Through the role of judicial facilitator, four trans activists in Paraguay are available to help their peers navigate a hostile labyrinth of complaints, police stations, and frequent police abuse. At least 57 trans women have been murdered in the country since the end of the last dictatorship in 1989. Excluded and subjected to violence by an hostile judicial system, Paraguayan trans women have opted for a new strategy: joining it. By María Domínguez, from Asunción. Photos: Mariluz Martín. The National System of Judicial Facilitators (SNFJ) seeks to improve access to justice for vulnerable populations: people living in poverty, the elderly, children, people with disabilities, and Indigenous people. It has been operating in Paraguay since 2008, through an agreement signed within the framework of the Organization of American States (OAS). The system is under the jurisdiction of the Judiciary. The facilitators perform their duties voluntarily and without pay. Their role is to serve as a bridge of communication between institutions and members of their community. At the beginning of December, four trans women were sworn in as judicial facilitators: Tamara Amarilla, Gabriela Espinoza, Mariana Sepúlveda, and Yren Rotela. It was the first time in the country that members of the trans community had joined this system. Each of them was assigned a police station in the area where they live, and it is the police officers and commissioners, as well as judges, prosecutors, and even the detainees themselves, who call them to request their mediation in some cases. “A friend called me one night and said, ‘Mariana, I’m at the police station, please come if you can.’ She was arrested by police officers as she was leaving after distributing condoms to sex workers in Chacarita,” Mariana Sepúlveda, a trans activist and vice president of the organization Panambí , told Presentes .

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The Chacarita neighborhood, located between Asunción's historic center and the bay on the Paraguay River, is one of the city's oldest. Its population is humble, generally living off the informal economy, and the neighborhood is stigmatized as a hotbed of poverty, crime, and drug trafficking. “They saw her with some bags and told her she must have just bought drugs. And that they were taking her to a police station for a 'more thorough search.' That's when she called me,” Mariana recounted. Mariana Sepúlveda shows the credential that accredits her as a judicial facilitator. For just over a month, Mariana has been working as a judicial facilitator, assigned to a police station in the Trinidad neighborhood, near the botanical garden in Asunción, where she goes whenever she's called. Often, when she answers her phone in the early hours of the morning, Mariana hears the voice of a colleague who has been attacked, assaulted, or illegally detained.

Knowing the Law because of experiencing injustices

Mariana isn't a lawyer, but she knows her rights. She knows that for a police officer to search your bag, witnesses must be present. She knows that no one can detain you without cause. She knows that if you're a woman, only a female police officer can search you. But in Paraguay, protocols for transgender people are rarely followed, according to Panambí. Mariana knows her rights because she knows about injustice. One night, two years ago, she was near the ruins of the Ykua Bolaños supermarket, a blackened brick behemoth abandoned since a fire in 2004 devoured the building and killed nearly 400 people. That night, a man approached her and asked for a cigarette, then a beer. Then he came closer, stabbed her in the neck, and ran away.

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Mariana arrived at the hospital bleeding. She was treated and reported the attack. She identified her attacker. The police found the knife that was used to stab her. But her case remains unsolved. The attacker is free. The prosecutor wants to change the charge to "minor assault." "But if I had been the one attacking, I'd surely be in jail by now," says Mariana. She explains that, for trans people, the presumption of innocence is practically nonexistent. Any accusation of a crime lands them in jail. And they always go to men's prisons; never to women's. “Justice is hard to come by for trans women. That’s why it’s important that we ourselves raise our voices,” she says.

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One of the goals of judicial facilitators is to raise their voices against injustice, mediate conflicts, move complaints forward, find lawyers, provide guidance, and engage in dialogue. For trans people, One of the biggest obstacles when reporting abuse at a police station is that, often, those who abuse them are precisely police officers. On the street, in sex work, demands for bribes, threats, and abuse of power by officers are constant, they say. The facilitators insist that trans people pay attention to the license plate number of the police patrol car, the officer's name tag, all the details that could lead to filing an effective complaint in case of abuse. Although the facilitators themselves also experience violence from the officers. “At the police station, the officers looked at me, laughed, and talked among themselves. So, I showed them my ID card that says 'judicial facilitator.' There's my chosen name, the one I use, and below it, in smaller letters, my legal name, the one that appears on my ID. And then it was all they said to me: 'Yes, ma'am, please, ma'am, come this way, ma'am,'” she recounts.

Police abuse and discrimination: the most frequent complaints

Along with police abuse, Judicial facilitators also receive complaints of discrimination. Yren Rotela, the president of Panambí, says that many of her colleagues are denied housing because they are trans. Or that, when they do rent, neighbors pressure them to leave the neighborhood. “If you don’t know your rights, you accept them. But if you know your rights, you can file a formal complaint,” she says. Yren Rotela, judicial facilitator and president of Panambí.  It's not an easy process. Both Mariana and Yren acknowledge that many of The complaints filed by trans people are left in the opareí, the Guarani word that alludes to oblivion, to the limbo of impunity. The most serious cases, those of murders against trans people, remain unsolved. There have been 57 since the end of the dictatorship in 1989. Despite the violence, The comprehensive protection law against violence against women, which in December criminalized femicide, does not include trans people. During the debate on the bill in Congress, several members of parliament requested the removal of any mention of the word "gender" from the text. Even Paraguayan bishops pressured the legislature to ensure that the law did not apply to "men who identify as women," as they put it. The law was ultimately passed without any reference to gender, and without excluding transgender people.

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“For trans people, justice is a punishment for being who you are. When we are convicted, what we are paying for is a penalty for our identity. It is a sentence for daring to challenge social norms, the roles defined for a man and for a woman,” says Yren from Panambí. On the website of the Paraguayan Judiciary there is a list of facilitators Spread across the different districts, departments, and companies of Paraguay, there are 1,586 of them, and it is estimated that they benefit some 700,000 people in a country of almost seven million inhabitants. They are present in 60% of the country. Cooperation funds from countries like Spain and Italy help maintain and expand this program, which already operates in other American countries such as Nicaragua and Panama. For Yren, being part of this network is a great step forward, and she wants the trans facilitators to reach every corner of the country. “We are creating a community. We not only strengthen ourselves, but also the entire judicial system. “We help ensure that the justice system is seen as legitimate, not corrupt,” she says. For Mariana, it’s a way to pave the way within the system. “We’re going to help the justice system see things that are happening, but that it’s ignoring.”

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