Diversidad sexual en Poza Rica y Coatzintla, Veracruz, México

This article is based on two months of ethnographic fieldwork done in 2017 in Poza Rica and Coatzintla, Veracruz, Mexico. I focus on the ways in which queer mestizos[i] contest, negotiate and mediate gender/sexual policing and how they challenge and produce/reproduce traditional gender roles and heteronormativity. I track these queer practices in contexts where institutions like family, marriage, church, and mass media, as well as cultural expressions like motherhood and language[ii] police alternative gender/sexual identifications and/or expressions. Gender and sexual policing are also mediated by the intersectionalities of gender, race-ethnicity, class, sex, and sexuality. I address queer (in)visibility and reveal how queer Mexicans make queer-worlds possible for themselves and publicly display what it means to be queer in these two towns. My findings reveal gender and sexual fluidity as well as emerging spaces that intersect with other practices for queer Mexicans. The data gathered also suggests terms of identification as a significant terrain fitting neatly into the paradigms of these two towns. [i] Mixed race as people part of the unmarked majority in these towns. [ii] Institutions and cultural expressions that work hand in hand in the construction and creation of people’s internalized homophobia.