I explore how queer Mexicans from the towns of Poza Rica and Coatzintla in Veracruz, Mexico make queer-worlds possible for themselves. Based on two months of ethnographic fieldwork in these two towns, I focus on the ways in which queer Mexicans contest, negotiate and mediate gender/sexual policing, while also challenging and producing/reproducing traditional gender roles and heteronormativity. I track these queer practices in a context where institutions like family, marriage, motherhood, mass

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... edia, church, language, and other institutions, police alternative gender/sexual identifications and/or expressions. Gender and sexual policing are also mediated by intersectionalities of gender, race-ethnicity, class, sex and sexuality. After a brief historical overview of queer developments in Mexico, this thesis examines how machismo, as an ideology in constant transformation, regulates the lives of queer folks. As well, it addresses queer (in)visibility in public discourses and it reveals the ways in which queer Mexicans publicly display what it means to be queer in these two towns. The thesis also examines the discourses and practices associated with La putería, (whoring) as a simultaneous a tool of both gender/sexual policing and resistance for queer folks and as a potential mechanism to challenge gender roles and the gender order. My findings reveal gender and sexual fluidity as well as multiple emerging spaces that intersect with other practices for queer Mexicans. The data gathered also suggests terms of identification as a difficult terrain since they do not map neatly into the paradigms found in North America. ii