I was still in grade school, so I had my uniform on, but I was already wearing lipstick, nail polish, and clogs with wooden heels; I was a hyperfeminine little boy, so when I walked past this group, they noticed me right away, and one of them called out, “Look at the little girl, la chiquilla, la jotita!” And then several others started calling to me, inviting me to come closer. Feeling exposed, I panicked and ran all the way to the metro station.

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I’ll never forget that experience: so many jotas—some wearing makeup and men’s clothing, some in dresses and heels, some with short hair, lipstick, and earrings, all of them flamboyant—laughing and calling to me in what seems to me today like a scene out of a surrealist movie.

Months later, I walked through the Zona Rosa for the first time with my childhood friend Karina and a few other vestidas, as we called ourselves. That day, Karina and I were in the Glorieta de Insurgentes, a sunken plaza connected to the metro station bearing its name. In the mid-1970s, urban tribes would gather there, heterosexuals mingling with people we know today as LGBT, regardless of social class, some in groups and some seated on the ring of concrete that encircled the space.

Some would sit in chairs at the cafés and restaurants that existed in the plaza, turning the area into a meeting point for all kinds of activities. On this occasion, Karina and I were with a group of vestidas: La Georgette, La Claudio, La María Félix, Enrique La Galleta, and La Princesa Mérit, who was a minor like Karina and me, but she was already a vestida; that is, she was already transfeminine, which was admirable back then.

I have met so many wonderful people who have not only challenged society in one way or another but have also stood up to the system.

At thirteen, I was awestruck by the experience, by seeing so many vestidas together, queering around and talking about countless things I didn’t understand yet. I remember that’s where I met Miss Dior, Miss Clairol, La Licuadora, La Viuda, Katia, and so many other vestidas, some of whom were very femme, others who were already on hormones, and others who were more masculine, like La Licuadora, the blender, whose real name I never knew. These were times of terrifying violence against people like me, like us, people who dared to challenge what we now call heteronormativity and the gender binary, to challenge the categories of masculine and feminine.

In my case, I identify as a transfeminine person, and it’s important for me to mention other people who dared to challenge the gender binary in my time, people who paved the way for future generations; we owe them recognition because they managed to shift the way society viewed nonconforming people in that era. In my long trajectory, I have met so many wonderful people who have not only challenged society in one way or another but have also stood up to the system and transgressed the norms imposed on us.

My contribution to the anthology México se escribe con J: una historia de la cultura gay (Mexiqueer: A History of Gay Culture in Mexico) is an essay titled “Jotas, vestidas, cuinas, locas y mariposas: Historias del movimiento trans en la Ciudad de México” (Jotas, Vestidas, Queens, Locas and Mariposas: Histories of the Trans Movement in Mexico City), in which I describe my experience and talk about the figures who had an impact on my life, like Xóchitl and her princesses, whom I mention in the context of one of the parties Xóchitl organized in luxury hotels and resorts outside the city. Here is a paragraph from that essay, where I talk about the importance of not forgetting them:

There were too many important people at the party to count. Marta Valdez-Pinos was there; she was the owner of several colorful watering holes like DeVal, an iconic nightclub back in those days. Also in attendance was Guillermo Ocaña, better known as Camelia la Tejana; a respected event promoter and agent, rumor has it that he was also one of the founders of the famous and elitist bar El 9. Camelia la Tejana acted as the master of ceremonies that night. Mitzy Gay, who had just recently won the Miss Gay pageant, was there, too; he was just starting to make a name for himself in the world of celebrity fashion, but he would go on to become a famous designer in Mexico and the United States and dress stars like Verónica Castro, María Félix, and many more. That night, the show was courtesy of Francis, whose drag career was on the rise, with help from Xóchitl, of course; over the years, Francis would become an international star. Also present, naturally, was Naná, known as the Queen of the Zona Rosa for her beauty and for being one of the few trans women in those days for whom doors would be opened and traffic would literally stop.

Xóchitl, or Gustavo Ortega Maldonado, as her inner circle knew her, was a mystical person who remains shrouded in myth and all kinds of stories, some of which might be true and others made up. What is indisputable, though, is that those of us who had the chance to be in the presence of Xóchitl—queen, mother, and lady; the one and only—will never forget her or the impact she had not only on LGBT communities but on everyone around her, including celebrities like film and television stars, writers, politicians, designers, promoters, and so on, as well as society in general. Xóchitl wasn’t just someone with power who could pull strings with people in different social spheres—she was also someone who challenged society with the way she presented herself in public and who used her power so others, including many trans people, could get ahead.

It’s a fact that many people found success in different fields back then because of their connection to Xóchitl. I can’t think of another icon who had as profound an impact on my life and the lives of the people I knew, regardless of class, stigmas, or stereotypes. Xóchitl wasn’t just an entrepreneur who managed brothels and organized events, who knew people in politics and the arts and had a way of opening doors for nonconforming people so we could have a place in society, she was also a support system for many in my inner circle, like Naná and Raquel. Xóchitl encouraged them and supported their development and productivity; she made space for them, taking them under her wing like her daughters. For me, Xóchitl wasn’t only the Queen of all Queens, she was also the Mother to all vestidas in those days.

In Mexico City, my beloved ex-DF, there have always been social justice movements; groups have always organized to express their discontent and protest against corrupt, oppressive governments. We cannot forget the student movement in 1968 and the massacre at Tlatelolco, the 1971 Halconazo that murdered and disappeared so many young people, or, more recently, the forced disappearance of forty-three students from Ayotzinapa. All of these were crimes committed by the state.

It was in 1978, on the tenth anniversary of the Tlatelolco massacre, that a contingent including gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans people joined the march to give visibility to their struggle and express their rage against the system that oppressed, persecuted, and criminalized them for the simple fact of their sexual orientation, identity, or gender expression. In the prologue to Voces del Otro Lado (Voices from the Other Side), the professor and my esteemed colleague Ernesto Reséndiz Oikión recounts this historic event and the movement it sparked, reminding us that when the Homosexual Front for Revolutionary Action (FHAR), the Lambda Group for Homosexual Liberation, and the autonomous group Oikabeth took to the streets demanding sexual liberation, their action catalyzed the creation of publications that later helped share information about these organizations.

The following year, in June of 1979, these groups got organized, and they organized the first LGBT march in Mexico City to call for an end to police harassment and extortion, and to demand that our rights as citizens be respected. I remember joining the march, which began at the Monumento a los Niños Héroes in Chapultepec and ended at the Alameda, right in front of Bellas Artes, if memory serves. It was the first time that we trans women—nosoTRANS—dared to walk the city streets, many of us in heels and long dresses, others in boots and miniskirts.

I remember wearing a halter top and shorts with high-heeled sandals and will certainly never forget the insults hurled at us, the cries of “jotos,” “maricones,” “putos,” and “degenerados,” among so many others. At one point, they started throwing things at us, garbage, I think, even fruit and other waste. I will always remember that moment of community empowerment, when we saw that we were, in fact, able to resist and challenge an oppressive system that criminalized and harassed us.

I feel an obligation and a responsibility to not only visibilize but also recover and vindicate the struggles of the LGBT movement.

A few years ago, I assisted Dr. Kris Klein Hernández, a historian and professor at a university in the United States, with a research project about a doctor who practiced sex reassignment surgeries, or gender-affirming surgeries, in Mexico in the 1950s. Supposedly, the first trans person to undergo this surgery was Marta Olmos, and it was performed by Dr. Rafael Sandoval Camacho. In the research process, we discovered that Dr. Siobhan Guerrero McManus wrote in 2014 about this doctor and the surgeries he performed in the state of Veracruz.

We tried to find a case that preceded Marta Olmos’s, even searching social media and talking with trans elders in Veracruz, but found nothing beyond the writings of Drs. Sandoval Camacho and Guerrero McManus. Recently, we uncovered another article published in 2023 in which Professor Ryan M. Jones from SUNY Geneseo confirms that, in 1954, Marta Olmos became the first trans person in Mexico to undergo what today is known as gender confirmation surgery.

It was toward the end of 2017 when I felt the need to recover and preserve the history and memoirs of my trans siblings, but unfortunately, this has been a challenge, since—given my exile in the United States, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and the fact that most trans people of my generation have either died or disappeared—there are virtually no history or testimonial accounts told by trans people of earlier generations.

The system’s repression of LGBT people from the 1960s through the ’80s has not been adequately documented or made visible. Nor is there an official archive to legally document all the injustices committed against trans people in those days. This is why I feel an obligation and a responsibility to not only visibilize but also recover and vindicate the struggles of the LGBT movement, no matter how difficult.

Decades have passed, and the testimonies of trans survivors still have not been gathered within a legal framework in order to foster historic reparations. It is essential that these stories be told, that new generations learn that the long path to our civil and human rights was paved with the blood and suffering of our ancestors who fought for our right to express ourselves and to be trans, to resist oppression as trans people, and to love ourselves and each other as trans people.

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From Tsunami: Women’s Voices from Mexico, edited by Heather Cleary and Gabriela Jauregui. Copyright © 2025. Available from Feminist Press.