VivirLatino

When looking at all the push for reform in various areas of social justice (as if there is no overlap), the transgender community is often overlooked or mentioned as an aside. As if gender identity doesn’t intersect with sexual orientation, or health care access, or immigration status. You would think that no transgendered identified person wants to get married, or have access to affordable health care, or want to come out of the immigration shadows.

For example earlier this year I looked critically at the groundbreaking NAM study on Latina immigrants that seemed to look at cisgendered, partnered, straight Latinas, making invisible any Latinas that fell outside of those margins. It seems that the only time the media deals with the everyday issues in transwomen’s lives is when those lives are gone. And yes the critique is aimed at myself and this site as well.

It is within the accepted narrative for Latin America to be transphobic but in the U.S. the abuse and denial of basic rights is rarely even on the radar especially when it comes to immigration. In fact in a conversation i had just last week on the issue of who are Latina immigrants, there was an attempt, I felt by the other to paint transgender Latinas as outsiders or “one-offs” in the Latina immigrant community rather than an essential and regular part of it. It is attitudes such as this that create an atmosphere that is ripe for further abuse especially within the already unjust immigrant detention system.

Esmeralda: A Transgender Detainee Speaks Out from Breakthrough on Vimeo.

For those Latinas working inside Latin America trying to get their message to U.S. audiences, they have found their own barriers and all signs point to transphobia:

On November 3, just a week before she was supposed to speak before audiences in the US about her work for sexual rights in Nicaragua, activist Silvia Martinez of the Trans Network of Nicaragua (REDTRANS) was denied a travel visa by the US embassy.

This decision came as a shock for several reasons:

- Silvia has been issued visas by other countries in the past. In 2007, she traveled to Panama to present recommendations of the LBTTTGI community to government representatives attending a session of the Organization of American States.

- She has an invitation through MADRE, a leading 26-year-old women’s human rights organization. MADRE has brought activists from around the world to speak in the US on previous occasions without a problem.

- She is firmly rooted in her community in Nicaragua and holds an important position in an organization (REDTRANS) that depends on her work in Nicaragua. There is no reason for her to give this up in order to live in a far less desirable situation in this country, away from her network of friends and allies.

Yet no member of the consulate even bothered to call MADRE to verify these facts.

Silvia clearly meets the above criteria that the US Department of State commonly uses to determine visa eligibility. The denial of this visa fits a broader pattern of the US embassy systematically rejecting visa applications from transgender people.

This discrimination constitutes a violation of internationally recognized human rights, which the US is obligated to uphold.

Support Silvia and transgender rights by sending this letter to the Consular Section of the US Embassy in Nicaragua.