Gender & Sexual Solidarity: News & Updates

"We want justice and that these cases are investigated and the reformed penal code procedures to be applied when those who are responsible are found,” Aspidh Arcoiris Trans Projects Coordinator Ambar Alfaro told the Blade, referring to a 2015 amendment to El Salvador’s legal code that enhances penalties for hate crimes based on sexual orientation and gender identity. “Although we have begun the year badly, we hope these crimes establish precedents for there to also be a positive legal framework that regulates the situation of trans people, especially the situation of violence and insecurity.”

The Red de Mujeres del Caribe roots its peacebuilding efforts in what it calls the “built knowledge” of Caribbean communities, not in policies written at a desk in Bogotá or Havana or Oslo. In summits and workshops, the network’s organizers emphasize the authority of local women, acknowledging them as uniquely capable of understanding the current political moment. Their writings theorize the importance of “senti-pensar” (“feeling-thinking,” a decolonial feminist term referring to the validity of lived experience and affect as a source of knowledge production) in peacebuilding and conflict transformation, in contrast to what a 2017 statement by several Caribbean women’s and LGBTI organizations calls the “modern/colonial” model of “knowledge production and social classification that exploits the bodies-lives of women and other subaltern groups.”

Roxsana Hernández Rodriguez had “deep bruises” on her body and died of dehydration, an independent autopsy found.

At the beginning of this year, the Inter-American Court on Human Rights ruled in favor of same-sex marriage. Based on this ruling, Honduran LGBT organizations presented a constitutional challenge against Article 112 of the Honduran Constitution, which prohibits same-sex marriage. To quite some surprise, the challenge was accepted by the court. Now, to see if the state will act on it.

Roxana Hernández came to the US with the Caravan of Central American Migrants. On May 25, 2018, she died after five days in US custody in facilities notorious for their freezing temperatures. The Transgender Law Center (TLC), a leading transgender advocacy group, called Hernández’s treatment in US custody “negligent”, and – along with other civil rights groups – has issued a list of demands, including that ICE stop detaining transgender women altogether.

To DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. Signed by 37 US House Members, including author Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-NY, 4th district). "We strongly urge you...to ensure that...LGBT individuals are released from custodial detention and that parole or alternatives to detention...are used instead to ensure the safety of this population during their immigration proceedings."