Mexico’s first gay mayor

Benjamin Medrano elected in rough rural area

Mexico’s first gay mayor will take office in September, reports the Associated Press in the Huffington Post. Benjamin Medrano, a singer and bar owner, won local elections in the northern town of Fresnillo earlier this month.

Fresnillo is a rough, rural town on the crossroads of the drug war. Winning over its citizens will not be easy, Medrano says.

“I am going to be mayor of a township where there are 258 villages full of tough country people, who don’t necessarily have much information on what’s happening elsewhere, and have even less of an automatic sympathy with their gay mayor.”

“But it’s not like I’m going to paint city hall pink, either,” he says.

Niko Bell

Niko Bell is a writer, editor and translator from Vancouver. He writes about sexual health, science, food and language.

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Politics, Power, News, Ottawa, Vancouver, Canada, Toronto

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