Claudia Diaz Pérez. (Photo courtesy of Movilh)
A prominent transgender activist in Chile was found dead in her home over the weekend.
Authorities in Cartagena in the country’s Valparaíso Province found Claudia Diaz Pérez, 73, dead Dec. 11.
Ricardo Castillo of the Investigations Police of Chile (PDI)’s Homicide Brigade told El Líder, a Chilean newspaper, the head injuries that Diaz had were “compatible with the action of third parties” and she suffered them less than 24 hours before authorities discovered her body.
Authorities have not determined whether Diaz’s murder was a hate crime. Her friends and fellow activists, meanwhile, have categorized it as such.
Díaz throughout her life worked with a variety of organizations.
She was a spokesperson for Club de Adultos Mayores Sobrevivientes del 73, a group that victims of human rights abuses that took place during Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. Diaz was also a leader of Cartagena Atlético, a local sports club, and Sindicato Afrodita, a group for trans women.
Díaz before her death participated in the “LGBTIQA+ Roundtable” that President Gabriel Boric and the Women and Gender Equality Ministry have been promoting.
Women and Gender Equality Minister Antonia Orellana on her Twitter account condemned Díaz’s murder.
“(Sindicato Afrodita) leader Claudia Díaz participated in our ‘Mesa LGTBIQA,’ presenting on the issue of aging transgender people,” tweeted Orellana. “She was found dead yesterday. (The National Service for the Woman and Gender Equity) will take part in (the effort) for justice. We will continue our work. Trans lives matter.”
Emilia Schneider, the first openly trans woman elected to the Chilean Congress, during an interview with the Washington Blade said Diaz was “a very beloved leader in her community.”
“Her death has caused a lot of commotion,” said Schneider. “This happens in the Fifth Region of Chile’s Valparaíso Province, which has already been labeled as a red zone for the LGBTI community because of the amount of crimes and hate crimes in the area … Claudia was found dead and it must be investigated.”
Schneider said the government “has mobilized … to investigate the possibility of a hate crime.”
“We undoubtedly also have to move forward with substantive responses to the violence and discrimination that affects our community,” she said. “We are working on an amendment to the Anti-Discrimination Law in Congress. And there are many other efforts — comprehensive sex education and other measures, for example — the government should, can and urgently needs to undertake.”
Asociación OTD Chile, the country’s most prominent trans rights organization, also condemned Diaz’s death.
“Again, and days before the end of the year, we must (note) another murder of a trans person in Chile. This time, the victim was Claudia Diaz, an elderly trans activist, who had managed to survive the military dictatorship’s darkest stages and social hatred, but who still met a violent demise,” Ignacia Oyarzún, the group’s coordinator of public policies and legislation, told the Washington Blade. “We sadly see that hate crimes have recently increased, fueled by hateful trans discourse promoted in the media and by indolent political authorities in the face of a reality that they do not want to change.”
Oyarzún said trans people “continue to be discriminated against and violated by our families, segregated from educational spaces, fired from our jobs, discriminated in health centers and in general from any public space.”
“A gender identity law is useless if the State cannot first guarantee our existence,” she said.
Alessia Injoque, a trans activist who is the director of Fundación Iguales, a Chilean advocacy group that partners with the Human Rights Campaign, said “it is painful to know that another trans woman, another trans activist, has been violently murdered.”
“If it is proven that the motivation was her gender identity, she will become one more of the (many) friends and colleagues that hate has stolen from us,” she told the Blade.
Injoque added that she hope “progress is made in the investigation to bring the culprits to justice and that priority is given to expanding the Anti-Discrimination Law.”
“This is the only effective way to confront the violence that affects the lives of all LGBTIQ+ people,” she said. “It is urgent that this government take concrete measures in the face of facts that cannot remain in indifference, understanding that due to the circumstances, we are a population at risk that deserves special protection, and therefore, we need an institutionality that addresses all our problems in a comprehensive manner.”
