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“We are making history.” With those words, Emilia Schneider celebrated her victory in the election for a seat in the Chilean Chamber of Deputies. Today, she is the first transgender woman to reach the country's Congress, at 25 years old, with 76.13% of the votes counted as of 11:53 p.m. on Sunday.

So far, the count favors her with 12,947 votes, placing her among the top-voted candidates in District 10 of the Metropolitan Region. This is one of the surprises of the parliamentary and presidential elections held in Chile yesterday, with results that represent a major blow to centrist forces and leave the door open for a presidential runoff between the ultraconservative candidate José Antonio Kast and the leftist Gabriel Boric.

Camila Musante and Marcela Riquelme, LGBTQ+ activists, will also join the Chamber of Deputies. They were elected yesterday, one for District 14 and the other for District 15.

Camila is a lawyer with a master's degree in Environmental Law. She is 31 years old and identifies as pansexual. With 12,335 votes, she has entered Parliament to promote a feminist agenda, with an emphasis on social, environmental, and LGBTQ+ rights. She also wants to implement transformative projects that represent an alternative in line with the new Constitution. Her campaign platform includes proposals such as the recognition and remuneration of care work; equal pay; child protection and improvements to adoption law; paid reproductive work (which includes not only domestic work, but also caregiving and child-rearing); the creation of women's centers and support and meeting centers for the LGBTQ+ community; a trans employment quota; and non-sexist sex education. 

Marcela is also a lawyer. She is a lesbian, 48 years old, and received 11,493 votes. Her platform is based on the pillars of equality, inclusion, equity, transparency, and women's rights. She also proposes progress on other issues such as mining royalties to fund free education; a new pension system; legislation for a green and sustainable territory; the creation of a fund to protect national and regional heritage; increased funding for mental health; and improved legislation for pets and animal welfare. 

"A day of mixed feelings"

On Sunday at midnight, in a live video broadcast from her Instagram account, Emilia first addressed the rise of this unexpected figure from the far right who still defends the legacy of Augusto Pinochet. “It has been a day of mixed and bittersweet feelings because today neo-fascism, fear, and hatred advanced. But at the same time, there is hope,” she said, moved to tears. 

And then he spoke about what it meant to have won: “This is a victory after years of struggle for sexual minorities who have been fighting for the right to exist, the right to be, the right to live, and the right to grow old. We will be in Congress confronting those same hate speeches that want the people our alternative represents to have fewer rights and a worse life.”

Emilia is 25 years old, a law student, vice president of the Comunes party, and the great-granddaughter of General René Schneider, the Army chief assassinated in 1970 by a far-right death squad seeking to prevent the socialist Salvador Allende from coming to power. She has been active in the streets since 2011, when she participated in every march of the memorable student movement that began to challenge the educational model in Chile. 

Who is Emilia Schneider?

Her name has resonated strongly since 2018, when she spearheaded the so-called "Chilean Feminist May." Along with a group of students, she participated in the occupations of the Law School at the University of Chile to demand the resignation of a professor accused of sexual and workplace harassment. 

In May 2019, Emilia marked another key milestone in recent Chilean politics: she became the first trans president in the history of the Federation of Students of the University of Chile (FECh), the oldest student organization in Latin America. She was also a member of the 8M Feminist Coordinating Committee, which called for a massive feminist strike that year, coinciding with International Women's Day.

Emilia reiterated that last night's victory is not just hers, but a collective one. With her, trans feminism and all dissident voices have reached Parliament. "We are working to pave the way for the entire trans and travesti population," Emilia told Presentes in mid-2021. At that time, she was trying to win a seat in the Constitutional Convention, which is currently drafting a new Constitution for the country, and she was proposing a candidacy that emphasized that women and the LGBTIQ+ community should no longer be seen as "just another sector" of the population. 

What are your proposals in the Chamber of Deputies?

“We are workers, students, citizens, and while we want to include issues such as sexual and reproductive rights, the right to identity, and the right to a life free from violence and discrimination, we also want to talk from our perspective about many of the current issues,” she told Presentes last April. 

“We want to be able to bring our community’s perspective to all the discussions that take place in Congress. Speeches that seek to deny our rights and our dignity will no longer be tolerated,” she said in one of the last videos she uploaded to her Instagram account before the election. 

With that same vision, she arrives at the Chamber of Deputies for the 2022-2026 period. Among her proposals are advancing towards comprehensive sex education, fighting for trans employment quotas, promoting anti-discrimination policies and working for social rights for the LGBTIQ+ community.