Mexico’s Transgender Wrestlers!
Transgender
Mexico City, Aug 22 (EFE).-
Transgender activist Razzia Santillán and trans professional wrestler Estrella Fox organized a lucha libre event on Saturday in Mexico City’s Cineteca Nacional with the aim of transforming this important film venue into a public space for rejecting transphobia.
In the ring of ‘Lucha Libre Trans’ (trans Mexican wrestling), a project created by Fox, all bodies are welcome, and each one fights, in every move, against discrimination against the trans community, sports misogyny, and any label of the “exotic,” a role to which trans people are often relegated in lucha libre, according to the organizers.
“This is our third time bringing the ring and the women to the Cineteca Nacional (national film archive), and it’s in this way that we have become active in this cultural space, because we really need to be seen,” Santillán told EFE about this day of resistance.
For the human rights defender, the urgency lies in the Mexican public overcoming its transphobia and learning their stories, becoming aware of the repression exerted against them by the Mexican state, and understanding that without a “comprehensive trans law” they will not be able to access decent jobs or public health services.
Santillán also expressed her concern about the increase in femicides in Mexico, one of the countries with the highest number of cases in the world and the second with the most transfemicides.
“We are a highly marginalized and violated population. We don’t even have the right to inhabit public spaces. That’s why this occupation is so important, because nobody wants us in public spaces; it’s not a problem exclusive to restrooms or restaurants,” the activist stated.
The president of the Mariposas Negras collective has personally experienced the exclusion, discrimination, and repression of the Mexican state, recounting that in 2023 she was forcibly removed from the women’s restroom at the Cineteca Nacional. This led her to stage a three-year sit-in near the cultural institution, an action for which she now faces criminal charges.
“When you fall into the hands of the Attorney General’s Office, you end up in prisons where drug lords are held, and I’m truly terrified (…) Besides, if I go to a men’s prison, the sentences will surely be longer,” she said.
Despite this, she has faith in what trans women can achieve in the ring, denouncing, with “wit, passion, and fury,” the marginalization the community still suffers in sports and its criminalization simply for defending its identity.
“Tonight, there are 30 people fighting, doing something very different, breaking the molds that the elites impose on the ‘fine arts,'” stated Santillán, for whom wrestling is a grassroots sport that challenges the stigmas stemming from social class divisions.
‘Lucha Libre Trans’ celebrated its third edition at the Cineteca Nacional, featuring figures such as Reina Gintana, who has been in this freestyle sport for over three decades, as well as Erika La Diabólica, Davisha, Amenaza Negra, and others. EFE
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