Mexico City will now give harsher punishments to anti-trans murderers

Mexico City, Mexico has passed a local law banning murders against transgender women, a practice referred to in the country as transfemicidio (transfemicide). Murderers convicted under the law would face between 35 to 70 years in prison.

The new law was named in memory of Paola Buenrostro, a trans sex worker who was murdered in 2016. The law passed almost unaninmously in the state’s Congress, with 47 votes for it and three votes against it.

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“[Buenrostro’s] memory continues to be a symbol of the fight for the rights and dignity of trans women in Mexico and beyond borders,” Deputy Gabriela Quiroga Anguiano said in a statement after the law’s successful congressional vote.

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This law is especially important as, according to the organization Transgender Europe, nearly 600 trans people have been murdered between 2008 and 2021. At least 10 trans women have been murdered this year in Mexico City alone. The number is likely higher as not all cases of murder against trans women are reported to police for various reasons, including misgendering and fear of police persecution.

“For the first time, we can feel represented before the law, and that violence against us really carries a severe punishment,” said Kenya Cuevas, a friend of Buenrostro and a Mexican activist. She spent years organizing for the new law after her friend’s death. “For the first time, I can feel some satisfaction, some peace, after all these long years of work.”

The law modifies penal and civil codes, the organic law of the General Prosecutor’s Office and laws relating to victims inside Mexico City. The law specifically defines gender identity on the basis of identification and how one expresses themselves, and gives particular focus to those whose identify aligns with a feminine gender. 

The protects seeks to protect trans women from sexual assault and other physical violence. It adds enforcement penalties when attacks coincide with verbal hate speech or other known displays of bigotry. The law also extends to public figures, houseless individuals, and those who have had their belongings burned or destroyed as a result of a hate crime.

The law will allow friends of murdered trans women to participate in bureaucratic processes related to their deaths, as many individuals in Mexican public and government hold transphobic views. The law contains additional provisions to protect against trans women who might be re-victimized. The law mandates quarterly investigations into the number of transfemicides in the state as well.

This makes Mexico City the second state to pass such a law protecting trans women, the first being Nayarit, whose law introduced penalties of up to 60 years in prison.

“Paola was the victim of an atrocious hate crime, re-victimized by negligent, discriminatory and lacking empathy by the personnel who were responsible for seeking justice,” said Ernestina Godoy, head of the Mexico City Prosecutor’s Office, in a statement to CNN Latin America. 

“Those in charge of investigating Paola’s transfemicide, public ministries, investigative police and expert personnel, incurred omissions, errors and negligence that allowed the murderer to be released and thereby denied access to justice to the victims,” she added.

Aranza Villegas’ sister was murdered in cold blood for being transgender, and she’s been fighting against bigotry since. She said in a statement to The Guardian regarding the killer’s prosecution, “I think it’s one in a hundred cases. It took a lot for me and my family to make it happen. If a trans woman doesn’t have a family like ours, nothing happens. And so when they die in such a cruel and tragic way, they’re forgotten, and they end up in a mass grave.”

As for the law, Villegas described being fearful of even going outside in light of recent murders.

“It is a watershed moment in stopping these terrible murders, and we hope it extends to every state in Mexico. We just want to be respected as transgender people, like any other human being. Respected—that’s all.”

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