BOGOTA — The LGBTI community (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual/Transgender and Intersexual) in Colombia has suffered disappearances, forced migrations, mutilations, humiliation and abuse.

The phrase “damaged bodies, silent crimes” has come to be used by this community to describe their suffering often made even worse by the civil war that has torn Colombia apart over the past decades.

In 2011, Colombia passed Law 1448, commonly known as the Victims Law or Victims Compensation Law, meant to acknowledge and offer reparation to LGBTI who have faced abuse and violence.

As of now, 374 people belonging to the LGBTI community are registered with the reparation plan. The details of the reparations are still being developed, but indemnities of 20 to 30 times the current minimum wage and personal rehabilitation, together with a number of psychological measures, are being considered.

But behind the statistics, there are the stories of 278 forced displacements reported to the government. As this is the most common complaint, the Unit for Victims has identified patterns in threats and displacements by forces of the insurgent rebels.

The narratives of disappearances and displacements are repeated over and over. El Espectador has the details of three cases that are being assessed by the Unit for Victims:

Andrea

She prefers to talk about the year 2000 onward, but with some observation we can pick up a few details about her past. “In 1999, I was persecuted for belonging to the state military,” says Andrea, who is transsexual. “I was a non-commissioned officer, and I fought for six and a half years … But that’s all in the past.” Andrea says that where she is from is irrelevant. She has variously fled to Tolima province, Oslo, Milan and Bogotá.

“They gave me four hours to leave. In one of the towns in Tolima, I had a hairdressing salon and, because I refused to leave the town, four guys arrived, grabbed me by the hair and beat me up. They had sent me a note, but I had ignored it. I wasn’t hurting anyone. That day they knocked me unconscious and left me lying on the floor.”

Andrea looked for a house in the Diana Turbay district in Bogotá. “That was around 2002. I was walking through the area when a guy stopped me and asked me my name. He asked for my documents and told me I had to leave. He was one of those men who had sent me away from the town, a paramilitary.”

That’s when she changed her name. She asked a friend to lend her some money and she went to Oslo in Norway. “I arrived at the airport and they stopped me again. A policewoman made me strip and kept me in a bathroom for three hours telling me to hand over the drugs! It was so degrading. I hadn’t done anything wrong. Then I went to Milan. There nothing changed. The police held me for a whole night without water or anything, and I was there with my documents all in order. I went back to Colombia and everything carried on just the same.”

She says that she signed up for the reparation plan because she doesn’t want to hide her true identity any more. And she talks about the military. “I signed up to the military, and I ended up in the school for non-commissioned officers. Of course, I was like a chameleon, always with a dual identity. At night time, I transformed into my real self … But then the ignorance and machismo started from certain people, and I had to leave and set up my hairdresser. Today the only thing I have left is my self-esteem.”

María Camila

She says she was “the first trans woman” in town. “There was a large gay community, but almost no trans,” she says. “That was a defining point for my town. Dabeiba [in Antioquia department] is too Catholic and religious. It was obviously not easy to accept someone like me. In 2007, those self-defense groups arrived to carry out social cleansing. At that time, there were two more trans girls in the village. One was physically assaulted and the other was killed. I wasn’t going to wait to find out what would happen to me, so I fled to Medellín in 2008. There are still a lot of transphobic men there too.”

2013 LGBTI pride parade in Bogota — Photo: Diego Cambiaso

In Medellín she found work in a hairdressers. “As a stylist, I met more trans women and we founded Antioquia Trans, an association that worked with the whole LGBTI community in Medellín, which has suffered at the hands of the armed conflict. I think we deserve reparations. But that has to start with the way we are treated by civil servants. When I went to register as a victim, they told me, ‘You don’t look like a displaced person, and you’re not dressed like one either.’ They looked as if they were scared of me, and I felt discriminated against. Being displaced doesn’t mean you necessarily live in degrading conditions. And when I tell people, they say that I deserve it for being who I am … People are always on their guard. Getting rid of the stigma would be a good start for reparations.”

Adionel

On a farm in the outskirts of Paratebueno, Adionel sufferered many episodes of violence at the hands of the Centauros branch of the Colombian paramilitary group known as United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia. “It is the only municipality in the province of Cundinamarca with a llanero [plainsman/cowboy] culture. Every time one of those guys came by the farm, they would say things like, ‘You poof, if you want to know what a real man is, I’ll bend you over.’ They would come, abuse me and my sister who has Down Syndrome (they called her ‘that crazy girl’), steal everything we produced and then leave.”

In 1999, things got even worse, Adionel recalls. “This little guy that they called The Rat would come and tell me, ‘You poof, you are going to end up dead in a bag.’ He threatened us with a gun, and touched us and everything … It wasn’t just that, but the fact that they treated my little sister like that … We moved to the city because they made some really serious threats.”

Adionel is requesting reparation because he believes that if peace comes to Colombia, he could work without being discriminated against. “I have studied at the SENA [a national education service that promotes employment and training possibilities], and I am doing a Masters degree. But five years ago they sacked me from Paratebueno Town Hall just for being gay. Reparation is about more than just the money. I want processes to be put in place so that my municipality can be a peaceful land, and so that they stop seeing us like weirdos.”

Luis Miguel Hidalgo, alias The Rat, arrived in this region in 1999 and has 200 murders to his name. During trial, he confessed to massacres and rapes in the provinces of Meta and Cundinamarca. And he revealed the locations of seven mass graves to the district attorney’s office.

The advocates

One of the reference points for the LGBTI community is the group Colombia Diversa, which has been fighting on behalf of this marginalized population since 2004. “The first challenge is the structure of the community and the visibility of the victims,” says the organization’s lawyer, Mauricio Albarracín. “Institutions must be more flexible and encourage the creation of safe spaces for these people to be able to express their true identity. The peace process and a negotiated solution to the conflict, as well as protective measures for these communities, are urgently needed to stop the increasing levels of victimization.”

Albarracín adds that the fight for greater rights must be decentralized. “The majority of public policies about LGBTI rights are implemented in the large urban centers, and rural locations and other urban centers where the armed conflict has been more severe are forgotten.”

The Colombia Diversa lawyer agrees with the LGBTI victims that “the focus cannot remain solely in the Unit for Victims, but it must also include the district attorney’s office, the public prosecution office, the military, Congress and civil society.”