Eternal thirst for justicec

-I'm thirsty and I don't want to die" were the last words of Sara Millerey González Borja to her mother in La María hospital in Medellín, where she was taken after the brutal and highly viralized crime that made her the 24th transfeminicide of 2025 in Colombia. Fifteen days after her murder and adding another 6 fatal victims, the constant violation of the rights of LGBTIQA+ people is once again in evidence, with no major guarantees for justice and reparation. On the contrary, the heteronormative mandate that has shaped the concepts of democracy and citizenship in modern societies means that any discourse on plurality or diversity is far surpassed by forms of civil and institutional relationships that continue to relegate existences such as Sarah's to a life expectancy of no more than 35 years, due to the most perverse practices of patriarchal morality that is exacerbated in feminized, racialized and impoverished corporealities.

Transphobia is usually so ignored in the public debate that its scarce visibility depends more on the horror of aggressions and violent deaths, than on political commitments to break down the multiple barriers that a Trans person faces in any social space. It remains to be seen whether all the “commotion” generated by Sara's case will lead to better guarantees for education, employment and health, considering that discrimination within these systems is 90% in the whole region, according to the Center for Documentation of the Trans Situation in Latin America and the Caribbean (CEDOLSTAC). In legal matters, obstructions to access to justice prevail and, consequently, the reduction of transphobic crimes.

According to Transgender Europe, the more than 230 femicides registered in Latin America since October 2023, determine that Brazil, Mexico and Colombia are the most insecure countries for trans life experiences. Regarding the latter, Caribe Afirmativo reports that between January and April 2025, 17 transfeminicides have been registered, doubling their number during the same period in 2024.

The global political turn to conservatism also oils the machinery of exploitation and death that took Sara's life. For the most orthodox eyes, throwing her defenseless into a river, staged those macabre rituals of correction and social cleansing that paramilitary violence established in much of the territories of Colombia and that are revived with the anti-rights advance of governments such as those of Trump, Milley and Bukele, to name a few. It is worth remembering how in the report “Annihilate the Difference” of the Historical Memory Center, several stories of Trans people who stood out for their community leadership and whose lives were taken away without being allowed to receive a dignified burial from their families were reconstructed.

The global political turn to conservatism also oils the machinery of exploitation and death that took Sara's life. For the most orthodox eyes, throwing her defenseless into a river, staged those macabre rituals of correction and social cleansing that paramilitary violence established in much of the territories of Colombia and that are revived with the anti-rights advance of governments such as those of Trump, Milley and Bukele, to name a few. It is worth remembering how in the report “Annihilate the Difference” of the Historical Memory Center, several stories of Trans people who stood out for their community leadership and whose lives were taken away without being allowed to receive a dignified burial from their families were reconstructed.

This is problematic because of the resurgence of phenomena such as racist police violence against Trans women. ILEX Acción Jurídica states that, in cities with a majority Afro-descendant population such as Cali and Cartagena, there is a constant denial of the right to public space, especially in central sectors where Black Trans women (especially sex workers) are the main focus of criminalization and punitiveness.

Afroresistance firmly believes that Trans liberation must be the most radical expression of Black liberation. Therefore, we raise our commitment to strengthen the analysis and advocacy on intersectional inequalities that affect the human rights of Trans people in the region. Faced with this wave of institutional transphobia in the world, we must make our spaces, places of real containment and dignity to Trans lives. It is a debt to Sara and the thousands of Trans women who have lost their lives thirsty for justice.

Mauri Balanta Jaramillo