Trans art & resistance in Puebla, México

Stayku, a non-binary visual artist, displays some of their work in their home. Puebla, Mexico, April 2025. Photo © Samantha Páez.

Reportage • Samantha Páez • May 22, 2025 • Leer en castellano

It was a Wednesday—two days before people would pack like sardines into the cantina—and the overflow section of the El Portalito bar in Puebla was nearly empty. Tenoch del Castillo, a 35-year-old visual arts graduate, sat behind the bar mending one of the screenprint pieces he would paste up on the streets of Puebla in the early hours of the morning. Like many other trans artists, del Castillo juggles his artistic practice with a paid job.

Del Castillo’s main artistic outlets are screen printing, collage and more recently, spoken word poetry; he also experimented with sculpture, oil painting and engraving at university. The issues del Castillo addresses in his work are political, with a touch of dark humor. He recently made several large screen prints of pigs in police uniforms, recalling when he’s been stopped and searched at night. Other pieces address the importance of protecting trans children.

He started working as a bartender to pay for school, and after graduation, for his artistic projects. “I got used to living this way, in which I earned good money and used it to buy my materials,” said del Castillo in an interview with Ojalá.

He’s often wondered if institutional support could boost his career. “I’ve seen people who achieve excellence with financial support, I feel that if there was funding specifically [for the LGTBI+ community] it could be a great thing” he said.

Tenoch del Castillo mends a silkscreen print at El Portalito bar in March 2024. Photo © Samantha Páez.

Survive to create

Transgender people in Mexico experience high levels of violence and discrimination. They’re often expelled from their family homes, have few educational and job opportunities, and lack access to justice and health services.

“We have to think about the circumstances under which trans women have existed in Mexico,” said Rojo Génesis, filmmaker and the curator of the Museo de Arte Transfemenino in Mexico City. She can vouch for the many obstacles trans artists face. “If you don't have a place to live, you can't demand access to education, much less to health or to art,” she said.

Génesis was born in the community of La Ceiba, in the Sierra Norte de Puebla, and she moved to Mexico City in pursuit of her career. She went on to win two grants, one from the National Fund for Culture and the Arts and another from the Patronato de Arte Contemporáneo.

Gato Que Pinta is a non-binary visual artist who lives in Tehuacán, in the interior of the state of Puebla, a place where, they say, there is no effort to include vulnerable populations. Like Génesis, their artistic work has had more resonance outside their municipality: they were chosen to paint a mural for the Secretariat for Substantive Gender Equality (SISG) in Puebla, and painted a mural in the state’s Chamber of Deputies.

“I'll be honest, I took those opportunities because here in Tehuacán I can't paint those things: I can't paint two men or two women kissing,” they said. “It’s difficult to be able to paint murals with transmasculine or LGBT identities.”

Of the 10 artists interviewed for this piece, only one had made their name and identity change legal: the rest, for legal and personal reasons, have given up on the process. This, despite the fact that in February 2021, Civil Code reforms were approved to allow one to change one’s gender identity in the state of Puebla.

Ibai 'Isis' Samaniego began as a painter and is now dedicated to writing poetry and youth texts. Since they don’t have a government ID that reflects their gender, they’ve chosen to work outside of official institutions. Last year, Samaniego collaborated with the state’s Ministry of Culture for the first time, giving workshops, but they didn’t receive the payment they were promised.

“I think it's both things: one, I'm a [sexual and gender] dissident and I don't have papers, so they can pay me whatever they want and whenever they want,” said Samaniego. “You know why? Because they only want to make a verbal contract, and we know that if there’s one thing the government does not respect, it’s someone’s word. So we can say that I am doubly discriminated against.”

For Samaniego, who does not identify as a man or a woman, trans people not only struggle to make a living from art, they also fight for basic rights such as identity and legal recognition.

“Recently, [the Ministry of Culture] was telling me they’re going to start up new workshops. Look, the limitation for me is that they are always going to ask for ID,” they said. “We want to move on from the past and we get asked again and again for our ID, which reopens the wound.”

A still from the Cuinas exhibition at the Museo de Arte Transfemenino, in Mexico City. Photo courtesy Museo de Arte Transfemenino.

Work on the margins 

Given the lack of government interest in making the work of trans artists visible, the creators interviewed prefer independent or artist-run spaces. But Génesis, the curator, says institutions can also open doors. 

“Not only does it give you economic stability [...] specifically in the art and culture sector, a lot of it has a lot to do with what kind of institutions are endorsing your practice,” she said. “In order for your project to be endorsed by an institution, you must have previously have worked in other spaces.”

Claudia Castelán, an academic, researcher, artist, and cultural worker from Puebla, points out that winning scholarships and projects sponsored by public or private organizations allows artists to accrue credentials so they can access the National System of Art Creators, a program that promotes and funds Mexican artists. It puts artists on the map, she says, and links them with mentors with a longer trajectory and who can help them generate more economic resources.

Just who is working within institutions can make a world of difference. Citlalli Santos, a writer and cultural worker, worked in the now-defunct Institute for Youth in Puebla (Injuve in Spanish) during the last administration. From there, they spearheaded mural contests in which the winners were paid, as well as organizing a national poetry slam that covered the expenses of out-of-state participants. There were also workshops, fashion shows, vogue events, and rehearsals by a queer traditional dance group.

“It’s tough realizing that the institutions don’t welcome us, but it's also important we make those spaces our own,” said Santos, who authored the poetry collection “A thunderstorm of lilies”, about their time with Injuve. “It was lovely for me to have the opportunity to be in that institution, because I think that even though they weren’t big events, they made a difference”.

Public agencies are indeed capable of promoting the artistic work of sexual and gender dissidents—and it goes without saying that it’s their responsibility to do so. The cultural program of the last six-year presidential term explicitly stated that “public policies on culture must be inclusive” and “the state must guarantee equal access to culture for all, prioritizing historically excluded groups.”

Many of the interviewed artists said that, beyond Santos’ efforts, cultural institutions only sought them out when it was convenient to make appearances. “In the end, it seems we only exist in June, July, during Pride month,” said Stayku, a non-binary visual artist. “That’s when these spaces magically open up.” 

While public policy at the local level does not seek to make culture inclusive, artists such as del Castillo, Ibai, Génesis, Gato Que Pinta, Santos, Stayku—and many others—continue to resist and survive, instead of having opportunities to grow their work so that it has the impact it deserves.