Artist Sta

Gay Pride March, Mexico City, 2003

El Zocalo, the central plaza in Mexico, has long been a special space for me since I first visited it as a young student in the early 90's. Naively looking for my "past", I found a Mexico of the present: vibrant, thriving and contentious. El Zocalo is a space in constant flux, surprises and possibilities, a site of daily protests, concerts, Aztec dancers, and street vendors; a complex and ever changing theater of dissent.

This series of photographs documents one such protest, "La Marcha del Orgullo Gay" which takes place the third week of June. The march performed with great spirit, humor, and festivity, followed the traditional route from the Angel de la Independencia on Reforma through the streets of El Centro Historico for the twenty fifth year in 2003. A temporary take over of downtown, in which drag queens, trannies, lesbians, punk anarchists and others who come in solidarity publicly parade their bodies and costumes, subverting social and gender roles while simultaneously playing with notions of national identity. This dressed insurrection, in which desires and fantasies are acted out and sexual taboos placed on display points to a multi-layered identity as dense and complex as the architecture of the city itself.