I interviewed Patria Jimenez in Coyoacan's normally bustling markets. The onset of the swine flu crisis had emptied the streets.
Jimenez ignored swine-flu protocol and greeted me warmly.
In 1997, Jimenez made history by being elected the first openly lesbian member of Mexico's Chamber of Deputies.
Running on the ticket of the Workers Revolutionary Party (PRT), which was in an alliance with the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), Jimenez was also the first openly lesbian candidate to be elected in Latin America.
She is standing again in the July federal elections with the We Will Save Mexico coalition.
Jimenez's election was based on decades of campaigning around lesbian, gay, feminist and indigenous people's rights.
Her work gathered her international recognition. She was nominated in 2005, along with another 11 Mexicans, for the Nobel Peace Prize, as part of the Project 1000 Women for Peace.
Born in San Luis Potosi in 1957, Jimenez's political activism began at high school, around the issues of lack of resources in secondary schools.
Politics and coming out
"I was never in the closet", she said. Jimenez left home so her parents wouldn't try to take her to a psychiatrist due to her sexuality.
At the time, she was campaigning in the streets: "The first demonstration I went to I unfurled a poster at the Iranian embassy, because they were killing women who took off their veils. It was a big sign saying: 'Mexican Lesbians Against the Assassination of Iranian Women'."
Jimenez said: "I liked going to lesbian and gay social events, but they were ghettos. We just didn't have other possibilities to meet.
"Then in 1979, I was invited to a meeting in Cuernavaca in Nancy Cardenas's house. Nancy was an open lesbian, one of the first open lesbians in Mexico. She was a director of theatre and she fomented the social movement, and helped us not forget how to organise."
Jimenez said: "It was from this meeting that I began my activism, within the feminist movement and the gay and lesbian movement.
"At that time, we were organising the first gay and lesbian march, and simultaneously, actions were organised in the feminist movement. We were organising both movements parallel.
"Then, in 1994, at the time of the uprising of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (ELZN) movement [which organised indigenous groups in Mexico's south], I also began to work with them for the human rights of indigenous people."
In 1992 Jimenez co-founded a lesbian rights organisation, The Closet of Sor Juana. "We always took the opportunity to forthrightly declare that we were lesbians protesting this or that. Because I believe it is very important to get involved within social movements as lesbians, homosexuals and bisexuals, and to work within them, like the indigenous movement in Mexico, for example.
"That gave us presence, and made us, and them, realise that one is not alone."
A former student of psychology at the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM), Jimenez recalled: "The movement was so intense, so interesting; every day there were things to do. So much so, I did not finish my schooling at UNAM.
Battles of the 1980s
"At that time, the press was very much against us. According to it, we were not gay candidates running for office — we were maricones [butterflies – derogatory term used against homosexual men] or things like that.
"However, we began to change these terms within the press. Indeed, we protested against the press in order have these terms banned.
"We were able to plant the idea that we are homosexual men and lesbians, not weak or inferior. After some time, the press was less aggressive, less derogatory.
"In the beginning of the movement there was lots of repression. Now, as a result of the campaigns we have fought, that repression has diminished."
"Before the movement rose in the late 1970s", Jimenez remembered, "it was difficult to leave the closet, but after the movement many more people began to be open about their sexuality. In the middle of the 1980s in Mexico it was easier.
"In general, it is easier to leave the closet, and be open about sexual identity in Mexico City than in the outer provinces, but it is still difficult.
"There also used to be a lot of hate crimes against LGBT people — assassinations, bodies just left in the streets and lots of violence. The police were terrible, corrupt.
"There were cases where young gay and lesbian people were raped, and the police knew who was the rapist was, but said they knew nothing. In some cases, police would defend the perpetrator.
"They would also extort gays and lesbians. There are still such cases today.
"The early demands of the gay and lesbian movement were the right to work, education and housing. Under the labour laws, health and public housing for working couples and married couples are provided.
"Now there is a private contract, a privatisation of this contract. We believe not in more or less rights for homosexuals and transgendered people, but campaign for the same rights that heterosexual couples have."
The PRD
Jimenez spoke about the formation of the main opposition party, the PRD, in 1989: "The PRD's birth was a combination of the social movements and those expelled from the capitalist Institutional Revolution Party (PRI). Many current PRD leaders were expelled from the PRI at this time.
"So a large part of the PRD membership comes from the PRI, which also explains their conservatism.
"The PRD broke with the PRI, but conformed to power politics. Others saw the PRD as a democratic front.
"Within and around the PRD was the peasant movement, workers movement, gay, lesbian and feminist movement, and the movement of petrol workers. Within the PRD too, there was and remains a Marxist current, as well as a gay and women's current.
"However, there are limitations with the PRD."
The PRD-backed candidate in the 2006 elections was Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. He is widely believed to have won the elections, but was denied victory by electoral fraud by Felipe Caldreon and the incumbent National Action Party (PAN).
The largest mass protests in Mexico's history broke-out in the election's aftermath, recognising Lopez Obrador as the legitimate president.
"Frankly", Jimenez said, "there is no PRD without Obrador. He is crucial to the politics of Mexico.
"Unfortunately, within the PRD there is no democratic participation.
"However, now there is the Salvemos a Mexico coalition, which contains Obrador, the Convergencia party and the Workers Party.
"This coalition is designed to support Obrador. Obrador is not a strong feminist or Marxist, but he has respect for women and homosexuals."
The PRD mayor of Mexico Citiy, Marcelo Ebrard, "is the PRD leader who most uses feminism within his political discussion", Jimenez said.
"He is very much in favour of women's rights."
Jimenez said there have been some gains for gay rights under Ebrard.
Ongoing struggle
Jimenez said: "We have had success with a campaign to delete references to homosexuality within the Article 201 of the federal penal code. This was in relation to crimes of sexual practices that corrupted minors.
"Another battle was to change radio, television and printing laws in order to protect the identity of the victims of sexual crimes.
"Another campaign that was very strong when I was a deputy was the 'Justice for Nadia' campaign. A young woman, Nadia Ernestina Zepeda Molina, was condemned to jail in May 2004. She was charged because she resisted rape by the Public Security police.
"In September 2005, Nadia Zepeda won her liberation."
Jimenez said: "The gay and lesbians rights movement is building for a march on June 20. A committee led by gay men organises one every year.
"There are up to 50,000 people at these processions each year. I hope soon there will be a general march and then, within that, a march for women."
Jimenez concluded: "The only fight we lose is the one we abandon. We have to force the government to provide equal treatment, stop discriminating, respect the right to health care and provide jobs for gays.
"In order to exercise these rights, we have to demand them."
[A significantly extended version of this article can be found at Links, journal of international socialist renewal.