Queer urban activism under state impunity: Encountering an LGBTTTI Pride archive in Chilpancingo, Mexico

While southern Mexico’s state of Guerrero has faced rising socio-political violence and impunity for over a decade, with particular consequences for sexual and gender minorities, an LGBTTTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgender, travesti and intersex) rights movement has simultaneously emerged in the state capital, Chilpancingo, and in other cities and towns. In 2002, activists organised the state’s first Pride march in this small, peripheral Latin American city, and each year since, people have gathered for what has become an annual event in this remote place nevertheless formed by what happens in distant centres of power. Also, LGBTTTI marches, parades, drag competitions and other events meant to orient the community and state institutions towards recognition of the rights of sexual and gender minorities have extended to public spaces across the state. This article examines this incongruous actuality through a study of the photos and videos in the private collection of a local activist and professional photographer, visual data that provide a unique record of how the local LGBTTTI movement has drawn on transnationally recognisable symbols and local cultural motifs to bring attention to violence experienced by its members. Building on a dense description of this archive, this paper argues that an identity-rights-based movement can coexist with a weak state that has abdicated its responsibility to guarantee basic human rights. Through its use of urban public spaces, such a movement can convey its message and draw people together, though given the limits of state-sanctioned impunity it may opt for strategic silence on wider socio-political issues in order to make specific advances.