Tehuel de la Torre: Echoes of a ruling that is a triumph for activism
For the first time, we have a ruling recognizing a transhomicide. And it's a political victory for activists in a context where diversity resists attacks of all kinds.
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Tehuel's name echoed dozens of times in the courtroom during the reading of the verdict in the La Plata courtroom. Many people are surprised to learn that Tehuel, through his transmasculine identity, continued to embrace the name he was given at birth, of Mapuche roots, like his mother's surname, Norma Nahuelcura, as if it contained the germ of ancestral diversity. That name echoed off the walls of the courtroom during each hearing of the trial. Sometimes in testimonies that recalled his good humor and cheerful laugh, and other times in the evidence that pieced together the puzzle of cruelty, where no one is safe but some people are more exposed. Sometimes so much so that it's not even possible to connect the name to the bones.
We don't know where Tehuel is, we know that the search for him was misguided and that the search must continue (there is another case for this). But for the first time, we have a ruling that recognizes a transhomicide , applying the aggravating factor of hatred to gender identity. And it is a political victory for activists in a scenario where diversity is resisting attacks of all kinds by Javier Milei's government. From the dismantling of institutions and public policies to the now-commonplace hate speech. Days before the ruling, Justice Minister (!) Mariano Cúneo Libarona had rejected sexual identities "that do not align with biology," calling them "subjective inventions" and flouting numerous laws at the national level and within the human rights system.
Covering a trial
Covering a trial as a journalist is an experience full of challenging aspects to communicate, and this has been one of the most difficult. Reporting it is part of a task similar to translation, a bridge between worlds that are often distant. How can we rejoice in a verdict when Tehuel hasn't been found and we don't know where he is? Are we idiots? Virginia Woolf once said it in one of her beautiful stories where she speaks of the "brilliance of the incongruity of ideas," so relevant today.
Perhaps part of the challenge—sorry if we're boring by going back to this—involves pointing out that very few media outlets covered the trial and gave it publicity. Media coverage of the Tehuel case, since his disappearance, has been sparse. It has generally been handled by cooperative or self-managed media outlets, and it was more the exception than the rule. Neither the mainstream media nor television, except for the 2021 raids on Alejandro Korn, devoted much attention to the case. There were no TV hawkers waiting for the historic ruling, as fortunately happened when the transvestitism of Diana Sacayan was tried, and issues of feminism and diversity occupied a different place on the agenda.
Furthermore, Tehuel is the kind of victim the media—and perhaps not only them—consider far from them, even though we live in a country with a 54.6% poverty rate. A young trans kid from the inner city, who lived with his girlfriend and her son, whom he looked after and called "dad."
The tests
A trial has the rituals of theater and the dialogic structure of Greek tragedy. Main protagonists, antagonists, choruses of witnesses, dramatic texts, micro-stories of inequality that the world of television could quickly turn into entertainment . Covering a trial is also similar to a series. In each hearing, clues, characters, and relationships are revealed. If one thing was clear in each hearing, it was that Ramos did know and still knows where Tehuel is. There were testimonies, a photo, and videos that placed Ramos with Tehuel on the evening of March 11, 2021, and a wealth of expert evidence that complicated matters.
"No explanation, other than the victim's violent death, is plausible to justify the existence of such blood stains, which were visible to the naked eye, teardrop-shaped and approximately 1.5 meters high, on the interior wall of the house where Luis Ramos lived ," the ruling states. But Ramos also called himself a friend and never cooperated with the search. He embarked on a saga to escape justice, changed his appearance and neighborhood, visited relatives he hadn't seen in years, and ended up hiding in a neighbor's bathtub.
The underlying currents
A trial is a space filled with emotions, although this isn't often discussed. During hearings, care is taken to ensure that tempers don't run high. On the day of the sentencing, no one was allowed to enter with signs or banners. Rosa Bru couldn't enter with the image of Miguel, her missing son, which always accompanies her. The exception this time was Norma, Tehuel's mother, who entered wearing her bib with her son's face and the question "Where is he?" The plaintiff's lawyers were also present, placing a picture of Tehuel's smiling face on the desk.
Sitting opposite, Luis Alberto Ramos listened to the sentence without taking his eyes off the two court clerks in charge of reading it. For 40 minutes, he stood attentive, unwavering, with his hands in his lap and wearing a blue Paraguay national team sweatshirt. This is the second conviction he faces; he had already been sentenced for a homicide in 2009. "Tehuel was a victim of cisnorism. He was fighting for recognition. He was exposed to the wolves, where his life was lost," an expert had noted. Ramos doesn't look like a wolf, but he remains there, without saying where Tehuel is, in another film that is also part of this.
As has occurred in other cases where remains remain unaccounted for—Miguel Bru or so many victims of state terrorism—the ruling establishes homicide. “To this day, Tehuel De la Torre's body has not been found, but there is precise and compelling evidence that proves not only that he was killed between the last hours of the 11th and the first hours of the 12th of March 2021,” states the ruling signed by Judges Claudio Bernard (President of the Court) and Ramiro Fernández Lorenz, and Judge Silvia Hoerr.
Why we say historical
The sentence is not historic in convicting Ramos. It is the first in court records to address the murder of a trans man, that is, a transhomicide. "During the course of the trial, various witnesses were heard who established the friendship between the victim and the perpetrator, which the latter exploited to reveal his hatred and kill Tehuel. The bloodstains found on the wall of Ramos's house demonstrate the extreme violence deployed to kill the victim, but even more significant and decisive in justifying the application of the aggravating circumstance contemplated in section 4 of article 80 of the Penal Code is that the defendant used the means to make Tehuel's body disappear."
The ruling recognizes that Ramos not only denied the possibility of existence to a "disobedient body" but also used cruelty—and cruelty is characteristic of hate crimes—by hiding his lifeless body. It concludes that Ramos not only took Tehuel's life "motivated by hatred of his gender identity, but also made the only tangible thing that remains of a human being when they die disappear, thus preventing their loved ones from having their body to dress it one last time, to wake it, and to say goodbye (...). Furthermore, the impossibility of the family being able to certify with their senses that Tehuel was indeed murdered creates the illusion that he may be alive somewhere."
Arguments and activism
The Pride and Struggle activists, who along with the Commission of Friends and Family of Tehuel provided strategic support for the trial, lit up when the court cited the Yogyakarta Principles, jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Tehuel's right to form a family, and the recognition "of structural patterns of inequality by much of Argentine society and institutions, which expose differences in rights and opportunities ." They had to keep their hands off applauding when they heard that the ruling accepted the request from the prosecutor's office and the plaintiff to ask the Buenos Aires Ministry of Women and Diversity to create a specific protocol for searching for missing LGBTIQ+ people (which is already being worked on), with a focus on sexual and gender diversity; and the declaration of a social emergency in response to violence due to prejudice against transvestite and trans people.
A little relief, the fight continues
As soon as the reading ended, Ramos was quickly escorted out of the room, and the audience was able to stand up, hug each other, and celebrate. “I feel relieved,” Tehuel’s mother said, tears in her eyes. Wherever he is, Tehuel must feel a little more peace. "Now we're going to the other trial ," she repeated, while hugging Flavia Centurión, the plaintiff's lawyer, and Mónica Galván, from the Association of Tehuel's Family and Friends. The excited LGBT+ activists repeated fragments of the ruling. " It's historic!" they shouted, as if they still couldn't believe the magnitude of the victory for a cause that began in the worst possible way. The ruling reflects the joint work of the organizations, with the plaintiff and the prosecutor's office, who listened, processed, and transmitted the demands of a plot. Because it's not just about Tehuel. "Our Mothers and Grandmothers taught us this, we will continue searching," said one activist, making it clear that the path continues. This day is also threaded through that legacy of struggles for human rights and sexual diversity, which in Argentina have always walked hand in hand.
I wondered many times throughout the trial what would have happened if LGBT+ activists hadn't been present at every hearing, neither them nor all the people waiting downstairs on the street—from student, political, union, and cultural groups—completely soaked with radios. Meanwhile, in a scene from the season finale, Norma left the courtroom with her hand raised in triumph, surrounded by lawyers and activists. Outside the courtroom, a batucada (drum band) greeted her and celebrated the sentencing in the pouring rain, to the beat of drums, chanting over and over again: Where's Tehuel?
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