(C) OpenDemocracy This story was originally published by OpenDemocracy and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Trans rights are being ‘weaponised’ by Latin American politicians [1] [] Date: 2022-08 Teachers and healthcare staff claim that since 2020, the Call 100 hotline – which was established by Brazil’s Ministry of Women and Human Rights in 1997 to allow people to report rights violations – has been distorted. They say it is being used to monitor those engaging in gender-related debates in public and private institutions, with people encouraged to anonymously report those who dissent from the government’s views on issues such as COVID-19 vaccination, gender identity and sexual orientation. In 2021, the Brazilian press reported that a philosophy teacher and a headteacher were investigated by police following anonymous complaints to Call 100 accusing them of discussing gender, racism and diversity in their classes. The cases were later dropped. “People end up saying they ‘don't want their children to be taught this’, although Bolsonaro never talks about what is actually being taught in Brazilian schools: gender equality, prevention of sexually transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancies,” said González. The issue has returned ahead of October’s general election, in which Bolsonaro is seeking re-election. HRW has documented accusations and attacks against teachers who engage in sex education, on the streets, on social media and even in the judiciary. Similar censorship is happening in Peru’s schools, with a law passed this year giving parents the authority to decide what can be said – or, crucially, not said – in schools. The legislation says organised groups of parents must be consulted about educational materials and school curricula, regardless of whether they have any knowledge of the subject. It establishes sanctions for teachers and principals who do not comply with these provisions. The law was introduced by Education Committee chair Esdras Ricardo Medina Minayas, an evangelical pastor and a member of Peru’s ‘Don’t Mess With My Children’ movement, which seeks to eliminate gender-perspective and comprehensive sexual education from public schools. It passed by 91 votes to 18, a blow three years after the Peruvian Supreme Court rejected an attempt by conservative group Parents in Action – as part of a campaign by Don’t Mess With My Children – to remove gender-perspective education from the national curriculum. While Argentina’s federal government recognises the rights of transgender people, there are efforts from conservative local authorities to resist federal policies or distort them. Last year the government of the northern province of Chaco finally issued a decree to enforce a 2006 federal law implementing comprehensive sex education (CSE) but stated that it would be “grounded... in fundamental social values” – without defining those ‘values’. Shortly afterwards, Chaco authorities endorsed an optional training conference for teachers, called ‘comprehensive sex education based on science and values’, which was organised by the Metropolitan Evangelical Board and held at the Church of Jesus Christ. A thousand teachers attended the training, in which diverse gender identities were described as ‘pathologies’ – at odds with the CSE law. After fierce criticism from Amnesty International and the Network of Feminist Educators, the Chaco government tried to distance itself from the controversial conference. But its decree enabling the ‘social value-based’ CSE remains in force. A war on language Dozens of bills have been introduced across Latin America – mostly in Brazil, but also in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay – to prevent any attempt to shake the male-oriented and rigidly binary structures of Spanish and Portuguese languages. Some 34 bills to prohibit and punish the use of inclusive language in schools have been introduced in half of Brazil’s 27 states and in the federal Congress. Such bans have passed in the states of Santa Catarina, Rondônia and Mato Grosso do Sul, although the supreme court could suspend them as unconstitutional. Meanwhile in Argentina, the minister of education for the City of Buenos Aires announced in June that the practice of using ‘e’, ‘x’ or ‘@’ to make gendered Spanish words gender-neutral would be banned in schools. The decision, which was condemned by linguistic specialists and teachers’ unions, is subject to an ongoing court challenge, having been accused of breaking the 2012 Gender Identity Law. Two members of the legislative assembly of Buenos Aires province (the neighbour of the homonymous capital city and the most populated district in the country) have since introduced a similar bill. For Sonia Corrêa, these bills are not rooted in genuine “ideological belief”, but an effort to “lure the constituency of [far-Right politician] Javier Milei” – whose support is increasing ahead of Argentina’s 2023 elections, if polls are to be believed. In Uruguay, public education authorities decided in April that “the use of inclusive language must conform to the rules of the Spanish language”, meaning ‘e’, ‘x’ and ‘@’ cannot be used in schools. A bill introduced by a legislator from Uruguay’s far-Right Cabildo Abierto party – part of the ruling coalition – seeks to extend that by imposing an effective state-wide ban on inclusive language in public institutions. The draft was accused of plagiarism as it is almost identical to one introduced in Chile last year. Paraguay, meanwhile, has become the first country in the world to ban any reference to ‘gender’ from appearing in public education. Following an intense campaign by conservative groups, supported by the US-based Alliance Defending Freedom, a 2017 decree “prohibited the distribution and use of printed or digital materials related to gender theory and/or ideology in public educational institutions”. A department in the education ministry was given 60 days to review all school books and lessons and to “issue a report with proposals for the corresponding amendments”. The ban “built up a taboo against the very word ‘gender’,” said Mirta Moragas, a human rights lawyer and feminist activist who studied the results of the review. This has made teachers “reluctant to address certain issues, such as violence against women and girls”. This was particularly worrying as Paraguay has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the South American Southern Cone – a region that traditionally covers also Argentina, Chile and Uruguay – and sexual violence is widespread. Almost every day, two girls between the ages of 10 and 14 give birth, official figures show. The first four months of 2022 saw a daily average of seven reports of sexual abuse against children. Teachers “ended up frozen… and then somehow complicit with the continued terrible situation of sexual violence against children and adolescents and teenage pregnancy”, said Moragas. To make matters worse, when Moragas examined the review, she found the prohibited educational materials had “contained almost no mentions to gender” in the first place. “The review itself was vague and inconsistent,” she said. Although it said textbooks and school lessons should be changed, it didn’t make concrete suggestions as to how. The ban was adopted six months before the 2018 elections. “Likely, there was a purely populist motivation, without any legitimate concern about the issue,” Moragas said. The minister of education who signed the decree, Enrique Riera, promised to personally “burn the books in a public square if they contained gender ideology”. Banning trans identities In some parts of Latin America, trans people still face total discrimination and renewed attempts to suppress their identities. In 2017, Bolivian conservative legislators won a constitutional ruling denying equal rights for trans people, despite discrimination based on gender identity having been banned by the country’s 2009 constitution and two subsequent laws – a 2010 act against racism and all other forms of discrimination and the 2016 Gender Identity Act – that expanded on this principle. The legislators filed a judicial challenge against the gender identity law. Although the constitutional court partially dismissed the case, upholding trans people’s right to change their name and registered gender, it ruled that a segment of Article 11, which granted equal rights for trans people, was unconstitutional. An example of a real-world consequence is that trans women running for elected office in Bolivia now face more obstacles than cis women as they are not entitled to electoral quotas. This is a “shameful constitutional ruling”, Ronald Céspedes, executive councillor of the Latin American GayLatino Network, told openDemocracy. It “recognises people’s right to gender identity, but deprives them of their fundamental rights... “It's like saying to a trans person ‘you can change your name and registered gender, but you don’t have equal rights’.” In Guatemala, a draft bill to “protect children and adolescents from gender identity disorders”, introduced last year, is a “completely discriminatory” initiative, according to HRW’s González. The bill’s Article 1 claims that “children and adolescents have the right... not to have their identity violated according to their sexual gender (sic) at birth”, while Article 2 establishes that children must be “protected” from all content that “represents, promotes or shows alterations to the identity of the sex at birth, gender reassignment, or variation of the natural sexual identity”. The bill seeks to ban information on gender identity in schools and to force the media to label programmes that show or talk about transgender people as off-limits to children under 18. The draft, passed by the Education Committee and moving slowly through the parliamentary process, is also intended to “distract the public” whenever a pressing political issue arises, according to González. “With this initiative, transphobes have a free hand to discriminate against trans people,” activist Stacy Velásquez, director of the trans rights group Reinas de la Noche, told openDemocracy. On 8 March, the Guatemalan Congress passed the Bill for the Protection of Life and the Family, which, among other things, legalised homophobia and stiffened punishments for abortion. However, it was not signed into law by President Alejandro Giammattei as its flawed provisions were considered unconstitutional and at odds with international human rights treaties. Over the period 2019-20, 18 trans people were murdered in Guatemala, according to the Documentation Center on Trans People in Latin America and the Caribbean. None of these cases is being investigated by the authorities. The president of Reinas de la Noche, Andrea González, was shot dead in June 2021; two days before, an activist from the group Redtrans, Ceci Ixtapa, was beaten to death. Both women had reported threats to the authorities. The National Human Rights Observatory recorded seven other murders of trans people in 2021. Violence against LGBTIQ people is a persistent problem in El Salvador, according to HRW’s González. That violence led to the forced displacement of 166 LGBTIQ people in the country last year. And the persecution of transgender people got worse after the controversial state of emergency approved by Congress in March and extended for the fourth time on 19 July, because it suspends constitutional freedoms. “Before President Nayib Bukele came to power, there had been some progress,” said González. For example, authorities had established a sexual diversity unit within the Secretariat of Social Inclusion, eliminated by Bukele and replaced by a gender unit in the Ministry of Culture. “Many activists saw this change as an attack on their rights because violence against LGBTQ people and inclusion are not necessarily a cultural issue, but a social inclusion one,” he explained. A gender identity bill, aimed at increasing trans rights in El Salvador, was also shelved after President Nayib Bukele took office. “The current law says a person’s name must match their sex. If you have a vagina you cannot be named Pedro, you must have a name ‘in accordance’ with your sex,” trans activist Ambar Alfaro explained. In February, however, the Supreme Court’s constitutional chamber ruled that trans people do have the right to change their names, and gave legislators a year to act accordingly. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/-trans-rights-lgbt-latin-america-brazil-bolsonaro/ Published and (C) by OpenDemocracy Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/opendemocracy/