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MEXICO CITY, Mexico. Activists are denouncing the misuse of LGBTQ+ quotas in recent Mexican elections. In the state of Michoacán, eight people who registered under the affirmative action program for belonging to the LGBTQ+ community and identifying as women were elected to govern in eight municipalities and are now facing accusations of quota misuse.

In Mexico, the Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Branch of the Federation (TEPJF) and the National Electoral Institute (INE) require political parties to register candidates of indigenous, Afro-Mexican, disabled, sexually diverse, and migrant people in order to guarantee their political and electoral rights.

The quota for LGBT+ people was first established in the 2021 elections and since then activists have documented that political parties are usurping that affirmative action.

According to data from the Michoacán Electoral Institute, a total of 67 people identified as LGBT+ in these elections. However, these records show inconsistencies.

In some cases, men who identified as gay also registered as women in the sex category; and even those who registered as men self-identified as lesbian women, trans women, or non-binary people. In other registrations, they chose not to mention their sexual orientation and gender identity. 

“This isn’t just about usurpation by cisgender heterosexual men, but also by gay men who lent themselves to these charades. Some have said that political parties forced them to run as women, but we didn’t see them withdraw from the race either. It’s clear they don’t care about gender parity, nor about the media transphobia that’s happening as a result,” commented Irene Valdivia, a member of Canteras LBT , a collective of diverse women from Michoacán, in an interview.

“Affirmative action must be a priority for political parties.”

“The biggest problem is the political parties that refuse to invest in and strengthen their membership by not considering women, Indigenous people, or people from diverse backgrounds. Furthermore, the electoral body circumvents the law on gender parity by allowing all affirmative action candidates to fill positions designated for women. This is serious because parity should apply to women, including lesbians, bisexuals, and trans people, not just women of convenience,” Raúl Martínez, a member of the Michoacán es Diversidad Collective, Presentes

According to the INE regulations, to apply for the LGBT and Afro-Mexican quota, only simple self-identification is required. That is, the person only needs to state that they belong to that group. 

For Indigenous people, people with disabilities, and migrants, the principle of qualified self-identification applies. In these cases, documents are required to verify their connection to and community work with this population. If they live with a disability, they must present a medical certificate.

A report prepared by El Colegio de México states that affirmative action “is an issue that political parties should necessarily embrace and establish as part of their ideological priorities and their very organizational structure. Otherwise, the parties would simply comply with the authority's directives to meet quotas, without seeking to substantively represent the groups targeted for priority attention.”

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In Michoacán, activists are proposing guidelines for LGBT affirmative action.

Irene Valdivia commented that since 2022, civil organizations in favor of LGBT human rights without partisan interests and the Michoacán Electoral Institute (IEM) held talks in which they proposed that the affirmative action of sexual diversity be divided into two: one by sexual orientation and another by gender identity, with more solid requirements to participate. 

“We are asking that gay, lesbian, and bisexual people submit letters from collectives and civil associations proving their work in support of sexual diversity. We are appealing to the same for trans people, since self-identification is not enough. We believe there is no excuse for those seeking to run for office not to have their documentation corrected, thus preventing identity theft,” she told this publication.

Valdivia adds that these observations were well received by the local electoral body. However, it was the Electoral Tribunal of Toluca that resolved the challenge and determined that requesting documents beyond the self-identification process “is excessive and disproportionate, which violates the right to personal identity, gender, privacy, and private life.”

This is not the first time they have usurped quotas for vulnerable populations and gender parity.

Political parties and candidates have not only usurped the quotas for vulnerable populations, but also gender parity.

In the 2018 elections, muxe activist Amaranta Gómez Regalado, along with others, filed a complaint with the Oaxaca Electoral Institute after political parties usurped positions to comply with gender parity. Following this complaint, they succeeded in disqualifying 17 cisgender men who identified as muxe .

In 2021 in Tlaxcala, 18 men called themselves trans women just so that their political party would comply with gender parity.

For this year's elections, there have been complaints not only about the usurpation of LGBT quotas, but also about the usurpation of disability , indigenous, and Afro-Mexican candidacies .

The Latin American and Caribbean Observatory of the Political and Electoral Rights of Trans People took a stand on the matter and demanded that electoral authorities "must investigate and sanction false candidacies" and mentioned that establishing effective mechanisms to guarantee the representation of this population remains pending.