South America
Brazil LGBTQ activists, HIV/AIDS service providers fear Bolsonaro reelection
Presidential election to take place in October
(Editor’s note: Two sources quoted in this story — Fernanda Fonseca and Beto de Jesus — shared their personal views on the subject. Their remarks do not represent the views of AIDS Healthcare Foundation.)
SALVADOR, Brazil — Fernanda Fonseca was the coordinator of the Brazilian Health Ministry’s program to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV, syphilis and viral hepatitis B in 2019 when she attended the International AIDS Society’s Conference on HIV Science in Mexico City.
Fonseca, who attended the conference in her personal capacity, made a presentation that focused on the issue. Her husband, who at the time coordinated the Brazilian Health Ministry’s viral hepatitis program, also traveled to Mexico City.
One of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s sons soon posted to Twitter a picture of a doctored presentation “about trans community rights, and LGBT community rights” that an unnamed “couple” had made at the conference. The “couple” who Bolsonaro’s son targeted was Fonseca and her husband.
“He was like, this is what the government is standing for,” Fonseca told the Washington Blade on March 16 during an interview at a coffee shop in Salvador, a city in northeastern Brazil that is the capital of Bahia state.
Bolsonaro took office as Brazil’s president on Jan. 1, 2019, after he defeated then-São Paulo Mayor Fernando Haddad in the second round of the country’s presidential election that took place the previous October.
Fonseca noted one of the first things Bolsonaro did as president was to remove HIV from the name of the Health Ministry department that specifically fights HIV/AIDS in Brazil.
It was previously the Department of Vigilance, Prevention and Control of Sexually Transmitted Infections, HIV/AIDS and Viral Hepatitis. It is now called the Department of Chronic Conditions and Sexually Transmitted Infections.
Bolsonaro fired the department’s director, Adele Benzaken, after he took office. Fonseca said her position was also eliminated without her knowledge while she was on maternity leave.
Fonseca eventually resigned. She now works for AIDS Healthcare Foundation Brazil as its country medical program director.
“They destroyed my department,” she said. “When I came back (from maternity leave), no one was answering my calls.”
Fonseca is one of the many HIV/AIDS service providers and LGBTQ activists with whom the Blade spoke in Brazil — Salvador, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro — from March 12-21. They all sharply criticized Bolsonaro and expressed concern over what may happen in Brazil if he wins re-election later this year.
Bolsonaro is a former Brazilian Army captain who represented Rio de Janeiro in the country’s Congress from 1991-2018.
Fonseca told the Blade that Bolsonaro has banned the Health Ministry from buying lubricants, while adding he “wanted to shut down everything related to HIV.”
“It’s very specific. It’s very homophobic,” she said. “I don’t know who informs him.”
AIDS Healthcare Foundation Brazil Program Manager Beto de Jesus during a March 14 interview at his office near São Paulo’s Praça da Republica noted Bolsonaro has suggested COVID-19 vaccines can cause AIDS.
“To him, the question of AIDS is connected to faggots,” said De Jesus.
São Paulo’s Municipal Health Secretary distributes free condoms on the city’s subway system. The Brazilian Health Ministry has donated to AIDS Healthcare Foundation antitretroviral drugs that it provides to Venezuelan migrants who receive care at their clinics in Colombia.
Bolsonaro, among many things, has encouraged fathers to beat their sons if they think they are gay. (His son, Rio Municipal Councilman Carlos Bolsonaro, is reportedly gay.)
Jair Bolsonaro in March 2019 during a press conference with then-President Trump in the White House Rose Garden stressed his “respect of traditional family values” — he’s twice divorced and married his third wife, Michelle Bolsonaro, in 2017 — and opposition to “gender ideology.”
A report that Human Rights Watch released earlier this month notes Bolsonaro “has a long history of mischaracterizing and vocally opposing gender and sexuality education, including on the grounds that it constitutes ‘early sexualization’.” Bolsonaro has supported legislation that would limit LGBTQ-specific curricula in the country’s schools, even after the Brazilian Supreme Court struck down local and state laws on the issue.
Jair Bolsonaro was not president when Rio Municipal Councilwoman Marielle Franco, a bisexual woman of African descent, and her driver, Anderson Gomes, were murdered in Rio’s Lapa neighborhood on March 14, 2018.
Ronnie Lessa, one of the two former police officers who has been arrested in connection with the murders, lived in the same large condominium in Rio’s exclusive Barra da Tijuca neighborhood in which Jair Bolsonaro lives. Franco’s widow, Rio Municipal Councilwoman Mônica Benício, on March 19 said this fact is “just a coincidence.”
Benício during the interview that took place at a coffee shop in downtown Rio stressed Jair Bolsonaro’s rhetoric against LGBTQ Brazilians, women and other groups was “known” before he became president. Benício also acknowledged it resonates with a segment of Brazilian society.
“It is an absolutely despicable posture and incompatible with a posture of the president of the republic,” said Benício.
Two Brazilian LGBTQ rights groups — Aliança Nacional LGBTI and Grupo Gay da Bahia — in a report they released on May 10 notes 300 LGBTQ Brazilians “suffered violent deaths” because they were murdered or died by suicide. The organizations specifically note Salvador is the most dangerous state capital for LGBTQ people.
The report notes 28 percent of the murder victims were killed with knives, machetes, scissors, hoes and other weapons. One of them was stabbed 95 times.
“The cruelty of how many of these executions were committed demonstrates the extreme hatred of the criminals, who are not content with killing, disfigure the victim washing their murderous homophobia in the spilled blood,” said Aliança Nacional LGBTI President Toni Reis in the report’s introduction.
Grupo Gay da Bahia President Marcelo Cerqueira on March 15 told the Blade during an interview in Salvador that race, poverty, class, machismo and family structures all contribute to the area’s high rate of violence against LGBTQ people.
“There are many relationships with asymmetrical power dynamics,” he noted.
Keila Simpson is the president of Associaçao Nacional de Travestis e Transexuais (National Association of Travestis and Transsexuals), a Brazilian transgender rights group known by the acronym ANTRA.
She noted to the Blade on March 16 during an interview at her office in Salvador’s Pelourinho neighborhood that the Supreme Court in 2018 ruled trans Brazilians can legally change their name and gender without medical intervention or a judicial order. Simpson said trans Brazilians nevertheless continue to suffer from discrimination, a lack of formal employment and educational opportunities and police violence because of their gender identity. She also added efforts to combat violence against LGBTQ Brazilians have become even more difficult because Bolsonaro is “propagating violence against LGBTQ people every day.”
“It increases the possibility of people who are already violent by nature to continue committing violence,” said Simpson.
Mariah Rafaela Silva, a trans woman of indigenous descent who works with the Washington-based International Institute on Race, Equality and Human Rights, agreed when she and her colleague, Isaac Porto, spoke with the Blade at a restaurant in Rio’s Ipanema neighborhood on March 21.
“If I would choose a word to define Bolsonaro it would be danger,” said Silva. “He represents a danger to the environment. He represents a danger to diversity. He represents a danger to Black people. He represents a danger to indigenous people.”
Rio de Janeiro (State) Legislative Assemblywoman Renata Souza is a Black feminist who grew up with Franco in Maré, a favela that is close to Rio’s Galeão International Airport, and worked with her for 12 years.
Souza in March traveled to D.C. and met with Serra Sippel, chief global advocacy officer for Fòs Feminista, a global women’s rights group, White House Gender Policy Council Senior Advisor Rachel Vogelstein and other officials and women’s rights activists. Souza on Tuesday noted to the Blade that she also denounced Franco’s murder, the “escalation of police violence and Black genocide in Brazil’s peripheries and favelas” and called for international observers in the country for the presidential election when she spoke at the Organization of American States and to members of Congress.
“President Bolsonaro is the expression of a capitalist political project that serves private national and international interests related to the military-industrial complex, religious fundamentalism, agribusiness and the predatory exploitation of natural resources,” said Souza. “This project’s social base comes from the formation of an ideal of barbarism through the use of violence as language and hate as a fuel that spreads a misogynist, racist and fundamentalist culture, discriminatory customs and policies that predatory to nature and to being human.”
The first round of Brazil’s presidential election will take place on Oct. 2.
Polls indicate Bolsonaro is trailing former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro has already sought to discredit the country’s electoral system, even though a group of more than 20 would-be hackers who gathered in the Brazilian capital of Brasília last week failed to infiltrate it.
Da Silva, who was Brazil’s president from 2003-2010, is a member of the country’s Workers’ Party.
Sergio Moro, a judge who Jair Bolsonaro later tapped as his government’s Justice and Public Security Minister, in 2017 sentenced Da Silva to 9 1/2 years in prison after his conviction on money laundering and corruption charges that stemmed from Operation Car Wash. The Supreme Court in November 2019 ordered Da Silva’s release.
Marina Reidel, a trans woman who is the director of the country’s Women, Family and Human Rights Department, on Monday told the Blade to email a request for comment on Jair Bolsonaro’s anti-LGBTQ record to a spokesperson. The Blade has yet to receive a response.
Julian Rodrigues, who was the coordinator of the Workers’ Party’s National Working Group from 2006-2012, on Tuesday from São Paulo noted Da Silva in 2004 created the Health Ministry’s “Brazil without Homophobia” campaign that he described as a “pioneering program for LGBT rights.” Rodrigues also highlighted Da Silva created the Culture Ministry’s Diversity Secretariat that, among other things, funded community centers and sought to make police officers and other law enforcement officials more LGBTQ-friendly.
Simpson noted the Health Ministry when Da Silva and President Dilma Rousseff were in office funded projects that specifically helped sex workers and other vulnerable groups.
Rousseff was in office in 2013 when the Supreme Court extended marriage rights to same-sex couples across the country. Michel Temer was Brazil’s president in 2018 when the Supreme Court issued its trans rights decision.
The Supreme Court on May 24, 2019, issued a ruling that criminalized homophobia and transphobia. Bolsonaro, who took office less than five months earlier, condemned the decision.
The Supreme Court in May 2020 struck down the country’s ban on men who have sex with men from donating blood. Brazil in 1999 became the first country in the world to ban so-called conversion therapy.
Rodrigues described Bolsonaro and his administration as “an extreme right-wing, authoritarian and fascist government that uses racial prejudice, gender prejudice and prejudice against LGBTs as engines to mobilize its conservative and reactionary social base.”
“It is a very dangerous government for Brazil’s democratic freedoms,” Rodrigues told the Blade. “The entire Brazilian LGBT movement is fighting ardently to defeat the Bolsonaro government and elect Lula, a progressive president who is committed to the rights of LGBTQ people and all Brazilian people.”
A gay man who was on Rio’s Ipanema Beach with his husband on March 20 told the Blade they support Jair Bolsonaro because they feel he has fought corruption in Brazil. They did, however, add that Jair Bolsonaro “should keep his mouth shut.”
Fonseca said her father voted for Bolsonaro in 2018 because he “hated” Da Silva.
“We don’t live in a democratic state anymore,” said Fonseca, who noted the Supreme Court eventually absolved Da Silva. “We can’t trust the police force. We can’t trust the legal system.”
“People who think like him now they believe they can say that, they have the right to say homophobic things, racist things. They can because our president says them, so it’s ok,” added Fonseca. “We need to remember that it’s not ok. I don’t think they are the majority, So I think when we have a leader again that is strong, we are going back on track.”
Cerqueira echoed Fonseca.
“(Bolsonaro) managed to energize prejudiced people who were not vocal before,” Cerqueira told the Blade on March 15 during an interview in Salvador. “People were afraid to say that I was racist, that I was homophobic, that I was prejudiced. Nowadays everybody wants to be homophobic.”
Porto noted conservatives continue to dominate the country’s Congress and Brazilians who are Black and/or LGBTQ lack political power. He told the Blade the situation in a post-Bolsonaro Brazil is “going to be complicated”
“Brazilian society has not changed,” said Porto. “There is a movement of people who are organized and recognize themselves as equal.”
“There’s a lot of damage that we have to repair,” added Silva.
Brazil
529 openly LGBTQ candidates running in Brazilian election
Lula running against Jair Bolsonaro’s son in presidential contest
Editor’s note: International News Editor Michael K. Lavers will be on assignment in Brazil through Oct. 6.
SÃO PAULO — 529 openly LGBTQ candidates are running for in the Brazilian election that will take place on Sunday.
VoteLGBT, an organization that seeks to increase LGBTQ representation in Brazilian politics, notes 109 of these candidates are either transgender or travesti. They include Congresswomen Erika Hilton and Duda Salabert, who made history in 2022 as the first travesti and first trans women respectively to win seats in the Brazilian Congress.
Hilton, a member of the leftist Socialism and Liberty Party, known by the acronym PSOL, is a former sex worker who was a member of the São Paulo Municipal Council before her election to Congress. She currently chairs the Chamber of Deputies’ Women’s Rights Commission.
The Chamber of Deputies is Congress’s lower house.
Salabert, who is also a member of PSOL, represents Minas Gerais state in the Chamber of Deputies. Both she and Hilton in 2025 sharply criticized the Trump-Vance administration after it listed their gender as “male” on American visas that would have allowed them to travel to the U.S.
Benny Briolly is a travesti woman and member of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s Workers’ Party who is running to represent Rio de Janeiro state in the Chamber of Deputies. Thabatta Pimenta is a trans woman of mixed ethnicity who is running to represent Rio Grande do Norte state in the Chamber of Deputies as a member of the Green Party.
Nicolas is a trans masculine bisexual man from Pará state who is part of the Banca Transformer, a “collective candidature” for the Chamber of Deputies that VoteLGBT notes is “100 percent trans and lead by a trans masculine person.” Mãe Kaká Garcia is a gay travesti woman of African descent who is running to represent Mato Grosso state in the Chamber of Deputies as a member of PSOL.
“My bid for Congress stems from my life story and the need to bring voices that have historically been marginalized into the political arena,” Garcia told the Washington Blade.
“I am a Black travesti woman and a leader within the African-derived religious community, with a background in work, entrepreneurship, and community activism in Mato Grosso,” she added. “I am intimately familiar with the challenges faced by the LGBTQIA+ community, the Black population, women, and terreiro communities.”
Garcia added she is running because she believes “these spaces must also be occupied by people who live these realities.”
“I want issues such as combating violence against trans people, racism, religious intolerance, protections for women, LGBTQIA+ rights, and social policies to be treated as permanent public policies,” she said.
Associaçao Nacional de Travestis e Transexuais (National Association of Travestis and Transsexuals) President Bruna Benavides in a statement to the Blade praised all of the trans and travesti candidates.
“For ANTRA, the strength of trans and travesti candidacies lies in what our representatives already demonstrate through their work in office — acting beyond the LGBTQIA+ agenda in areas such as education, health, labor, human rights, culture, the environment, public safety, and the fight against inequality,” she said. “The presence of trans people is already a reality, and democracy needs them in politics — not merely as representatives of an identity, but as agents capable of shaping initiatives that benefit society as a whole.”
“Politics will only be truly transformed when it incorporates the perspectives and experiences of those historically excluded from centers of power — people who have nonetheless envisioned a nation where everyone can be free and live with dignity and security,” she added.
The Blade also spoke with other openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual candidates.
Uédem Lima is a bisexual, Makuxi Indigenous man who is running to represent Roraima state in the Chamber of Deputies as a member of the centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement.
“I am 23-years-old, a Makuxi Indigenous man, and bisexual,” he told the Blade. “I come from a reality where young people, Indigenous people, and LGBTQ+ individuals often still face difficulties in occupying spaces where decisions are made.”
“My candidacy is also a way to show that these spaces can — and must — be occupied by people who know these realities firsthand,” added Lima.
He told the Blade that education, health, climate justice, and Indigenous rights are among the top issues on which he will work in Congress if elected. Lima added his life in Roraima state, which borders Venezuela and Guyana in northern Brazil, and his identity will further shape his tenure.
“I know what it is like to grow up in Roraima, experience the shifts between the interior and the capital, and forge my path while carrying multiple identities,” he said. “I do not want to separate these parts of who I am. They are part of my story and also help explain why I chose to enter politics.”
Former Congressman Jean de Wyllys, who is the first openly gay man elected to the Brazilian Congress, resigned in 2019 and fled the country after he received death threats that he claimed came from supporters of then-President Jair Bolsonaro. De Wyllys at the time of his resignation represented Rio de Janeiro state and had just been elected for a third term.
De Wyllys has returned to Brazil and is running to represent São Paulo state in the Chamber of Deputies as a member of the Workers’ Party.
“My decision to return to present myself as a candidate is linked to the public responsibility with respect to this year’s elections, the most important for the future of Latin America in the last two decades,” he told the Blade. “Everyone knows that not just our region, but the whole world is a stage for a clash between two projects: one led by Donald Trump and his far-right (supporters) internationally that is neofascist, neocolonial, and neofeudalistic, and the other spearheaded by China that advocates for multipolarity, nations’ sovereignty, and global cooperation to overcome challenges, such as the climate crisis and possible pandemics.”
“As someone who enjoys national popularity and international connections, and having served two highly productive terms regarding human rights and cultural diversity, I could not ignore the electorate’s calls to participate in this global contest — and not merely as an intellectual and artist,” added de Wyllys.
Mônica Benício is a Rio de Janeiro Municipal Councilwoman who is running for the Brazilian Senate as a PSOL member.
Her widow, Rio de Janeiro Municipal Councilwoman Marielle Franco, and her driver, Anderson Gomes, were murdered on March 14, 2018. One of the two former police officers later convicted lived in the same condominium complex in the city’s exclusive Barra da Tijuca neighborhood in which Bolsonaro lived at the time. (Bolsonaro was not president when the murders took place, and strongly denied media reports that suggested one of the suspects visited his home before Franco and Gomes were killed.)
Franco was also friends with De Wyllys and a political ally.
“After Marielle’s assassination, the LGBTQIAPN+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender/transsexual/travesti/, queer, intersex, asexual, pansexual, nonbinary) community was one of the networks that embraced me and gave me the strength to carry on,” Benício told the Blade on Tuesday. “My Senate candidacy stems from this very commitment: to transform that affection and collective strength into a voice, protection, and rights within Congress.”
Benício stressed the LGBTQ and intersex community “needs to occupy more decision-making spaces.”
“I want to reach the Senate so that our rights, families, and lives are represented where laws are made,” she said.
Lula is running for a second consecutive term.
He defeated Bolsonaro in the second round of the 2022 presidential election.
The Brazilian Supreme Court last year sentenced Bolsonaro — who repeatedly targeted LGBTQ Brazilians and other groups while in office — to more than 27 years in prison for his role in an attempted coup that saw thousands of his supporters storm the Congress, presidential palace, and the Supreme Court itself on Jan. 8, 2023. Bolsonaro is currently serving his sentence at his home in Brasília, the country’s capital, because of his poor health.
Lula main challenger in this year’s presidential election is Bolsonaro’s son, Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro.
A second round will take place on Oct. 25 if no candidate receives at least 50 percent of the vote.
Colombia
Colombia withdraws from Equal Rights Coalition
International LGBTQ group ‘not a priority’ for country’s new government
Colombia last week withdrew from a coalition of more than 40 countries that pledges to champion LGBTQ and intersex rights.
The Bogotá Post, an English-language news website in the Colombian capital, reported the country officially withdrew from the Equal Rights Coalition on Sept. 17.
The Equal Rights Coalition formed in 2016.
The group’s current members are Albania, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Cabo Verde, Chile, Costa Rica, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Montenegro, Netherlands, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Ukraine, the U.K., and Uruguay. Civil society organizations from Colombia and dozens of other countries, including the U.S., work with the Equal Rights Coalition.
Colombia had co-chaired the group alongside Spain.
The decision to withdraw from the Equal Rights Coalition took place less than two months after far-right Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella took office.
El Páis, a Spanish newspaper, reported Colombian Vice Minister for Consular and Migration Affairs Pedro Agustín Roa said the Equal Rights Coalition “is not a priority” for his government and the country’s participation in it was “something from a previous government.”
Caribe Afirmativo is a Colombian LGBTQ advocacy group that works with the Equal Rights Coalition. Wilson Castañeda, its director, criticized his country’s withdrawal from it.
Ecuador
Caso Karlina: Una sentencia histórica contra las terapias de «conversión»
Karlina Quiroz, una mujer trans de Chone, fue internada contra su voluntad
La última vez que Karlina Quiroz, una mujer trans de 57 años, salió sola a la calle en Chone, terminó encerrada contra su voluntad en un centro de rehabilitación donde intentaron “corregir” su identidad de género mediante humillaciones, amenazas y agresiones.
Han pasado cinco años desde ese episodio, ocurrido en 2021; y el 11 de septiembre de 2026 Karlina por fin obtuvo justicia.
La Fiscalía informó, el 14 de septiembre, que el Tribunal de Garantías Penales de Chone sentenció a seis personas por actos de odio contra Karlina, al ser víctima de violencia basada en su identidad de género.
Entre los seis sentenciados están sus dos hermanos, que —según la denuncia de Karlina— ordenaron su encierro a este centro.
El caso de Karlina refleja el odio y la violencia hacia personas trans en Ecuador y vuelve a poner bajo la lupa la existencia de centros conocidos como clínicas de “deshomosexualización” o espacios de “terapias de conversión”.
De acuerdo con la denuncia presentada por Karlina, en julio de 2021 fue interceptada por varios hombres y trasladada contra su voluntad a un centro para el tratamiento de adicciones ubicado en Chone, Manabí, en la vía a Pedernales. Allí permaneció retenida y sometida a tratos degradantes, violencia psicológica y agresiones físicas.
Según su testimonio, durante el encierro recibió insultos relacionados con su identidad de género y amenazas orientadas a “modificarla”.
Karlina denunció, además, que esta no habría sido la primera vez. Según su relato, en 2019 permaneció aproximadamente tres meses internada de manera forzada en otro centro de rehabilitación, también ubicado en la vía a Pedernales, en Chone. Durante ese período habría sido sometida a dinámicas similares de aislamiento, control y presiones dirigidas a modificar su identidad y expresión de género.
Según información de la Fiscalía, en septiembre de 2021, como parte de las diligencias investigativas, se allanó el centro clandestino en Chone. Allí se recabaron indicios relacionados con el internamiento forzoso de Karlina durante tres meses.
Con esos y otros elementos de convicción obtenidos durante la investigación, la Fiscalía inició un proceso penal contra las seis personas, quienes fueron luego llamadas a juicio.
El proceso, explicó Karlina, incluyó los dos casos: el de 2019 y 2021. “El crimen se investigó desde que comenzó la primera gota de sangre”, señaló Karlina, en alusión a la violencia física que sufrió en su primer encierro.
De los seis sentenciados, tres fueron condenados como autores directos a cuatro años de pena privativa de libertad. Se trata de los dos hermanos de Karlina y un sobrino, por ordenar su encierro al centro de adicciones.
Los otros tres recibieron una pena de dos años, como cómplices.
De acuerdo con Karlina, uno de ellos es el director del primer centro al que fue ingresada contra su voluntad en 2019 por tres meses, y los otros dos son quienes la interceptaron la segunda ocasión, en julio de 2021, para llevarla al centro. Ella los señala como “capturadores” de las personas que son recluidas en los centros.
“Cuando recibí la noticia (el viernes 11 de septiembre durante la audiencia de juzgamiento) no podía creerlo. Las piernas me temblaron y las lágrimas se me salieron. Estoy tranquila y satisfecha”, señaló Karlina en una llamada telefónica.
Para Pedro Gutiérrez, abogado especialista en derechos humanos, la sentencia es importante no solo por reconocer un delito de odio, sino también por las características de los hechos: el ingreso (por orden de sus hermanos) a un centro de “deshomosexualización” en el que se cometen actos de tortura y violencia física.
Durante la audiencia, constó el testimonio de Karlina. La Fiscalía también presentó el informe de reconocimiento del lugar de los hechos, la inspección ocular técnica, el levantamiento de evidencias y los testimonios de personas que confirmaron que los actos de violencia por perjuicio hacia su identidad de género fueron ejecutados de manera reiterada por los ahora sentenciados.
El caso volvió a poner la atención sobre las llamadas terapias de conversión en Ecuador, prácticas ampliamente cuestionadas por organismos internacionales de derechos humanos y señaladas como formas de tortura o violencia psicológica. Aunque el Estado ecuatoriano ha realizado operativos y clausuras de algunos centros en los últimos años, organizaciones sociales sostienen que estos espacios continúan funcionando de manera clandestina o bajo otras denominaciones.
La legislación ecuatoriana penaliza los actos de tortura con la intención de modificar la orientación sexual o identidad de género, pero no existe una sanción contra los centros que ofrecen las denominadas terapias de conversión.
En 2020, la Asamblea aprobó el Código Orgánico de Salud y una de sus disposiciones fue prohibir expresamente este tipo de terapias, pero fue vetado totalmente por el expresidente Lenín Moreno en medio de una campaña de sectores antiderechos.
La sentencia también dispuso, como reparación integral a favor de Karlina, tratamiento psicológico e indemnizaciones por daños materiales e inmateriales.
Gutiérrez considera que la reparación para Karlina es limitada, pues -por ejemplo- no hay llamados de atención al Ministerio de Salud o disculpas públicas a la víctima.
“Mi nombre es Ariel Karlina Zambrano, soy una mujer trans de Chone, Manabí. Desde niña supe que quería ser mujer, quería ser bonita, libre. Pero mi familia nunca lo aceptó. Mis hermanos y mi padre, profundamente machistas, me maltrataban constantemente”, contó Karlina en un testimonio en 2025 que recogió el Comité Permanente por la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos (CDH).
Para activistas y defensores de derechos humanos, el caso de Karlina evidencia además un patrón de violencia que suele permanecer oculto dentro de círculos familiares, religiosos y comunitarios. En muchos casos, explican, los internamientos forzados son promovidos bajo la idea de “corregir” orientaciones sexuales o identidades de género consideradas inaceptables.
Karlina intentó vivir en Chone, creyendo que con la denuncia y las medidas cautelares estaba a salvo, pero su hermano le pagaba a personas para que la acosaran, según su relato. Por ello, tuvo que esconderse por meses.
Las personas trans en Ecuador enfrentan altos niveles de discriminación, violencia y exclusión social, especialmente fuera de las grandes ciudades. Según la Encuesta Nacional sobre las Condiciones de Vida de la Población LGBTI+ del INEC, el 53,5 por ciento de las personas LGBTQ mayores de 18 años en el país ha sufrido algún tipo de discriminación o violencia a lo largo de su vida, siendo el entorno familiar uno de los principales espacios de agresión.
En materia de violencia letal, organizaciones como Asociación Silueta X y el Observatorio Runa Sipiy documentaron 30 asesinatos de personas LGBTQ y transfemicidios en Ecuador durante 2025. De esos casos, alrededor del 70 por ciento corresponden a mujeres trans, lo que las posiciona como el grupo más expuesto a crímenes de odio y violencia extrema.
Diversas organizaciones de derechos humanos han advertido además sobre la persistencia de centros de “deshomosexualización” o internamientos forzosos, prácticas denunciadas desde hace más de una década en Ecuador pese a prohibiciones estatales y operativos de control insuficientes.
El caso de Karlina pone a prueba algo más grande que una sentencia individual: si Ecuador está dispuesto o no a reconocer que estas prácticas siguen existiendo y que la violencia contra personas LGBTQ continúa ocurriendo, muchas veces con la complicidad o el silencio de sus propios entornos familiares.
“Con mi caso, debe quedar un precedente. Debemos luchar contra el odio que podemos encontrarlo dentro de nuestras propias familias. Por nuestra libertad y derechos, debemos luchar”, indicó Karlina.
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