This article contains descriptions of the deaths of trans people.
At least three trans people have been killed in Mexico so far this year, just two months after Jesús Ociel Baena Saucedo, the country’s first nonbinary judge, was found dead in their home, and four months after a mausoleum for trans women, many of whom were victims of hate crimes, was opened in Mexico City.
Samantha Gómez Fonseca and Miriam Nohemí Rios, both trans women who were LGBTQ+ activists and worked in politics, were shot to death in separate incidents in the past week, according to the Associated Press. A third trans person who has not been identified by law enforcement was found shot to death in Jalisco on Saturday, January 13. According to the AP, the LGBTQ+ rights organizations LetraeSe and the National Observatory of Hate Crimes Against LGBTI People also documented the killings of two additional trans people: Gaby Ortiz and a woman known only as Ivonne. These killings have yet to be confirmed by official police, however.
Fonseca, the most recent victim, was shot multiple times while in a car in Mexico City this past Sunday, according to Mexico News Daily. She was 37 years old. According to Mexico City newspaper El Universal, Fonseca was shot while in a rideshare after visiting her partner at the Reclusorio Sur, a men’s prison. The Mexico City Attorney General’s Office is investigating Fonseca’s death as a femicide, according to a press release posted to X.
Fonseca was a prolific activist who, in October, was awarded by the Congress of Mexico City for her human rights work, specifically her lengthy record of LGBTQ+ activism, per El Universal. She had hoped to run for Senate in June as a candidate for the MORENA Party, the leftist political party that has ruled Mexico since 2018. Temístocles Villanueva, a deputy in Mexico City’s Congress, posted about Fonseca’s killing on X, calling her “a brilliant woman with an extensive career in the defense of human rights and against discrimination.”
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