Trans woman found tortured and beheaded in Mexico

24th May 2020

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Her head had been placed in a cooler on the steps of the local town hall.

A trans woman, Jesusa Fidel Ventura Reyes, known locally as Chucha, was found murdered on Monday night (18 May). She had been beheaded, with her head placed in a cooler on the steps of the local town hall. Her body had been dumped several streets away.

Her murder was the second murder of a trans person in less than a month in the Mexican state of Veracruz after Becky Reyna had been shot and killed at a family reunion in April.

Trans activist Jazz Bustamante condemned the murder, and wrote on Facebook about the violence “rising every day against our population. I strongly condemn this fact and demand that the three governmental powers act in the face of these facts.”

Jazz said that Chucha was “a transgender woman with a life full of obstacles to be accepted as always assumed.” Queerty reports that Chucha had recently begun transitioning and had a love for fashion.

Mexico is becoming a hotbed of anti-LGBTQ violence. Figures released by the LGBTQ advocacy group, Letra S last week showed that 2019 was the deadliest year for five years in Mexico for the LGBTQ community.

117 LGBTQ people had been murdered, with a half of them being trans women, and a third of them being gay men. At the time the report was released, there had been 26 LGBTQ-related murders in the country this year, with 20 of them being trans women.

Alejandro Brito, the director of Letra S, said: “We’ve documented that victims are subjected to multiple forms of violence, before or even after they were murdered.”

He added that one of the reasons in the recent surge of violence towards the LGBTQ community could be to do with an increase in LGBTQ rights, 32 of Mexico’s states now allow same-sex marriage.

“The greater visibility … has led macho groups, fundamentalist sectors to reject this public presence of gays, lesbians and trans people,” he said, saying the violence was “specifically directed” at the LGBTQ community.