The founder and president of the Unión y Fuerza de Mujeres Trans Chihuahuenses (Union and Force of Chihuahua Trans Women), Mireya Rodríguez, was an acclaimed defender of the rights of LGBTIQ+ communities and sex workers in the state.
In the early morning hours of Wednesday, 02 September 2020, her body was discovered with signs of violence inside a house in Aquiles Serdán, Chihuahua. She had been missing for several days.
According to the Austin, Texas NBC news affiliate KXAN, she had been receiving threats leading up to her murder but local police declined to investigate.
At the time of writing, Chihuahua state investigators had arrested Ivan Arturo G.P. on gender-related aggravated homicide and aggravated robbery charges.
Mireya is one of 4 trans women human rights defenders killed in México in 2020 alone, and featured on the HRD Memorial. The three other trans women human rights defenders killed in 2020 from Mexico are; Karla Camarena (March 2020), Dr. María Elizabeth Montaño (June 2020), Jeanine Huerta López (August 2020).
#JusticiaParaMireya
Pictures via Unión y Fuerza de Mujeres Trans Chihuahuenses;
Translation of a post on the Movimiento Malinche Facebook page:
“To the Union and Force of Chihuahuan trans women, friends, companions, the family of #Mireya Rodríguez Lemus:
We write to you with our broken, angry hearts. We write these lines with hope beaten. So we run to embrace you so that you know that you are not alone, that our means, privileges and creativity are for you, for your grief, for your struggles.
We recognise in you the realization that another world is possible, that it is plausible, necessary, to embrace each other in sisterhood because together we can be and inhabit a Chihuahua in which no girl, adolescent or woman has to face alone the terror of exclusion and violence.
For Mireya, for her smile and courage, we demand that the Government of the State of Chihuahua, the Attorney General of the State of Chihuahua, the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Chihuahua Women guarantee truth, justice and measures of reparation and non-repetition that include the creation of a public policy comprehensive for the recognition of the dignity and importance of childhood, adolescence and other trans people; a policy capable of reducing the inequalities and barriers they face in terms of health, education, work, security and a life free of violence and discrimination. We therefore demand that they fulfill their obligations and provide trans women with the opportunities they require to develop autonomous and libertarian life projects.
We demand that the media eliminate the notes with which they participate in the hatred that condemns trans women to a life expectancy of 35 years; We remind you that you must ensure the recognition of Mireya’s identity.
We invite the other feminist collectives and organisations of the state to join the pain and indignation that overwhelms trans women in Chihuahua and the rest of the country. Speak out, use the political spaces you occupy to recognize this murder and that of #PatsyAndrea as femicides, thus ensuring the implementation of the protocols and alerts for which we have fought.
We ask Chihuahuan society: how many more femicides will we have to face to organise our anger? At what point will the shouts of “ENOUGH!” be loud enough to topple the foundations of a society that refuses to recognise the importance of trans people, their lives and bodies?
If not now, when?
Never again a #femicide. Never again a Chihuahua without trans women.
Malinche Movement
September 2, 2020
Sources: IM-Defensoras, Them.us, the Union and Force of Chihuahua Trans Women Facebook page, and the Movimiento Malinche Facebook Page.