There are a number of posts and tweets I have seen today about today being Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day where those whose lives were lost in transphobic hate crimes. Peep the video below and pay special attention to just how violent life is for trans people in Latin America.

Pero before we as Latinos in the U.S. think of this as happening as a problem “over there”, as in Latin America still painted as more transphobic than the good old U.S. of A, all we need to do is look at the life of Esmeralda who came to the U.S. in search of the “American dream”, the life of Angie Zapata, and Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado, porque like it or not Puerto Rico is part of the U.S.

I am sadly surprised that more “Latino” centric sites don’t cover the lives of translatin@s. It’s easy enough to write on immigration cuz that is what is expected to us. Pero to exclude and ignore the reality, the lives of our hermanos y hermanas just perpetuates stereotypes, hate and violence. As I wrote in another post, do Latinos not think that issues of immigration, health care, and marriage equity impact the lives of transgente in our comunidad?

There are events all over today commemorating Transgender Day of Remembrance.