Mexico City's 'Pink Zone' is center of growing, proud gay and lesbian community

By LAURENCE ILIFF / The Dallas Morning News
 
MEXICO CITY – Amid the jumble of restaurants, discos and knickknack shops in the capital's touristy Zona Rosa neighborhood, one small coffee shop stands out. Two large rainbow flags frame a sign with the legend, in English, "BGay, BProud."

An open window reveals brightly colored sofas and metal bar stools inhabited by mostly young, same-sex couples. They hold hands, drink coffee and occasionally kiss.

This open expression of their sexuality is not limited to the interior of the nation's first cafe devoted explicitly to Mexico's gay population.

All over the Zona Rosa, in the heart of macho Mexico, young men walk arm-in-arm, check out passers-by and congregate on street corners. Men greet each other with a peck on the cheek in McDonalds. Lesbian couples, though fewer in number, nuzzle each other as they lounge against storefronts.

"Part of what we are doing here is showing people that we have nothing to hide, we are not doing anything wrong," said Gerardo Espinosa, the 22-year-old co-owner of the BGay cafe. "This generation is unlike the others. We watch Will &Grace. We see gay characters on Friends. We're on the Internet, and we absorb a lot from other cultures."

Mr. Espinosa sees the Zona Rosa quickly turning into a "gay village" full of fashion boutiques, restaurants and cafes, as in the Castro district in San Francisco or Dallas' Oak Lawn.

For now, the area is the center of a gay community that has grown in recent years along with democracy, the Internet, the popularity of American culture and global debate on issues such as same-sex marriage and gay priests, analysts and activists said.

The trend comes on the 25th anniversary of the nation's first gay march, in Mexico City, where the City Council is considering a same-sex civil union law. It would extend some rights of marriage to same-sex unions and might pass this year. A similar measure failed by one vote last year.

Demographic shift

One key element changing Mexican social attitudes is a demographic shift comparable to the baby boomer phenomenon in the United States after World War II, analysts said.

Mexico's demographic bubble of globalized youth is coming of age. A third of the nation's 100 million people are 15 to 35 years old. And 20 million will move into that age group within a decade.

But not everyone is crazy about young men cuddling along the network of walkways in downtown's Zona Rosa – a Bohemian and chic enclave in decades past.

Its name, "Pink Zone," referred to the tranquillity and glamour of an artist colony when it was established 50 years ago. Streets are named after European cities such as Liverpool and Prague. Now, some say, its two dozen square blocks are becoming more of a "Red Zone," with shops selling sexually oriented videos, condoms and other paraphernalia.

"These people bring a lot of prostitution," said Víctor Manuel Freyre, 53, who has sold handicrafts in the zone for 40 years. A gay bar dedicated to young people, El Cabarétito, moved next door to his shop three years ago. "They block the door, and you can't say anything to them because then it's discrimination. The gays used to be more discreet."

Some business groups go further, saying the young men, some of whom they describe as provocatively dressed, are driving families and tourists from the Zona Rosa.

"We are not homophobic in any way," said Daniel Loeza Treviño, vice president of the National Chamber of Restaurants and Prepared Food. "But just the show they put on in the streets – men kissing and hugging, girls with girls – makes visitors feel assaulted. And a lot of these kids are minors."

Paulo Juárez, an official in the Zona Rosa tourism office, said there have been complaints about the show of affection among same-sex couples. All have come from Mexican tourists visiting from conservative cities such as Guadalajara, he said. None has come from the steady stream of foreign visitors, he added.

The cultural clash, however, is not limited to the Zona Rosa, analysts said.

While Mexican television has kept its distance from gay themes, there have been a few gay characters in prime time, and the cable and radio airwaves are full of talk shows that address sexuality. At home, cable TV brings viewers U.S. shows, including Bravo's hit Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and HBO's racy Queer As Folk – which some of Mexico's cable companies initially blocked.

Youth-oriented magazines and Web sites often include gay topics. In Mexico City and elsewhere, gay youths are more visible in shopping malls and on public transportation. Some wear rainbow armbands as a symbol of pride.

Still, Mexico remains a heavily Roman Catholic nation where the clergy campaign against condom use and sex education. President Vicente Fox belongs to the conservative National Action Party and called one of his opponents in the 2000 election "mariquita," meaning "sissy." Gay youths are sometimes physically assaulted by parents or classmates.

Backlash has begun

The backlash against gay visibility has already begun, said pollster María de las Heras. While the vast majority say that everyone has the right to his or her sexual orientation, she said, most don't want to see physical affection among gays and lesbians in public, and only a fifth support same-sex marriage.

"The visibility of homosexual men in a macho society like Mexico makes other men feel more vulnerable, and that makes their reactions more drastic," Ms. de las Heras said. "The level of homophobia we are seeing is intense."

In contrast, older gays and those from Mexico's more conservative countryside say they find the brashness of the capital's gay young people refreshing.

"My generation was much more reserved; we had to hide," said Carlos Abraham Slim, 38, a photographer from the nearby city of Puebla whose art exposition hangs from the walls of the BGay cafe. The images, using a 19th-century process that leaves them bluish, are semi-erotic. "This is a place where you really feel free," he said.

Others agreed.

"In the last five years, there is a freer gay climate here," said Alberto Ibarra, 23, a university student drinking a soda with four friends in the BGay cafe. But outside the Zona Rosa, he said, "There is still a lot of discrimination despite the changes."

His friend, Guadalupe Mosco, 22, also a university student, said lesbians have it easier than gay men. "I think it is easier to be a woman. Before we were looked down upon, but things are beginning to change."

The explosion of gay young people in the Zona Rosa is in part a byproduct of the free market.

Tito Vasconcelos, a 52-year-old "torch singer" and pioneer in Mexico's gay movement, said he realized five years ago that gay youths had nowhere to go, as adult-oriented bars proliferated in the dark basements of the Zona Rosa.

So he opened El Cabarétito, which initially offered theatrical skits. Gay young people flocked to the club and stayed in nearby coffee shops or hung out on the streets. A competing club down the block, Celo, also caters to gay youths.

Mr. Vasconcelos has five businesses, including a soda fountain for gay kids who are not old enough – 18 – to enter a bar. A charitable foundation offers an accredited high school program for teenagers who are being harassed at school.

Rather than rejecting gay youths as troublesome, he said, business owners in the Zona Rosa should embrace them.

"On the surface, it doesn't seem like they have a lot of purchasing power, because they only buy a few drinks," Mr. Vasconcelos said, referring to soda and alcohol alike. "But they come every single day."

Further, he said, the Zona Rosa has always been a gathering spot for gay Mexicans, even if they were less visible in the past.

He remembered the heyday of the neighborhood when Latin American literary figures such as Mexico's Carlos Monsiváis chatted in cafes.

"It was a fantastical place ... and gay people are part of the Zona Rosa and its history," Mr. Vasconcelos said.

Transformation's roots

The transformation of the zone from artsy neighborhood to commercial district came with the opening of the city's subway system in the late 1960s, which brought the Mexico City masses downtown, he said.

Architect and history buff Edgar Tavares López said the Zona Rosa has always been a place to see extravagantly dressed people; a place where everybody somehow fits in. Through the years it drew so-called "hippies" or "punks"; now it's "goths" and gays.

Likewise, the area's commercial use has fluctuated with the times and the trends, given a lack of planning, Mr. Tavares said.

"It's like a complex experiment that you never know how it's going to turn out," he said. "You have a nice hotel next to a gay bar next to a handicrafts shop. ... I think it's a place suited to changing with the times, like it is now with gay people."

E-mail liliff@dallasnews.com