Carolina Gomez Mena
Newspaper La Jornada
Thursday June 30, 2022, p. 13
In Mexico, only 3 percent of transgender women access university studies and of people in prison in Mexico City more than 30 percent are trans women; that is, 150 of the 450 that are thus recognized
highlighted the Elisa Martínez Street Brigade in Support of Women.
Upon completing 32 years of supporting this population, the organization highlighted the case of América, imprisoned for almost 14 years in the Santa Martha Acatitla Men’s Center for Social Reintegration, after denouncing the murder of her partner.
“On August 4, 2003, the transgender, indigenous and sex worker woman arrived in shock at a Public Ministry in Iztapalapa, where she began to be questioned about whether she had committed the crime. The person who took her statement told her to only answer with a yes or no, at no time did she have a translator of her mother tongue (Ñomndaa or Amuzgo), although she was blunt in saying: ‘I did not kill him’, they made her sign papers that supposedly were from the complaint; she hours later she entered the prison ”.
In 2017 America was released from prison through an injunction, she had been sentenced to 20 years for qualified homicide.
In his confinement, América resumed his studies, but did not obtain his papers. With the permanent literacy program of the Brigada Callejera de Apoyo he finished his primary school; her certificate came out with the name she decided on and not the one she had before she was the first Amuzga indigenous woman in her community to legally change her gender identity
.
