Asylum and Identity: the transvestite case

For our purposes, Hernández Montiels story helps focus a discussion about patterns of violence against transgender individuals in Mexico, as well as how the discussions of these practices have been exported to the US, and in turn, how US scholars and US sex tourists, as well as US discussions of gay rights, have informed some practices and discussions in Mexico. Th is back-and-forth of mutual infl uence and partial incomprehension involves, for example, the necessary legal inscription of cultural stereotypes as irrefutable fi ndings of fact, as well as a fair amount of projection and fulfi llment of wishes from numerous sites, in both directions