LGBTI+ older people in Mexico:
to exist, to survive, to persist.

I get up fifty times.

Mario is 69 years old. Thirteen years ago, his peace of mind materialized in a birth certificate, one that does reflect what he has always been and what was difficult for him to put into words: I am a trans man .

Whether it's an earthquake or not, I say, "Oh God, please protect me." But I feel like a survivor of everything... believe me, life's new challenges don't faze me anymore. I think I've already overcome all the bad things in life, all the ignorance, all the pain, the sadness, and everything else. Now, what comes next is like... like saying, "Of course I can!"

Mario grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Mexico City, in an environment where gay men and trans women were referred to using offensive language. Mario didn't have access to sex education that would have allowed him to articulate his identity, but in his childhood, dreams told him who he was: " I dreamed that when I woke up, my body would be that of a man, of a boy ," he recalls.

In that environment and without information, Mario lived silently and kept his own gender identity in confinement for more than fifty years.

There were no lesbian groups, no trans boy groups, nothing. So, honestly, it just kept getting worse for me, but I still thought: if you don't move, then just stay there, isolated, go cry in a corner and die of sadness. But no, I pushed the sadness aside for a bit and said: let's keep moving forward, forward, forward

But that changed the day he crossed paths with Diana, a 59-year-old engineer who had also experienced that same type of isolation since childhood, under the clock at the Balderas metro station in Mexico City.

Diana recalls that period of isolation, which lasted until university, as extreme and terrible . So too was the year and a half of harassment, mockery, and discrimination she faced at one of her workplaces after sharing her experience as a trans woman and finally allowing herself to be herself.

That was isolation, this is another kind of isolation too. I sometimes say that our life stages are like coin tosses. You flip a coin for life or death, for isolation, and for something that comes your way (...) You're always on the razor's edge..

Mario and Diana withstood those lockdowns, and after meeting at that subway station, they started dating, fell in love, and married thirteen years ago. Since then, their visibility and activism have been vital in ensuring legal recognition of the identity of transgender adults in Mexico City.

Mario jokingly says: I'm the grandpa of all the trans boys and girls who feel like their lives are passing them by at 18... no! To recover fifty-six years, a whole life... that's a great challenge, it's not easy at all .

Diana and Mario delayed coming out due to a lack of information and role models. They also did so to avoid jeopardizing their jobs.

In Mexico, 4 out of 10 older adults live in poverty. Not to mention that discrimination against transgender people contributes to job insecurity, and the pandemic exacerbated the problem even further. According to data from the Impacto Diferenciado survey, 70% of transgender women and 60% of transgender men who responded experienced income loss during the first year of the pandemic.

INCOME LOSSES
DURING THE FIRST YEAR OF THE PANDEMIC

Given this dual situation, being older adults and trans people, Mario and Diana feel fortunate .

In some ways, being transgender hasn't been so bad for us, because at least we have food and a place to live..

Thus, during the mandatory isolation due to the health emergency, Mario and Diana allowed themselves to work on a personal project in the mountains of Hidalgo: the construction of their cabin.

What we did in the cabin was really for ourselves. (...) That kept us alive, I mean, productive, even though we weren't working for anything, not earning a living. We were working for our mental health. We were working to distract ourselves and keep us grounded. (...) For many, it was a waste of time, but for us, it kept us grounded, right? It kept us alive..

During lockdown, returning to or remaining in the closet was neither a foreign nor a new strategy for LGBTI+ people; it was a resource used to cope with violence. According to the National Survey on Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity ( ENDOSIG, 2018 ) prepared by Conapred:

92% of LGBT people in Mexico hid their sexual orientation or gender identity at an early age due to the discrimination they face in different spaces.

In 2020, 47.26% of respondents to the survey "Differentiated Impact of Covid-19 on the LGBT Community in Mexico" reported increased violence within their families. However, the percentage of older adults who may have experienced violence at home due to their sexual orientation or gender identity is unknown.

Older adults are the sixth most discriminated social group in Mexico City, only after: people with brown skin, indigenous people, women, “gays” and “poor people”, according to the recent Survey on Discrimination in Mexico City .

Violence

According to the Secretariat of Inclusion and Social Welfare of the Mexican capital, violence against older adults increased by 30% in 2020, with 863 cases of violence registered: 32% for psycho-emotional violence; 31% for patrimonial and economic violence; 31% for omission of care and mistreatment; and 9% for physical violence.

After two years of the pandemic, the Mexican government has not collected any further information. Existing data on LGBTI+ people are the result of efforts by civil society organizations. This data was collected online, and is therefore insufficient given the disparities in internet access and device usage.

The deaths of my friends from HIV
and of family members
during the Covid pandemic
do not hurt any differently.

Juan Carlos recalls that only once in his life did he feel the need to isolate his own sexuality. This 67-year-old photographer, who works at the Institute of Astronomy at UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico), was part of the first Mexican LGBTI+ activist groups in the 1980s. He describes himself as a survivor of two pandemics.

I am one of those people who lived through, let's call it, the full bloom of HIV and its devastating presence in the community. Many, many of my friends died then, and I am alive because Allah is great. (...) I don't really know how it happened..

With the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic, the response, care, prevention and treatments for HIV, cancer, diabetes, mental health illnesses and other conditions were weakened.

According to the Zero Shortages , HIV was the fourth most frequently reported condition due to medication shortages during 2019 and 2020. Furthermore, lockdowns disrupted HIV testing, resulting in fewer diagnoses and a drop in treatment initiation. According to UNAIDS, one in four people living with HIV experienced difficulties accessing their treatment in 2020.

As the pandemic progressed, Juan Carlos learned of deaths, which caused him and Jorge—his partner— growing alarm . Soon, deaths of people close to him followed. One of them, though not from Covid, was that of his mother.

It was a heart attack we knew was coming. And of course, it was a very painful process… I think gay men have a special attachment to their mothers, and they're almost always the closest people to us emotionally. And that bond is established and it stays, it stays there forever..

According to figures from INEGI , in 2020 the main causes of death for older adults were heart disease, Covid and diabetes.

Despite so much suffering, Juan Carlos —like Mario and Diana— also feels fortunate.

I survived HIV and I've survived this pandemic as well. I consider myself, overall, a very, very lucky person. I appreciate my life, and I appreciate that in this reflection on life, it inevitably slips away, and you don't know when or how. There's only one chance to be here, and after that, we don't know. And as someone close to science, I believe there's nothing more after this. And so we have to be here: alive, constant, social, loving, hardworking.

There are many things that put our activities on hold, and instead told us: take care of yourself. Take care of yourself because others won't be able to take care of you.

In Mexico, there are 40 government programs targeting older adults; all of them focus on addressing health, economic, and training needs, and “none of these can be classified as long-term care programs,” according to research by Coneval . Furthermore, none of the programs explicitly mentions LGBTQ+ individuals or specific actions to meet their particular needs.

Mexico City is home to the only three clinics in the entire country that provide free hormone therapy to transgender people. During the first year of the pandemic, users of this service reported delays in the supply of testosterone and estrogen, as well as problems with appointment follow-up, via social media.

Diana was one of those affected by this and her mental health was also compromised.

Yes, the health aspect was very complicated. We needed to take extreme care to avoid getting sick because dealing with this pandemic was difficult, especially since we saw people around us starting to suffer from it..

According to the National Survey on Discrimination ( ENADIS 2017 ), 5.7% of older adults surveyed believe they lack access to healthcare. Similarly, surveys focused on LGBTI populations also fail to report how many have access to the public healthcare system in the country, a system closely linked to formal employment, the institution for which one works, and income.

One in two LGBT people in Mexico hide their sexual orientation and gender identity in the workplace due to discrimination and harassment. According to the 2018 ENDOSIG survey, LGBT people, especially transgender individuals, report the highest rates of discrimination in healthcare services. Consequently, they are also the most likely to avoid seeking medical checkups.

And although the National Survey on Discrimination against Older Adults does not collect data on sexual orientation and gender identity, it makes clear that “limited access to education reduces the opportunity to have formal employment with basic benefits, which limits access to health and social security services, a dynamic that has disadvantaged previous generations, with visible effects on the levels of well-being of older people today.”

These chains of structural violence affect each LGBTI+ population differently. A gay man with formal employment and access to healthcare is not the same as a lesbian or trans woman working in the informal sector without social security.

Juan Carlos, for example, didn't see his job or income affected. For him, working from home kept him "less exposed to getting sick," and he says that for that reason he didn't have to seek medical attention.

The survey, "Differentiated Impact of Covid-19 on the LGBTI Community in Mexico ," found a higher prevalence of older lesbian and transgender women among respondents. Following this finding, the report proposes reflecting on public policies to improve conditions for aging. "These conditions of well-being must be accessible to all, free from discrimination, and with a gender and life-cycle perspective," the report states.

Regarding this, the authors of the article "The right to care for the elderly, a need of the Health system in Mexico " observe that there is an "imperative need" to make modifications in the care systems for the elderly "to solve now the deficiencies in the exercise of rights."

The authors propose that aging should not be seen as a homogeneous phenomenon, but rather, on the contrary, that old age should be analyzed carefully, considering the variables that influence it . Therefore, they propose that "the care perspective should be understood as multifactorial and involving a series of interrelationships—between the family, the State, and the community—where the lack or poor care of any one of these factors can lead to ineffective care."

In the Álamos neighborhood of Mexico City, Samantha Flores, an 89-year-old trans woman, opened Vida Alegre, a day center that since 2018 has served as a meeting place and that before and during the pandemic has also been a community response for LGBTI+ older adults.

That's what I tell Samantha: "It's incredible that this place can unite so many hearts, so many sensibilities, and that we can come together and talk without anyone feeling uncomfortable, right? That's the value I place on Vida Alegre, the people."

The speaker is Korina, a trans woman with dark skin, small eyes, and shoulder-length straight hair who says she is “five minutes away from turning 60.” She has spent most of her life working in the bar industry and also worked as a sex worker for a time.

Alfi and Anzin are friends, and since Vida Alegre opened, they frequent the space and participate in various activities such as thanatology sessions, yoga, and the film club. Above all, they have found friendship here.

This place has given me many friends, and that's the most important thing to me. The way they treat you is so lovely, that kindness; it's like giving you a little affection, and all the affection people show you, in any way, is welcome.

The person who answers is Antzin, a woman with short, gray hair, blue eyes, and a relaxed voice. She is 74 years old, a massage therapist, and a traveler—for thirty years she traveled through parts of Asia to learn meditation and massage techniques. She doesn't like to be labeled; she says she doesn't identify with any letter of the LGBT+ acronym. She feels attraction toward people regardless of gender.

For Alfi, a 71-year-old non-binary and intersex person who uses a bicycle as their main mode of transportation, Vida Alegre represents a safe and inclusive place for people like them and the rest of the rainbow there is more intimacy, more trust, and more community here .

But Vida Alegre isn't just frequented by LGBTQ+ people. Korina says that even before the pandemic, cisgender heterosexual women (that is, people who identify with their gender assigned at birth and are attracted to people of the opposite gender) were already regulars. And she asserts that they, like LGBTQ+ people, also experience a great deal of neglect .

In March 2020, when the pandemic was announced in Mexico, the government took mitigation measures and followed the World Health Organization's guidelines by declaring older adults as one of the at-risk groups for Covid-19. Vida Alegre closed, and its members activated organizational measures to cope with isolation, loneliness, and hunger.

Our community is very affectionate, very loving, very caring. So, for them to suddenly close our place, where we could meet to talk and see each other, and also with a history of difficult lives, of isolation, well, yes, it was hard —Korina.

Despite the physical closure, Vida Alegre's community outreach continued. They opened a WhatsApp group to stay in touch, and Burritos no bombas , a food bank run by and for LGBTQ+ people, provided them with food baskets (basic products for a nutritious diet) for eight months.

We kept in touch through our WhatsApp group. We knew who had gotten sick and who hadn't, and we prayed for our adoptive family—because we've all adopted each other. Thankfully, no one died; many were infected, but we all pulled through, and there were no losses..

Korina found, in addition to the support of her chosen family, the love of her friends when she suffered in bed with Covid-19.

The pandemic gave me the opportunity to strengthen my emotional connection with my friends and to realize who is truly there for me. The emotional aspect was a huge revelation. Although many people say they had a tough time, I feel very happy because, despite almost dying, I realized I have people who love me very much and whom I love very much.

The existence of a WhatsApp group allowed most of the Vida Alegre family to stay in touch, but Alfi couldn't access it because she doesn't have internet or a smartphone, and besides, she doesn't know how to use one. Given this, Alfi says it's important to look for opportunities.

If you're restricted in something, you explore, you look elsewhere, and you find things that motivate you. I'm motivated by openness regarding rights, especially environmental activism, and I'd like to implement an inclusive language workshop at Vida Alegre.

For Antzin, WhatsApp was the way he could stay in closer contact with his friends. With old friends, with those from other continents, with those from his meditation group, and with those he made when he went for walks in the parks or on La Milla, a running or biking circuit within the Chapultepec forest.

"Antzin even talks to stones ," says Alfi, alluding to Antzin's ability to converse with people he doesn't know and make them his acquaintances.

But also, regarding loneliness, Antzin and Alfi say they don't share the tearful view that people have of it. Both (Alfi uses the pronouns "elle" and "ella") also enjoyed their time alone and the transformation the city underwent during the lockdown.

The city didn't shut down completely, but it felt freer. In that sense, it was advantageous because nature reclaimed spaces it hadn't had... suddenly birds that hadn't appeared before started showing up because there weren't humans around, Alfi replies..