Nancy Cárdenas (29 May 1934 – 23 March 1994) was a Mexican actress, poet, writer and feminist.

Education

Born in

Parras de la Fuente Parras de la Fuente () is a city located in the southern part of the Mexico, Mexican List of states of Mexico, state of Coahuila. The city serves as the municipal seat of the surrounding Parras Municipality, which has an area of 9,271.7 km ...

Coahuila Coahuila, formally Coahuila de Zaragoza, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Coahuila de Zaragoza, is one of the 31 states of Mexico. The largest city and State Capital is the city of Saltillo; the second largest is Torreón and the thi ...

, Cárdenas earned a doctorate in Philosophy and Letters at the

National Autonomous University of Mexico The National Autonomous University of Mexico (, UNAM) is a public university, public research university in Mexico. It has several campuses in Mexico City, and many others in various locations across Mexico, as well as a presence in nine countri ...

, studied staging, film and theater at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

in the United States and took courses in Polish language and culture in

Łódź Łódź is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located south-west of Warsaw. Łódź has a population of 655,279, making it the country's List of cities and towns in Polan ...

Radio, theater and cinema

Nancy Cárdenas began as a radio announcer at the age of 20 years, then became a stage actress. In the 1950s she participated in the reading program, ''Poesía en Voz Alta'' ("Poetry Out Loud"), directed by Héctor Mendoza. In the 1960s she switched to writing. She published her first one-act play, ''El cántaro seco'' (The Empty Pitcher), and began a career as a journalist for various magazines and on the culture pages of various newspapers. In 1970 she worked as a theater director on ''El efecto de los rayos gamma sobre las caléndulas'' (The Effect of Gamma Rays on Marigolds), which won the Association of Theatre Critics Prize. She directed several successful plays, displaying certain political implications. She also wrote, along with

Carlos Monsiváis Carlos Monsiváis Aceves (May 4, 1938 – June 19, 2010) was a Mexican philosopher, writer, critic, political activist, and journalist. He also wrote political opinion columns in leading newspapers within the country's progressive sectors. ...

, a documentary film, ''México de mis amores'', and directed it herself in 1979. From 1980 she devoted her time to writing plays and poetry. She died in Mexico City on March 23, 1994, of breast cancer.

Sexuality

At age 39, Cárdenas became the first publicly declared

lesbian A lesbian is a homosexual woman or girl. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homosexu ...

in Mexico when she revealed her sexuality on the TV show ''24 horas'', hosted by

Jacobo Zabludovsky Jacobo Zabludovsky Kraveski (May 24, 1928 – July 2, 2015) was a Mexican journalist. He was the first anchorman in Mexican television and his TV news program, ''24 Horas'' (''24 Hours'') was for decades regarded as the most important in the co ...

, during an interview about the firing of a gay employee. In the 1970s, she pioneered the gay liberation movement in Mexico, elaborating on the subject in several television interviews. She founded, in 1974, the first gay organization in Mexico, Frente de Liberación Homosexual Mexicano (FLHM; Mexican Homosexual Liberation Front). As a feminist and sexology specialist she also held numerous conferences, seminars and national and international television interviews on the subject. In 1975, along with

, she wrote the Manifesto in Defense of Homosexuals in Mexico. On October 2, 1978, during the march in commemoration of the Tlatelolco massacre, she headed the first gay pride march in the

Plaza de las Tres Culturas The Plaza de las Tres Culturas ("The Three Cultures square") is the main square within the Tlatelolco neighborhood of Mexico City. The name "Three Cultures" is in recognition of the three periods of Mexican history reflected by buildings in ...

. A center for gay and lesbian activities was named in her honor: the Nancy Cárdenas Latin American and Mexican Lesbian Documentation and Historical Archives Center (CDAHL).

Works

Film

*México de mis amores (1979) (direction and photography – director with Carlos Monsiváis)

Theater

*El cántaro seco (The Empty Pitcher) *Y la maestra bebe un poco (And the teacher drinks a bit) *Los chicos de la banda de Matt Crowley (adaptation of Matt Crowley's ''Boys in the Band'') *Cuarteto (Foursome) *Misterio bufo (Bouffe Mystery ) *La hiedra (Ivy) *La casa de muñecas de Henrik Ibsen (Henrik Ibsen's Doll House) *El pozo de la soledad de Radclyffe Hall ( Radclyffe Hall's Well of Loneliness) *Sida.... así es la vida (AIDS .... such is life)

Poetry

*Cuaderno de amor y desamor (1968–1993) (Book of love and hate)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cardenas, Nancy 1934 births 1994 deaths Mexican LGBTQ rights activists Mexican feminists Mexican feminist writers Mexican stage actresses Mexican lesbian actresses Mexican lesbian writers Mexican LGBTQ poets Mexican LGBTQ dramatists and playwrights Mexican women poets Mexican women dramatists and playwrights Lesbian poets Lesbian dramatists and playwrights 20th-century Mexican women writers 20th-century Mexican poets 20th-century Mexican dramatists and playwrights 20th-century Mexican actresses Felipa de Souza Award 20th-century Mexican LGBTQ people Yale University alumni