Invisible realities: violence against transvestites, transsexuals and transgenders who are sexual workers in the city of Lima.

This book presents the results of the Sexual Diversity Program of Runa Institute during 2006, the year in which some activities were developed concerning the custody of human rights of trans people. We describe acts of violence against trans population, most common practices, testimonies and profiles of aggressors. It is an important report to know about problems of trans community.

Trans population is not visible and has little political impact. This book starts making some general definitions about trans identities, differences between gender and sexual identity, discrimination and what it means to have a phobia against the trans population.

Then we describe the nature of the study using statistics to summarize the information. The population of the study are from Lima and are mainly sex workers. The results show trans reality and give us some terrible and dramatic testimonies about violence that they suffer.

“The Serenazgo of Los Olivos, took me to an isolated place, they kept my money and clothes and also forced me to have sex with them”(41). Ronca, 39 years old, Los Olivos.

This investigation is limited to Lima. The main aggressors are serenazgos, local police officers in charge of the security of a district that are hired by the municipality. They are public employees but do not respect their norms. Serenazgos have received a lot of complaints for their deplorable acts against human rights. However, they are still working for the municipality and every year they increase in number and in budget. The main problem is that they are common people that have no training in how to take care of the population. Instead of investing in police officers, the institutional security, municipalities prefer to hire their own people to control them as well as to have more votes in upcoming elections.

69 cases were studied, from those, 43% (30) complain of physical and verbal abuse and as well as being robbed; 39.1% (27) are cases of physical and verbal abuse only, an other case in less proportion are cases of retention, extortion and aggression. From all this complaints, 65.3% were made by the Serenazgos of Lima and districts. Others aggressors are neighbours, gangs and police officers.

“I was in a corner when a man appeared with a knife and tried to harm me, the man seemed to be drunk and high and followed me and there were also police officers but they didn’t do anything to protect me”(43). Mónica, 28 years old, Center of Lima.

This book shows that a campaign is necessary to respect trans people as well as changing the gender’s profile that contribute to the perception that a women (biological or transvestite) is a point of abuse and aggression, especially when they are sex workers.

It is necessary that society respect everybody no matter what there identity is, no matter if they are the same or different from me. This investigation shows the necessity to support the trans community and talk about their problems in order to change it.