School was where Fátima first experienced transphobia—the hatred of trans people.
It was during her early years of elementary school that she started identifying as a girl, and her teachers were her first abusers.
They told her that she wasn’t normal, warned others to “be careful” around her, and said that if she kept it up, she would be expelled from school.
Fátima’s childhood was characterized by a struggle that would plague her into adolescence, as she grew up surrounded by classmates and teachers who shunned her and prevented her from forming her trans identity.
But denying her own self was an intolerable existence, and she quickly grew tired of it.
Fátima was only 15 when she decided to change her physical appearance. “I couldn’t stand it anymore. I changed my clothes. I changed completely,” she says.
Were you afraid?
“I was so afraid. I was terrified. But I wanted to be me. I wanted to become independent. My father and mother didn’t accept me, they beat me, they left me bruised and bloody, which is how I found my courage. I found the courage to be myself and accept myself.”
Fátima never finished high school. She was expelled from public school and wasn’t able to enroll anywhere else. The doors to the job market were automatically closed to her as well. So, when she was 15 years old, Fátima turned to sex work.
“That’s when I first felt the rage”
Fátima was a teenager when she entered the world of sex work. Away from home and far from her family, it was the only way she could survive. “A person has to eat, and the other girls tell you this is the only job people like us can get,” she says.
It was around this time that Fátima was first hand witness to the murder of two trans women—two of her friends. It changed her life.
“I was with a group of compañeras who at the time were all doing sex work. We didn’t have the option of working any other job,” she says.
That night, Fátima and some other women were on 11th Street in Zone 1, the epicenter of Guatemala City’s sex market. A car drove by and opened fire on her and the other women who were standing nearby.
Fátima survived without injury but she had witnessed a tragedy. “They killed two of my friends, and that’s when I began to feel the rage.”
The most recent annual report from Guatemala’s Attorney General for Human Rights documents that between 2014 and 2018, there were 888 reports of assault against trans women, gays, lesbians, and other members of the LGBTQ community. But the death of Fátima’s two friends, like the rest of the murders and assaults, continue to add to the statistics as their perpetrators continue to enjoy impunity.
Fátima’s rage is what moved her to get involved in activism, working in defense of the human rights of women like her. She also started learning about the other dangers faced by the LGBTQ community in Guatemala, like the lack of information on HIV-prevention and the lack of care available for trans women at Guatemala City’s health centers.
It was through a friend that Fátima found out about Otrans Guatemala, an organization founded in 2004 to support trans women in the country. Years later, she joined the Red Multicultural de Mujeres Trans de Guatemala, or Redmmutrans, another network of trans women. From then on, she has sought ways to collaborate to improve conditions for all trans people.
“It motivates me to know that there’s something I can do to make people respect us more, to make them recognize our most basic rights, that we can have a job in government, or at some company, that they see us on a street corner and don't yell macho insults at us, that we don't suffer more assaults and abuse.”
Changing the sex work paradigm
According to Redmmutrans, 53% of trans people in Guatemala registered by the organization had never finished elementary school, due to the exclusionary practices of the country’s education system. But through her activism, Fátima has managed to open doors for herself. She wants to study, build her resume to be able to qualify for a formal job, and destroy the idea that being a trans woman is synonymous with being a sex worker.
A satisfied grin spreads across Fátima’s face when she talks about studying human rights law, or about how she likes to read texts on Guatemalan legislation and the rights of Indigenous peoples, migrants, and trans people.
“I’m already studying. I won a scholarship to the Instituto Centroamericano de Estudios Sociales y Desarrollo [the Central American Institute for Social Studies and Development, or INCEDES] to research human rights,” she says.
Fátima hopes that one day she will be hired by a public institution. She wants to be a teacher and to educate from a place of tolerance and respect. “It would be my way of influencing others, of raising awareness,” she says.
Little by little, she has found spaces where she feels included, and has even managed to turn her home and family situation into a safe environment.
“My family finally accepted me. They realized that I’ll never be able to change, that this is the way I am, and it’s not because I’m abnormal or a bad person. Now they love me. They respect me,” she says.
Her next goal is to expand this way of thinking out from her home and into the world. But she admits there’s still a lot to do before she can achieve this.
“I might not even be around to see it with my own eyes, but either way, I’m going to keep trying.”
The Street Is the Worst University
The Humanist Institute for Development Cooperation (HIVOS), an international aid organization, estimates that 49 trans women are killed every year in Guatemala.
A 2018 report from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) says that 24 people from the LGBTIQ community were killed in Guatemala that year. The advocacy organization Asociación Somos puts the figure at 33 murders and says that in 20 of these cases the victims were trans women.
“Trans people go to the worst university there is: the street. We are beaten, mistreated, and your own friends tell you that the only choice you have is sex work,' says Fatima.
What does being trans in Guatemala mean to you?
“To be trans in Guatemala is to leave your house and not know if you’ll ever come back. It’s to face transphobia, discrimination, and death. It’s to bear your own family not knowing who you are. It’s running away to the streets and exposing yourself to alcohol, drugs, human trafficking, and sexual exploitation. It’s to confront a lack of job opportunities, education, and even housing. Being a trans woman is a very heavy burden to carry. It’s not easy.” The memory of her two murdered friends keep her going.
“What motivates me to make it through each day are all the women who have died. The compañeras who have died as a result of hate crimes, transphobia, or from HIV. Those women are who inspire me.”
In spite of everything, Fátima smiles. She is a trans woman, a leader, and a warrior. She works during the week and spends each Saturday studying.
She hopes to become an example for other women like her.
“Right now I’m a sex worker, but that’s not my goal for the future, and it’s not my legacy. I see it as a springboard that will allow me to overcome my situation, and eventually to show society that it’s possible for a trans woman to find other types of employment.”
*Translated by Max Granger
