Former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum on Sunday became the first woman elected president of Mexico.

Sheinbaum, a scientist who is a member of outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s leftist Morena party, defeated Xóchitl Gálvez of the opposition National Action Party and Jorge Álvarez Máynez of the Citizens’ Movement. She will also be Mexico’s first Jewish president.

“Thank you to the people of Mexico,” said Sheinbaum on her X account. “This is your triumph, this June 2 we once again made history.”

Mexican voters elected Sheinbaum less than a year after Mexico City hosted an LGBTQ and intersex rights conference that the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute co-sponsored. The election also took place against the backdrop of rampant cartel violence in Michoacán and other Mexican states. 

Sheinbaum before the election released a policy paper that reiterated her support for LGBTQ rights in Mexico. The platform, among other things, reiterated “absolute respect for diverse gender identities” and pledged to create “public policies to (end impunity) and to eradicate hate crimes and violence against LGBTIQ+ communities because of gender and sexual orientation.”

“Without diversity, there is no democracy,” read the paper.

(Courtesy photo)

Mexican Congresswoman Salma Luévano, who is transgender, is among those who congratulated Sheinbaum. Claudia López, the former mayor of the Colombian capital of Bogotá who is a lesbian, in a post to her X account described Sheinbaum’s election as a “cultural and political transformation” for Mexico.

“Claudia Sheinbaum has on her shoulders the largest popular mandate in Mexican history and the necessary institutional equilibrium that depends so much on her talent and style of leadership,” said López. “I am sure that her human, professional, scientific training and her feminine empathy will allow her to honor history and her role in it.”

The Washington Blade will update this article.

The Mexican Senate on Thursday approved a bill that would ban so-called conversion therapy in the country.

Yaaj México, a Mexican LGBTQ rights group, on X noted the measure passed by a 77-4 vote margin with 15 abstentions.  The Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Mexico’s congress, approved the bill last month that, among other things, would subject conversion therapy practitioners to between two and six years in prison and fines.

The Senate on its X account described conversion therapy as “practices that have incentivized the violation of human rights of the LGBTTTIQ+ community.”

“The Senate moved (to) sanction therapies that impede or annul a person’s orientation or gender identity,” it said. “There are aggravating factors when the practices are done to minors, older adults and people with disabilities.”

Mexico City and the states of Oaxaca, Quintana Roo, Jalisco and Sonora are among the Mexican jurisdictions that have banned the discredited practice. 

The Senate in 2022 passed a conversion therapy ban bill, but the House of Deputies did not approve it. It is not immediately clear whether President Andrés Manuel López Obrador supports the ban.

Canada, Brazil, Belgium, Germany, France, and New Zealand are among the countries that ban conversion therapy. Virginia, California, and D.C. are among the U.S. jurisdictions that prohibit the practice for minors.  

A Spanish version of this article can be found here.

Gaby Ortiz, renowned trans stylist in Hidalgo, an unidentified trans woman in Tlaquepaque, Jalisco, Vanesa, trans woman in Coatzacoalcos, Miriam Ríos activist and trans commissioner of the Movimiento Ciudadano political party in Michoacán, and Samantha Fonseca, a trans activist and human rights defender in Mexico City, have been murdered in the first 15 days of the year.

People belonging to LGBTTTIQ+ groups protested outside the National Palace against the escalation of violence against trans people and hate crimes.

Victoria Sámano, a trans activist, denounced the hate speeches of leaders, officials and public representatives targeting trans people and urged the president to condemn this violence.

“We demand that, in your capacity as representative of this country, you take a stand against the violence that trans people experience.” – Victoria Sámano, trans activist and founder of LLECA (Listening to the Street)

The National Observatory of Hate Crimes against LGBTQI+ People defines hate crimes as culturally founded and systematically and socially widespread behaviors of contempt against a person or group of people based on negative prejudice or stigma related to an undeserved disadvantage, and which has the effect of harming your fundamental rights and freedoms, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

“We are not only demonstrating for these deaths, we also demand that the Comprehensive Trans Law be approved as a matter of urgency, which seeks to influence education, housing, health and work for trans people. We demand that all these legislative initiatives that favor people of sexual diversity be unblocked. And that Morena, even though the majority in the Chamber of Deputies and Senate, have remained silent, they have not done anything, they do not have a clear position against violence towards LGBTTTIQ+ people … even when they have boasted of being a left-wing and progressive party throughout the 6-year period and that they support vulnerable populations.” – Victoria Sámano, trans activist and founder of LLECA (Listening to the Street) 

This wave of transfemicides occurs in a context of escalating violence and attacks against LGBTTTIQ+ people, including activist and public figures such as Nicté Chávez or Paola Suárez, and the proliferation of hate speech against trans women and LGBTTTIQ+ people by public officials. According to data from Letra Ese, in 2023 there were 58 murders of LGBTTTIQ+ people, 35 were trans women.