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The exile of Nicaraguan trans voices

2021-06-28T12:23:06.965Z


Spain has just unblocked the law on free gender self-determination, but in Nicaragua people of this sexual identity live an ordeal that forces them to take refuge in Costa Rica. Star, Vargas and Abarca, three of them, tell us their testimonies in this Gay Pride week that is now beginning


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They tried to turn off her light on Star EW, but they couldn't.

That is why it is named like that, because it says it continues to shine, because it comes out of adversity and despite threats and abuses - including unpunished sexual abuse - it continues to work for the rights of the LGBTQIA + community from exile in Costa Rica, coordinating the Table for Articulation in Exile (MESART).

It defines itself as a dissident body in transition, activist, Afro-feminist and a native of Bluefields, in the southern Caribbean of Nicaragua.

But, above all, he defines himself as a person who transgresses everything heteronormative, which is why he had to leave his country in 2018. "It is not easy to be a trans person and with all my intersectionalities," says Star via video call.

More information

  • Children and gender identity: the importance of accepting your child

  • The Government unlocks the 'trans law', which will recognize free gender self-determination

  • LGTBIQ refugees, recovering their dignity far from home

Biologically, Star was born with a vagina.

He relates that culturally it was very hard trying to put himself in front of his family and the community.

Since he was little he knew that he was different and that this was bad, so he continually repressed himself.

"I come from a violent context, but even so I had the perseverance to be an agent of change, that's why I decided to change my star and study."

This is how Star began her career and graduated in 2013 in psychology in multicultural contexts.

But the discrimination and abuse did not end.

Furthermore, the WHO had not yet removed transsexuality from the list of mental illnesses.

Now he lives in exile in Costa Rica.

On celebrating Pride Day, commemorated this Monday, Star is clear: “We continue to demand from the State of Nicaragua the measures that guarantee the safety of LGBTQIA + people in exile. We do not celebrate in a foreign land. Where we would like to be screaming is in our country, because it weighs us down and hurts us. Healing does not come overnight, it is a process and that is why there is nothing to celebrate, but a lot to demand ”, laments Star.

In the community they told him that it was a curse and that he was going to be cured.

And when his mother passed away, the only one to whom he bowed his head, he left his environment, but what he found outside was more of the same.

Just because I was a trans person, there were fewer opportunities.

“When we go out on the street, our life range is between 17 and 35 years old, accompanied by violence and having sex for survival.

It is the only way we have to live because there are no policies ”.

When we go out on the streets our life range is 17 to 35 years, accompanied by violence and having sex for survival.

It's the only way we have to live because there are no policies

Star EW, trans person

Damaso Vargas, also a refugee applicant in Costa Rica, agrees.

She is a young Nicaraguan transgender woman, an activist since the age of 14 for the rights of LGBTQIA + people who recognizes that many are forced into prostitution as a means of survival.

In his case, he never had to.

“Thanks to the universe I didn't go through that.

The streets of Nicaragua scare me, not that they will kill you, but that they will rape you, beat you or treat you horrible, ”he explains by video call.

Many of the trans women are forced to have sex for survival.Javier Sulé

However, since he assumed his identity, Vargas says he never hid it.

"I started by putting on heels and painting my lips, but it was in activism when I learned to defend my identity from a political perspective and not from the 'I feel like a woman because I like heels and lipstick'".

She left home at 16 because her mother couldn't deal with the situation, but she understands it.

“My mom wasn't forced to understand what it was like to be trans.

She is super catholic, she was born half a century before me and she experienced another lot of family violence.

As if to come to embitter the last years of his life with the issue of my identity.

In the distance, my relationship with her has improved and if she manages to understand me one day, I will be happy ”.

The streets of Nicaragua scare me, not that they will kill you, but that they will rape you, beat you or treat you horrible

Damaso Vargas, refugee applicant in Costa Rica

The reality of Vargas was also harsh in Nicaragua.

She can tell countless experiences that speak of discrimination: a bus that almost ran over her, the call for attention in Secondary for wearing makeup or when in a hospital they named her with the "Don" in front of her.

Not to mention trying to get a home or job.

Discrimination is also observed in the health system, under the prejudice that all LGBTQIA + people have AIDS. And is that the only time in which Nicaragua was supposedly concerned about the health of trans women was in 2009 with HIV. “The Ministry of Health spoke of us as vulnerable people and said that our identity would be respected. Unfortunately, what they did was stigmatize an entire segment of the population because we had the HIV poster on our foreheads, ”recalls Vargas.

However, both Vargas and Star have had activism in their blood for years, from their personal experience. In the case of Star, as a result of the 2018 protests, where his compatriot journalist Ángel Gahona was murdered in Bluefields, and the violence against his own body, he had to leave the country. “At that time, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) put the measures in place for a policeman to take care of me, the same ones who had harassed and besieged me. He could not circulate freely ”. Vargas, for his part, did not want to go into exile, but had to do so after presenting a report in Costa Rica and the United States on the effects on LGBTIQ + people in the framework of the 2018 protests, when he was a spokesperson for the National Board of Nicaragua. .

In Nicaragua there is no gender identity law, nor is equal marriage, diverse families and the adoption law recognized

Braulio Abarca

And it is that, in Daniel Ortega's Nicaragua, being a gay, trans or lesbian person became an ordeal to which the influential Catholic Church joins in the public life of the country on issues such as abortion or sexual education. The feminist movement and LGBTQIA + have been confronting them for some time, but many defenders of sexual and gender diversity ended up paying for their audacity and were forced into exile in Costa Rica, especially since April 2018, as a result of the forceful repression of the State to the outbreak. against the reform of the social security system. They did so by adding to the list of the more than 108,000 Nicaraguans who, according to UNHCR, left the country, 85,000 of whom sought protection in the neighboring country.

In fact, from that moment on, the persecution of human rights defenders became latent. Among them, many of those who made up the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH), such as Braulio Abarca, who has been in Costa Rica for almost two and a half years. From San José, Abarca is currently a defender of the Human Rights Collective Nicaragua Never Again, an organization founded two years ago by defenders from CENIDH.

Abarca is 30 years old and was trapped in the closet until he was 21, when his family discovered a photo with another boy who is now exiled in Spain. “The level of discrimination is very harsh in Nicaragua. Until 2008 the crime of sodomy was ratified and recognized ”, he recalls by video call. The activist talks about how harsh violence is at school, especially in those of religious origin, where the teachers themselves defined the people of the group as devils. “That is why I studied law at the university; to raise our voice and defend human rights in my country ”. Because, in addition, as Abarca clarifies, these crimes against the LGBTQIA + population are not considered hateful.

In particular, it is trans people who suffer the most from this and other discriminatory treatment.

The defender tells of the case of trans women arbitrarily detained, victims of inhuman treatment, torture, sexual violence, forced nudity, isolation and confinement, without their gender identity being recognized and locked in men's prisons.

“To date, there is no gender identity law in Nicaragua, nor is equal marriage, diverse families and the adoption law recognized,” criticizes Abarca.

Life in Costa Rica

Star did not want to go into exile, she never thought about it and the high costs it would have on her psychological and emotional health. He lives each day with the fear of a new discrimination, like getting on the bus and that no one sits next to him. Or that a colleague from the LGBTQIA + community commit suicide again. When he landed in Costa Rica, he arrived at a foster home, but he continued to be violated and decided to live with people in the same situation, even if it was overcrowded, to support each other. “We do not have the support of the diverse national communities because there is a political zeal. We live with xenophobia and racism every day ”. And with the pandemic, everything became difficult, he lost his job and his Nicaraguan university degrees are not recognized, in part, because they have the name that his parents gave him at birth.He wants to return to his country and continue training, to be a teacher of formal and multigrade education, the second career he had to leave when he was in exile. "The seed of change is in the new generations", highlights Star.

On the other hand, Abarca affirms that, although in Costa Rica there is less violence against the group, there are also acts of discrimination. “It is a country with open doors, but it is a lie that there is complete protection of human rights for LGBTQIA + exiled people. Violent acts are carried out against them; they are beaten, sexually assaulted and the police mock. Unfortunately, there is no State policy to avoid this type of action ”. Vargas also considers that discrimination exists in Costa Rica, although apparently there may be some recognized rights for the group. “Not all the streets treat you badly, but you move a little from the neighborhood and they start to look at you just as ugly as in Nicaragua. In addition, in Costa Rica there is equal marriage, but it is a bet of pink capitalism,it is not a matter of rights. What they want is that the diverse European couples come to spend the money, that's all ”.

Like Star, Abarca also wants to return to Nicaragua.

“Going back to my roots, to the land where I was born, that's my dream.

As it is to have a free country, to be with my family, with the people who support me.

And to continue defending human rights, to speak out for the people who cannot, who have been silenced ”.

Vargas, on the other hand, does not want to return or die in Nicaragua if the country he returned to is the same country he left, which he describes as totally "toxic."

Actually, he would like to leave Latin America.

“I have been surviving 28 years: with my mother who washed clothes to support us, a father who drank whenever he could, sexist and state violence, exile, inequality in a foreign country.

I'm fed up ”.

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Source: elparis

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