HAVANA, Cuba. – The La Rosita community remains shocked by Disneys Borrero’s murderan LGBTIQ person who worked as a stylist and who was allegedly murdered by her partner between November 10 and 11.
Recently, Bertha Mariela Sablón Roque, a resident of Mirador del Diezmero, in San Miguel del Padrón, and mother of a friend of the victim, offered new details about the crime in an interview with CubaNet.
According to Sablón, Disneys lived in a small room where she also offered her stylist services. He was a well-known person in his neighborhood, to whom many young women, including the daughter of the interviewee, went to “get their eyebrows done.”
The source described the crime as “brutal” and assured that it had been perpetrated by the victim’s partner, who is currently a fugitive and is wanted by the National Revolutionary Police (PNR).
This case not only highlights the sexist violence that persists in couple relationships in Cuba, but also highlights the vulnerability of LGBTIQ people on the Island. Studies on gender violence carried out have focused on heterosexual couples, without consider the manifestations of violence that encompass female aggressors and male victims or affect LGBTIQ couples in general.
Consequently, most, but few, services are aimed at helping cisgender heterosexual women, which can leave LGBTIQ victims feeling isolated and misunderstood.
According to the researchers Cuban women Delia Rosa Suárez Socarrás and Marais del Río Martín, “this circumstance has conditioned scientific production on the subject to equate gender violence with violence against cis women, which constitutes a reduction in the complexity of the first concept. Given this situation, it is necessary to opt for a more inclusive and comprehensive notion that understands that the relations of subordination configured in the patriarchal system do not only occur in intergender relationships and place women in a situation of vulnerability, but also intragender relationships.
Statistics on intimate partner violence within the LGBTIQ community are difficult to determine because there are a high number of unreported cases. However, the National Survey on Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Violence 2010, found that 44% of lesbian women, 61% of bisexual women, 26% of gay men, and 37% of bisexual men experience domestic violence by an intimate partner at some point in their lives. . another study shows that between 30% and 50% of transgender people experience intimate partner violence during their lives.
In the Cuban context, a 2016 investigation of the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) indicates that 96.5% of a total of 3,512 trans people between 15 and 49 years of age had suffered psychological violence, while 47.8% had been victims of physical violence. by your partner in the last year.
Also the report “Experiences of domestic abuse in trans people” identified psychological and physical violence as the most common. This study, which included 28 trans women, 19 trans men and 13 people who identified with another “gender variant”, showed that 48 people had experienced violent behavior by their partners or ex-partners.
