Ten years of feminist rebellion in Mexico

Amid growing tensions in which the governor of Oaxaca has begun the persecution and the criminalization of demonstrators, thousands of women marched on March 8, 2024 in Oaxaca City, México. The sign in the middle of the frame reads: "We are the heart of those who are no longer with us." Photo © Naxhielli Arreola.

Opinion • Libertad García Sanabría • April 4, 2024 • Leer en castellano

Protest is a collective experience that emerges from situated fragments, faces, posters, actions, and slogans. The preparatory work and its outcomes—both personal and that shared among attendees—shape the totality that is the milestone of March 8 (8M).

This year’s 8M was cathartic for me. It was unexpectedly joyful, disruptive and happy because I was among friends and a growing circle of accomplices in Oaxaca City. 

I missed others, whom I no longer see, and I was reeling on the anniversary of a sexist attack on a beloved comrade. This 8M was a moment of collective grief, too.

We took to the streets together, but the march’s power enveloped those who are no longer with us, those who went before, and those who will one day march on International Women's Day—or, as I prefer to call it, 8M. 

We danced together, took over the streets, and made the sanitized, tourist-themed stage that Oaxaca City has become a little less comfortable. To get there, we traveled many roads.

Expansion and memory

This year marks ten years since feminism began to explode in Mexico. The history of feminist movement in Mexico City—where I was living at the time—and coming out as a lesbian in my early thirties shape my reflections on the period. 

Feminist lesbianism helped me to explore depths that heteronormative feminism and heterosexuality had not allowed me to perceive, much less question. 

A time of feverish activism opened up ten years ago. We began taking to the streets with others, holding wide-ranging dialogues in women's assemblies and encounters, and our visibility in the city increased. The efforts to call out violence against lesbian feminists at Bellas Artes on May 17, 2014, and the march against gender violence on April 24, 2016 were key moments in this trajectory.

Around that time, we opened the La Gozadera feminist space in the downtown neighbourhood of San Juan de Letrán, a gentrifying area, which we eventually had to leave. 

We learned of the murder of Alessa Flores while in a meeting following the murder of Paola Buenrostro in October of 2016. That’s when we hung the trans flag with Alessa's name in La Gozadera, where it remained until we closed.

The fire at the Virgen de la Asunción group home for girls in Guatemala, which killed 41 girls and adolescents, took place on March 8, 2017. That tore us to pieces. In dialogue with comrades from the Red Carnation group in Guatemala, we were able to understand the contradictory density of fire’s symbolic violence, which is used so often to raze rebellions there. 

At times, we were overwhelmed with pain. Lesvy Berlín Osorio was the victim of a femicide by her then partner on the campus of the UNAM in Mexico City on May 3, 2017. A poster at the entrance to our space demanding justice for Lesvy seared her face into my memory.

The loss of so many comrades brought us together with others. It was an honor to make our space available for press conferences, meetings and fundraising events; to talk, to do therapy, and to comfort and support each other. 

In 2018, Zapatista women called upon us. That year we spent March 8 in the Caracol [liberated Zapatista base community] 4 Torbellino de Nuestras Palabras in Chiapas. 

In December 2019, the Zapatistas convened again and we traveled to southern Mexico. This time we gathered in the Caracol Morelia, where we were reminded that our commitment to each other is to live.

From there, feminism poured onto the streets and into the peripheries. Feminisms multiplied and feminist genealogies grew like rhizomes. 

Some of us grew branches and became interwoven in unprecedented alliances. There was also questioning, debates, splits between close and more distant comrades, and the reappearance of wounds left over from previous feminist battles. 

In 2020, we celebrated the fifth anniversary of La Gozadera. It had become the economic pillar that sustained us, generating enough income to pay the salaries of the approximately 10 of us who worked there. It even turned a small profit, which we reinvested in the project. 

Then came the immense 8M of 2020. 

We took to the streets with banners and drums. We prepared pots of food to welcome the women who, after the march, wanted to come through and talk. 

One week after that great mobilization, we shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In September 2020, we announced the permanent closure of La Gozadera.

Demonstrators in Oaxaca City, Mexico, on March 8, 2024. The sign in the center of the frame reads: "I want every girl to know that she can change the world with her voice." Photo © Naxhielli Arreola.

Other territories from which to organize

We have lived through a pandemic and at least two wars since then.

I believe we are experiencing a resurgence of structural violence against women's bodies: narco-criminal violence, precariousness and increasing displacement in the city and the countryside for the sake of gentrification and tourism. The so-called "waves of migration" are forms of exile. At times, they are "sexiles," to use Norma Mogrovejo’s term: for many of those who reject heterosexual norms in the global south, migration is the only option in the face of death and violence. 

This year on 8M in Oaxaca City, I witnessed numerous disrespectful intrusions by people who, with haste and violence, wanted to transgress the collective body we wove as we marched. Learning to set limits is a bodily exercise that we need to do together more often—to pass our power on to each other. 

During the march, many were indifferent and many others looked on, as if stuck in place. We continued to weave.

Younger comrades' voices filled the mobilization. Slogans and songs for a hopeful future filled the air, and the memory of fire bequeathed by ancestral women flooded my gaze.

My eyes and my politics didn’t miss the huge plastic banners that we used to carry. Instead they welcomed the slogans that are shouted, rehearsing their power. A multitude of posters and voices move me: 

"I want to see my friends graduate, not be buried."

"If only I was protected as well as the monuments are.”

"My country is femicidal.”

"I shout out what my grandmother kept silent."

"We are not in competition, together we are in resistance."

"The girls of Gaza are not a threat."

As I reflect on 10 years of feminist rebellion in Mexico, I want to note two key struggles for justice and remember the loss of two people whose lives touched mine and whose memory summons me to the streets on 8M. 

On February 19, the Malena Law was approved in Mexico City. It punishes the use of acid or other corrosive substances in attacks against women, adolescents, children, transgender, and disabled people. 

There has been a drawn out battle in the media and the courts in the wake of the acid attack that Juan Antonio Vera Carrizal, then a representative of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, planned and had carried out in an attempt to kill María Elena Ríos Ortiz. Today there is a path to formal justice for women and diverse people who are victims of similar crimes, at least in Mexico City.

The second cry for justice pertains to the case of "Chío" Rocío Esmeralda N. On April 2, 2023, she was the victim of an anti-lesbian attack in Tlalnepantla, Mexico State. When she defended her life and that of her partner, she was arrested and imprisoned on charges of attempted murder. 

Finally, I wish to evoke two immense legacies. First, that of Francesca Gargallo, a rebel, cross-border feminist, teacher, and friend, who passed away on March 3, 2022. And second, that of Chuy Tinoco, an autonomous feminist lesbian and relentlessly critical teacher, who passed away in early February. 

The memory of their lives and their thought will always be with us.