She left Peru to escape transphobia: she was killed in Buenos Aires

Yaritza Millones López was 27 years old and had arrived from Peru 3 years ago, escaping discrimination.

May 6, 2019

Yaritza Angélica Millones López was 27 years old and lived in an apartment on Alsina Street at number 2500, in a central area of Buenos Aires. There, police from the Homicide Division found her murdered on Sunday, April 28, after her colleagues reported that she hadn't answered her phone for several days. The investigation was assigned to prosecutor Marcelo Ruilopez of the 18th National Criminal Investigation Prosecutor's Office, based in Buenos Aires.

She was born on December 6, 1991, in Peru and had been living in Argentina for three years. Her family learned the news last Sunday. Her mother is a homemaker and her father, Carlos Alberto Millones López, is a taxi driver. He traveled to Buenos Aires this weekend to identify the body. “Her mother, her brother Cristian, and I are very sad. My daughter was a very quiet, good girl. She loved animals. We talked on the phone very often. And the last time, she asked her mother—because they talked a lot— 'If something happens to me, will you take me and look after my animals ?' She said she had been threatened,” Carlos Alberto told Presentes, deeply distraught. He will file a lawsuit to seek justice for his daughter.

Yaritza was working as a prostitute. She lived with two dogs and a cat in a two-room apartment on the eighth floor of a building in Balvanera. Neighbors became worried because they hadn't seen her and the pets were restless. Her friends had a bad feeling: it wasn't like Yaritza to not answer their calls. “They went to the building and, since no one answered, they and the neighbors decided to call 911. They also contacted the person who rented her the apartment so they could get in. The Homicide Division entered and found her dead. She had been dead for a few days,” Marcela Tobaldi, coordinator of Rosa Naranja, told Presentes.

Yaritza had approached this organization to ask for advice on the procedures for changing her gender.

“We ran into each other a few times,” Tobaldi recalls. “She started going to the Ombudsman's office, where I work. Later, we got together at La Rosa Naranja and shared some mate at my house. She was a sweet girl, very loving. She recently called to let me know her gender transition was approved.” Tobaldi was with other members of La Rosa Naranja, collecting data for a census of homeless people, the weekend Yaritza's friends decided to go to the building. As soon as they heard the news, they went to the building in Balvanera. “Only the police and forensic experts entered the apartment. Later, they summoned witnesses,” Tobaldi said.

Justice for Yaritza

This weekend, Tobaldi and Yaritza's friends met with the victim's father to discuss how to move forward. "I want justice," he said. "When she was 13 or 14, we already knew this was the way things were. I accepted her. And I didn't want her to leave. But she wanted to live her life her way, without anyone telling her what to do, so she left Peru with a friend. She was studying computer science and working. My daughter finished high school, but everyone there discriminated against her. That's how it is in Peru," the father says.

Presentes contacted the 18th prosecutor's office, which is in charge of the investigation. But a court employee declined to provide information: "We cannot give information to people who are not part of the case."

From the La Rosa Naranja group, Tobaldi requests: “We want the UFEM (Specialized Prosecutor's Unit for Violence against Women and LGBT+ People)—which intervened in the investigation of Diana Sacayán's transphobic murder—to be involved in this investigation as well.” There are strong suspicions that the crime was committed by someone who knew her well. Her friends believe she was suffocated and beaten on the head.

Tobaldi adds: “The fact that she is a migrant must be emphasized. Justice is not the same for a poor, trans, migrant as it is for a middle-class Argentine trans person. It is proven that trans migrants suffer double discrimination for being migrants and for the structural and systematic discrimination that trans people face. They suffer it twice over. Being a transvestite in the City of Buenos Aires means paying a very high price in life and also in one's final destination, death.”

The context to which Tobaldi refers is beginning, albeit very slowly, to permeate the justice system. In June 2017, the sentence that convicted one of the perpetrators of the transphobic murder of Diana Sacayán acknowledged the structural violence suffered by the trans community. In April, at the request of prosecutor Franco Picardi, the court dismissed charges against five trans women (four of them migrants) in a drug dealing case, taking into account the structural violence and lack of access to basic rights faced by trans people and trans gender identities.

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