Mexico women to wed in first for Latin America

Mexico City residents are enjoying a new freedom, which sets the sprawling capital another step apart from the rest of the country.

MEXICO CITY, March 11, 2010 (AFP) - "We don't have anything ready apart from what we're wearing," said Judith Vazquez, a Mexican who will wed another woman in Mexico City on Thursday in a first for Latin America.

After years of activism, Mexicans Lol Kin Castaneda and Judith Vazquez were taken by surprise when the region's first gay marriage law came into force last week in the Mexican capital.

Shortly after they signed their names in the city's civil register, they learned they would be the first of five couples to pass before a city judge on Thursday.

Mexico City's left-leaning legislature approved gay marriage and opened the way for adoptions on December 21, provoking a wave of uproar from religious groups in the Catholic nation and conservatives including President Felipe Calderon.

The attorney general has lodged an appeal against the move at the Supreme Court, and a string of states are seeking to apply measures to specifically prohibit gay marriages.

Meanwhile many Mexico City residents are enjoying a new freedom, which sets the sprawling capital another step apart from the rest of the country, after the city's legislature approved first trimester abortions three years ago.

Mexico City is still a far cry from gay centers like Amsterdam or San Francisco, but it has one of the few openly gay populations in Latin America.

Two men were recently married in Buenos Aires, the country's second gay marriage, after a judge approved the union ahead of possible legislation in Argentina.

After weeks instead of months of planning, Mexico City's first female couple will marry wearing ivory dresses designed and donated by a Mexican stylist.

"I'm worried about the reception, about making a good speech," said Lol Kin Castaneda, whose first name means "Sunflower" in the Mayan language.

"My commitment (to the cause) means not speaking about myself but about a reality of putting a situation of historically-denied rights in political terms."

The couple met nine years ago, when Castaneda was already a political activist and Vazquez was planning to become a nun.

"There was a contradiction as I was a lesbian, so I decided to give up my plans to become a nun. It wasn't easy," Vazquez said, sitting in the couple's Mexico City apartment.

The most painful part of her decision was that it opened up a gulf with her parents.

"At 45-years-old, they still see me as the single daughter who has no kids. They can't respect either my relationship or our life," Vazquez said.

As they held hands, the women said they had never thought about marriage until shortly before the new law was approved last December.

"Some 30 of us activists sat down and asked each other who would get married," said Vazquez. "No one replied," she added.

The couple volunteered in the end, but for reasons which had little to do with the traditional motives for marriage.

"The marriage doesn't change our relationship or change our love or consolidate anything," 33-year-old Castaneda said. "It just gives us rights which were denied."

Those include being recognized as a couple by social security services, inheritance rights and joint guardianship of children.

The younger partner was so against stereotypes that she proposed getting married in a traditional indigenous outfit and combat boots, before Vazquez and others persuaded her to change her mind.

"We want to be pretty, for us and for lesbians in Latin America who long for a day like ours," Vazquez said.