Frida was always Frida, even though Alfredo was listed on her birth registry and even though neither she nor anyone around her knew what a trans person was. She knew it after many years, “the name”, just the name, the definition: trans woman. The rest, no. Now, at the age of 44, Frida Cartas, a Mexican born in Mazatlán, in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, has published a book that was not actually intended to be a book but “a gift” to her mother Lubia, “so that…” These memories would never die. No matter how dark they were, because Transport to Childhood (Almadía, 2023) is love but also violence in a balance that was sometimes on the verge of being unsustainable, inside and outside the home, and always crossed by social class was: “faggot”, “puto”, “joto”, rape, abuse, mistreatment, contempt and humiliation to which she was subjected by her classmates, boys and girls, teenagers and adults, including her father, and that this woman, her mother, cushioned with something she calls “claw guards.”
Questions. In the book there is a constant contrast between very different forms of violence and the love of his mother and his sisters.
Answer. It's very painful, it's also a book of wounds, but the process of writing it was very healing and I became very aware that there are things that will remain open and it's okay to stop feeling guilty , because I haven't been able to heal some of these things.
Q Some didn't just happen outside her house, they happened inside.
R. What happened inside the house went beyond what I could sometimes imagine. Usually I felt like I could breathe in the house and not on the street, but sometimes I felt like I had to go out because I couldn't breathe inside. Today [este martes] It is December 12th, it is the day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the most representative day of Mexico. When I was little, I prayed to the Virgin: “I want to die, I want to die.” I asked her if she could give me death for Christmas, if I could go to heaven with her. While writing this book, I thought about what would have to happen for a 10-year-old girl to want to die.
Q There is increasing talk about suicide or suicide attempts among minors.
R. Yes, while I was writing this book, data came to light: now in Mexico three children commit suicide every day and it has nothing to do with impermanence, but with depression, pain, torture. The world is very cruel to children, not only in my country but all over the world: wars, forced relocations, migration.
Q How important is protecting mothers and fathers in the context you mentioned and your own experience?
R. The biggest focus should be on caring for the mental health of these future adults. When there is also a sexual difference, a problem of guilt and shame arises that is not natural but naturalized. My mother's support was very loving and strong, but she didn't have the pedagogy to explain to me why I wasn't wrong, she couldn't help me with the shame and guilt. I think that an educational combination is necessary, I don't know if it is academic, but knowing how to name the basics, like the “ABC” of trans; and at the same time not letting go of that grip, that protection for those who are most vulnerable, boys and girls, whether they are cisheteros or gays or lesbians or transsexuals.
Q And how important do you think this pedagogy is from a social perspective?
R. In the political confrontations and discourses we are currently experiencing, it seems to me that there is not even a willingness to understand this difference, but rather a desire to criminalize and demonize it. We have to stop criminalizing, because it has nothing to do with pedagogy, but with something more humane, more compassionate, more supportive, with the recognition that everyone is different. “You also have a tail that you step on,” they say in Mexico.
Letters, in the Mary Read bookstore in Madrid.Claudio Álvarez
Q How do you feel about this within the feminist movement?
R. I got into feminism around 2010 when I started reading theory and it seemed like a safe place. Not now, but what seems to me is absolutely necessary. Disputes arise from repeating the mistakes of history; At some point, lesbians were also attacked because they refused to marry or have children. As Audre Lorde says, it is not the differences that divide us, but the inability to understand those differences. There was terrible anger that we didn't want to listen, that we didn't want to sit down, that we just wanted to attack each other, in public and in the media, at marches and demonstrations.
Q Solution?
R. Sit in more closed places without internet to be able to listen to each other and don't leave there until we understand that it is not necessary to be friends but to unite. I think that the idea of power has somehow absorbed a lot of feminists who were there first and fought a lot for it, and now they think that a trans woman is going to take that space of power away from them. And it's not like that. A transsexual is precisely the one who has been whipped by power: one must explode power instead of striving to have it as status.
Q Do we also need to trigger certain perceptions about how feminism understands care or housework? In your book you talk about how you always enjoyed cleaning and cooking, how it took away your stress, and how you always felt like a caregiver. Do you think this was due to gender-specific requirements and roles?
R. When I go out with my boyfriend and his son, whom I have taken care of since birth, everyone sees in us the kishterosexual woman with her husband and son, and this reading leads one to these patriarchal figures. But, for example, I am bisexual, we have an open relationship and my care has nothing to do with gender roles. These social readings do not recognize these vanishing points of normativity. When it comes to the question of responsibilities, feminism has brought exactly this concern to my attention [de las personas o del hogar] They are a job. When I started doing grooming, cooking and cleaning, I did it because I know how to do it, because it's fun and relaxing, and I started to monetize it. It's work and you have to call it what it is. For example, my resume has the title “housewife and author” on it, and sometimes it isn’t even mentioned in interviews, but rather removed and made invisible.
Q Did you ever want to be so invisible because of the violence that surrounded you? When did you first become aware of this violence?
R. I was about seven years old when I woke up one night to the screams of a neighbor whose husband, my father's military friend, [su padre también lo era] I hit him. My mother woke up and ran out, opened the door to save the neighbor and I remember running after her. In that moment I realized that I thought that this violence that I saw as normal was normal in other ways than normal within the house, also around me, with the neighbors, and that it was normal in the world. In the street they beat me, girls, boys, little children, they called me a puto, a faggot and a fool. When I left there, I realized that I myself had strong reactions and that it is a very difficult task to eradicate that. It doesn't affect the body like an infection, but the violence rots you a little. So it was self-defense. Part of this self-defense is my writing.
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