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By Penelope Moro

Melody Barrera was murdered in Mendoza early Saturday morning, shot at least six times from a vehicle. She was 27 years old, worked as a sex worker, and her body was found in one of the "red-light districts" of Greater Mendoza, bordering Guaymallén and the city of Mendoza.

The case is under investigation and is being treated as a “transvesticide,” as confirmed to Presentes by the Prosecutor's Office No. 8 of Guaymallén. This gives hope to the trans and travesti community of Mendoza, which is deeply grieving, as it is a gesture of “recognizing our deaths.”  

“It’s been incredibly difficult to reach Melody’s family,” Lana Martínez, an activist with “Inclusion for Trans Housing,” told Presentes. From the moment she and her colleagues learned of Melody’s murder, they and other collectives have been trying to connect with friends and family to offer their support in the fight for justice.

Melody had no prior involvement in trans activism, but the girls had seen her several times in one of the red-light districts. “It seems she was just getting by as best she could,” says Lana, who is also trying to piece together the events that led to the hate crime in the early hours of August 29.

“You know what happens? It happens that many of us don’t have homes, we live in borrowed places, and now with the pandemic, we’re constantly being evicted. Not much is known about us, and even less about the girls who can’t reintegrate into society as a group,” the activist explains in the midst of an afternoon of anxiety over the recent loss of a comrade and facing the uncertainty of how to shape their demands.

The intention was to demonstrate at KM0 in the capital of Mendoza under strict social distancing protocols with the slogan "We don't want any more Melodys . It was transvesticide," although the lack of dialogue with the family and the advance of COVID-19 in the province has left them somewhat "on standby" in the organization, which they are nevertheless determined not to give up on.

transvesticide

The activists and sex workers who spoke with Presentes fear that the murder of Melody Barrera will "go unnoticed" as usually happens with hate crimes and the continuous human rights violations of trans people in the Cuyo province.

However, there is a promising piece of information: the investigation led by Dr. Andrea Lazo, from Prosecutor's Office No. 8 of Guaymallén, has already classified the case as "transvesticide," so it is estimated that the investigation will be approached from a gender perspective.

At least that is what Article 80, Paragraph 4 of the Penal Code indicates, whose exemplary precedent was the life sentence received in 2018 by Gabriel Marino, co-author of "the crime of aggravated homicide due to hatred of gender identity" against the LGBTIQ+ rights leader Amancay Diana Sacayán.

Although the Lazo Prosecutor's Office has not released details of the investigation, it was reported that measures are being taken and the case has been officially classified as a "transvesticide".

A man who fled

The site where Melody was found around four in the morning is urban and populated, bordering a kind of highway, right at the intersection of Costanera and Correa Saá, on the east side.  

Security cameras scattered throughout the city and surrounding areas are, so far, the only witnesses to the six shots that struck Melody's body. According to the Forensic Medical Corps, most of the bullets hit her chest, and death was instantaneous. A number of spent 9mm shell casings were found at the scene of the attack by the Scientific Police.

Although no arrests have been officially announced so far, initial investigations indicate that the shots were fired from a vehicle window by a man who fled after riddling Melody with bullets.

For Uma Daniela Flores, of the “Movement for Transvestite and Trans Inclusion”, the fact that the concept of “transvesticide” is being considered in the case “is important because for the first time our deaths are being named by the justice system. We hope they will continue to do so.”

An absent State in the midst of a pandemic

The pandemic has exacerbated violence against transgender people, especially those who have to go out on the streets to earn a living. That is, more than 90 percent of the total population.

No emergency decree, emergency income support, food basket, or face mask can save trans women from criminal hatred. “Many live in complete informality; there is a lack of legal tools for them to assert their rights,” Uma explained, adding that evictions are the biggest burden of this pandemic for the sector.

“We don’t have money to pay rent, we go back to overcrowding, to our family homes that we had left to escape the violence, we go back to the darkness of the street, now in solitude, to subjugation,” she said.

The support networks among trans sex workers are more emotional than practical. “We help each other as best we can; now we face double or triple the risk. None of us are safe.”

The alternatives for continuing to work during the pandemic under safer conditions are available to only a few. They do so in "escort mode," through video calls or by selecting clients they trust. But not everyone can access this higher-status modality: "because that implies undergoing extremely expensive surgeries to achieve hegemonic bodies that satisfy the demand, and they end up falling into clandestine 'medical' practices, another form of transphobic violence," Uma concludes.

While dozens of inclusive projects revolve around them, the lack of access to health, the impossibility of enjoying labor rights, police harassment, harassment by pimps, a society formed to expel and the absence of the State for hundreds like Melody, are the daily reality and the main transphobic weapons they face.

Towards the end of the conversation, Uma and Lana's wishes resonate for the case to advance as "transvesticide": that the echo left by Melody will serve in Mendoza to name for the first time these deaths that have always been silenced.