By Víctor Hugo Robles. In Ñuñoa, in the eastern part of Santiago, Chile, there is a school where transgender children can feel supported and continue their studies. Faced with uncertainty and not knowing how to navigate daily educational situations, the country's first transgender school, named after the Mexican Muxe activist Amaranta Gómez Regalado, presents itself as an alternative to the binary school system. It was inaugurated in early April after months of work. “The initiative for a school arose in December 2017, when we realized that 15% of the children in the Foundation were not completing the school year at their regular schools,” Evelyn Silva, president of the Selenna Foundation, which works with transgender children and their families in a country where the gender identity law has not yet been approved after five years of debate in Congress, told Presentes.

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“We envision a space free from all forms of violence,” Silva adds, reinforcing the idea of ​​“developing a free education where children and young people are protagonists and responsible for building knowledge as a political act, through their relationship with educators and their peers, moving from being passive social beings to active, autonomous, and thinking social beings.”

A refuge to continue studying

The school operates in a community center from Tuesday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., and serves 10 children and teenagers between the ages of 8 and 18 who are prepared to take standardized tests in subjects such as language, mathematics, science, and history. They also participate in workshops on philosophy, art, English, photography, recycling, and theater. “Along with the more traditional subjects, throughout this educational process, the students can develop a critical and constructive perspective on their own learning, opportunities that will allow them to become agents of change with a richness of social, gender, and sociocultural diversity, unique in Chile and Latin America,” says Silva, who, in addition to being the president of the foundation, is also a mother. Selenna, a 9-year-old trans girl and a pioneering figure in the visibility of trans children in Chile.

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Trans activist and history teacher Romina Ramírez, a guest at the inauguration, told Presentes that “while we currently have a Trans Circular that provides educational support, it lacks legal weight, and it also suffers from shortcomings due to its dependence on parental approval, which often fails to respect the autonomy and human right to identity of their own children.” “If there are educational institutions with a strong religious orientation, or in some cases in southern Chile, schools with a significant Mapuche cultural component, then why couldn't there be a trans school without excluding non-trans students?” asks Ramírez, who hopes to be invited to share her expertise and teach history at Chile's first trans school.

Amaranta, a unique and liberating trans role model

The name Amaranta was not chosen at random. The pioneering and essential work of the prominent trans muxe activist, coupled with her close ties to Chile, made it possible to inscribe the symbolic name of Amaranta Gómez Regalado during her recent visit to the country, invited by TravesChile for the inauguration of the Latin America's first Transgender Mausoleum at the General Cemetery of Santiago. “Infinite thanks to the Selenna Foundation. Enormous commitment. Very honored by this recognition,” said Amaranta Gómez Regalado on her social media, appreciating the Foundation's public political gesture.

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According to Silva, “the school’s name responds to a need to provide children with a role model they can see themselves in and escape the gray cloud that society tries to surround them with, based on the prejudice that their only options are to become hairdressers or sex workers.” She adds that “Amaranta is a figure who represents various social struggles and also shows a different way of being trans than the one circulating today in the social elite, a more liberating way, much richer in cultural, collective, and familial terms.”