Mexican Town Bans Women in Miniskirts and Fines Crossdressers

Feb. 26, 2013— -- The security chief of a Mexican border town has decided to ban women from wearing miniskirts, and to impose fines on men who parade the streets of his city in female attire.

Javier Agudelo is a retired general and now the top security officer in Ciudad Acuña, a city of 140,000 residents across the Texas border. He told local newspapers that miniskirts and cross dressing had to be banned in town in order to preserve "morality" and "decency," but also said that women who wear short skirts, or men who dress as women, can use their apparel to "commit several sorts of crimes."

According to Agudelo women can use miniskirts and "provactive" attire to engage in prostitution, to provoke fights, or to lure kidnapping victims. Men who dress like women can hamper police investigations – by allegedly disguising their identity — and use public bathrooms intended for the opposite sex. There are clearly no statistics that prove this, but that has not stopped the push for it.

Agudelo's moral crusade has, of course, been rejected by local LGBT community leaders who say that police in Ciudad Acuña already discriminate against transgender men. Representatives of the LGBT community told local newspaper El Zocalo that they are planning protests against the new "security measures," and are seeking advice from Mexico's National Commission on Human Rights.

Banning miniskirts is unlikely to chase many real criminals away from Ciudad Acuña. For several years, the Zetas gang has used this city to ship drugs into the United States, and in 2012 almost half of the city's police officers were fired after they failed to pass anti-corruption background checks.

Agudelo himself was under investigation for the murder of Jose Eduardo Moreira, the son of a former state governor. He was cleared of charges in the killing however, which is thought to have been a revenge attack from the Zetas on the Moreira family.

Agudelo, by the way, is not the only public official in Mexico who has proposed a miniskirt ban. According to Mexican website 10puntos.com, officials in at least ten different states and cities have recently tried to ban the miniskirt in universities, government agencies and at local churches. The miniskirt ban in Ciudad Acuña, however, seems to be the first that will affect all of the residents of a city, even when they are not at work.