Against the bland, beige backdrop of Mexico’s electoral courtrooms, Jesús Ociel Baena was radiant. The non-binary magistrate paired a shirt and tie with colorful skirts, high heels and bright red lipstick. In the heat of Aguascalientes state, Baena, who used they/their pronouns, would theatrically brandish a rainbow fan to cool down.
Proudly out in the courtroom, the classroom and on social media, Baena was a beacon for Mexico’s queer population, and their death this week has sent shock waves through an embattled community.
“I’m a trans man and Ociel meant visibility and strength for me,” said Karim García. “Ociel gave me the courage to show the world who I am.”
At a demonstration honoring the magistrate on Monday night, García held high a hand-painted drawing of Baena with their rainbow hand fan. “We demand justice!” it read.
Officials said that Baena’s body had been found at home, along with that of another person, whom local media identified as Baena’s partner.
In protests across the country on Monday night, LGBTQ+ Mexicans rejected the government’s initial claims that Baena died over a “personal matter” and suggested that their death was fueled by the hate, discrimination and violence the community routinely faces.
Thousands marched along Mexico City’s Reforma Avenue chanting “Justice” and “Crime of passion? National Lie!” They waved rainbow, trans and non-binary flags and whipped rainbow hand fans in the air.
Similar demonstrations were held in other cities including Monterrey, Puebla and Baena’s hometown, Aguascalientes.
“This is a painful loss for our community,” said García. “Having people in government who represent us means so much because we haven’t had that.”
Baena was a magistrate at the Aguascalientes State Electoral Institute and a professor at the Autonomous University of Aguascalientes. They pushed linguistic boundaries by rejecting the gendered Spanish word endings, which code nouns as male or female.
Q&AHow did gendered languages evolve?
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Silvia Luraghi, a professor of linguistics at the University of Pavia, says that in Proto-Indo-European – the reconstructed language from which all Indo-European languages originated – there is a three-gender system, as there is in German or Latin or Russian: masculine, feminine and neuter.
“In the course of their development, some languages lost gender partly – the Romance languages lost the neuter – or completely,” she says. “Armenian has no gender distinction even in third person pronouns. Persian has also lost the gender system even in pronouns. English has lost it in nouns and now it only exists in pronouns.”
Luraghi says it’s possible that at a Pre-Proto-Indo-European stage, there was “a two-gender, animacy-based system, with a two-fold distinction between animate and inanimate”.
She adds that while Romance languages cast off the neuter gender when they emerged from Latin, things today are hardly cut and dried. Take the Italian regional dialects from south of Rome, where there are four genders: male; female; an alternating gender for things that come in pairs, and a neuter for mass nouns.
All of which goes to prove that “languages don’t necessarily become less complicated; they can become more complicated”.
Luraghi is keenly aware of the tendency to “politicise everything” in Italy but says those who speak of the right way and the wrong way are missing the point. “From a linguist’s point of view, you can’t even say that something is correct or not correct because language is how people speak it and how they use it.”
Baena used the term le magistrade instead of the male-gendered el magistrado, and in October 2022 they became the first person in Mexico and Latin America to be granted a non-binary magistrate title. In May 2023, Mexico’s foreign relations ministry granted Baena the country’s first non-binary passport. Just three weeks ago, Baena received the first “maestre”, or non-gendered professor, title in electoral law.
“Ociel being a public servant was one of the most tangible pieces of evidence of the progress we’ve made,” said Enrique Torre Molina, an activist and co-founder of the LGBTQ+ organization Colmena 41.
“It was also a win for the LGBTQ+ movement, which has found ways to make friends and allies in government,” said Torre Molina, who has worked as a diversity consultant for the federal government. “But I believe the LGBTQ+ community is not finding enough support from the highest levels of government.”
Mexico’s queer community is particularly outraged at what they see as a rush to conclusions by authorities investigating Baena’s death.
Hours after Baena and their partner were found dead, the Aguascalientes state attorney general, Jesús Figueroa Ortega, said both victims where found holding razor blades, which presumably caused their wounds.
“There were no prints of a third party inside the home and the front door was locked,” said Figueroa in a press conference. “The two people arrived around 1.00am. Upon reviewing security cameras, no one else entered the house before or after.”
He also said that investigators found blood on the bed and bloody footprints leading through the home.
From 2018-2022, LGBTQ+ rights group Letra S documented 453 murders in the community but said the actual number is likely much higher. Trans people were the most common victims, including 13 in the first five months of 2023.
Alejandro Brito, director of Letra S, said that Baena’s visibility on social media made them a target and urged authorities to take that context into consideration in their investigation.
“They were a person who received many hate messages, and even threats of violence and death, and you can’t ignore that in these investigations,” Brito said.
Baena’s supporters have also received threats. One shared comments they received while livestreaming a response to Baena’s death on TikTok.
“What happened to the magistrate is going to happen to you,” a commenter wrote.
One of Baena’s last public appearances was a video posted on social media. Dressed in heels, a long skirt and bright red lipstick, they acted out a skit about how the state electoral board was reserving positions for the LGBTQ+ community, people with disabilities and people over age 60.
“Remember, LGBTQ+ gang,” Baena says in a flirty voice, fanning themself with a rainbow hand fan. “You must sign up because being a part of the electoral authority is your political-electoral right.”
“We need to take over the electoral authority office or go after Ociel Baena,” wrote one commenter.
Another started a petition demanding “that degenerate” Ociel Baena remove the video.
“I will not take down my post!” Baena responded.