By Stefany Urrea
Firefighters responded to an apartment ablaze in a Pico Union neighborhood on Wednesday when they later discovered a badly-burned body inside. Police couldn’t make an identification at the time, but the next day, Bambi Salcedo, president of TransLatina Coalition, informed the trans and immigrant community of Viccky Gutierrez’s death in the fire on Facebook. Some witnesses reported that the scene smelled like gasoline. The police department merely labeled the crime as “suspicious” at first, but later took a suspect into custody on Friday for her death.
Guiterrez was a member of TransLatina Coalition and an immigrant transwoman that arrived in the United States three years ago from Honduras. According to one of her neighbors, she was harassed on the street she lived on, and recently had gotten her house spray painted with a slur. Less than two weeks in, Gutierrez is already the second transwoman killed this year in the U.S. However, it’s known that these numbers are rarely accurate as many transwomen are misgendered at death by police departments.
On Friday, Gutierrez’s friends, family and loved ones held a vigil in Los Angeles, once again taking the streets to demand the right to live. As an Orange County Immigrant Youth United member, I often visited transwomen at the Santa Ana Jail. They informed me of the deadly trans-misogyny in their home countries which lead them to flee up north in dangerous circumstances, crossing borders of countries equally or even more transphobic then their own. Transwomen are often violently detained in detention centers, where they are misgendered, isolated and abused. Unsurprisingly, these same transwomen help lead the immigrant fight in the U.S. Jennicet Gutierrez staged a hunger strike in 2016 against Santa Ana’s ICE contract allowing the use of their jail at the time. Salcedo travels the country connecting low-income LGBTQ community to affordable healthcare services. Angela Pereira spoke out at Santa Ana city council against the ICE contract before it ended last year.
Sadly, Gutierrez’s death is a flashback to the summer of 2014, when Zoraida Reyes was brutally killed in Anaheim. Reyes, who is fondly remembered by the immigrant rights community, marched and organized in the streets of Orange County for immigrant and trans rights. The fate of transwomen like Gutierrez and Reyes are a testament of the widespread transphobia and xenophobia in the U.S.
As a community, we are guilty as well. The immigrant rights movement is notoriously centered on cisgender and heterosexual people, especially men. We are at fault of overusing transwomen’s labor without recognizing their work. They are constantly used as publicity for donations, but rarely supported by organizations that profit off them. Guiterrez’s death is an opportunity to understand that, despite having our immigrant stories in common, as individuals we are complex and need to acknowledge how our fellow immigrants could be more vulnerable than us. Our ignorance and silence towards their issues can be as actively violent and hindering as the very xenophobia we work against. To this day, Reyes hasn’t been served the justice she truly deserves. We hope that won’t be the case with Gutierrez. In the meantime, as community we can strive for a better life for the trans people among us. Transwomen shouldn’t spend their efforts fundraising to bury their own, or marching the streets asking for the right to exist. Despite all the street harassment, social and economic violence that transwomen face, they persevere and work for our collective immigrant rights. But we don’t show up for them like they show up for us.
May Viccky Gutierrez rest in peace. With her death, I hope our indolence as community, at the very least, comes to an end.
