Patria Jimenez takes her seat in the Chamber of Deputies Sept. 1 as a representative of the left-wing Democratic Revolution Party (PRD).

She will be one of the 200 legislators in the 500-member body who are selected by political parties rather than by direct voting. Each party gets to appoint a certain number of specially listed candidates to represent a several-state region, based on the percentage of the vote the party received in the region.

In Jimenez's case, the PRD needed 16 percent of the vote in the states around Mexico City to put her in office -- as she was listed at number 12 on the PRD's proportional-representation candidate list.

To everyone's surprise, the PRD captured about 36 percent of the vote in those states and even snagged the mayor's seat in Mexico City -- stunning the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which has clung to power for 68 years amid routine allegations of electoral fraud. When tabulations are final, the PRI likely will have lost its majority in the Chamber of Deputies as well.

"I'm really happy," Jimenez said in Spanish in a July 10 phone call from Mexico City. "We've been partying. We're delighted.

"It's an historic event and we're just really pleased."

Jimenez said she will fight for institutionalization of gay-community spaces and improved treatment for people with HIV, among other things. The vast majority of Mexican AIDS patients cannot afford any antiviral drugs.

Jimenez's colorful campaign posters were aimed directly at "the lesbian-gay community" with the slogan: "Safe Sex, Safe Vote. Make the future yours!"

As far as can be determined, Jimenez becomes the first openly gay or lesbian member of any Latin American federal legislative body.

A second openly gay candidate, gay activist Francisco Robles Manning, lost his Congressional race in Mexico City's gay Zona Rosa neighborhood.

His Cardenista Party also failed to get enough votes in the several-state region for him to be appointed by the party. (Unlike Jimenez, Robles ran both as a regular candidate and a "plurinominal circumscription" -- or party-list -- candidate.)

"The vote for my party was very low because of the big swing to the PRD -- that was the problem," Robles said in Spanish in a July 9 phone call from Mexico City.

The Cardenistas would have needed three percent of the vote in the region for Robles to be appointed but received only about two percent. In previous elections, the party captured up to five percent of the vote -- which had led Robles to predict his election was a fairly safe bet.