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By Airam Fernández

In the early hours of Sunday, August 9, Cynthia Leslie Velásquez was stabbed after intervening in an argument and defending a girl from a man who was trying to sexually assault her. Chico Leslie—as she chose to be called and as she was known in her neighborhood—was a lesbian and died a few hours after the attack in a Santiago hospital. One of her lungs was completely punctured.

Leslie, 31, was at a party that night in the Lo Espejo district, one of the 55 areas of Santiago still under quarantine due to the pandemic. She had recently been released from prison, where she served time for minor offenses. Those who know her say she was in the middle of a rehabilitation and reintegration process that she had handled quite well.

“She had turned away from a life of crime, she wasn’t committing offenses, she wanted to get ahead and she was selling clothes at fairs,” Paola Ramírez, founder of the Free Women Collective of Chile and advisor to Mujer Levántate, a foundation that works to help dozens of women like Leslie, who were deprived of their freedom, to reintegrate into society, tells Presentes.

Paola met Leslie at the San Joaquin Women's Penitentiary Center in 2014.

He believes that the only "relapse" he had after leaving prison was going to that party.

So far, no one has been arrested in the case, but several witnesses and acquaintances point to a man known in the community as "Fat Ivan." Paola says that Leslie had had some previous problems with him and that when he saw her on the street, "he would yell things at her, he was bothered by her appearance, by how she was and how she looked."

The information Paola has is that during the party, Iván Poblete tried to assault another young woman, and Leslie witnessed it: “I don’t know the details, but I know that when things calmed down, the man took advantage of her momentary lapse in attention and attacked her from behind, stabbing her several times. After that, he and another person dragged her from the house where she was to the street, bleeding and unconscious . Someone called for help, and a group of Haitians arrived and helped take her to the hospital. They filed a report with the Carabineros (Chilean police), but so far, nothing is known about the assailant, and there is still no arrest warrant against him.”

Call for justice

The study "Being a Lesbian in Chile", prepared in 2019 by the Lesbian Group Breaking the Silence (RS), based on a sample of 436 lesbian and bisexual women surveyed in all regions of the country, indicates that more than 70% recognized being victims of harassment in public places because of their sexual orientation, like Leslie.

Presentes attempted to contact the Homicide Brigade of the Investigations Police to learn details of the investigation, but there was no response.

The call for justice from Leslie's family and the organizations to which Paola belongs was also joined by other feminist organizations such as Abofem, the Lesbian Group Breaking the Silence, the Lesbofeminist Assembly RM, OTD, the Feminist Collective of Lo Espejo, Las3 Abisales, Antiracist Lesbofeminists Land and Territory, Reconstructing Spaces and the Chilean Network against Violence towards Women.

This Thursday they issued a joint statement demanding three things: that the Prosecutor's Office apply the Gabriela Law (enacted in March, which expands the legal framework for femicide) when formally charging Leslie's murderer, since it was a femicide motivated by her sexual orientation and gender expression ; that the Oral Criminal Court sentence the murderer to life imprisonment; and that the right to due process and investigative relevance be respected in all cases of violence that affect all communities.

“We want this situation to be brought to light because she’s not the first of our colleagues who have been killed, and the case is simply ignored, as if we don’t have the right to be defended because we are former inmates,” Paola asserts. She insists that, judging by the complete lack of response from the authorities, this case involves not only discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender expression, but also discrimination based on Leslie’s past: “They see her record, but they don’t see that she was in a reintegration program, that she was trying to do the best she could, and that she wanted a second chance at a good life.”

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