Nancy Cárdenas, a Mexican woman with short light hair and a white sweater smiles at the camera.
“Of course, if we change the future we change the past"
– Nancy Cárdenas
Born 29 May 1934 in Parras de la Fuente, Coahuila, Nancy Cárdenas grew up in a small town surrounded by fairly progressive views that would inform much of her later life. Though she was expected by many to become a housewife, lawyer, or doctor due to her extensive education, she quickly found her path as a woman of letters. She was especially drawn to the position of playwright, later also working in acting, To pursue this passion she sought a global education, starting first with her native Mexico earning a Ph.D. in the dramatic arts in Mexico City at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. She then went on to study film and theatre at Yale University located in the United States of America, moving from there to Łódź, Poland where she studied Polish language and literature.
Through this time and travel, she was becoming more and more respected throughout the global community and also was able to make queer contacts throughout the world. Privileged with her ability to travel she met and discussed queerness with people around the world, weaving it into her writing as a lesbian woman and sharing and taking advice from the people she met.
““As her work became more well known, she began to gather a community around her,””
Her political views which had been leaning left when she went to University in Mexico, continued to turn in that direction. With her colleagues from home, she began to work and advocate for the communist party in the 1950s, which at the time was not a popular cause, but she was passionate and surrounded herself with others who felt the same. Speaking at rallies and handing out flyers she soon became known for her activism as well as her writing.
After her travels she returned to Mexico, working in radio production, journalism, acting, and translating. Her work still centred around theatre; she published The Empty Pitcher in 1960 which went on to be produced at the Universidad Nacional.
Her growing recognition would not keep her from the backlash to her political actions, and while protesting police violence in 1968 police arrested her. Rather than this deterring her, her activism would increase in passion and effect as the 1970s began. Her work also continued to garner attention, writing plays, as well as translating, directing, and producing, Paul Vindel's The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, which won her first prize from the Associación de Críticos de Teatro.
As her work became more well known, she began to gather a community around her, becoming friends with other queer writers who she would welcome into her home, discussing queer identity and experiences.
It was through these connections and a growing understanding of how big the queer community truly was that Cárdenas would partake in two massive firsts for the Mexican queer community. These two choices would go on to define her legacy and eclipse many of the other events in her life, one happening only a year after the other she would go on to be remembered for these moments throughout the global queer community.
In 1973 feminist, playwright, actress, and activist Nancy Cárdenas would go on live television at age 39 and come out as a lesbian on Jacobo Zabludovsky's 24 Horas. It was during a discussion of queer rights that she made this announcement, as by that point she was known for her activism and writings within that field. While many were aware of this and her sexuality, her public coming out was a historic moment.
Cárdenas would remember the fallout of this decision later saying:
“No one approached me to attack me, all I received were congratulations but nobody gave me work.”
After this Cárdenas would openly express her interest in the lesbian community and its’ history, a friend of hers Carlos Monsiváis described this in a post-humous open letter to Cárdenas saying:
“When you decided to come out of the closet, you did it with the vitality of your other activities, and very soon you dedicated yourself to knowing the history of your tribe and interviewing women of old age (younger than I am now, I suppose), and then you evoked their stories, for example, the friendship of two ladies who were always together and slept together and loved each other, while their families murmured: “Poor ones! They have never known the love or comfort of a caress! " And you were outraged about the past. One day I told you: “Don't be so angry. What has happened can no longer be changed" (or something so judgmental), and you said to me: 'Of course, if we change the future we change the past'”
Her coming out and her continued interviews with lesbian women had more or less made her a queer lightning rod. The most visibly and openly queer person in the country, she was in the perfect position to make her next move, in 1974 she founded el Frente de Liberación Homosexual the first gay organization in Mexico, a task she took on with “methodical joy”.
She became an expert in her field, collecting stories, and sharing them, both in nonfiction and fiction works. Her plays contained many lesbian characters, showing intergenerational friendships and mentorships within the community she loved so much in a way not many others were doing.
Her open discussion of queer topics would not go without blowback, as many of the people within her circle believed her lesbian identity was something she was allowed to have, but should not discuss. As an active member of many political groups outside of strictly queer ones, all had their reaction to her open queerness. One of the most common complaints being that her lesbian identity and advocacy for queer rights was in some way in opposition to her other positions, either because it was an imported ideology and would harm the traditions of Mexico, it was anti-communist and would distract from the “real” issues, or it was anti-feminist and would distract from the “real” issues.
One point in which this conflict would come to the forefront was at the United Nations International Women’s Year Conference in 1975.
Only two years after coming out, she was invited to host a forum about lesbianism at this conference, a decision that received a large backlash. The forum featured a participant-led discussion which led to the writing of the first Mexican Lesbian Manifesto. With this victory under her belt, Cárdenas would exit to find picketers waiting for her, protesting her presence and the discussion of lesbianism at the event. One such picketer was holding a sign that called for Nancy’s death, to which Cárdenas responded by approaching the woman and talking with her quietly, quickly revealing that the woman had been paid to stand with the sign by the chief of police.
Her dealings with the press also held a balance of antagonism and grace, Cárdenas recalled them swarming her after the forum saying:
“The assault was aggressive: are you a lesbian? Who else is? Why did you agree to come? What does this mean? It was one question after another. I couldn’t even answer. The only thing I managed to tell them was: so long as the laws of my country do not offer guarantees for homosexuals, neither I nor anyone can answer your questions”
Despite the initial attention the press gave her, few discussed the story later, and the ones who did were generally not giving favourable accounts. Many journalists who had been supportive of her other political endeavours, turned against her in these. But with all of these drawbacks, there were also successes. Along with the first Lesbian Mexican Manifesto, Cárdenas was able to help build solidarity and alliances between Mexican lesbians and foreign lesbians. She remembered this saying:
“We got all the foreign lesbians together and I invited them to a meeting in my house to introduce Mexican lesbians to them. I brought them lesbians who thought they were women trapped in men's bodies, those who were in their sixties who had not accepted gay militancy, and young girls of twenty; I wanted them to see everything.”
The group would go on to exchange ideas about gender roles within lesbian relationships, relationship dynamics, and political strategy throughout the meeting. Cárdenas said she found solidarity and comfort from the meeting, discovering the problems and discussions that had arisen within her community were not due to personal failure, but rather something many others were also discussing.
It is also important to note here that at this time lesbian was understood as much more of an umbrella term than it is today, often embracing gender variance as well as attraction to men. While this is no longer the way that the word lesbian is defined by the community, it is relevant to Cárdenas' discussion of “lesbians who thought they were women trapped in men's bodies” something that through a modern lens reads as transphobic.
This is not to dismiss the transphobia that may have been there. It is possible this quote comes with the worst intentions, it’s also possible it doesn’t. Very frankly, many of these discussions felt very new, and not all of them were satisfying or feel respectful to more modern discussions. Many who may have understood themselves now as transgender men, probably came to the group understanding themselves as lesbians. Cárdenas' discussion of them was not hostile, or as a problem, but rather a fact of her community.
Cárdenas would go on to build more bridges within the feminist community, inviting heterosexual women and queer women to meet at her house to talk and socialize.
Within her writing, she would translate lesbian classics such as Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness and adapt them to the stage for Mexican audiences. She would leverage her respected position within the theatre community to gain support for other causes, such as money to support an organization she founded to support people who had been diagnosed with AIDs. In one of her final firsts in 1978, she would lead the first gay pride march in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas.
She continued writing and working in activism for the rest of her life until 1994 when she died of breast cancer.
Nancy Cárdenas is not one of the most remembered members of the queer community, but her writing and activism are worth going back to in difficult times. With every tool and skill she had, Cárdenas worked for equality not only for herself but for anyone she saw as being discriminated against. A powerful ally, Cárdenas was a woman of action. In his letter to her, Carlos Monsiváis described her as:
“An activist by vocation and temperament, you weren't worried about What They'd Say, you didn't even consider it. Now I know that you were not a provocateur, as I sometimes felt at that time (in those years the so-called protagonists were called provocateurs) but, strictly, a defender of human and civil rights, first of all for those of your specific minority, but also from other causes.
[...]
you were always at the forefront of your circumstances, in the battle against intolerance, illegality, dehumanization, and ignorance. Ten years after your death, your causes have progressed despite all obstacles, and that you would see as the most recommended form of personal continuity.
In this resurgence of the right, the existence of people like you is extraordinary, Nancy Cárdenas. In this successive failure of the right's prohibitions, what a grateful debt we have to people like you, Nancy Cárdenas.”
The respect she received was earned. While the path she took was by no means easy, for every first she took part in, there was a second.
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