Patria Jiménez

#PatriaJimenez (1957 – ): A Mexican politician who also heads #ClosetDeSorJuana (Sister Juana’s Closet), a lesbian rights group named after Juana Ines de la Cruz (a Carmelite nun and Mexican poet), she has been fighting for LGBTQ+ rights in #Mexico for over two decades. Representing the #PartidoDeLaRevolucionDemocratica (Party of the Democratic Revolution), she was the first openly LGBT member of Mexico’s legislature in the country’s history and the first openly LGBTQ+ member of any Latin American legislature. Even before becoming a politician she worked relentlessly on combating bigotry in Mexico, becoming notable in the early 1990s for pressuring police to reopen investigations into the deaths of 25 gay and trans men (most of them from the #Chiapas drag and transgender community). She has been a strong advocate of combating homophobic and transphobic by ending the silence and marginalization that happens within families with children who are LGBTQ+. In speaking to how many see her as courageous, she says “Courage is when, in Chiapas, you ask a general to remove his troops from a community because they are entering houses at night, frightening people. You have to talk to that general, to confront someone with weapons and power, to overcome your timidity and fear. Today they tell me I’m going to Chiapas, to lead the people on a march into the community of La Realidad. When we get to the roadblock, there will be armed paramilitaries. These are the most risky situations: entering communities in which my truck is surrounded by paramilitaries threatening to burn it, saying that they will kill us. It used to make me afraid, but it doesn’t any more. Because I am never alone. Even when people ask me to go in front, to confront the troops or the paramilitaries, they come with me, so we’re a group…Others have been beaten up, but this has not happened to me. If that happens to me some day, it will be part of the work. I just hope they don’t hurt me too badly.” #PrideMonth #LGBTQIA #LGBTQIAPride #Pride #LegendsOfPride #YouCannotEraseUs