Anti-feminism and the trials of the Mexican right

Illustration for Ojalá by © Citlali Potamu.

Reportage • Melissa Amezcua • April 19, 2024 • Leer en castellano

When Agustín Laje boasted about eliminating the Ministry of Women, inclusive language and what he called the “state media indoctrination apparatus,” his audience at the Emanuel Church in downtown Mexico City cheered wildly, as if this attack on Argentine feminism was a victory of their own.

Laje is one of the most prominant rising stars among the so-called new leaders of the ultra-right.

He was received in Mexico City like a celebrity or a rockstar. His followers waited in line for more than an hour to enter the venue, notwithstanding a crushing heat wave. They waited for another couple of hours before he spoke inside a church that felt more like a warehouse, with its tin roof, and more people than chairs. Someone started selling bottled water on the fly.

There were about a thousand people in the standing-room-only crowd. Five other speakers were scheduled to speak, but the audience was bursting with anticipation as it awaited Laje’s arrival.

Most of his followers brought one of his books. Even though the event lasted around five hours, this didn’t stop his fans from lining up once again to get an autograph and a selfie with the 35-year-old Argentine. 

Over the previous weeks, Laje visited Mexicali and Tijuana on the U.S. border; Cuernavaca, the capital of the central state of Morelos; and Naucalpan in Mexico State. His event in Mexico City was the last stop on his “Cultural Reconstruction” tour through the country. Without much publicity beyond his own social networks, he filled every venue in which he spoke. 

Laje’s opposition to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights is old news, but the reiteration of his talking points seemed to captivate those who gathered to hear him speak on April 6 at the evangelical church in Mexico City's Tránsito neighborhood.

"They say that he charges in dollars for every speech," said an attendee while waiting to enter the church. Another noted that during Laje's last Mexican tour, when she also heard him speak, a group of feminists protested outside the venue in the city of Toluca, but "there were only a few of them and they were easy to ignore." 

A younger woman who was listening to our conversation told us excitedly that Laje had posted on Instagram that he was already in Mexico City. "He made it. He says that he’ll be here at six o’clock," she said.

Laje arrived almost an hour and a half late, and was greeted with cheers and applause. An anti-rights crusader, he introduced himself as a fervent supporter of Argentina's current President, Javier Milei, and one of his closest friends. 

Laje has built his literary and political career on denouncing and mocking feminism and LGTBQ+ rights. 

His verbal attacks on minorities use what feminist theorist Sara Ahmed describes as a “cultural politics of emotions.” It calls upon listeners to defend the core values of the nation. In Latin America, this discourse centers Christianity and is openly hateful, racist, classist and otherwise authoritarian, more reminiscent of a preacher than a political scientist. 

"We eliminated the thought police you call CONAPRED [National Council to Prevent Discrimination, in its Spanish acronym] and we eliminated the entire state media indoctrination apparatus, which was a hangout for militant leftist journalists, who were in people's heads around the clock," said the Argentine, who urged his audience not to abandon the cause if they’re defeated in the upcoming elections. "Please, don't give up!"

The power behind Laje

Laje relies on more than rhetoric alone. His career has already reached great heights: he is applauded by thousands and his book Generación Idiota [Generation Idiot] was the sixth best-selling book in Mexico last year. All of this takes human and financial resources, ideological allies and connections with powerful people throughout the region. 

In his speeches and presentations, Laje talks about his close relationships to politicians like Jair Bolsonaro, the former President of Brazil; Fabricio Alvarado, a member of Congress in Costa Rica; Eduardo Verástegui, a former soap opera actor who tried unsuccessfully to run for the President in Mexico as an independent. Laje has also cultivated close ties with Carlos Leal, a state congressperson for Morena in Nuevo León; with ultra-right-wing US journalist Michael J. Knowles; and even with Sabrina Sabrok, an Argentine singer and actress based in Mexico that attended his presentation in the Mexican capital. 

Laje is no stranger to Mexico’s political class. He boasted of having given a speech in Congress in 2019, the same year that student protestors forced the cancellation of a presentation that he was set to give at La Salle University. In 2021, together with Santiago Abascal of Spain’s ultranationalist Vox party, he gave a presentation to Mexico’s Senate that divided the rightwing and that other parties decried as a dangerous opening of public space to people who promote hate speech against minorities. 

The National Front for the Family (FNF), a far-right political lobby that has taken positions against the abortion, gay, lesbian and transgender rights, sponsors most of Laje’s events in Mexico. The FNF emerged in 2016 after President Enrique Peña Nieto issued an executive decree guaranteeing the right to same-sex marriage. Today the FNF is closely associated with the Yunque, a right wing political and religious organization connected to the National Action Party (PAN). 

Today public officials and political advisors appear to have no qualms about sitting in the front row at Laje’s events. 

The PAN’s legislative advisor, Alicia Galván López, emceed his event in Mexicali. In Cuernavaca, activists published a statement against the Morelos state government's decision to allow Laje to speak in the Teopanzolco theater, which is a public venue. Activist Oralba Castillo was among those who signed an open letter opposing the government’s decision. 

The event in Naucalpan drew the largest number of politicians. According to local press reports, Agustín Belgodere, a city councillor, had organized the event and attendees included Fernando Flores, Mayor of Metepec, as well as Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) state congressperson David Parra Sánchez and PAN federal congressperson Jorge Ernesto Inzunza. 

Teresa Castell, a PAN federal congressperson representing Mexico State, made a prominant appearance at Laje's Mexico City talk.

Castell has made news for verbally attacking Salma Luévano and María Clemente, who are both transgender congresspeople, in congress. These clashes prompted the Electoral Tribunal to sanction Castell for gender violence. 

In 2017, Castell ran for Mexico State governor as an independent, although her ties to the PRI bloc led by former governor Eruviel Ávila led some to question her independence. Castell was already taking homophobic and anti-abortion positions at the time.

During Laje’s event in Mexico City, five religious speakers bombarded the audience with the message that progressivism is a threat to society. They repeatedly alluded to freedom of conscience, worship and expression, but said nothing about the importance of secular governance. No political party was mentioned, beyond Laje's gesture to the PAN legislator in the front row. 

Following the main event, Jorge Aguiñaga, a strident, self-styled Mexican Laje, received the most enthusiastic reception. His fans lined up for autographs after his 40-minute speech, during which Aguiñaga mockingly attacked queer families and leftist icons like Karl Marx, Friederich Engels, and Simone de Beauvoir, whom he called "unhinged." 

The audience applauded when Aguiñaga repeated the alarmist fallacy that the left’s popularity and advances in human rights are predicated upon the destruction of the traditional family and meddling in children’s development.

Another detail: to attend Laje's event in Mexico City, participants were asked to deposit 250 Mexican pesos in the bank account of Diana Raquel Ulloa Matus. According to the National Transparency Platform, Ulloa Matus has held several government positions, including Head of Youth Welfare at the Municipal Institute for Youth in Benito Juarez, Quintana Roo and Head of Procurement for the same city’s Institute of Women. 

An anti-feminist counter-offensive 

Laje's success is most likely due to his ability to adjust the ideas he promotes to the tastes of his audience. In Mexico City, he presented videos of feminist protests in Mexico’s capital and Guadalajara as though they were comedy.

Laje's antifeminist discourse is not unique to Latin America, but echoes ideas that the ultra-right expresses around the world. 

In an interview for Ojalá, Almudena Cabezas, who researches feminism in Latin America, understands this as a kind of blowback stemming from the official recognition of feminism, which has made it countercultural to be anti-feminist.

"The rise of anti-feminism or fundamentalism is a response to the fact that feminism has become the most powerful movement over the last decade, and that feminists can mobilize street protests in ways that no other group has been able to do," said Cabezas. 

She thinks political parties and think tanks drive the anti-rights movement. That is why it is crucial to understand who makes up Laje’s networks in Mexico. 

When asked how to respond to attacks against the women's movement and LGBTQ+ rights, Cabezas said that it is vital to encourage an intersectional understanding of class and race, which fundamentalists attempt to use as wedges. 

"We have to promote feminism for the 99 percent... And leave behind the transactional agenda of corporate feminism, which has been taken up by global institutions," Cabezas explained.

Political figures like Laje often celebrate individualism and appeal to emotions. His use of shocking examples, which rests on a decontextualized literalism, generated the most applause in Mexico City. 

On stage, Laje showed videos of International Women’s Day marches in Mexico City during which protesters vandalized monuments and buildings to protest government inaction against feminicide.

He scoffed and joked that no feminicides were prevented by "smashing a wall or a church." In doing so, Laje ignores the fact that feminist demonstrations are not isolated occurrences. They can only be understood within a wider context of social outrage and the near total impunity for feminicidal violence. 

Feminism today draws from a complex ideological current. In practice and in theory, it is sharply opposed to decontextualized literalism, which is the preferred approach of its detractors.