program aimed to radically transform the way the LGBTQ+ community is viewed in Mexican society. Broadcast for the first time in October, the space goes against the current in a sexist country where almost 4 out of 5 people identify as Catholic.

The program — a play on words that mixes the words “truth” and “drag” — arose when Barraza, a journalist for 10 years, presented the daily news program of the public television channel Canal Once in drag during the Pride celebration in June.

At first, the avalanche of hateful comments that followed frightened Barraza, who had already received two death threats while working as a journalist in northern Mexico. But soon, he and the channel were pushed to open a space to address LGBTQ+ issues in a more formal way.

“This, just a few years ago, would have been completely unthinkable: talking about transsexuality, gender, drag,” said Vianey Fernández, a news director at Canal Once. “We want to open spaces for the LGBTQ+ community and we have to do it with a serious perspective, recognizing not only their rights but also their capabilities.”

In Mexico, drag — the act of dressing in exaggerated outfits that defy gender stereotypes — has long been used in entertainment and comedy shows such as “The Francis Show,” “The Vampire Sisters” and “ Desde Gayola .” .

The shows often included insults to the LGBTQ+ community and cartoonish stereotypes. Still, they took key steps to open spaces for the queer community in Mexico, said Jair Martínez, a researcher at Letra S, a Mexican rights organization.

“They are pioneers in demonstrating how one can transform from a victim into a subject, into an active subject, a subject with agency and the capacity for resistance,” he said.

Growing up as a gay person in the hyperconservative northern city of Culiacán, Sinaloa, Barraza never saw examples of sexual diversity on the family television screen that he could truly identify with.

On the news channels, the only time sexual diversity was talked about was after a hate crime or a brutal murder. At school, people went to great lengths to not look gay. With a family that still struggles to accept his public gender expression, Barraza said he only came into his own when he became involved in a theater group, where his character Amanda was born.

“In Sinaloa they teach you not to be gay,” Barraza pointed out. “Historically we were mocked, we were objects of entertainment.”

In other countries, with the rise of shows like “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” drag has gradually blended into popular culture. But drag has long been used as a tool of resistance, especially when the LGBTQ+ community is “under attack,” explained Michael Moncrieff, a researcher at the University of Geneva who has studied the history of drag queens.

The earliest examples date back to the “molly houses” of 18th-century England, secret meeting places where people dressed in clothes of the opposite sex and were often raided by authorities because homosexuality was still a capital crime. In the United States, drag would later become an integral part of the so-called Harlem Renaissance, with drag queens the faces of the resistance at key moments such as the McCarthy era.

In the last 15 years, the practice has spread around the world, from Israel or Moscow to parts of Africa, Moncrieff reported, and in the United States it continues to be used to combat a wave of anti-LGBTQ+ laws and bans.

“They are the fighters of their community,” Moncrieff said. “Drag queens were willing to do things that no one else wanted to do.”

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Barraza begins his program with a characteristic ostentatious gesture, standing on a stage surrounded by three heavy cameras and producers with headphones who count down “four, three, two, one.”

Today, wearing a blue and purple gala dress, Barraza takes a turn, looks at the camera with her chin raised and says: “Welcome to La Verdrag, the program where minorities become the majority.”

With a duration of 40 minutes, Barraza’s program covers the main headlines of the day: gender in the Mexican elections scheduled for 2024, human rights in a historic migration to the United States and violence against queer populations. The rest of the show revolves around deeply documented stories and interviews, each showing a different layer of sexual diversity in the country.

One week is a deep dive into the lives of transgender youth in Mexico, the next is an interview with Ociel Baena, the first binary gender person to hold a judicial position in Latin America. Baena — one of the most recognizable LGBTQ+ figures in the country — broke one barrier after another and became an emblem of the fight for visibility also long defended by drag queens.

“Hate speech towards me has been increasing every time, I have seen it on social networks. But the most unfortunate thing is the death threats I have been receiving lately,” Baena said. “They are ingredients that create a breeding ground for homicides.”

With a blazer, high-heeled silver shoes, a white skirt and her characteristic rainbow fan, it would be the last television interview that the magistrate would give. Just a few weeks later, Barraza would remember that crossing the line in a place like Mexico can have deadly consequences.

Baena was found dead with her partner, Dorian Herrera, in their home in the state of Aguascalientes, in central Mexico, on November 13, 2023. Her body had almost two dozen razor blade cuts. These deaths haunted Barraza and many in the Mexican queer community.

Just a few hours after Baena’s body was discovered, the Aguascalientes prosecutor’s office stated that he had allegedly been murdered by his partner, who then took his own life. This is something authorities often do: label a case a “crime of passion” and quickly file it in a country where almost 99% of crimes remain unsolved.

The “crime of passion” hypothesis was quickly rejected by other Mexican officials and by the country’s LGBTQ+ community, who stated that it was another attempt by the authorities to cover up the violence they suffer.

Activists continue to demand a more in-depth, gender-responsive investigation that takes into account the growing death threats against Baena and historical violence against the LGBTQ+ population. In the first month of 2024, authorities and human rights groups recorded at least three murders of trans people.

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Gathered with a group of friends in his apartment in Mexico City after watching the first broadcast of “La Verdrag”, Barraza reviewed rows of hateful comments that flood Canal Once’s social networks, something that would increase with each broadcast. .

“’God forbids perversion; only Satan is happy with the rottenness of this world,’” Barraza reads between laughs, making jokes with his characteristic ease.

Behind it is a pall of fear, a reminder of the weight of what you are undertaking.

In addition to being one of the deadliest places to practice journalism in the world, Mexico has one of the highest rates of violence against LGBTQ+ communities in Latin America, a region where hate crimes and gender violence are numerous.

“I wouldn’t be the first journalist to be murdered and I wouldn’t be the last,” he said. “My biggest fear is that what I am doing will hurt other people: my partner, my mother, my brother.”

Over the past six years, human rights group Letra S has documented at least 513 targeted killings of LGBTQ+ people in Mexico. Cases of violence have increased in the last year, said Martínez, the Letra S researcher who documents the number of deaths.

The murders of people with sexual diversity are usually characterized by a special brutality, with bodies mutilated by their murderers. While an ordinary homicide victim in Mexico may be stabbed once and show signs of beating, Martínez said he has seen cases of LGBTQ+ people with up to 20 stab wounds, having their genitals amputated and messages written on their body.

“It is not only about ending the victim, but about sending a message against the population in general. That is why this brutality has the intention of being, to a certain extent, like disciplining, like exemplifying what can happen to other LGBTQ+ people,” Martínez explained.

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Barraza looks out over a sea of ​​thousands of mourners with candles and Pride flags in mid-November, sadness painted on his normally cheerful face.

Almost every surface is dotted with photographs of Magistrate Baena, who a few weeks earlier had sat in front of Barraza talking about the increasing death threats they both received for their work and activism.

His violent death shocked Mexico’s LGBTQ+ community, which believes Baena led its fight for visibility. Chants of “Justice, justice!” They floated over Barraza, whose mind was spinning due to the hateful comments that appeared on “La Verdrag” social networks.

“Two mentally ill people,” said one. “Divine justice,” noted another. “A week drunk celebrating his murder; “The world is better,” prayed one more.

He remembers Baena smiling and laughing at his side behind the cameras in his studio.

“My mother wrote to me this morning, extremely worried. Several friends wrote to me this morning saying: ‘Wow, get off, don’t talk about politics, take good care of yourself, protect yourself,'” Barraza said.

As he walks alongside thousands of people along the main artery of Mexico City, tears begin to stream down his face. His partner, Francisco García, hugs him and they move forward holding hands.

“No one is safe in this country,” Barraza said. “The more exposed, the more visible you are and the more you want to fight to make a change, the more you put the target on your chest. And if we have to put our chests, it’s going to touch our chest, no way, because fear is not going to win us.”