Women Warriors Who Open Pathways and
Spread Flowers: Lesbian Feminism in Mexico
Recorded October 4, 2021
This video features Spanish-to-English interpretation.
Women Warriors Who Open Pathways and Spread Flowers: Lesbian Feminism in Mexico | Leticia Armijo,
Diana Solís, & Hinda Seif
Who were early women to publicly declare their love for women and
fight for lesbian visibility and rights in Mexico? How did they find
each other and create spaces beyond bars and strict gender roles?
Professor Leticia Armijo and Diana Solís, two members of the Oikabeth 2
lesbian feminist group (1982-5; one of the first in Mexico), will share
Mexican LGBTQ history with photographs, differences from US activism,
and how brave women challenged sexism and heterosexism despite the
dangers. We will learn what some Oikabeth 2 members are doing today and
the current status of lesbians in Mexico. Composer and musicologist
Armijo will address her work featuring Mexican women and music. In 1997
Patria Jiménez, Oikabeth 2 co-founder with Armijo, became the first
LGBTQ person elected to a federal legislature in Mexico and Latin
America. Professor Hinda Seif (UIS) will introduce the context of
Mexico’s lesbian feminism.
Co-founder of Oikabeth 2, Professor Leticia Armijo
(Autonomous University of Querétaro, Mexico) specializes in Mexican
women in music. She is director of the Women in Music Collective and
Yolotli Women’s Chorus of the Indigenous Pueblos of Mexico. Armijo has
received awards from Spain’s Ministry of Culture and Education and
Mexico’s Society of Authors and Composers and National Feminist Front.
In 2017, Armijo’s Oikabeth Warrior Symphony was performed by Mexico’s
National Symphony Orchestra at Mexico City’s Palace of Fine Arts.
Diana Solís (B.F.A., UIC) is a Chicago-based visual
artist and art educator. Her work has been exhibited in museums and
galleries in Chicago, nationally, and internationally. Her images of
Chicago queer history were featured in the 2021 exhibition LatinXAmerican at the DePaul University Art Museum.
Hinda Seif (Associate Professor of Women/Gender
Studies and Sociology/Anthropology, UIS) researches and writes about
Chicago’s Latina artists, featuring the photography and transnational
life of Diana Solís. She serves on the Faculty Board of the University
of Illinois Press.
