Tatiana Cespedes, 51, was working in the hair salon that she had set up in her home in southern Colombia’s department of Caquetá when three armed men burst in. She had one week to leave town, they warned her, otherwise she would be killed.
The men belonged to one of the many armed groups that still operate in Colombia despite the peace agreement signed in 2016 between the country’s biggest rebel group, the Farc, and the government.
Cespedes, who identifies as a transgender woman, hid at home for a week without knowing what to do, before taking her dog and a small bag and fleeing in the middle of the night to another town.
Violence against LGBTQ+ individuals has been on the rise in Colombia: eight trans women were killed between February and April this year, while 41 were killed in 2023.
Activists say armed groups are seeking to create a parallel state where those who are seen as damaging society – which for them includes trans women – are punished or killed.
Flyers have been appearing on the streets in Caquetá, a stronghold of the armed groups, and circulating through WhatsApp, warning of a plan of “social cleansing” where “faggots, lesbians and men and women who destroy homes” would be among those considered legitimate military targets.
Cespedes says she has lived through previous periods of sexual violence by armed groups against trans women, including from the Farc.
“All I did was bear their desires because every time they got drunk I had to pay the price. At times three, four, and up to five men would knock on my door and I was forced to open it. If I refused, they would assault me,” she says.
The 2016 peace agreement between the Farc and the Colombian government recognised LGBTQ+ people as victims of the conflict and guaranteed them the right to political participation. However, an increase in the activity of armed groups in departments such as Caquetá has led to renewed threats against the LGBTQ+ community.
Cespedes believes she was targeted because she had been standing as a candidate in the local council elections.
After fleeing, Cespedes moved back home with her mother and set up a new working space in her house. She makes some money for food from cutting her neighbours’ hair, but starting all over again has not been easy.
“I would ask an organisation that could help me, to give me a salon to work. With this, I could rebuild my life here because I don’t have a life right now.”
Due to discrimination, trans women are usually limited to earning a living as hairdressers or sex workers, says Yesenia Rodríguez. As a trans woman from Caquetá, she says that, with few other opportunities available, she was forced into sex work.
“When I started my transition, I used to work at night. At that time we would receive flyers announcing social cleansing of drug addicts, prostitutes and faggots. Luckily nothing happened to me but a friend of mine was killed,” she says.
“As a young woman, I didn’t have any other option but to sell my body to survive. But now that time has passed it is difficult for me to work even in this.”
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Cespedes says she tries not to leave the house and lives in fear that someone might recognise her. “We, as trans women, are always looked at. But now, when someone looks at me on the street, I think it is because they have identified me or want to harm me,” she says.
Catalina González, a 21-year-old woman also known as Jefferson, says after beginning her transition when she moved to Medellín, Colombia’s second-largest city, she dressed as a man when she returned home to Caquetá, where she says it is harder to be transgender.
González, some of whose family members belong to an armed group, avoids visiting relatives for fear of their reaction.
“I wonder what they would think. Imagine, if they forced me to join the group to ‘make me a real man’. That’s very scary,” she says. “I’ve always known that I’ll die first, before my mom.”
Trans activists say the government does little to protect them despite the rise in threats, violence and killings.
Aurora Iglesias, an LGBTQ+ activist in Caquetá, says: “The prosecutor’s office doesn’t even recognise a trans-femicide. “They record all the cases as homicides, not even femicides, because the issue of gender is not important to them.
“I’m not a prosecutor or a lawyer, but we are killed for what we are, not for being beautiful women passing by. We are being killed because the weight of a visible identity has a price. The truth is that every time we leave our houses, we don’t know if we’ll come back.”