Argentina: Transgender women suffer spate of murders as country introduces laws recognising LGBT rights

Murders part of a backlash against new laws in Argentina recognising the rights of the LGBT community

Equality legislation, passed in the National Congress building in Buenos Aires, represents a triumph for Pride activists, but old prejudices die hard, particularly given a culture of machismo in the country (AP)

Kalym Adrian Soria’s journey from woman to man in Argentina began more than 20 years ago when he left college without graduating because he refused to wear a dress.

It was completed when, in 2012, Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner herself presented him with a new ID card designating him as male.

“Hold me tight, until Cristina comes back,” he joked. Under Ms Fernandez, who will shortly leave office, Argentina has made stunning strides enshrining rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals, including the passage of a gay marriage law. Yet the LGBT community today is suddenly reeling not from any unexpected legal or political setbacks, but from violence.

The murders have come in a macabre string of three, all since the start of September. Marcela Chocobar and Coty Olmos, both activists who had transitioned from being men, were killed in the provinces of Santa Fe and Santa Cruz respectively. Then, the body of Diana Sacayan was found in her flat here in Buenos Aires. She had been tied to her bed and stabbed repeatedly, police sources said.

The killing of Ms Sacayan seemed like the last straw. A leading political agitator for the community and a journalist, she had travelled the globe specifically to highlight the high rates of violence towards trans women in Latin America. She also received her new ID card in 2012 in person from Ms Fernandez. She and Mr Soria were at the ceremony in the Casa Rosada, the presidential palace, together.

The day after her death, a small group marched outside Congress to demand justice. And Ms Fernandez spoke out. “In homage to a woman, Diana Sacayan, who was the first to whom I presented her new ID, I ask the national security services and the metropolitan police to solve this horrible crime,” she said.

So far, there have been no arrests. “A dark cloud has set over Argentina’s trans community,” said Mariela Belski, executive director of Amnesty International Argentina, in the wake of Ms Sacayan’s death. “Unless this latest wave of murders is effectively investigated and those responsible taken to justice, a message will be sent that attacking trans women is actually OK.”

“Discrimination still kills and we are not saying this figuratively,” added Esteban Paulon, president of the LGBT Federation of Argentina. “Cases like that of Diana Sacayan, Marcela Chocobar and Coty Olmos crudely demonstrate the effect that this discrimination has on people.”

No one here questions that the three women were targeted because of their trans status or that they had been victims of a backlash triggered by the new laws meant to protect them. Mr Soria, 50, who runs his own organisation, the Intersex, Transgender and Transsexual Network of Argentina, is also clear that their deaths represent only a fragment of the full breadth of violence against trans people in his country, almost all of which go unreported.

Kalym Soria with President Fernandez receiving his new ID card in 2012 (Twitter)

Nor is it a phenomenon limited to Argentina. A rash of 21 reported murders of trans women in the United States this year have in recent days drawn the attention both of the White House and of Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat Minority Leader in Congress. “We can pass a law, we can help to break down barriers in people’s minds,” she told reporters on Capitol Hill. “Now we have to get to their hearts.”

For himself, Mr Soria finds himself trapped between celebrating the progress made under Ms Fernandez, who cannot run again after two consecutive four-year terms, and lamenting that distressing, and sometimes violent, residue of discrimination. “There is still a big gap between the legal realities in our country now and the actual societal reality,” Mr Soria acknowledged.

Married to a woman for 25 years – they have a grown-up son they adopted when he was nine months old – Mr Soria knows that prejudice of old. He met it the day he went to pick up his son from primary school and was sent away because his ID card still said he was a woman. How could he be the boy’s father? In the meantime he was striving to set up a business as a private maths tutor in Buenos Aires.

“I knew that because of the way I looked, and the ID that did not say the same thing as my face, that when I arrived at someone’s door they might let me in once and never again,” he observed. But he was a good teacher and eventually the business flourished. “I had to make magic – make every person I met understand what was beyond my face and what was beyond my ID – that with me they would learn.”

Now the ID issue is resolved and under the same law Mr Soria is not obliged to acknowledge his past gender – or past first name – to anyone.

While he had a mastectomy years ago, he has not opted for genital reassignment surgery. “Before the transgender law, doctors were prohibited from doing this kind of surgery so we are still learning the techniques in this country,” he offered. “And I prefer a small friend that I know, rather than another I have yet to meet.”

For him, the killings must be seized on further to raise consciousness about the dangers trans people still face. He compares the strength the community must now show with that of the now famous Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who for years marched outside the presidential palace for information on their children who had been “disappeared” during the Dirty War of Argentina’s military dictatorship. The murders have not sent him into hiding with double-locked doors or behind more tightly drawn curtains.

“I am not afraid,” he insisted, sipping water at a café in the trendy Palermo district of Buenos Aires. “Every death, every act of violence must be reported. If we close our doors, they will definitely find us. If something is going to happen to us, then let it happen out in the open. So people can see.”