The Mexican Senate is about to approve a proposal that bans and punishes with jail the so called “cure” therapies for homosexuality, or conversion therapies. They do exist: civil organizations advocating for the rights of the LGBTQ community have identified them as Esfuerzos para Corregir la Orientación Sexual e Identidad de Género (ECOSIG) (Efforts to Correct Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity); their practice includes, in addition to the classic family rejection, “deprivation of liberty, torture, corrective violations, conversion therapies, medicalization of bodies and economic violence” for those who decide to live their gender identity out in the open, according to the civil association YAAJ.
In October 2018, Senators Citlalli Hernández Mora, of the National Regeneration Movement, Alejandra Lagunes, of the Green Ecologist Party of Mexico (PVEM), and Patricia Mercado Castro, of Movimiento Ciudadano, introduced this a proposal of reform of the Federal Penal Code and the General Health Law. The reform would sanction with up to three years of prison for the executioners of these practices.
The United Nations, according to ADN politico and other outlets, , describes these therapies to “cure” homosexuality as “unethical, unscientific and ineffective”. The UN stress that this practices include torture.
However, yes, they do exist in Mexico in an organized manner. There are psychotherapists who assume to have the power to make possible “the development of heterosexuality,” as Milenio reports.
In a dossier on the subject, the organization YAAJ put together the story of Luis, 16: “They confined him in a kind of rehabilitation camp and subjected him to a strong process of depersonalization. They didn’t refer to him by his name; he could only speak when he was told to. The food was conditioned not to look at the rest of the teenagers who were in the camp, nor could he speak to them without the supervision of the adults in charge. Talks about the dangerous, deviant and corrupt homosexual desires were repeated three or four times a day. The reference to the damnation of his soul was constant. As the days passed, Luis discovered that if he ‘showed progress in his cure of the traumas unleashed by his homo desires’, he would receive more food, could take showers without supervision, and would receive approval pats on his back. In a matter of four weeks, his homosexual impulses ‘diminished’, he learned to behave correctly. If he continued his efforts he could soon stop being ‘afraid of women’ and be ready to start a healthy and happy courtship. Currently, Luis is a young homosexual living in Playa del Carmen.”
A Notimex dispatch quoted by Excelsior says a technical team is preparing a draft of a judgment in the Justice Committee of the Mexican Senate, following the three senators’ proposal The president of the Committee will draft a final judgment to undergo the review and eventual support by other political parties. In addition, revisions are being made to the initiative, senator Hernandez Mora pointed out, “because an ambiguous interpretation could lead to the imprisonment of ministers of worship just for giving advice, or of those who accompany people in their process of gender conversion.”
After approval, the reform would pass to the House of Representatives.