80 Years Strong: How a Trans Woman Became a Legendary LGBT Advocate in Mexico Celia Gomez Ramos - OUT
go to original October 3, 2016

"While most women my age are resigned to their fate, I find myself with a lot to do," says Samantha Aurelia Vicenta Flores García. (Bénédicte Desrus)

I grew up halfway between religion and homosexuality,” says Samantha Aurelia Vicenta Flores García, one of Mexico’s most prominent transgender activists and the force behind a groundbreaking day shelter for LGBT senior citizens. On the phone her voice sounds soft and bright before turning powerful. Twenty years ago she was transformed from a hyper-successful publicist into a high-profile activist by the death of a close friend with AIDS. She has not looked back.

Flores’s sense of self is unyielding, and it derives its strength from her struggle with owning her identity. It goes back at least to the moment she chose to go blonde, simultaneously rejecting men’s clothes that she’d been forced to wear through her teens like a tourniquet.

“Being a blonde is great for procuring things and securing lovers,” says Flores, the founder of Laetus Vitae (Full Life), the umbrella organization for the day shelter for elderly LGBTs in Mexico City, now in its 15th year. Flores plans to add a second service in time, providing sanctuary to at-risk homeless youths who will in turn learn to care for the elderly during their stay.   

Today, Flores gives talks to youth on sexual responsibility and lectures on transgender issues in universities and other venues. She has even addressed representatives of Mexico’s Congress regarding the rights of the LGBT community. “While most women my age are resigned to their fate, I find myself with a lot to do,” she says. In the process she has earned the respect and fondness of the international community. Earlier this year she was awarded the Transexualia Prize by transgender women in Madrid, Spain, in recognition of her work.

Before she became a publicist, Flores was a renowned transgender hostess at the Camelia la Tejana club, located in the posh neighborhood of San Ángel in Mexico City, a venue favored during the 1970s by celebrities, stars, and business tycoons — who went there mainly to see her. “I never received a complaint from the customers,” she says. “I cannot say the same about the employees, who, after finding out that I was trans, used to pretend I didn’t exist. I had to work hard to prove myself, until they started needing me.”

But despite her pioneering role, it was only in 2013 that Flores was able to officially change her identity. Last year she realized her dream of being christened as Samantha in the Catholic Church. “I felt a sense of peace,” she says. Although oppressed by her religion, she still attends mass every Sunday “because my father would have liked me to.”

Read the rest at OUT

Related: Slideshow: Inside the Prolific Life of Trans Advocate Samantha Aurelia Vicenta Flores García (Out)

Related: How One Mexican Gay Woman Found Home in a Phoenix Nightclub (Phoenix New Times)

Translated from Spanish by Guillermina Olmedo y Vera

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