World
Transgender man flees Honduras, seeks protection in U.S.
Washington Blade interviewed Jerlín last summer
A transgender man who the Washington Blade interviewed in Honduras last summer is now seeking refuge in the U.S.
Jerlín in a video message he sent to the Blade on Thursday from Piedras Negras, a Mexican border city that is across the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass, Texas, said he and a small group of migrants left Honduras on Jan. 14.
Jerlín said police at the Guatemala-Honduras border “assaulted us, robbed us and took everything that we had brought with us.” Jerlín told the Blade that people in Guatemala did not help him and the other migrants with whom he was traveling because they were afraid of gangs and corrupt police officers.
“Passing through Guatemala was like passing through hell,” said Jerlín.
Jerlín said some of the migrants in the group who were from his community in Honduras later disappeared. Jerlín also told the Blade that people who he encountered demanded sex for food and water.
“It was also very hard crossing Mexico,” he said.
Jerlín said he arrived in Piedras Negras on Jan. 24.
He told the Blade that he had been sleeping along the riverbank and outside Mexico’s National Institute of Immigration office in Piedras Negras in the cold and the rain in the hopes he will receive a humanitarian visa. (The temperature in the city on Thursday was near freezing and Jerlín was wearing a coat, thick gloves and a hat in the video he sent to the Blade.)
“You cannot walk here because the drug cartels will kidnap you,” he said.
Jerlín on Wednesday sought to enter the U.S., but U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials sent him back to Mexico under Title 42, a Center for Disease Control and Prevention rule that has closed the Southern border to most asylum seekers and migrants because of the pandemic. Jerlín is now living in a temporary migrant shelter the Transgender Law Center and Abdiel Echevarría-Cabán, a South Texas-based attorney who is also a human rights law and policy expert, helped him find, but it is unclear how long he can stay there.
The State Department currently urges American citizens to reconsider traveling to Coahuila state in which Piedras Negras is located because of “crime and kidnapping.”
Anti-LGBTQ violence commonplace in Honduras
Jerlín was a bus driver in San Pedro Sula, Honduras’ commercial capital, until gang members shot him three times in 2012 because he couldn’t pay the extortion money from which they demanded from him each month. Jerlín, his partner and their daughter subsequently fled to La Ceiba, a city on Honduras’ Caribbean coast that is about three hours east of San Pedro Sula.
Jerlín migrated to Mexico in January 2019, but returned to Honduras less than a month later because his partner was hospitalized. The couple and their daughter migrated to Mexico a year later and applied for a Mexican humanitarian visa.
Jerlín last July during an interview at the offices of Organización Pro Unión Ceibeña (Oprouce), a La Ceiba-based advocacy group, said he and his family were living in a migrant detention center in Tapachula, a city in southern Mexico that is roughly 20 miles from the country’s border with Guatemala. Jerlín said they decided to return to Honduras in May 2020 because they did not want their daughter to further endure the “inhumane” conditions in which they were living.
Someone shot at their house on July 10, 2020.
“Sometimes I think that it’s better that they kill you in your home country and not here where nobody knows you or feels compassion for anyone,” Jerlín told the Blade from Piedras Negras.
Jerlín fled Honduras four days after Thalía Rodríguez, a prominent trans activist, was murdered outside her home in Tegucigalpa, the country’s capital. Vice President Kamala Harris and U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power are among the dignitaries who attended Honduran President Xiomara Castro’s inauguration on Jan. 27.
Harris and other White House officials have acknowledged anti-LGBTQ violence is among the “root causes” of migration from Honduras and surrounding countries. The Biden administration has also told migrants not to travel to the U.S.
Dominican Republic
Dominican court strikes down police, military sodomy ban
Nov. 18 ruling ‘a decisive step’ against discrimination
The Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Court on Nov. 18 ruled the country’s National Police and Armed Forces cannot criminalize consensual same-sex sexual relations among its members.
Human Rights Watch in a press release notes the landmark decision struck down Article 210 of the National Police’s Code of Justice and Article 260 of the Armed Forces’ Code of Justice.
Police officers and servicemembers who engaged in same sex “sodomy” faced up to two years or one year in prison respectively. Human Rights Watch in its press release said the provisions violated “constitutional guarantees to nondiscrimination, privacy, free development of personality, and the right to work” in the Dominican Republic.
“For decades, these provisions forced LGBT officers to live in fear of punishment simply for who they are,” said Cristian González Cabrera, a senior Human Rights Watch researcher. “This ruling is a resounding affirmation that a more inclusive future is both possible and required under Dominican law.”
Consensual same-sex sexual relations have been legal in the Dominican Republic since 1822, more than two decades before it declared independence from neighboring Haiti.
The Armed Forces Code of Justice had been in place since 1953. The National Police Code of Justice took effect in 1966.
Anderson Javiel Dirocie de León and Patricia M. Santana Nina challenged the policies in court.
“This decision marks a decisive step toward ensuring that these institutions, as well as any public or private body, adapt their rules and practices to guarantee that no person is discriminated against or sanctioned for their sexual orientation,” said Santana in the press release.
Dominican law does not ban discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in employment, education, housing, and other areas. The country’s constitution defines marriage as between a man and a woman.
James “Wally” Brewster, who was the U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic from 2013-2017, is openly gay. Religious leaders frequently criticized him and his husband, Bob Satawake.
Brewster in a text message to the Washington Blade said the Constitutional Court ruling is “important.”
Brazil
Black transgender singer from Brazil wins three Latin Grammy Awards
Liniker performed at Las Vegas ceremony
A Black transgender singer and songwriter from Brazil on Nov. 13 won three Latin Grammy Awards.
Liniker, who is from Araraquara, a city in São Paulo State, won for Best Portuguese Language Song for her song “Veludo Marrom,” Best Portuguese-Language Urban Performance for her song “Caju” from her sophomore album of the same title, and Best Portuguese Language Contemporary Pop Album for “Caju.”
She accepted the awards during the Latin Grammy Awards ceremony that took place in Las Vegas. Liniker also performed.
“I’ve been writing since I was 16. And writing, and poetry, have been my greatest form of existence. It’s where I find myself; where I celebrate so many things I experience,” said Liniker as she accepted her first Latin Grammy on Nov. 13. “And being a composer … Being a trans composer in Brazil — a country that kills us — is extremely difficult.”
Liniker in 2022 became the first openly trans woman to win a Latin Grammy.
Eswatini
PEPFAR delivers first doses of groundbreaking HIV prevention drug to two African countries
Lenacapavir now available in Eswatini and Zambia.
The State Department on Tuesday announced PEPFAR has delivered the first doses of a groundbreaking HIV prevention drug to two African countries.
The lenacapavir doses arrived in Eswatini and Zambia.
The State Department in September unveiled an initiative with Gilead Sciences to bring lenacapavir “to market in high-burden HIV countries.”
Lenacapavir users inject the drug twice a year.
The State Department in its September announcement noted everyone who participated in Gilead’s clinical trials remained HIV negative. It also said lenacapavir “has the potential to be particularly helpful for pregnant and breastfeeding mothers, as it safely protects them during and after pregnancy to prevent mother-to-child transmission.”
“In our new America First Global Health Strategy, the Department of State is establishing a first-of-its-kind innovation fund to support American-led research, market-shaping, and other dynamic advancements in global health,” said PEPFAR on Tuesday in a press release.
“The arrivals of the first doses of lenacapavir in Eswatini and Zambia mark an important milestone in HIV prevention and reflect our commitment to supporting communities with the greatest need,” added Gilead CEO Daniel O’Day. “For the first time, a new HIV medicine is reaching communities in sub-Saharan Africa in the same year as its U.S. approval.”
The September announcement came against the backdrop of widespread criticism over the Trump-Vance administration’s reported plans to not fully fund PEPFAR and to cut domestic HIV/AIDS funding. The Washington Blade has previously reported PEPFAR-funded programs in Kenya and other African countries have been forced to curtail services or even close because of U.S. funding cuts.
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