Mexican LGBTQ+ Activist Becomes Country's First Person to Receive Nonbinary Gender Marker

Gender nonbinary people in Mexico have landed a huge legal victory.

LGBTQ+ activist and law student Fausto Martínez has became the country's first person to receive a non-binary gender marker on their birth certificate, which was issued by the Civil Registry of Guanajuato on February 11 after they won an amparo lawsuit (Mexico's constitutional appeals process).

“I have always said what is not named does not exist,” Martínez wrote in a Twitter thread. “For this reason, the transcendence of this fact, the Mexican state recognizes that non-binary people exist and with that we are subject to rights and obligations.”

Martínez, 26, detailed the process, recounting that they first approached the National Electoral Institute (INE) in September with a group of people wishing to put ‘NB’ on their official documents, instead of sex, according to People.

After the INE denied the request, Martínez sought help from Juan Pablo Delgado, executive director of Amicus, described on their website as “a Mexican civil society organization dedicated to the defense and promotion of the rights of LGBTI people.”

They filed their amparo action in the town of León in November and the judge ruled in their favor in January, according to the Associated Press. Although the ruling applies only to Martínez's case, Delgado noted that the decision could be used as a precedent.

“It is a collective achievement of non-binary people in Mexico, that our existence is legally recognized with all that that implies, making us a legal entity with rights and obligations,” Martínez told Mexican news agency EFE.

More than half of Mexico's 32 states have passed legislation to allow trans people to change their gender on official documents. In 2019, Mexico's top court ruled that transgender people must be issued an updated birth certificate following their gender confirmation surgery.

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