A new law has been passed in Mexico City, Mexico that gives anti-trans murderers between 35 and 70 years in prison for the crime of transfemicidio (transfemicide). This is a watershed moment for LGBTQ+ rights and protections in the country of Mexico as a whole.
According to Transgender Europe, 593 trans women have been murdered in Mexico between 2009 and 2021. At least 10 trans women have been killed this year in Mexico City alone. The law was proposed because of, and fueled by, the backlash from the murder of trans sex worker Paola Buenrostro in 2016. She was killed by a client, who was caught on the run (and caught on tape) by Buenrostro’s friend Kenya Cuevas—However, a judge determined there was insufficient evidence to convict the man and he was released just two days later. Cuevas has been pushing for the establishment of laws protecting trans women, especially trans sex workers, in Mexico City ever since.
The law modifies existing local legislature by adding that gender identity is defined by how one expresses themselves and not just based on assignment at birth. It adds protections against sexual assault, murder, and other forms of violence, as well as re-victimization—and becomes harsher enforced when attacks overlap with hate speech, hate crimes, or other forms of bigotry. It allows for friends of murdered trans women to participate in the legal proceedings surrounding their deaths (often this doesn’t occur due to existing transphobia in the government) and mandates investigations into the number of transfemicides in the city quarterly. The States has passed our own law similar to this one, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which was used for the first time in the murder of a trans woman, Dime Doe, earlier this year.
In light of ongoing activism since Buenrostro’s murder and the unjust trial of her killer, the law passed almost completely unchallenged in Mexico City’s state Congress, 47 to three. Aranza Villegas, the sister of a murdered trans woman, says that “one in a hundred” murders in the city are a trans woman, killed in cold blood. Cuevas says of the law’s passing, “For the first time, we can feel represented before the law, and that violence against us carries a severe punishment. For the first time, some satisfaction, some peace, after all these long years of work.”
Photo courtesy of social media
