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Bogotá marches to defeat stigma and make visible Colombian trans struggle

Bogotá, Jul 15 (EFE) .- Hundreds of people marched this Friday through the center of Bogotá to make visible the reality of trans people in Colombia and remember the struggle for rights that they continue to lead to get out of stigmatization and conquer the rights that deserve. A float with music led the colorful march in which trans flags stood out and cries of “why are they killing us if we are the hope of Latin America” ​​from different groups that invoked the various pillars of the struggle, including trans-inclusive feminism. “Today we come to make our rights visible,” Pamela Victoria Mena, who attended the march impersonating the Spanish Cristina “La Veneno,” explains to Efe. These rights to which Mena refers “are already written, but they must be removed from paper” so that the trans community can have access to health, work, education and, above all, “there is no more discrimination and stigma against transgender people and not binary. “Despite the fact that centuries have changed, times have changed, the stigma (…) still exists, and that is why we march,” laments Mena at the annual march held in Colombia on July 15. 57% of trans women and 41.2% of trans men are in socioeconomic stratum 2 -of the 6 into which Colombia is divided-, while in 2021 there were at least 35 transfeminicides, and in 2022, due to the So far, 12 have been registered, according to data released by Heidy Sánchez, councilor of Bogotá. DISCRIMINATION IN THE TERRITORIES Although the march with more participation and more focus was held in Bogotá, in different cities of Colombia the trans collective went out to march to demand rights and many women leaders traveled to the capital to denounce the problems that are experienced in the territories . This is the case of María Victoria Palacios, a trans, black, Raizal and Palenquera woman who came from the department of Chocó to “demonstrate that we can get ahead, that we can move forward (…) and that not only trans people are for the sex work and for hairdressing, but we can exercise other spaces such as politics, as teachers”. “We hope that in this new presidential administration,” referring to the inauguration of Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez as president and vice president of Colombia, respectively, “we can have a Comprehensive Trans Law that guarantees the rights that we have historically been requesting.” STATISTICAL INVISIBILITY “Statistical invisibility” is “one of the most explicit manifestations of historical discrimination against the LGTB and trans population,” lamented Juan Daniel Oviedo, General Director of the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE), who participated in the march to socialize a statistical initiative to give visibility to the community. This initiative consists of voluntary and anonymous surveys in which the LGBT population can participate. “Instead of complaining, we are putting into practice a new way of making statistics, which is collaborative statistics,” explained the official, who recently gained relevance after participating in the Pride march held in Bogotá. Any person with a diverse sexual orientation and gender identity can answer their basic data in order to obtain more precise statistics on the population of the collective in Colombia, something that, in turn, “will allow addressing specific problems”, especially in the Santa Cruz neighborhood. Fe, one of the most marginal and where there is a high population of trans women who are forced into sex work to survive. Oviedo’s presence on behalf of one of the State institutions is something practically unprecedented in this type of march, which tends to have a marginal character and does not reach power. Precisely, he himself considered that “the institutions have to recognize that (…) we are part of the diverse social fabric of our society and therefore we have to have horizontal dialogues, such as taking advantage of this type of expression and this type of cultural scenario to be able to reflect that there are solutions to the problems we face as a population historically discriminated against in Colombia”. (c) EFE Agency