Left… behind?

Although same-sex marriage has been de facto legal everywhere in Mexico for a few years now, not all states have changed their marriage laws to reflect our Supreme Court ruling on the matter. Without too much fuss, state legislatures have been reforming their own laws over the last two years, Campeche being the latest. While there was a demonstration against the reform bringing about 200 people into the street, the measure easily passed with all but one legislator voting in favor of the change (which also prohibits marriage among minors). The one nay vote came from Adriana Ávilez Ávilez. Her rationale was that such marriages are “against morals and nature, like mixing oil and water”… the usual kind of thing you’d hear from a die-hard conservative.

What makes that noteworthy is that Ávilez Ávilez is the sole representative of Morena, the left-est of the leftist parties. It’s a mistake to confuse leftism with social liberalism, especially when talking about Latin America, and especially in Mexico, where the economic theory (socialism) is much closer to the “traditional values” than other European-based theories. One can of course be both socially liberal and a socialist, but they are by no means synonymous. In a sense, perhaps our socialists should be considered conservatives, wanting to preserve the communal values and relative equality of traditional rural societies. Or, maybe Adriana Ávilez Ávilez is just a bit of a crank.