Lady Tacos de Canasta, of Muxe origin from Oaxaca, will participate in the elections in Mexico City, which will be held on June 6, in which she will seek to be a deputy in the Congress, for the 32nd electoral district, in Coyoacán.
According to the draft agenda of the Electoral Institute of Mexico City (IECM), Lady Tacos de Canasta will participate under the Equity, Freedom, and Gender (ELIGE) party, a political party led by Mariana Morán Salazar, a teacher with a doctorate in education.
Lady Tacos will appear on the ballot with her birth name, Juan Francisco Martínez Ventura, however, at the request of the party and already approved by the IECM, the nickname by which she is known will be included: “Lady Tacos”.
Marven, known as “Lady Tacos de canasta”, a transgender woman rose to fame on social networks in 2016, after she was caught on video shouting in a deep voice the sale of her tacos de canasta in the LGBT + Pride March of the Mexico City: “taaacos, basket taacos, tacos.”
The cook originally from Villa de Etla, Oaxaca, is a muxe person, a Zapotec term that refers to the gender that defines a male person from the isthmus region, who assumes roles traditionally associated with identity and established behavior as feminine, in any of the social, sexual or personal spheres. There are more than 3,000 Muxes in the Zapotec region of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
In 2017, Lady Taco became a trend again when she had a confrontation with elements of the capital police, who tried to take away the bicycle where she sold her tacos in the Zócalo of Mexico City. In a video, she is seen exasperated and confronting a policewoman to whom she angrily indicates “Don’t call me sir, because I’m not a man.”
The video quickly went viral and Lady Taco became so popular on social media that they even began inviting her to multiple television shows to publicize her story and her work as with tacos, extolling the qualities of street food.
Even with enough accumulated fame, “Lady Tacos de canasta” was invited in 2019 by the Netflix content platform to appear in chapter 9 of the documentary series Las crónicas del taco, where it narrates the history and preparation of this popular style of taco. With her participation in the project, Lady Taco gained more fame even in other countries, and with the success, she was able to open her first taco de canasta restaurant in the Narvarte neighborhood of Mexico City.