Wilter Gómez was 12 years old when his stepfather took him to the jungle.
They walked for hours on remote trails in the Río Plátano reserve, where the greenery is very dark and the mud tires the legs.
When they were already very far from the sea, the man began to beat him repeatedly.
The punishment was so brutal that he fell and could not get up, but the rain of punches continued.
"He wanted me to disappear," she
remembers bitterly.
When it no longer reacted, he threw it into a ditch full of water.
The intense pains from the beating caused him to wake up, and that saved him from drowning.
He wandered for two days through the jungle of La Mosquitia, Honduras, without eating anything until he found shelter.
He never returned to his home in Gracias a Dios, the department where his town is located.
“
My only sin was being who I am, a gay person
.
My people are very discriminated against because we don't speak Spanish well, and we only live off the sea and the mountains.
But inside, among the indigenous people, there is a lot of machismo.
It's like living a curse because they cut us, they beat us, that's why I had to leave, ”says Gómez, 22, from the Casa de Luz shelter in Tijuana, Mexico.
Spain debates a law that seeks to expand the rights of transgender people
April 4, 202101: 51
[A trans man is murdered in Puerto Rico amid a "wave of homophobic and transphobic violence"]
He lived on the streets of Tegucigalpa for several years, until in 2019 they broke into the house he shared with some friends and killed one person.
He says that that was the trigger to walk out of his country and cross the borders to reach Mexico where, in his words, he has not had much luck.
They have cheated on him in various jobs with miserable salaries, and many times they did not pay him.
They even drugged and abused him, to the point that he fell into a depression that led to him being admitted to a psychiatric hospital for four months in 2020.
“When they put me in the hospital, I was dying inside.
Sometimes this country is very scary,
”he says dismayed.
The figures seem to agree with him.
In 2020, at least 79 LGBTQ + people were murdered in Mexico
, that is, about 6.5 per month, according to Letter S: Sida, Cultura y Vida Cotidiana, a civil organization that is dedicated to the defense of LGBTQ + people and that registers these cases since 1998.
The most recent report by Letter S affirms that
in the last five years there have been 459 violent deaths
of people from the LGBTQ + community, although the 2020 figures show a reduction of 32% compared to 2019, when 117 were registered.
Monica Trasandes, advocate for women's rights and the LGBTQ community
March 22, 202104: 18
[California will house transgender inmates based on their gender identity]
“What the state governments did not achieve, the pandemic did.
But shutting ourselves up in our homes and not going to places of recreation is by no means an option ”, says Alejandro Brito, executive director of the organization.
And he adds that "it is very likely that the figures will skyrocket as activities in the country are reestablished."
Official crime and violence figures do not differentiate victims according to characteristics such as sexual orientation and gender identity, which makes it difficult to make the problem visible because prosecutors have not incorporated these variables into their records and
LGBTQ + victims of homicidal violence are incorporated in other categories such
as robbery, assault and simple homicide, among others.
Of the 32 states of Mexico, only 14 consider hate crimes due to "sexual orientation" as an aggravating factor to the crime of qualified homicide, but the Mexican Federal Criminal Code still does not include it, nor does it mention the term "gender identity."
Outrage over the death of Dr. Elizabeth Montaño, symbol of the trans community in Mexico
June 29, 202002: 00
[She disappeared in Mexico, only her remains were found: the story of Dr. María Elizabeth Montaño and her importance for the trans community]
Racism and discrimination
This May 17, the International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia is celebrated, in commemoration of the date on which the General Assembly of the World Health Organization eliminated homosexuality from the international classification of mental illnesses.
"The history of LGBT people, like other victims of discrimination and violence, has been one of suffering, resistance and hope, a vital struggle for freedom and equality in the face of singular adversity," says a United Nations statement on the commemoration of this date, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic that has produced some 220,000 deaths and more than 2,564,000 infections in Mexico.
Vatican refuses to bless LGBTQ unions, couple calls it "discriminatory and humiliating"
March 16, 2021
For Marven, an indigenous trans woman who is a candidate for Congresswoman in Mexico City, the vulnerabilities of the sexually diverse community are a fundamental political issue.
Since she was a child, she suffered the mistreatment of her father who beat her incessantly for her gender identity and her cousins who made fun of her without stopping.
“
Mexico has to change, it is not possible that one has to get used to living with that hatred
and mistreatment.
I have tough skin, like a crocodile, because if they don't destroy you, ”says the candidate who gained great popularity in 2019 when she appeared in a Netflix documentary that showed her selling her basket studs on a bicycle, dressed in her colorful traditional dresses and her braided headdresses.
[Trump removes the rule that protected transgender patients from being discriminated against by health services]
“In the case of the indigenous, it is
a minority that excludes us from another minority that we are the LGBT people of the native peoples
, it is crazy because they are patriarchal systems.
And here in the city it also happens, instead of sending us to a general hospital, they make a center for LGBT but that is to separate us.
Inclusion is not seen.
I got into politics to fight for our health ”, explains Marven, better known as“ Lady tacos de canasta ”, who will participate in the midterm elections on June 6.
Marven, an indigenous trans woman who is a candidate for Congresswoman in Mexico City.
Marven
A recent scandal illustrates how the fight for the rights of sexual diversity has entered the electoral campaign.
LGBTQ + collectives have denounced that
18 men registered as trans women in the state of Tlaxcala
in order to circumvent the conditions of sexual parity imposed by the candidacy law, despite the crudeness of the maneuver, it is not the first time that it has happened. .
In 2018, 17 men posed as trans women to meet gender quotas in Oaxaca, but the electoral authorities managed to suspend those candidacies.
It remains to be seen what the electoral institute will decide in the case of Tlaxcala.
A transgender woman seeks to be governor of a state in Mexico and shares her plans with us
March 15, 202103: 26
[Who was Aimee Stephens, the woman who managed to respect the labor rights of LGBTQ people]
In Mexico, racism and discrimination have been widely documented.
The most recent National Survey on Discrimination by the National Council to Prevent Discrimination (Conapred) reveals that 40.3% of the indigenous population declared that they have been discriminated against.
This survey also shows that the population aged 18 years and over is aware that the rights of
discriminated groups are not always respected in the country
.
The majority, 71.9%, think that the rights of trans people are little or not respected, 65.6% think the same about gay and lesbian people and 65.4% believe that this happens to the indigenous population.
In the midst of the sea of data from that consultation, several terrible aspects stand out:
26.6% of the people mentioned having faced physical aggression due to their sexual orientation or gender identity at school
, in addition, 9% expressed having received some kind of abuse or sexual violence by neighbors, 8.7% suffered these attacks at school and 6.6% in the family.
“This data is brutal.
The population was asked if the environment of hostility and discrimination that comes with assuming their sexual orientation and gender identity has led to suicidal ideas and the response was positive in 73% of trans men, 58% of trans women, 51% of bisexual women, 48% of bisexual men, 43% of gay men and 42% of lesbian women, ”said César Flores Mancilla, general director of complaints at Conapred.
This Latina fights to break the stereotypes of the LGBTQ community
March 11, 202 105: 45
[Neymar Jr. faces lawsuit for homophobic comments against his mother's ex-boyfriend]
In these investigations, the term “accumulation of disadvantages” is often used to describe the structural discrimination that people suffer due to their characteristics, for example, if you are an indigenous woman you experience a series of social problems in fundamental aspects such as access to education, health and other public services, but if you also belong to the LGBTQ + community, those disadvantages increase.
“
The issue of being indigenous and being women puts us in a tutelage role all the time.
They have always told us that we are incomplete beings that as indigenous we need the tutelage of the State, that as women we need the tutelage of a man and, in that sense, we are invisible. Furthermore, it is not believed anywhere that an indigenous woman can feel desire and love for another woman, ”explains Yadira López Velasco, a Zapotec poet and sociologist.
López is part of the National Coordinator of Indigenous Women and other organizations that fight for the rights of indigenous peoples in Mexico, where
25 million people identify as indigenous and more than 7 million speak an indigenous language.
In her case, the daily debate over the claims is traversed by the reconquest of aesthetic language from her gaze as a lesbian woman.
"My beauty has nothing to do with the imposed whiteness, but it does have to do with the color of the earth, the adobe that raises the walls of the house (...) my beauty has nothing to do with completing me with a man, but it does , in
the beauty of knowing that I am a woman and loving another who, like me, knows how to see my brown skin blossom
", read some of her verses that she signs as Yadira del Mar.
The House of Representatives gives the green light to the Equality Act that protects LGBTQ rights
Feb. 26, 202100: 21
[Costa Rica becomes the first Central American country to legalize homosexual marriage]
Veracruz, the deadliest land
Various experts agree that conditions of machismo and gender discrimination already existed in indigenous peoples, but there was awareness of the fluidity of gender in various ancestral traditions.
The patriarchal system rooted in many indigenous communities today, which is seen as a determining factor for the physical and psychological abuse of LGBTQ + people, is often seen as an inheritance from the colonization process.
“Before the conquest we had a greater permissiveness to be and to show ourselves why
the indigenous cosmogony had to do with this idea that the masculine and the feminine were intertwined
, there was no distinction (…) The conquest came to impose a religion already delegitimize a series of things that used to be part of daily life, ”explains Gloria Careaga Pérez, an academic at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and founder of the National Observatory of Hate Crimes against LGBT people.
Careaga affirms that, according to the most recent figures from the observatory, between
May 2020 and April 2021 there have been 87 cases of hate crimes
, which shows an increase compared to the period between May 2019 and April 2020 in which detected 77 cases.
Ritchie Torres becomes the first Afro-Latino from the LGBTQ community to reach Congress
Nov. 4, 202001: 06
[Chronology of the murder of a transgender woman in Puerto Rico: what is known about the Alexa case]
For several years, Veracruz has been considered the deadliest entity for LGBTQ + people in Mexico.
Letter S registered
27 murders in that state during 2020 and, so far in 2021, the observatory has already detected six murders and one disappearance
.
In addition, that entity is characterized by the cruelty of attacks against people from the LGBTQ + community: Alaska Contreras Ponce, a 25-year-old trans woman and beauty queen, was tortured to death in 2018;
Miguel Ángel Medina, 21, was stoned in a pantheon in 2019;
Jesusa Ventura Reyes, 35, was beheaded and her head was left in an ice chest in front of the city hall of Fortín de las Flores, a city in Veracruz, in 2019;
Gethsemane Santos Luna, a trans woman, was shot in February of this year, among many other cases.
"The authorities always say that they are crimes of passion, or that they were related to drug trafficking but they do not investigate, they do not make expert opinions," says Jazz Bustamante, a trans woman and candidate in the next midterm elections in the state of Veracruz.
These are the impressions of young people and activists of the LGBTQ community after the Supreme Court ruling
June 19, 202001: 54
[Utah bans conversion therapy for LGBTQ children]
Bustamante, who is part of the civil association Soy Humano, denounces that
more than 40% of LGBTQ + people who are murdered in the region end up in mass graves
because the authorities only give their remains to blood relatives.
“Many are from other states such as Guerrero, Oaxaca, Tabasco and they leave those regions because of the abuses they suffer.
They do sex work, because they don't let us study or practice professions, they have no other option
.
So they cut ties with their family and we cannot bury them because no one comes to claim them.
It is unusual that they do not allow us to fire them ”, explains the activist.
Jorge Mercado Mondragón, a sociologist and academic at the Autonomous Metropolitan University, has studied the internal migration of the LGBTQ + population in Mexico and explains that the moment a young indigenous person "dares to manifest their diverse sexuality" begins a process of aggression , large and small, which often mark the family and culminate with the departure of young people from their hometowns.
United for the same purpose: the LGBTQ community, Hispanics and African Americans call for an end to discrimination
June 14, 202001: 47
["My quality of life improves from today": more than 1,000 people plan to change their registration with the new gender identity law in Chile]
“Forced internal displacement not only occurs due to generalized violence, natural disasters or religious conflicts, it also responds to discrimination based on gender identity.
There are many indigenous people who flee their communities because of their sexual orientation,
”asserts Mercado Mondragón.
This is the case of Sofía Sánchez García, a 25-year-old trans woman, who had to leave Papantla, her indigenous town in Veracruz due to extreme violence against the LGBTQ + community and the lack of work and academic opportunities.
“I had to leave there because there is no branch of work for one, people do not understand that you were born with a name and an identity different from how you see yourself.
That's why I had to leave my studies, and now I dedicate myself to sex work, ”Sánchez explains with a hint of sadness.
Although she claims not to have been physically violated, she assures that the psychological abuse suffered throughout her life takes a toll because "strange thoughts enter her."
"You have to fight depression because the mind betrays you many times," he
asserts.
The plastic artist Pedro Miranda. Pedro Miranda
[He swore that he could trade homosexuality with religion. Now he has something to say: 'I'm gay']
A place in the world
They are overflowing silhouettes, shades of lights and characters that unfold, Pedro Miranda's photographs are suggestive, not precise.
They seem like something out of a dream.
In a world obsessed with sharpness and brightness, Miranda opts for the mist, for the dreamlike universe and the textures that turn her work into an experience.
"Sometimes my friends joke with me, because they say that I am part of the minority, of the minority, of the minority," he says with a laugh, looking up at the sky.
Miranda is a blind plastic artist, he is also an LGBTQ + indigenous person, but he says that none of that is his cover letter.
Bet on overcoming categories and discrimination.
A work of the plastic artist Pedro Miranda.Pedro Miranda
“I think the most important thing is to know where you are in the world.
The fact of being indigenous does not detract from me, on the contrary, it adds to me because I am from a region that has survived a great number of terrible things
, ”warns Miranda, who says she is aware of the privilege she has had by being part of the artistic community.
[Hate violence against trans people remains "disturbingly common"]
“It's supposedly a more open world, and I understand that it is.
Although they have come to accuse me of overexploiting my indigenous image, can you believe it? ”, He explains laughing.
Miranda usually uses some of her living conditions, which others consider weaknesses, such as the strength that drives her aesthetic discourse.
This year he did the Perfect Disabled Handbook, a project of in-depth interviews with other creators who share their experiences living with various types of disabilities.
“You don't have to look at your limitations, even if that is difficult.
There are things worth dying for, worth losing privileges for, and that is knowing who you are
, living by your own personality, and that includes sexual orientation.
That is why you came into the world ”, he concludes.
If you want to file a complaint of discrimination due to your sexual orientation or gender identity, in Mexico, you can do so with Conapred by calling these telephone numbers: 5552621490 and 8005430033. You can also write to quejas@conapred.org.mx.
If you have information about cases of discrimination in Mexico or Central America, you can write to
albinson.linares@nbcuni.com
.