Mexico City, Jan 15 (EFE).- LGBTI groups protested at Mexico’s National Palace on Monday, in response to the death of activist and politician Samantha Fonseca, the fourth trans woman murdered in the country in the first few weeks of 2024.
Samantha Fonseca, the 37-year-old trans woman, was awarded the Medal of Merit for Human Rights Defenders by the Congress of Mexico City and was a candidate for the Senate with Morena Party.
The protesters, mostly trans women, painted the wall of the venue with slogans such as “Trans Lives Matter,” “Transphobic Mexico,” and “Transgender Law.”
“How long will the murders and crimes against trans people continue? How much more must we tolerate?” one of the protesters said through a loudspeaker.
The protest comes in the wake of the murder of Fonseca, who was shot on Sunday as she left the Reclusorio Sur in Mexico City, where she was a human rights defender and activist with the ruling National Regeneration Movement (Morena), López Obrador’s party.
Outrage has been growing since the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, called a transgender legislator, Salma Luévano, “a man dressed as a woman” on Jan 8. The next day, he asked for forgiveness and recognized gender identity rights.
“Andrés Manuel, you are a man dressed as a leftist,” said one of the protesters.
On Jan. 11, Miriam Ríos Ríos, a trans politician for the opposition Citizen’s Movement (MC) party in Michoacán, was also murdered.
Gaby Ortiz, a stylist, was found dead with a hate message in the state of Hidalgo on Jan. 6.
According to the National Observatory of LGBT Hate Crimes of the Arcoíris Foundation, Mexico is the second most violent country in Latin America, after Brazil, in terms of homophobia and transphobia.
In Mexico 52 murders of trans and gender-diverse people were registered between October 2022 and September 2023, according to data from the Trans Murder Monitoring 2023 research project by Transgender Europe (TGEU) cited by Statista. EFE
