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Mexican Refugee Film

        According to the narrator of the film, Claudia Huerta, the numbers of Mexicans seeking political asylum has shot up by 100 percent in the past six years. These requests have to do not only with persecution for political activism. They include persecution for sexual orientation in a largely Catholic nation in which more humanitarian laws regarding gays have yet to translate into humane behavior by law enforcement: Those who should protect gays are often the worst abusers of their rights and they operate in an atmosphere of impunity.
     Some of the testimonies of those interviewed brought to mind the brutal human rights abuses of El Salvador and Guatemala at the height of those countries’ civil wars.        “’She’s not going to be a lesbian anymore,’” a member of the Mexican National Army warned Emma Beltran before driving her away to a room where she was tortured with lit cigarettes on her back and repeatedly raped for over a week.
     She said the fact that she was openly critical of Mexico’s dismal human rights record made her a target. But she was a target for another reason as well. “I am public about being a lesbian,” she said.
       Beltran left Mexico in 2001. She eventually received asylum in Canada. She was lucky. During 2001, almost 2000 Mexicans sought asylum but of these, only 28 percent were granted it, explained the narrator. Mexico ranks fourth among all countries in terms of the numbers of applicants for asylum in Canada that it generates.
    According to Amnesty International statistics, some 500 homosexuals were killed between 1995 and 2001 in Mexico. The cases have never been resolved. The country, explained the film’s narrator, has taken second place on the continent for homophobic assassinations.
      A lucky survivor of police brutality is public finance professional Jose Luis Calderon. He was found kissing his partner in a car. Mexican police officers forced them out and threatened to rape Calderon with their guns. “It’s a shame that you are a Mexican,” a cop taunted. When the horror was over, Calderon knew he could not report it to officials. “What could I do? Go and tell them that their buddies are abusing me?”
     Others who have obtained asylum in Canada include Alejandra Cabreara, a woman with a degree in tourist management. Her husband raped her repeatedly and also tried to kill her with a knife. His hatred, he claimed, stemmed from the fact that she had borne three girls. He wanted a son. When Cabreara went to the cops their response was, “He’s your husband. How could he rape you?”
     Cabreara is lucky to have got out alive. Mexican publication Sol de Mexico reported in 2004 that 5200 Mexican women between the ages of 15 and 49 die annually as a result of partner violence. Two out of three die in their own homes.
     In another case, Raul Aguilera, a labor activist, was thrown into the back of a car.  Later he smelled gasoline and just assumed he cops were going to burn him alive. After a long drive, the men let him go. Although not gay, he had been active with the Zapatista movement which has brought together a wide range of human rights activists. He too obtained asylum in Canada.
    An advocate for refugees who was interviewed in the film explained the difficulty of convincing Canadians that Mexico generates refugees. The country is viewed, if anything, as a “winter playground” for Canada, he said.
     Furthermore, it’s often difficult for Canadian advocates for gays to “believe the lived experience” of gays in Mexico, which is after all a democracy. Laws concerning the treatment of gays and women have advanced greatly. But the chasm between the law and the actual practice of those who should uphold the law remains, he said.
     The film briefly touches on the issue of hundreds of women who have disappeared in Juarez—their bodies found, if at all, mutilated.
    The film is being shown by the gay right’s group Lambda Legal (lambdalegal.org), specifically its Proyecto Igualdad, an outreach program to the Latino community. 
     Hopefully the film will help enlighten people about the treatment of gays and women in Mexico. It also has the potential of raising awareness among immigrants of what gays endure. An immigrant woman from Albuquerque who saw the film said she could relate to the level of fear of being discovered by law enforcement. “I feel the way two gays feel walking down the street holding hands,” she said.

From an article in National Catholic Reporter