Cheryl Mendoza, FCLC 2025

MAJOR: Film and Television

BIO:

PROJECT TITLE: Queerness in Mexican Culture

MENTOR: Zeljka Blaksic, 

ABSTRACT: I received Fordham University’s FCLC Dean's Undergraduate Research and Creative Practice Grant to make a documentary surrounding the Lesbian Pride festival in Puerto Vallarta that began in May of 2013. My research focuses on the recent introduction of this festival compared to the annual San Francisco Pride that began in 1970. Mexico is a place in which queerness is not as widely accepted as it is in the United States, and there is still much stigma surrounding it. Puerto Vallarta is a very interesting location for this festival to take place, as it is within Jalisco. Some of my indigenous ancestors come from Jalisco, where Puerto Vallarta is located, with 75.8%1 of the population identifying as indigenous mixed with white. This is significant as Jalisco has the fourth highest population out of all of Mexico2. Jalisco was part of the Aztec Empire, which is widely considered to have had homophobic tendencies. The gods Xochipilli and Xochiqetzal, however, indicate the opposite. The Aztecs did not believe in the separation of binaries; instead, multiple genders coexisted within this single entity. When I learned about these gods, it became clear that there is a record of fluidity in gender in Mexican history. While conducting my research last summer, I discovered none of my subjects were aware of this. My documentary is now rooted in the reality that queerness, although celebrated one week a year in Puerto Vallarta, is still radically stigmatized and silenced throughout the vast majority of Mexico.