“How do we go about safeguarding the lives of these people?”

“Cutting the wings” is the metaphor with which Juli Salamanca lists the violence and discrimination suffered daily by LGBTIQ+ people. So far this year, in Colombia, 42 people have had their wings “clipped” or have been murdered, according to the registry of the Caribe Afirmativo organization. “This day reminds us that many LGBTIQ+ people have lost their lives and their struggles, their wings have been clipped for being who they are, for loving people of the same sex, of the same gender,” says the renowned activist and rights defender of transgender people

This May 17 is the International Day against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia, it is a claim and commemoration. “In every corner of the world, LGBTQI+ people continue to face violence, persecution, hate speech, injustice and even outright murder. Every assault on LGBTQI+ people is an assault on human rights and the values ​​we hold dear. We cannot and we will not go back,” António Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations, said on Twitter.

May 17: International Day against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia

The date is not random. A little over thirty years ago, homosexuality was classified by the World Health Organization as a psychiatric disease and it would not be until May 17, 1990 when the institution removed homophobia from its catalog of pathologies. “What this day allows us is to reflect on the situation of LGBTIQ+ people in the world, what continue to be the main barriers to accessing rights, but it is also an invitation to mobilize (…) to think about what we can do on a daily basis to guarantee the rights of these people”, the Colombian activist told France 24.

Transsexuality, however, was not removed from the International Classification of Diseases until 2018. “The LGBTIQ+ population continues to face schemes of violence and structural discrimination from the health system, the justice system, the educational system that still do not cover or do not they adequately welcome homosexual, bisexual and trans people,” Elizabeth Castillo, activist, lawyer and deputy director of LGBTIQ+ Affairs in Bogotá, the Colombian capital, told France 24.

Despite these late advances in its enumeration; oppression, violence and discrimination in all areas of life are many and intersect with oppression of class or race. “They are not killing all LGBTIQ+ people. They are killing the poorest, black trans women, excluded and marginalized trans women; poor gay men, gay men who are not white”, denounces Salamanca.

“How do we go about safeguarding the lives of these people?”

The data, despite underreporting, is overwhelming: between 2018 and 2022, the deaths of 700 people were documented LGTBIQ+ in Colombia, according to the report by the organization Colombia Diversa. Some murders that are magnified in the territories and rural areas of the country. “How do we safeguard the lives of these people?” is the wounded cry of the activist and her fellow fighters.

On Tuesday, the Organization of American States (OAS) issued a statement alerting States to confront racism and stigma against LGBTIQ+ people: “Racialization, ethnic origin, age, color, disability, socioeconomic status, nationality and residence expose people to LGBT to different forms of discrimination that affect their ability to enjoy their human rights and fundamental freedoms without distinction of any kind”, says the text, which focuses on the need to tackle these problems with an intersectional approach, as Salamanca pointed out, in which racism or class discrimination is intertwined with oppression and discrimination based on sex and gender in all aspects of daily life.

Systems of oppression rooted in class, race, gender and sex

“It’s not just the fact of being a trans person that crosses me, but the fact of being an Afro, a transvestite, from the territory,” Magdalena Moreno, an Afro-Colombian artist known as The Morena del Chicamocha. The bullerengue singer – an ancestral dance and song from the Colombian Caribbean – reiterates that it is important to make visible the voices “that come out of the European, Western LGBT imaginary, which does not tell the stories of the multiple diversities and the multiple ways of being trans people, fagots, lesbians, dissidents… in rural areas, with different realities”.

For this reason, the acts carried out this Wednesday in many Latin American cities are raised in honor of the victims of these crimes who still enjoy broad impunity in the region and do so from the most absolute diversity. “Making this day visible is also important to change the paradigms that society has imposed on transgender people and on sexually diverse people,” says Moreno.

Despite the legislative advances that allow equal marriage, the criminalization of discrimination or the protection of gender identity in most Latin American countries, some Caribbean nations such as Dominica or Jamaica continue to penalize homosexuality with jail. Other advances, denounced the Colombian activists, remain on paper. “Once a certain equality has been achieved in legal terms, what follows is cultural change,” says Castillo. A change that, according to her, begins in everyday life: from “not replicating homophobic jokes” to “inviting the gay cousin with the boyfriend to the wedding party.”

Mexico, the second country with the most hate crimes in Latin America

From Argentina to Mexico, the stories of mistreatment, aggression, discrimination and violence based on their sexual orientation or identity are replicated, worsening even more in those States led by conservative or ultra-conservative politicians, whose hate speech directly attacks diverse people and dissidents from gender. “Hate speech has been sown from the pulpit of religions, from places of politics, and it is necessary to treat this as the problem that it is: a hate speech that prevents access to guarantees of our lives,” denounces the artist. Afro-Colombian.

Mexico is the second country in Latin America with the most hate crimes in the region, behind Brazil. During 2022, the National Observatory of Hate Crimes against LGBTIQ+ Persons documented 22 disappearances and 62 murders. “But of each documented case there are three others that are not counted,” Ximena Manríquez, coordinator of the Observatory, an initiative of the Arcoíris Foundation, told EFE.

In Peru, Amnesty International denounced this Wednesday that at least six trans women were murdered in 2023: “We remind the Peruvian State that it has an urgent pending issue with the LGBTIQ community to eradicate the systematic violence we face,” Carol Carlobi Ríos wrote on Twitter, activist and representative of the Trans Feminist Organization.

Homophobia and transphobia starts in schools

Homophobia and transphobia starts in the school playground. For example, in Mexico 6 out of 10 LGBTIQ+ children suffer from bullying, according to a UNESCO report on homophobic and transphobic violence in the school environment in Latin America. “In Brazil, more than 40% of homosexuals reported having been physically assaulted in their schools”, reads the text, which concludes that homophobia “is culturally accepted”.

“Both the educational system and the health system have enormous inclusion challenges for the LGBTIQ+ population, particularly for the trans population”, explains the Colombian lawyer, “there is an important pending task in which both the national and local governments should have an influence direct”, reiterates Castillo.

Also when it comes to accessing jobs, “trans people are still denied the right to work and few trans people manage to access education in universities, since education centers refuse to recognize their identity names , educational spaces that become war battles, where trans people constantly have to be fighting for their rights to be recognized”, denounces Salamanca, who has been fighting for the recognition of their rights for eight years.

There is still a long way to go to celebrate this day as a party, but Salamanca –like her fellow activists– wants to continue dreaming “of a world where trans people can live happily, calmly, without fear, without anguish”.

And for this, as Moreno says, they rely on the processes of resistance and diverse community accompaniment that have emerged for years both in rural areas and in the cities, neighborhoods and peripheries of Colombia. “We don’t need them to give us a voice, because we have a voice! We need it to be our own experiences, we are the ones who can speak from our places.”

*Photos courtesy of Trans Health League