By Inés Amarelo |
Mexico City (EFE).- They were hung from trees naked, thrown gagged into sewage, beaten, shot, humiliated and discriminated against by police. Today, older trans women -those who did not die along the way- demand that the Mexican State repair the damage, even though they are aware that psychological wounds remain forever.
“We are looking for a remedy. It was a dirty war for us, ”Verónica López shares from her home, a small apartment in the heart of Mexico City that she has made her own by placing protest dolls, figures and images in every corner.
“We trans women, formerly known as the dressed ones, were very discriminated against, very persecuted by the police. That war was always latent with us, that war was left with so many crimes that they were left without anyone being able to raise their voices, ”she continues.
Discrimination that does not stop
For decades of police violence, especially intense during the terms of José López Portillo (1976-1982) and with Arturo Durazo Moreno as head of the Police and Traffic Department of the Federal District (now Mexico City), and decades of discrimination that have not yet They end, now, they organized and demand justice through the organization Debt Histórica.
“We are never going to forget the psychological damage that they did to us, with this reparation we are not going to revive so many friends, so many colleagues who did not have a chance to live,” insists Verónica, who, accompanied by Valentina Telena, from the Ius Cogens Foundation, an organization who defends and promotes human rights and who has a program for trans “grandmothers”, shows the ravages of the police on her body: she lost her teeth, cannot hear and can barely walk.
Even so, the reparation they demand includes compensation for physical, emotional, psychological and economic damage.
The trans “grandmothers” consider that the Mexican State owes them a life pension, access to decent housing and specialized health care, and an asylum to “spend their last years with dignity,” among others.
Rebels with a cause
Verónica is originally from Chiapas and at the age of 12 she arrived in Mexico City after losing her mother at a very young age. The Mexican capital and the violence to which she was subjected turned her into a “rebel with a cause,” she says.
After multiple complications, at the young age of 14, working at a juice and smoothie stand, she heard on the radio that there would be a screening of the movie “Nora la rebelde” (1979) and, after putting on eyeliner and lips for the first time, she headed to the movies.
“(The film ended) and I stayed seated, when I see an exuberant, gorgeous woman coming out of the bathroom, it scared me, but I saw her very pretty, it was a girl,” she recounts in detail. She then began her approach to sex work.
She remembers that during one of her first working days the police appeared and was detained for 15 days, but she and her colleagues remember the agents of the Crime Prevention Investigation Division (DIPD) with special pain.
“We were the object of violence because of our preference, we were subjected, we were unjustly imprisoned. They tied us hanging from the trees (…) or gagged us by the mouth and threw us into the sewage waters”, recalls in an interview Alma Delia, who arrived from the state of Guerrero to Mexico City and saw in sex work an opportunity to earn money and contribute to his family.
However, she was soon confronted with the high levels of police violence in the capital, and she also saw how some of her colleagues never returned home.
Torture for trans women in Tlaxcoaque
And they make special mention of Tlaxcoaque, the basements of the DIPD, where they were tortured, where “it was not known if it was night or day.”
The trans women who were there report that they lived “all piled up” in cell number five in aisle three.
While they made them clean all the pots and the place, a few meters away they put people in water drums where they electrocuted them.
That place was dismantled in 1989, but the violence continued, “and continues,” they say.
In 2005 Nefi -who has three attempts at transfemicide- was attacked in the street by two men who beat her until she was left unconscious on the floor. She lost an eye.
“I don’t know what the reason was, I don’t understand precisely what the reason was. (…) They beat me so much that I couldn’t stand up”, remembers Nephi.
visibility and memory
Now, although they recognize the importance of the changes that have occurred in terms of visibility, they demand that the authorities take responsibility and repair all the damage.
But meanwhile, all these years they buried their companions who lost their lives and took it upon themselves to remind each other that they deserve a dignified life.
Even this Saturday several of them will celebrate their fifteenth birthday -traditionally very relevant birthday for Mexican women-.
Since their youth was stolen from them, they themselves will celebrate having reached today, always remembering all those who preceded them and those friends whose lives were taken from them.
“I ask that those great compañeras who came forward always be respected, those great friends that I never saw again, who were left dead in jails, on the streets, in the hands of those DIPF agents. They deserve to be always remembered so that they are not forgotten”, concludes Verónica.