The Mexican state of Sonora approved the legal name change for transgender people

Sonora became the tenth state in Mexico to guarantee the gender identity of adult trans people.

October 2, 2020

By Georgina González

Photos: Sonora Trans

Sonora became the tenth Mexican state to guarantee the gender identity of transgender adults. With 17 votes in favor, the bill reforming the local Civil Registry Law to guarantee the change of chosen name and self-perceived gender on identity documents was approved on October 1st.

The struggle began in 2018, when LGBTQ+ activists presented a political agenda to candidates in the electoral arena. In November 2019, Representative Miroslava Luján introduced a bill to reform the Civil Registry Law so that transgender people can legally change their gender identity and name on their official documents.

On February 20, 2020, the Justice and Human Rights Commission ruled in favor of the initiative of Representative Luján; however, despite the fact that the trans activists of Sonora maintained the dialogue, the State Congress did not put the ruling to a vote and it spent 8 months "in the freezer".

On September 29, it went to Congress for a first reading and vote, where it did not obtain a majority. And it was on October 1, during the second reading, that the bill guaranteeing the rectification of gender identity and name for transgender people over 18 years of age in the state of Sonora was approved.

“The struggle of trans people has been going on for decades. In Sonora we have suffered persecution, discrimination, expulsion, and the rectification of our gender identity in our documents opens a new, more promising horizon for us,” Fernanda Velarde, founder of the Sonora Trans .

Members of the Sonora Trans collective reacted this way when the reform was approved.

Fernanda and the Sonora Trans collective will seek, as their "next struggle", to work to make gender identity accessible to minors and non-binary people.

“That’s our next fight, it’s on our agenda, but we need to start working on it right now. We’ll probably present it to the next legislature in 2021 and hope that it will be possible to talk about these struggles by then,” the activist added.

Fernanda sees a more promising future; however, as a trans population in Sonora, they are aware that gender identity in their documents "is not a magic wand that will solve all our problems of discrimination and exclusion, but it is a resource, a very powerful one to face all of that and access our rights."

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