Cabello/Carceller

CABELLO/CARCELLER 378
Nancy Cárdenas, whom she was very close to. We find out later that
Nancy Cárdenas premiered in that theater, in 1973 or 1974, her theatrical
adaptation of Los chicos de la banda [The Boys of the Gang],
the first gay play staged in Mexico. There were attempts to censor
her, but she fought until she was able to stage it. While our interview
takes place inside the car, Isabel tells us that she did not
know that there was another archive with Nancy Cárdenas’s name. She
tells us that Cárdenas had a lot of documentation and information
about the period and that all this material is still waiting to be
classified and ordered. There is a third archive then, but it is not
accessible. One should get the family to make it public, it would be
a shame to lose all that material. She remembers that period and the
places where she used to go out. They were an escape, there was also
a private house near the Zócalo. There was a lot of struggle back
then. She hands us an envelope containing a CD with a documentary
and a photograph of Nancy Cárdenas.
We come back home. Our bus brakes suddenly and crashes into a
car. There are no injuries, only a chaotic situation in which no one
seems to take the initiative. We remember Frida Kahlo. With all that
we have traveled, it is our first bus accident, luckily it is not in
a pesero.
* *
We continue with the search for the second archive. We find a newspaper
article about CAMeNA, inaugurated in May 2013: “It combines
in one collection the documentary materials coming from the ‘Nancy
Cárdenas’ Center of Documentation and Lesbian Historical Archive of
Mexico, Latin America, and the Caribbean; the historical archive of
the Collectivo Sol; the Center for Resources and Information on Sexuality
and AIDS (CRISSOL); and the Center for Information and Documentation
of Homosexuality “Ignacio Álvarez” (CIDHOM). All ambitious
names, there must be enormous material, we think. But it seems that
Yan is going to be right and that the archive has been “fused”: “the
integration of these materials into the Gregorio and Marta Selser Archive…”.
We shall see. A web address is mentioned in the article, we
try again, but through it we return to: “Service Temporarily Unavailable”.
This time at least we have a specific direction: the article
locates the CAMeNA in the del Valle campus of the UACM.
We go there.
We arrive at the del Valle campus. Banners inform us that the
university has been on strike: “Welcome Uacemitas. No to the imposition
of the council.“ The school holidays are over, but it seems
that the UACM classes have begun only on this campus. We ask for
the CAMeNA. We are informed that it is open and given directions to
the courtyard at the back where it is located. We go in and ask them
about the CDAHL. It is there, we are told, at last. In fact, it was
EN