Month two (and a half): Gay Pride March

5.) Six of us went to the Puebla Gay Pride March. It was a lot of fun and a great experience. The march was small compared to Pride Marches in US cities and it was made almost entirely of young adults, high school age to lower thirties, I’d say. It felt intimate because it was small, like we were all in this together, come what may, and that we really were there because we believed it was important. Homosexuality is still not very accepted here, even among many young college folks. I guess it’s the same in the US, especially outside of Massachusetts, but I am still a bit surprised by the people who are against it or who have the attitude of “they can do what they want as long as I don’t have to see it.” I’ve had discussions with some of my friends and many hold this view or say that even if they wanted to go to the pride march to support homosexuals, they couldn’t because of their parents. Parents have more control over their children in the universities here because many times the kids still live at home. That makes for a different dynamic.

The goal of the march was to pressure the Puebla government to pass a law protecting against discrimination based on sexuality. There is a federal law in Mexico against such discrimination, but the state of Puebla doesn’t have a law. The way it was explained to me, that means that any discrimination case of this sort can’t be taken to a Puebla court, or at least if it is, the courts don’t have to do anything about it. I didn’t actually know that this was the specific purpose of the march until I got there. I also learned upon arriving that it is against the Mexican Constitution for foreigners to take part in political demonstrations in Mexico. We decided the march counted, but decided we were still going to march. Hopefully no government officials will come after us. I’m guessing since there was no violence or anything around the march and a week has passed, we’re probably ok. We did show up in the newspapers the next day, but without any identification. It was just in a picture that was used as the backdrop for the page in the paper about the march. We were careful not to give our names or nationalities to any of the photographers or interviewers, though I did do one interview for an internet paper.


1) At the march


2) The huge rainbow flag at the march.