I had heard rumors about males having intercourse in Mexico Metropolis’s subway system. However nothing ready me for what I witnessed on my first experience within the último vagón.
It was early afternoon, outdoors of peak commuting hours. Solely a handful of passengers had been within the final automotive of the prepare because it headed out of town middle and pulled above floor, zooming alongside the freeway. My eyes darted forwards and backwards between a middle-age man in dusty overalls, presumably a day laborer, and a preppy, college-age man in a polo.
The youthful man stood together with his forearms resting on a handrail. He stared at his cellphone, barely bent over. The older man was braced in opposition to the door, his hand stuffed into the youthful man’s sweatpants. I attempted to not stare, however I stored stealing glances to verify what I assumed I used to be seeing. After a number of moments, it grew to become clear that he was masturbating the younger man anally.
The older man stared forward, stony and emotionless. The younger man didn’t betray any emotion both; he continued to scroll by his mobile phone, guffawing sometimes, maybe in response to some novelty on his social feeds. It was as if they had been sustaining a type of public decorum, regardless of the brazenness of their intimate exercise.
The younger man bit his lip and clenched his jaw, seemingly attempting to hide a shudder rocking by him—as if he had been throwing himself onto a hand grenade, valiantly defending the harmless bystanders from the pleasure that was exploding inside him. The prepare continued, passing the Villa de Cortés station.
I regarded round for somebody who may make sense of this example. Only some meters away, an aged girl sat with a basket of sunflowers in her lap. A person in a enterprise swimsuit was absorbed in his cellphone. They might not probably have failed to note what the 2 males had been doing, a paradoxical efficiency of publicity and concealment. However outwardly, they ignored the episode completely.
Queer individuals the world over have discovered methods to create areas the place they’ll survive, and typically even thrive, within the unlikeliest contexts. However only a few have managed to style a queer hub out of one thing that’s cellular and woven into the municipal infrastructure. Mexico Metropolis’s homosexual underground has the excellence of being actually underground. The historian Alonso Hernández Victoria notes that homosexual males have used Mexico Metropolis’s subway for intercourse, romance, and different encounters because it opened in 1969. Within the quintessential Mexican LGBTQ novel The Vampire of Colonia Roma, revealed in 1979, creator Luis Zapata describes the subway because the axis of Mexico Metropolis’s homosexual world. For many years, sure stations served as hubs of homosexual neighborhood, and by the Nineteen Nineties, the subway system had develop into what the geographers Álvaro Sánchez Crispín and Álvaro López-López referred to as “one of the in style and visited homosexual locations…maybe in the entire world.” Since 2000, public male-male intercourse has taken place within the último vagón nearly continually throughout its working hours. In the meantime, metropolis authorities have more and more branded Mexico Metropolis as LGBTQ-friendly, adorning Metro stations with works by queer artists, even licensing works by the homosexual US artist and HIV/AIDS activist Keith Haring to cowl whole prepare exteriors. But the practices of the último vagón exist in a authorized grey space, which retains many queer individuals precariously depending on the largesse of police and politicians.
Most cities don’t acknowledge public intercourse as a human proper; Amsterdam and Copenhagen are notable exceptions. Whereas Mexico Metropolis doesn’t explicitly defend the actions of the último vagón (Spanish for “final automotive”), it doesn’t forbid them both. Metropolis statutes that apply to public intercourse and intercourse work are ambiguous and open to interpretation by police. Particularly, it’s not clear when or if laws within the metropolis’s civil code truly apply to intercourse within the final automotive. Héctor Domínguez Ruvalcaba, a scholar of queer Latin American tradition on the College of Texas at Austin, advised me that he was reminded of how colonial legal guidelines in Mexico typically included the proviso “obedézcase, pero no se cumpla” (a paradoxical insistence that the legislation wanted to be “obeyed, however not fulfilled”). The textual content of Chapter I, Article X, of Mexico Metropolis’s municipal code states that it penalizes “the exhibition of the intercourse organs with the intention to hassle or assault somebody,” underneath the particular situation that “there exists a criticism from the individual thus bothered or attacked.” The legislation doesn’t strictly apply to consensual sexual actions, although the police have typically invoked this legislation to be able to extort bribes. In the meantime, the final automotive has provoked a lot debate and outcry within the Mexican press, which often laments this “open secret.” And now the establishment—which some name a paradise and others contemplate a disgrace—could also be dealing with a crackdown.
I started to experience the último vagón. My informal exploration rapidly advanced into in depth analysis. Early on, I met Elias within the final automotive. A homosexual man in his mid-20s, Elias advised me that he had studied pictures in faculty, however for the reason that pandemic he has struggled to search out regular work. He invited me to disembark with him, and we chatted briefly on a station platform. Elias advised me that, due to his straitened financial circumstances, he had moved again in together with his mother and father, whom he referred to as homophobic. He described himself as an “professional” within the último vagón and had undertaken an intensive examine of town’s subway system.
Elias supplied me a listing of the traces the place there may be, as a rule, cruising within the final automotive—however I rapidly realized that he had named almost all 12 traces within the subway. Because the second-largest subway system on the continent (after New York Metropolis’s), the Mexico Metropolis Metro strikes a mean of just about 4 million individuals a day, from 5 am to midnight. The fare for the Metro has been 5 pesos, or about 25 US cents, since 2013—the system is so closely sponsored that it has repeatedly been a supply of competition between the Mexican authorities and the World Financial institution. As Elias famous, this low worth makes the final automotive rather more accessible than golf equipment and bars.
Every line, Elias advised me, has its personal persona. “On the road that goes to Metro College,” he stated, “the final automotive has extra faculty college students.” Different traces swimsuit different tastes: “The coffee-colored line passes by the sports activities middle, so the final automotive on that line has extra jocks.” In response to a current examine by the sociologist Andrés Alvarez Elizalde, the sexual exercise is very frequent throughout peak hours (when the final automotive is extraordinarily crowded) and late at night time (when the final automotive is sort of empty).
After I requested Elias concerning the curious scene I had witnessed—the employee anally fingering a scholar, in full view of people that pretended to not discover—he advised me to learn the Nobel laureate Octavio Paz. “The final automotive,” Elias stated, “is like what Paz referred to as the Mexican ‘labyrinth of solitude.’” Paz claimed that Mexican nationwide tradition is characterised by hypocrisy and loneliness, as individuals cover their true selves whereas becoming a member of collectively in public rituals and celebrations. Like many different guys I might meet, Elias stated the final automotive emerged out of what he referred to as the doble moralidad, or “double requirements,” of Mexican tradition. The final automotive gives homosexual males like him with an area of freedom. Elias defined that he had little or no cash and no privateness at residence and that the final automotive offered a refuge from his judgmental mother and father.
Most of the males I met on the Metro advised related tales. Miguelito—who’s in his late 20s and teaches French—advised me he had grown up in a provincial city and moved to Mexico Metropolis for faculty. By chance, he discovered the final automotive, and he started to experience in it often. He stated that exploring the prepare helped him to come back out as homosexual, “not simply sexually, however by seeing homosexual individuals speaking, flirting, laughing.” He even met his first boyfriend within the último vagón. Like Elias, he described the phenomenon of the final automotive as having to do with a “double life.” He stated that he took pleasure in how he may “insurgent in opposition to his household’s thought of him as the perfect son.”
A podcaster named La Siguamonta has created an in depth collection of interviews concerning the final automotive, Trip It Good: Aventuras desde el Último. The thumbnail on La Siguamonta’s podcast exhibits them using the prepare whereas exposing their bum, and so they advised me that they used to dress as much as experience the Metro, as if on the point of go to a membership. They talked about how, after they migrated to Mexico from Guatemala, the final automotive offered them with an area of neighborhood. There may be “a social dedication to the último vagón and a philosophical affinity,” they stated, insisting that it’s “not nearly being a ho.”
Trip It Good describes a fancy sexual ecosystem hiding in plain sight, its most intimate escapades on full show however its nuances legible solely to these within the know. Males with particular tastes know which traces to experience on to be able to encounter their sort. Line B, for instance, leaves town correct for the rougher barrios surrounding it, and its final automotive is named a spot to search for gente mal—tough commerce.
As La Siguamonta put it, “There are extra intensities on the margins than within the middle, the place everyone seems to be homogenized.” And the prepare connects these marginal intensities. Actually, this has been an necessary position the Metro has performed in queer historical past. Because the homosexual novelist José Joaquín Blanco has written, when the Metro opened in 1969, it related the working-class barrios with the luxurious neighborhoods and created cross-class homosexual relationships that “forcibly democratized” the homosexual neighborhood and turned the entire metropolis “pink”: “The unemployed or underemployed boys from Neza [a rough barrio] arrived in waves of lots of and hundreds, simply by getting off the subway.” Vacationers, in the meantime, have been coming to Mexico Metropolis to benefit from the bustling homosexual scene—stuffed with bathhouses, discotheques, and film theaters—and the US photographer David Graham has documented the final automotive with thrilling images. One of many metropolis’s intercourse golf equipment even features a duplicate of an último vagón. However as digital nomads transfer into Mexico Metropolis, only a few of them appear to experience the subway.
The current examine by Alvarez Elizalde documented the range of practices that happen within the automotive. Principally the intercourse is masturbation or oral, although typically there may be additionally anal penetration. Many commuters are merely making the most of their day by day trek to and from work. Others use the automotive as a gathering place and migrate the sexual exercise elsewhere. A laborer in his 30s named Jesús advised me that “Wednesday is my time without work, so each Wednesday afternoon I experience round till I meet somebody after which go to a resort with him.”
Not everybody within the final automotive is in search of intercourse. Some guys use the final automotive to hunt out dates and romance. And a few LGBTQ people experience within the final automotive as a result of it feels comparatively safer. The primary two vehicles of the trains are for girls and youngsters solely, to be able to defend ladies from sexual assault. However Rachel Swack, who’s researching the Metro from a feminist perspective as a Fulbright public coverage fellow, advised me that this has turned the center vehicles into “harassment vehicles” that appear to be stuffed with predators. Within the final automotive, I typically see lesbian {couples}, trans ladies, and others from all stripes of the LGBTQ rainbow. It’s like a day by day Pleasure Parade, stuffed with queer staff, college students, docs, legal professionals, troopers—some having sexual adventures and a few simply using to and from work.
In fact, there are homosexual individuals in Mexico who object to the follow. Saúl, a middle-aged mariachi singer, advised me that he thought of the último vagón “shameful” and “with out dignity.” Saúl stated that the automotive “didn’t have the romance of the mariachi ballads” that he appreciated to sing.
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However different riders take a extra optimistic view. Adam, a physician from Israel in his late 40s, advised me about how he had escaped an organized marriage and fled to Mexico. When he discovered the final automotive, he stated, it helped him regulate to his new life. “Within the final automotive,” Adam advised me, “you could be your self.”
Different males discover the final automotive therapeutic. David, a flower salesman in his 30s, advised me he had grown up in rural Mexico, crossed the US border, and lived for years with an older associate. When his associate died, David stated, he “felt depressed” and determined to return to Mexico. He went to a therapist, who urged that he experience within the final automotive to be able to make buddies. “It’s not like different homosexual areas,” David stated, “as a result of there’s no medication or alcohol.”
Though public intercourse, significantly through the daytime, might sound inherently dangerous, a number of individuals advised me that the final automotive is comparatively safe. Elias stated that “there’s numerous mild” within the automotive, “so it feels safer” than different homosexual areas. A bisexual lab technician in his 20s advised me that “within the final automotive, there’s much less discrimination than on Grindr,” the place customers typically reject individuals due to their race or physique sort.
Epidemiologists don’t but perceive how intercourse on the Metro impacts public well being. However HIV/AIDS activists, understanding that it’s a web site for male-male sexual exercise, ceaselessly use the Metro to ship drugs and academic data.
The último vagón’s authorized standing grew to become much more sophisticated following a battle in 2011 between the Metro’s authorities and town’s Human Rights Fee. A press report from that yr said that sexual exercise on the prepare “has been an open secret since 2004, when guards from the Metro Collective Transportation System started to detect it.” The Metro introduced that it will shut the final automotive of sure prepare traces throughout night hours. Formally, authorities claimed that they had been taking this motion as a consequence of a scarcity of ridership late at night time. However the Human Rights Fee acquired at the very least three formal complaints accusing the Metro of anti-gay discrimination. And a subsequent investigation by the fee discovered that ridership was not decrease at late hours, and that the authorities had clearly meant to close down the final automotive to be able to curtail homosexual intercourse. Many station managers and law enforcement officials had stated aloud what everybody already knew. One cop justified the closure of the final automotive by saying, “There are lots of gays, and so they do their issues.” One other guard described homosexual intercourse within the último vagón as a type of militant invasion: “It’s due to the gays, as a result of they had been taking up the services…. There are even recordings by which oral intercourse is being practiced.”
In its subsequent, nonbinding suggestions, the Human Rights Fee argued that the Metro had discriminated in opposition to homosexual individuals by particularly focusing on them, and that the closure of the final automotive had violated their human rights. The fee really useful that the Metro reopen the final automotive at late hours and mount a publicity marketing campaign to tell the general public about LGBTQ rights. The fee’s suggestions had been adopted, which gave a quasi-legal sanction to the último vagón. Some homosexual activists have objected to how the ensuing authorized confusion promotes discrimination in opposition to homosexual individuals. Héctor Salinas, a professor of gender research on the Nationwide Autonomous College of Mexico, has urged that the fee appeared to have granted homosexual individuals particular privileges to have intercourse in public. “We’d like equal rights,” he stated, “not particular rights.”
One subway safety guard advised me that her superiors gave her strict directions: “When you see guys having relations within the final automotive, simply politely ask them to depart.” I’ve additionally seen guards enter a automotive the place males had been masturbating each other brazenly and easily shout to the gang “Buenas tardes!” as a solution to sign their presence and encourage the boys to desist.
Despite the authorized ambiguities, many riders, in addition to some police, assume that public intercourse is in opposition to the legislation in Mexico Metropolis. Alan, a music trainer in his early 30s, advised me that “it’s not a good suggestion to argue with a cop.” Sometimes, cops don’t arrest individuals for intercourse within the automotive however as an alternative demand bribes. Some encounters with law enforcement officials within the subway are abusive: For many years, journalists like Eduardo Monteverde have documented quite a few allegations that law enforcement officials extort intercourse from homosexual males within the subway.
Jhon, a graphic designer in his 20s who lives outdoors town together with his aunt, stated that, like Elias, he has little privateness at residence and never a lot cash. He has persistently discovered the final automotive to be essentially the most possible place for him to have intercourse. One night, he and an acquaintance had been participating in oral intercourse within the final automotive once they had been shocked by a cop. The cop demanded a bribe. Jhon’s pal certainly supplied one, within the type of oral intercourse.
In July of this yr, a bisexual cop and newbie pornographer recorded himself having a threesome within the subway with one other male porn actor and the feminine influencer Bella Luna. After it was posted on-line, the video went viral and have become a significant if fleeting scandal. The incident introduced new scrutiny and press consideration to the follow of intercourse within the subway. The officer additionally moonlighted as an OnlyFans performer (apparently for homosexual and straight audiences alike). Generally known as Señor Indomable (Mr. Indomitable), his pornographic persona is macho and cussed. Within the subway film, Señor Indomable performs a hyper-macho state police officer in uniform who masturbates himself solo in a prepare automotive after which participates in a threesome.
Journalists lamented how the incident embodied “the Mexican hypocrisy which at all times involves mild,” and Metro personnel hung makeshift indicators in lots of stations warning individuals to not have intercourse on the prepare. The police division suspended Señor Indomable, although he was instantly reinstated after LGBTQ teams protested.
There are different indicators that the tolerance of the subway as a homosexual establishment in Mexico Metropolis could also be on the wane. Lately, authorities evicted a long-standing queer occupation of the Insurgentes station within the plaza of the Glorieta, a significant transportation hub with connecting bus traces. Since its opening in 1969, Metro Insurgentes has offered house for queer neighborhood, cruising, and intercourse work, and for many years, stalls within the plaza had been rented out to meals distributors and small shops, till a collection of renovations in 2012, 2017, and 2024 eliminated commerce from the location. In 2021, queer and trans youths commandeered a part of the station to function what they referred to as a “sexual dissidents’ market.” Below a low, concrete ceiling—darkish, like a cave—the sexual dissidents laid down blankets and started to promote political artwork, classic clothes, and their very own style designs, in addition to books and zines, weed, BDSM regalia, and dildos.
Generally YouTubers with cameras have tried to document the queer intercourse that takes place within the public bogs subsequent to {the marketplace}. The organizers of the market took a tough line in opposition to vacationers who needed to gawk at them and gringo journalists who needed to check them. On the cement partitions, graffiti messages proclaim: “Jotxs si, fotos no!” (“Fags sure, images no!”) I solely managed to speak with one of many cofounders by paying her a hefty sum of money (the identical price, she advised me, that she charged for intercourse). She stated that she and her buddies had been discriminated in opposition to once they tried to promote merchandise in a feminist market, and they also had determined to launch their very own queer market.
Formally, {the marketplace} didn’t have a transparent authorized proper to occupy the house. And a corrupt labor syndicate, affiliated with the mob, claimed to have jurisdiction over the world. In September 2021, distributors represented by the syndicate got here to Metro Insurgentes with sticks and beat up distributors on the queer market. In response, the occupiers held a protest; partly peaceable and partly violent, it broken a part of the station. Metropolis police arrived and kettled the protesters for an hour. Leaders of {the marketplace} met with the authorities, and town’s then-mayor, Claudia Sheinbaum (now the president of Mexico), repeatedly threatened to evict {the marketplace}. Sheinbaum declared that the station ought to “not be an area of commerce.” But she was finally conciliatory, stating that “by the Secretaría de Gobierno, dialogue is being opened with totally different individuals who have established this place as a gross sales house,” and that “we’re privileging dialogue.”
The occupation managed to hold on for 3 extra years. Within the weeks following the Señor Indomable scandal, nevertheless, municipal authorities lastly compelled the sexual dissidents out of Insurgentes and closed down {the marketplace}. In a press release launched by Instagram, the occupiers vowed: “Our struggle continues, so long as our human rights proceed to be disrespected, so long as they proceed to kill trans individuals, and so long as they proceed to disclaim us jobs.”
Mexican and worldwide commentators have scrutinized the nation’s current, controversial reforms of its judicial system, in addition to the growing militarization of its police drive. It stays to be seen how Sheinbaum’s tenure as head of state will change the nation. The one factor everybody I spoke to agreed with was that change was coming. I requested Miguelito, the French trainer, if he was frightened that the último vagón could be shut down. He advised me, “We at all times discover a solution to work across the guidelines.”
Lately, I attempted using within the final automotive once more, to see what it was like when the subway is busier. One afternoon, round 5:30 pm—simply as people are making the after-work commute—I waited on the platform at Metro Tacubaya, pressed by an enormous crowd. Because the prepare pulled into the station, I used to be pushed by the mob and jammed into the final automotive. Over 30 our bodies squashed collectively—a mass of staff, college students, legal professionals, troopers. Densely writhing, their limbs now not appeared to belong to specific people however grew to become an assortment of arms, hips, butts, bulges. I may discern three youths who fashioned a circle, their backs turned, masturbating one another. 4 guys lined up as in a conga line, dry-humping. Within the nook, a soccer participant acquired oral intercourse from a trans girl kneeling in entrance of him. Because the prepare pulled into the subsequent station, the video games paused. A few of the guys furtively zipped up and zipped out. Extra guys packed in and joined the enjoyable. Because the prepare left the station, the motion resumed. Stopping and beginning on this means, secret and furtive, the final automotive—a paradox of freedom and repression—testifies to how queer individuals have an everlasting capability to create areas for themselves, even inside attempting circumstances. And, for now at the very least, the experience continues.
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