ABSTRACT
One evening in 1998, Maria de Jesus Corona met her girlfriend in Mexico City where they live. I have translated Mariana Pérez Ocaña’s account of the incident. (The other quotations appearing in this chapter, most of which originated in Spanish, are reproduced in translated form only.)
She met her partner in the street, they kissed goodnight, and at that moment they were surrounded by police. It seemed the police had been following them for a while in the hope that they would ‘do something’ so that they could accost them and charge them with ‘Lack of morals’. This is an article of the [Mexican] penal code under which anyone who does something in public which is ‘damaging to public morals’ can be convicted and imprisoned. It is an ambiguous and repressive law because it is not clear what the crime is.
