Contestants from 21 Mexican states recently sashayed down the runway for the second annual Miss Transbelleza (Trans Beauty) Mexico 2019 pageant in Mexico City.
Swimwear, regional dress and formal attire comprised sections in the four-hour event in which Ivanna Cázares from Colima came out triumphant.
“We want to bring a message to society of respect for the trans girls of Mexico,” said Cázares, who sported an indigenous-themed leopard print costume with plenty of plumage for the traditional garb section.
Cázares began her transition three years ago. While she has a communications degree, her own salon and her family’s support, the most challenging part for her has been earning respect from society. This is why trans rights activist Flipy Morales de Franco launched the initiative in 2018.
“Miss Trans Beauty México is the perfect platform with which we want to show that everyone in this life is the same and that we have the same dreams and aspirations,” said Morales de Franco, who is also the president of Por un Veracruz Sin Discriminación, the state with the most reported LGBTQ-linked hate crimes.
Along these lines, Miss Trans Beauty Mexico also originated to raise awareness about violence against trans women throughout the nation. Even though spirits were high during the event, the reality is that over 260 transgender people were murdered between 2013 and 2018, according to the civil rights group Letra S. Only a fraction of these cases ever reached a court verdict.
“We have seen many deficiencies on the part of the attorney general’s office (and) by the public security police, who always criminalize trans women for the simple fact of being one,” says Kenya Cuevas, executive director of Casa de las Muñecas Tiresias, a non-profit working with vulnerable people in Mexico City.
Certain parts of Mexico, in particular Oaxaca, have historically celebrated two-gendered muxes who maintain important roles in the matriarchal communities. All the while, Mexico captures headlines as one of the most hostile countries for trans people.
During Enrique Peña Nieto’s six-year term, three LGBTQ people were killed every two weeks. Less than one percent of these cases were prosecuted, according to the Global Impunity Index.
Even the United Nations released an alert in the summer of 2018 when ten trans women died in rapid succession. The multinational body highlighted the torture and murder of Alaska Contreras Ponce. She won the Gay Queen 2018 contest from Veracruz’s Martínez de la Torre municipality before her murder.
The warning called for swift judicial action and an end to impunity.
“It is imperative that authorities carry out a thorough investigation of this and all similar cases and punish those responsible,” said the UN statement.
Research from the social anthropology department of the Autonomous University of Mexico shows that the average life expectancy for trans people in Mexico is 35 years. Many succumb to health problems, suicide and far-reaching threats of physical danger at early ages.
“This can be attributed to medical complications, since there are many doctors who do not attend trans women and suicides, but the vast majority are homicides,” said Ophelia Pastrana, a transgender Colombian-Mexican physicist and famous YouTuber who appeared on the Forbes 100 most powerful women in Mexico list in 2017. “Then they revictimize us in the press.”
The Mexican media repeatedly tends to misrepresent victims. Last year, a newspaper from El Olimpio, Michoacán published a photo of a diseased trans woman. She died from a gunshot wound to the head, laying in her own pool of blood. Underneath the gruesome photo was a caption describing the corpse as a “man dressed as a woman.”
Events such as the Miss Trans Beauty competition prove that Mexico’s trans community is empowering itself despite pervasive issues. More visibility should lead to more acceptance and less persecution. As Morales de Franco states: “We all have the right to live in flat-out freedom.”