Mexico’s #MeToo reckoning is on its way, starting with its comedy scene

Mexico City—The studio audience clapped and cheered as comedians Aníbal “El Muerto” (“Death”) and Myr Ramírez took the stage on July 7, 2018, for the last battle of wits on an episode of Comedy Central’s Duelo de Comediantes (Dueling Comedians), to be broadcast later in August. Goldtooth (a cowboy character played by Fernando Bonilla), the referee, asked veteran comedian Mauricio Barrientos—known more popularly as “El Diablito” (“Little Devil”)—one of three on the judging panel, to choose who should start.

“La señora del hashtag (The Hashtag Lady),” Diablito replied with a smirk.

It was a cheap shot against Ramírez, who laughed it off. In October 2017, Ramírez took to social media to recount how she had been sexually harassed by fellow comedian Fredy “El Regio” (“The Regal”) the year before. On her Facebook fan page, Ramírez said that El Regio had once locked her in the bathroom at the Woko bar in Mexico City on her birthday, saying he wanted to speak with her. “Over the previous year, he had been insisting on us having sex and… I had refused… Before locking me in the bathroom, he sent me a picture of his penis without any warning.”

Ramírez said she was prompted to tell her story of sexual harassment by a professional male peer after attending "Estrógenofest" (Estrogen Fest), a space for women to gather and perform music and comedy, held in the very place where she was locked in a bathroom by El Regio.

Before Ramírez’s disclosure, she told Women Under Siege, El Regio had contacted her via Messenger to apologize, and he later also apologized in person. However, she told us, just days after she posted about the incident on Facebook, “he called a press conference and told a bunch of journalists that I did it to gain attention and to obtain some benefit, using his fame to join a movement that is ‘in style’ (#MeToo).”

In November, one month later, 76 fellow women colleagues in comedy signed a letter, which went viral on Twitter with the hashtag #YaEstuvo, decrying the abuses described by Ramírez as far from isolated cases and calling for action. “It is necessary to stop sexual harassment and gender violence. It is time to act, but to make a change we have to start by educating ourselves, understanding which behaviors are normal and which are not.”

The cost of speaking out was high for Ramírez: El Regio was invited to give “his side of the story” in a spread in national daily El Universal, in which he denied Ramírez’s account. Along with El Regio’s, many comments in broadcast and social media also appeared, suggesting that Ramírez was telling her story purely for attention and that the story was incorrect. “I’m sure there are people who won’t hire me [now] for that,” Ramírez told us.

That there was backlash of this nature is hardly surprising in Mexico, where, like so many places around the world, sexism is entrenched in every level of society. Sexual harassment is widespread, as is domestic violence. According to Mexico’s National Public Security System (SESNSP)’s Executive Secretariat, based on the number of femicides in the first quarter of 2019 alone, an average of 10 women are killed per day in the country.

Since Ramírez first spoke out, she has been working with colleagues to improve conditions for women in the comedy scene and to support girls and young women to speak out and defend themselves in society. Working with fellow "standuperas" (women stand-up comedians) Adriana Chávez, Mónica Escobedo, and Leah Nedvedovich, working under the hashtag #YaEstuvo, they created a pledge for “a healthy work environment where we are all feel free to be, act, and express ourselves.” The group has also consulted with lawyers and therapists with expertise in gender justice and engaged male allies to help spread the word that there must be consequences for sexual harassment and sexual assault. Ramírez and her colleagues host workshops in collaboration with feminist theater-maker Lorena Elizondo—who first came up with the idea—for men and women in the media and comedy industries to combat violence against women.

Both the resistance to the #MeToo movement playing out in the comedy scene and the solidarity happening there largely mirror Mexico’s difficult path forward to a real reckoning—and a real sea change—on gender justice. Since Ramírez’s call to action over a year ago, the #MeToo movement has been steadily growing in Mexico. In March, hundreds of women denounced their colleagues in various professions, under hashtags like #MeTooEscritores (#MeTooWriters), #MeTooPeriodistas (#MeTooJournalists), and #MeTooMusicos (#MeTooMusicians). One of the better-known examples was the firing of Leonardo Valero, then director of operations at the national daily newspaper La Reforma, after testimony from Eloísa Ferrera, the former editor of the paper’s international section, of ongoing sexual harassment was made public and went viral under #MeTooPeriodistasMexicanos.

“I think it is a super important moment for this society,” Ramírez said. “We are not staying the victim, but we are going out to defend ourselves, and that is a message that seems very important to me.”

Thousands of actions, collectives, and ongoing projects are in operation throughout the country. Feminists are speaking out in the media wherever possible: for example, Mexico City collective Mujeres+Mujeres is urging national mainstream media to adopt “a gender perspective” to ensure that its coverage does not vilify the movement as violent, hypocritical and excessive. One of the more recent and notorious examples of this media bias was on full display in coverage of the “glitter protests” in August, when thousands of women took to the streets across Mexico to protest recent allegations of police officers raping teenaged girls. Protests in Mexico City left a metrobus station in flames and the famous Angel of Independence statue in the city center covered in pink glitter and pro-feminist graffiti. In a statement criticizing the imbalanced reporting, which favored centering the vandalism rather than the abuses that ignited the outrage in the first place, Mujeres+Mujeres wrote, “The protests seek to recover the ultimate meaning of public institutions: impart justice. The media have a clear responsibility in helping to break the normalization and silence surrounding the conditions of violence that women live in our country.”

Organizing against sexual misconduct continues through organizations like Foro #MeTooMX, which brings human rights defenders together to work on policy responses to sexual harassment and assault, and #YaEsHora (“It’s Time”), which organizes for gender parity in the media and film industries. Self-defense classes and collectives are also gaining popularity, with a clear mission to self-organize and self-strengthen against the threat of gendered violence and femicide.

Men like El Diablito can smirk and dismiss the movement that women like Myr Ramírez are building in Mexico, but there is little doubt that it is only growing in its intelligence, integrity, and power.