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By Airam Fernández, from Santiago, Chile

Matías Mella is a trans man, a student at the Antonio Acevedo Hernández high school in Santiago, 18 years old, and since Wednesday, March 13, he has borne the mark of a transphobic attack on his left arm: a Nazi swastika. Two hooded men forcibly drew it on him with a piece of glass after beating him.

It happened in the early morning hours, when she was in a plaza in the Pedro Aguirre Cerda district, very close to her home. “I was writing in a notebook when these guys approached me asking for a cigarette. I told them I didn't have one, and that's when they came at me, insulting and hitting me. They were yelling 'lesbian, we're going to kill you,' and then they tried to immobilize me to brand my arm. I don't know where I got the strength, but I grabbed one of them where it hurts men the most and squeezed him. I kicked the other one and managed to run away,” the victim told Presentes.

Mella, who still bears some marks from the beating on her face, doesn't want to show the scar left on her arm. The swastika is the same symbol used by Daniel Zamudio's attackers seven years ago, when they beat him to death in a park in the Chilean capital. “I don't want anyone to see my wound. It embarrasses me, and I feel it only feeds the morbid curiosity.”

But this has to stop; we can't tolerate any more homophobia and transphobia. We're not hurting anyone,” he said. However, several of the photos taken of him at the Carlos Valdovinos police station, where he went last night to file a formal complaint accompanied by Movilh (Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation), have already been leaked.

Wave of hate crimes

“We are on alert in the face of this wave of hate crimes against sexual diversity. That is why we are coordinating several street actions that we will announce soon,” Oscar Rementería, spokesperson for the organization, told Presentes.

Following the report, the case is being investigated by the OS9 unit of the Carabineros (Chilean police). This adds to the nine hate crimes registered by MOVILH (Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation) so far this year: a "corrective" rape of a lesbian, a 56-year-old man being doused with boiling water, a 24-year-old man being tortured and burned with cigarettes, the murder of a gay cook, a homophobic attack on a bus, and three lesbophobic attacks in the street. One of these attacks targeted Carolina Torres, who spent three weeks in intensive care, and whose attackers remain at large despite being fully identified.