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By Veronica Stewart

Last Sunday, February 14, Cristian Leonardo Guevara (33) was the victim of a homophobic attack in the city of Dolores, in the Province of Buenos Aires. After being thrown to the ground and repeatedly punched, Cristian went to San Roque Hospital, where doctors determined that he had suffered minor injuries. Therefore, the case was classified as minor injuries when he went to the police station to file a report. The case is being handled by Prosecutor's Office No. 5 – UDT, which specializes in gender-based violence.

Cristian had accompanied his cousin to pick up her daughter from a birthday party. The first thing that struck them was the number of people. “ When we arrived, we found more than 150 people,” he explained to Agencia Presentes. “It was an illegal party.” Cristian approached the house to pick up Ludmila, his cousin's daughter. However, he was stopped after only a few steps; “You can't be here, you're a faggot,” the homeowner told him, along with his family and a group of guests. Cristian replied that he wasn't there to fight, and went outside to wait for Ludmila.

It wasn't enough. No matter how hard Cristian tried to get away, his attackers, AN and JG, chased him. Finally, they tripped him and threw him to the ground. "The first thing they did was kick me in the head, which bent my glasses," Cristian recounted. "They beat me on the ground and yelled 'faggot' at me. I said, 'What's wrong? Why are you hitting me? Please don't hit me, I'm not violent,' and they answered, 'Because you're a faggot.'" The beating continued until his cousin and a couple of other party guests, including a former student of Cristian's, came to try and stop it. When he managed to get up, he ran to his car. One of his attackers chased after him and said, "Get out of here, or we'll wreck the car." Cristian got in and drove off.

“I drove around the block, parked the car, and called 911. Ten or fifteen minutes passed. I called again, another ten or fifteen minutes passed. I called a third time,” Cristian explained. The patrol car never showed up. After reuniting with his cousin and her daughter, he went to the hospital and then to the Women and Family Police Station to file a report. “The deputy commissioner told me she didn’t want the case to get so much attention because the clandestine party was never shut down,” Cristian said. “They kept at it until eight or nine in the morning, even after they had beaten me and I was in very bad shape.” Now, the deputy commissioner calls him every day to check on him and ask if the attackers came by his house.

The Dolores police offered her a panic button and sent a patrol car to her house, but as the days passed, she stopped receiving constant police protection. “That’s when the panic attacks started. I haven’t eaten for four or five days because I refuse food, and I feel listless. I feel like I’m bothering others and that I can’t be myself,” she said. At work, she was granted a ten-day leave of absence due to the aftereffects of the attack.

LGBT Dolores: Support Network

Cristian is the founder of the LGBT group Dolores, which supported him throughout his ordeal. “We decided to support him on our social media, both the organization's and our personal accounts,” Joaquín Caimi, a member of the organization since last year, told Presentes. Besides this outreach and the physical and virtual support they can provide, the group lacks the resources to do much more. “We don't receive any help from anywhere. Anything we can give, if it's material, comes from our own homes. Unfortunately, we also don't have a space to shelter young people who suffer all kinds of violence,” Joaquín explained.

However, visibility is no small feat. Joaquín asserts that in a city like Dolores, where it remains difficult for the LGBT community to live peacefully, publicizing cases like Cristian's is key to changing that mentality. "Dolores is a very closed-minded, conservative city that discriminates a great deal," he said. "Very few incidents of discrimination are reported, but if we don't make them visible, they continue to go unnoticed. Visibility equals importance. And if people don't want to adapt, we'll wear them down, and they'll get used to seeing the colors of pride everywhere," he added.

For her part, Cecilia Coronel, a member of the organization Mujeres y Diversidades Dolorenses (Women and Diversities of Dolores), who was also present during the support for Cristian, emphasized the importance of collective, cross-cutting, and horizontal organization. “Actions in the streets and on social media serve to tell the State that we are watching them, that we have proposals, and that we are going for it all,” she told Presentes.

Hate crimes

According to the semi-annual report published by the LGBT Hate Crimes Observatory, of the 69 hate crimes perpetrated between January 1 and June 30, 2020, 16% were against cisgender gay men, while 54% of the total correspond to “violations of the right to physical integrity, that is, physical violence that did not result in death.” Within these violations, 28% involved beatings. This is the second most common form, preceded only by the manifestation of state absence (35%).

The report also highlights that “regarding the relationship between victims of hate crimes and their perpetrators, in 29% of cases the perpetrators are neighbors or people known to them. In 26% of cases, the perpetrators are unknown to the victims.” This means that as many as a quarter of the victims were attacked by strangers solely because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

The homophobic hate crime suffered by Cristian falls within the majority of such cases due to three characteristics: the geographic location, the physical location where the attack occurred, and the victim's age. As many as 42.3% of victims are between 30 and 39 years old. Furthermore, the province of Buenos Aires was the scene of the highest number of LGBT hate crimes in the first half of 2020, accounting for 35% of them. Finally, the attack was carried out in a public place, as was the case in 49% of the incidents.