Adolfo Voorduin, left, and Nancy Martinez embrace throughout a rally by members of the LGBTQ+ group to protest the homicide of transgender activist Samantha Gomes Fonseca in Mexico Metropolis, Monday, Jan. 15, 2024. Gomes was shot in Mexico Metropolis Sunday. (AP Picture/Marco Ugarte)
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Authorities in Mexico stated a minimum of three transgender individuals had been killed within the first two weeks of 2024, and rights teams had been investigating two further such circumstances. The slayings marked a violent begin to the yr in a rustic the place the LGBTQ+ group is usually focused.
The most recent dying got here on Sunday, when transgender activist and politician Samantha Gómez Fonseca was shot a number of occasions and slain inside a automobile within the south of Mexico Metropolis, based on native prosecutors.
The killings spurred outrage amongst members of the LGBTQ+ group who protested in Mexico Metropolis’s important throughway on Monday.
Round 100 individuals marched chanting: “Samantha pay attention, we’re combating for you” and carrying indicators studying “your hate speech kills.” One other group of protesters earlier within the day spray painted the phrases “trans lives matter” on the partitions of Mexico’s Nationwide Palace.
Fonseca, the activist and politician slain on Sunday, initially supposed to march alongside different activists to name for larger acceptance of transgender individuals in society. After her dying, the march rapidly was a name for justice and for extra complete legal guidelines round hate crimes.
Paulina Carrazco, a 41-year-old trans lady among the many marchers, stated it felt like “the violence was knocking on our entrance door.”
“We’re scared, however with that worry we’re going to maintain combating,” Carrazco stated. “We’re going to do the whole lot in our energy so the following generations gained’t need to dwell in worry.”
Homosexual and transgender populations are repeatedly attacked and killed in Mexico, a nation marked by its “macho” and extremely non secular inhabitants. The brutality of a number of the assaults is supposed to ship a message to Queer folks that they don’t seem to be welcome in society.
Over the previous six years, the rights group Letra S has documented a minimum of 513 focused killings of LGBTQ+ individuals in Mexico. Simply final yr, the violent dying of one of the vital recognizable LGBTQ+ figured in Mexico, Ociel Baena, sparked a similar wave of outrage and protests.
Some like 55-year-old Xomalia Ramírez stated the violence was a partly consequence of feedback made by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador final week when he described a transgender congresswoman as “man dressed as a lady.”
Whereas López Obrador later apologized, marchers like Ramírez, a transgender lady from the southern state of Oaxaca, stated it was too little too late.
Ramírez stated girls like her battle to seek out work and once they do, their gender id is repeatedly ignored. Working as a Spanish trainer, she stated her bosses pressure her to put on males’s garments to work.
“If I wish to work, I’ve to disguise myself as a person,” Ramírez stated. “If I don’t, I gained’t eat.”
“These feedback by the president have created transphobia and resulted in hate crimes towards the trans group,” Ramírez added.
Final week, a transgender activist, Miriam Nohemí Ríos, was shot to death whereas working in her enterprise within the central Mexican state of Michoacán.
On Saturday, authorities within the central state of Jalisco stated they discovered a transgender particular person’s physique laying in a ravine with gunshot wounds.
Two different circumstances, weren’t instantly confirmed by regulation enforcement, however had been registered by rights teams who stated they usually battle to get particulars from officers of their efforts to doc hate crimes.
One transgender lady generally known as “Ivonne” was slain alongside her associate within the southern state of Veracruz, based on the Nationwide Observatory of Hate Crimes In opposition to LGBTI individuals.
In the meantime, Letra S. documented the killing of transgender stylist Gaby Ortíz, whose physique was discovered within the Hidalgo state. Native media, citing native authorities, stated her physique was discovered on the aspect of the highway subsequent to “a threatening message” written on a bit of cardboard.
Regulation enforcement stated they might examine the violent deaths however the activists stated they doubted something would come of the circumstances. Because of excessive ranges of corruption and total disfunction in Mexico’s authorities, round 99% of crimes in Mexico go unsolved.
“It’s very doubtless that circumstances like it will finish in impunity,” stated Jair Martínez, an analyst for Letra S.
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Related Press reporter María Verza contributed to this report.
