A Mausoleum for Transgender Women Is Inaugurated in Mexico's Capital as Killings Continue
Kenya Cuevas and Andrea Luna, two Mexican advocates for transgender rights, sat in front of the pink tomb of Paola Buenrostro, a close friend.
“You don’t have to pay rent anymore. You will have your own home now,” Luna mocked her deceased friend, a transgender woman who had been murdered in 2016 in front of Cuevas.
Buenrostro will be the first lady to be relocated to a nearby mausoleum that was opened on Thursday and is solely dedicated to transsexual women. Numerous transgender women who died were the targets of hate crimes.
The burial place was constructed in Iztapalapa, the borough with the highest population in Mexico City, and it is the first of its sort in the nation. In certain circumstances, no one claimed the deceased's body. Others perished violently, while others perished from natural causes. Cuevas wanted each of them to have a respectable final resting place.
“Thank you, Paola, because in your name we were able to reach an important milestone for the trans community,” Cuevas addressed the applauding crowd during the formal inauguration.
According to the LGBTQ+ rights organization Letra S, Mexico presently has the second-highest death toll worldwide for transgender people after Brazil, with 25 transgender women having been murdered between January and July 2023.
The group counted at least 586 murders of LGBTQ+ individuals from 2017 to July 2023. There were more than 58% transsexual women.
When her friend Buenrostro, a fellow transgender sex worker, got into a client's car and was fatally shot numerous times, Cuevas turned into an activist.
Cuevas managed to grab the man and held him until police arrived, but despite multiple witnesses to the killing and a video that Cuevas took with her phone, the man was released from custody a few days later.
She quickly stopped performing sex acts and started Casa de Muecas to advocate for laws protecting transsexual women. The tomb was established by the group.
Buenrostro and Indigenous transgender rights activist Guadalupe "Lupita" Xiu, who passed away alone on September 9 after fleeing her native Oaxaca and enduring torture and captivity, will both be buried there together with 149 other women.
48 of the 60 transgender women whose funerals Cuevas attended have already been returned to their families. The Attorney General's Office of the capital will shortly assist in the exhumation of twelve more dead from graves so they can be transported to the mausoleum.
“Today, after a long time, I feel this is an act of reparation,” said Cuevas.
Works Cited
A mausoleum for transgender women is inaugurated in Mexico's capital as killings continue. (2023, September 15). NBC News. Retrieved September 16, 2023, from https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/mausoleum-transgender-women-inaugurated-mexicos-capital-killings-conti-rcna105242#
PESCE, F. (2023, September 15). A mausoleum for transgender women is inaugurated in Mexico as killings continue. ABC News. Retrieved September 16, 2023, from https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/mausoleum-transgender-women-died-inaugurated-mexicos-capital-103210224
Smart, T. (2023, September 15). A Mausoleum for Transgender Women Is Inaugurated in Mexico's Capital as Killings Continue. USNews.com. Retrieved September 16, 2023, from https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2023-09-15/a-mausoleum-for-transgender-women-who-have-died-is-inaugurated-in-mexicos-capital