South America
More than 180000 people participate in Chilean capital’s Pride march
Flooding from heavy rains prompted organizers to delay event
The Chilean capital’s annual Pride march took place on June 25 after organizers postponed them because of heavy rains that authorities have described as the worst in 30 years.
The weather front affected central and southern areas of Chile and caused floods that have affected a large part of the population. The march, however, was unexpectedly well-attended.
More than 180,000 people participated in the march the Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation organized.
“We are very happy with this unexpected reception,” said Movilh spokesperson Javiera Zúñiga. “While it is true that Pride marches have always been massive, we expected a smaller turnout than in previous years because this time we had to postpone the parade for weather reasons. However, the opposite happened, since Pride 2023 became the most massive (one) that has been convened so far.”
Eleanor Berkenblit, a 21-year-old American woman from Sharon, Mass., who is studying in Chile, participated in a Pride parade for the first time in her life.
“I really enjoyed the march,” she told the Washington Blade. “I felt proud to be surrounded by people who looked like me, all dressed in colors with their flags and shouts of happiness. I was very excited to march, to be in community and to read the handwritten signs.”
March participants demanded Congress reform the country’s anti-discrimination law, known as the Zamudio law, and asked President Gabriel Boric’s government to support the creation of an institution that promotes and defends queer rights. They also demanded an end to violence against LGBTQ and intersex people in Chile, which has been on the rise over the last year.
An American tourist was recently the victim of a hate-motivated attack in Puerto Varas, a city in southern Chile that is roughly 630 miles south of Santiago.
“I was attacked in Puerto Varas at gunpoint between 8 and 9 a.m. on June 18 on the train tracks near the Bellavista crossing, in the vicinity of Phillipi Park, by a guy I met on a dating app,” said the man on TikTok after saying the person who attacked him identified himself as Benjamin.
“I took the gun away from him, but he took it back and hit me in the face (…) definitely (the aggressor) has some wounds on the back of the head, as I was able to inflict some of that during my struggle. I have reported all this to carabineros (the Chilean police),” he added.
Movilh, after speaking with the tourist and expressing its solidarity with him, sent his details to the U.S. Embassy in Santiago in order for them to provide further guidance and follow up with the investigations.
“Many people believe that after the approval of equal marriage and homoparental adoption, homo/transphobia ceased. However, they are wrong. In the last year, hate crimes have doubled,” said Ramón Gómez, Movilh’s human rights officer, in a speech during the Santiago Pride march.
The organizers said the large turnout “surprised” them, and said that it surpassed last year’s march, despite the cold and gray day in Santiago.
Several ambassadors participated in the march. Among them was Australian Ambassador to Chile Todd Mercer, who expressed his country’s commitment to the LGBTQ and intersex community. Ambassadors from Argentina, Denmark, the U.S., Finland, Ireland and Norway, among others, also attended.
Some parties within the governing coalition did not participate.
Fundación Iguales Executive Director María José Cumplido noted her disagreements with Boric’s government.
“We see with real concern that in more than a year of the current government we have not seen concrete advances in the rights of sexual and gender diversity in Chile,” said Cumplido. “Although we have had a good relationship with the Ministers of Justice and Foreign Affairs, there is a lack of an official interlocutor in these matters that we believe should be the Minister of Women and Gender Equality, who has been somewhat distant in the matter.”
Cumplido indicated her organization feels that “in addition to the reform of the Anti-Discrimination Law, we believe that the creation of an institutional framework that is housed in the Undersecretary of Human Rights is urgent, since the country needs to have an entity that is capable of preventing all types of discrimination in a transversal manner, not only that directed at LGBTI+ people, generating public policies that move towards the eradication of all types of violence.”
“Another of our focuses is to give immediate urgency to the José Matías Law, which addresses bullying and discrimination against students based on their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. We see with concern the rising figures of violence in schools, but if we zoom in on that, the attacks against trans students are becoming more frequent and that hurts us deeply and drives us to continue advocating for solutions,” added Cumplido.
Chileans on May 4 returned to the polls to vote for their representatives to the Constitutional Council, the new institutional body in charge of writing a new constitution. The Republican Party swept to victory in most of the country, winning a majority within the deliberative body.
“Today we are concerned about the position that the Republican Party may have regarding nondiscrimination in the drafting of the final text of the constitution,” Cumplido told the Blade.
Fundación Iguales and Movilh support amendments that would guarantee nondiscrimination in the proposed constitution that voters will consider at the end of the year.
Colombia
Colombia avanza hacia la igualdad para personas trans
Fue aprobado en Comisión Primera de la Cámara la Ley Integral Trans
En un hecho histórico para los derechos humanos en Colombia, la Comisión Primera de la Cámara de Representantes aprobó en primer debate el Proyecto de Ley 122 de 2024, conocido como la Ley Integral Trans, que busca garantizar la igualdad efectiva de las personas con identidades de género diversas en el país. Esta iniciativa, impulsada por más de cien organizaciones sociales defensoras de los derechos LGBTQ, congresistas de la comisión por la Diversidad y personas trans, representa un paso decisivo hacia el reconocimiento pleno de derechos para esta población históricamente marginada.
La Ley Integral Trans propone un marco normativo robusto para enfrentar la discriminación y promover la inclusión. Entre sus principales ejes se destacan el acceso a servicios de salud con enfoque diferencial, el reconocimiento de la identidad de género en todos los ámbitos de la vida, la creación de programas de empleo y educación para personas trans, así como medidas para garantizar el acceso a la justicia y la protección frente a violencias basadas en prejuicios.
Detractores hablan de ‘imposición ideológica
Sin embargo, el avance del proyecto no ha estado exento de polémicas. Algunos sectores conservadores han señalado que la iniciativa representa una “imposición ideológica”. La senadora y precandidata presidencial María Fernanda Cabal anunció públicamente que se opondrá al proyecto de Ley Integral Trans cuando llegue al Senado, argumentando que “todas las personas deben ser tratadas por igual” y que esta propuesta vulneraría un principio constitucional. Estas declaraciones anticipan un debate intenso en las próximas etapas legislativas.
El proyecto también establecelineamientos claros para que las instituciones públicas respeten el nombre y el género con los que las personas trans se identifican, en concordancia con su identidad de género, y contempla procesos de formación y sensibilización en entidades estatales. Además, impulsa políticas públicas en contextos clave como el trabajo, la educación, la cultura y el deporte, promoviendo una vida libre de discriminación y con garantías plenas de participación.
¿Qué sigue para que sea ley?
La Ley aún debe superar varios debates legislativos, incluyendo la plenaria en la Cámara y luego el paso al Senado; pero la sola aprobación en Comisión Primera ya constituye un hito en la lucha por la igualdad y la dignidad de las personas trans en Colombia. En un país donde esta población enfrenta altos niveles de exclusión, violencia y barreras estructurales, este avance legislativo renueva la esperanza de una transformación real.
Desde www.orgullolgbt.co, celebramos este logro, invitamos a unirnos en esta causa impulsándola en los círculos a los que tengamos acceso y reiteramos nuestro compromiso con la visibilidad, los derechos y la vida digna de las personas trans. La #LeyIntegralTrans bautizada “Ley Sara Millerey” en honor de la mujer trans recientemente asesinada en Bello, Antioquia (ver más aquí); no es solo una propuesta normativa: es un acto de justicia que busca asegurar condiciones reales para que todas las personas puedan vivir con libertad, seguridad y respeto por su identidad.
Colombia
Claudia López running for president of Colombia
Former Bogotá mayor married to Sen. Angélica Lozano
Former Bogotá Mayor Claudia López has announced she is running for president of Colombia.
“We begin today and we will win in a year,” she said in a social media post on June 3.
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López, 55, was a student protest movement leader, journalist, and political scientist before she entered politics. López returned to Colombia in 2013 after she earned her PhD in political science at Columbia University.
López in a speech she gave last December after the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute honored her at its annual International LGBTQ Leaders Conference in D.C. noted Juan Francisco “Kiko” Gomez, a former governor of La Guajíra, a department in northern Colombia, threatened to assassinate her because she wrote about his ties to criminal gangs.
A Bogotá judge in 2017 convicted Gómez of ordering members of a paramilitary group to kill former Barrancas Mayor Yandra Brito, her husband, and bodyguard and sentenced him to 55 years in prison.
López in 2014 returned to Colombia, and ran for the country’s Senate as a member of the center-left Green Alliance party after she recovered from breast cancer. López won after a 10-week campaign that cost $80,000.
López in 2018 was her party’s candidate to succeed then-President Juan Manuel Santos when he left office. López in 2019 became the first woman and first lesbian elected mayor of Bogotá, the Colombian capital and the country’s largest city.
López took office on Jan. 1, 2020, less than a month after she married her wife, Colombian Sen. Angélica Lozano. (López was not out when she was elected to the Senate.) López’s mayorship ended on Dec. 31, 2023. She was a 2024 Harvard University Advance Leadership Initiative fellow.
The first-round of Colombia’s presidential election will take place on May 31, 2026.
The country’s 1991 constitution prevents current President Gustavo Petro from seeking re-election.
López declared her candidacy four days before a gunman shot Sen. Miguel Uribe, a member of the opposition Democratic Center party who is seen as a probable presidential candidate, in the head during a rally in Bogotá’s Fontibón neighborhood.
She quickly condemned the shooting. López during an interview with the Washington Blade after the Victory Institute honored her called for an end to polarization in Colombia.
“We need to listen to each other again, we need to have a coffee with each other again, we need to touch each other’s skin,” she said.
López would be Colombia’s first female president if she wins. López would also become the third openly lesbian woman elected head of government — Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir was Iceland’s prime minister from 2009-2013 and Ana Brnabić was Serbia’s prime minister from 2017-2024.
Chile
Gay pharmacist’s murder sparks outrage in Chile
Francisco Albornoz’s body found in remote ravine on June 4
The latest revelations about the tragic death of Francisco Albornoz, a 21-year-old gay pharmacist whose body was found on June 4 in a remote ravine in the O’Higgins region 12 days after he disappeared, has left Chile’s LGBTQ community shocked.
The crime, which was initially surrounded by uncertainty and contradictory theories, has taken a darker and more shocking turn after prosecutors charged Christian González, an Ecuadorian doctor, and José Miguel Baeza, a Chilean chef, in connection with Albornoz’s murder. González and Baeza are in custody while authorities continue to investigate the case.
The Chilean Public Prosecutor’s Office has pointed to a premeditated “criminal plan” to murder Albornoz.
Rossana Folli, the prosecutor who is in charge of the case, says Albornoz died as a a result of traumatic encephalopathy after receiving multiple blows to the head inside an apartment in Ñuñoa, which is just outside of Santiago, the Chilean capital, early on May 24. The Prosecutor’s Office has categorically ruled out that Albornoz died of a drug overdose, as initial reports suggested.
“The fact that motivates and leads to the unfortunate death of Francisco is part of a criminal plan of the two defendants, aimed at ensuring his death and guaranteeing total impunity,” Folli told the court. “The seriousness of the facts led the judge to decree preventive detention for both defendants on the grounds that their freedom represents a danger to public safety.”
Prosecutors during a June 7 hearing that lasted almost eight hours presented conservations from the suspects’ cell phones that they say showed they planned the murder in advance.
“Here we already have one (for Albornoz.) If you bring chloroform, drugs, marijuana, etc.,” read one of the messages.
Security cameras captured the three men entering the apartment where the murder took place together.
Hours later, one of the suspects left with a suitcase and a shopping cart to transport Albornoz’s body, which had been wrapped in a sleeping bag. The route they followed to dispose of the body included a stop to buy drinks, potato chips, gloves, and a rope with which they finally descended a ravine to hide it.
Advocacy groups demand authorities investigate murder as hate crime
Although the Public Prosecutor’s Office has not yet officially classified the murder as a hate crime, LGBTQ organizations are already demanding authorities investigate this angle. Human rights groups have raised concerns over patterns of violence that affect queer people in Chile.
The Zamudio Law and other anti-discrimination laws exist. Activists, however, maintain crimes motivated by a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity are not properly prosecuted.
“This is not just a homicide, it is the cruelest expression of a society that still allows the dehumanization of LGBTQ+ people,” said a statement from Fundación Iguales, one of Chile’s main LGBTQ organizations. “We demand truth, justice, and guarantees of non-repetition.”
The Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation (Movilh), meanwhile, indicated that “since the first day the family contacted us, we have been in conversations with the Prosecutor’s Office so that this fatal outcome is thoroughly investigated, including the possible existence of homophobic motivations or components.”
The investigation into Albornoz’s murder continues, and the court has imposed a 90-day deadline for authorities to complete it.
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U.S. Supreme Court4 days agoSupreme Court upholds ACA rule that makes PrEP, other preventative care free
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District of Columbia5 days agoMan sentenced to 15 years in prison for drug deal that killed two DC gay men
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