Por Benjamín Torres Gotay | El Nuevo Día

Cabo Rojo – The LGBTQ+ community fears an advance by conservative forces that want to take away rights acquired in the November elections in both Puerto Rico and the United States and is preparing to fight it, community spokespersons said during a forum held this weekend in the tourist town of Boquerón, in this municipality.

Some 40,000 activists and members of the LGBTQ+ community – according to organizers’ estimates – came this weekend to this municipality for the Orgullo Boquerón Festival, which for 21 years has been held here, to meet, forge community and celebrate, but also to reflect on the challenges that hang over a community that is in the permanent crosshairs of conservative and politically powerful sectors.

The November 5 elections here and in the United States, community members said during the forum, pose the danger of advancing forces that have the rights of sexual minorities and non-binary people at the center of their debate and urged organizing to combat it.

“Throughout the world, including Puerto Rico, the religious right is exhibiting tremendous strength and we have to be vigilant. We have to wake up as a collective and as a community,” said, during the forum, Justin Jesús Santiago, a 69-year-old trans man who has been fighting for decades to be recognized as such.

In 1970, at the age of 15, Santiago assumed his gender identity, which led his family to subject him to a three-year conversion therapy-type psychiatric treatment that produced such deep psychological and emotional wounds that he ended up an alcoholic and took years to return to living under the gender identity with which he has identified since birth.

“I had to come to terms with the identity of a lesbian woman. There’s nothing wrong with being a lesbian woman, but it’s not who I am,” said Santiago, whose gender identity is that of a heterosexual man.

Santiago, and other activists, identified the conservative Proyecto Dignidad party, New Progressive Party (PNP) and Popular Democratic Party (PPD) legislators and politicians, and, in the United States, Donald Trump and his Republican Party, as the institutions and figures they said are eager to take away rights, including that of equal marriage.

“Our lives are at stake in this election,” said activist Pedro Julio Serrano, development director of the Waves Ahead organization, which organized the forum.

Activists said that the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that determined that there is no constitutional right to abortion, and that left to the states and territories the power to legislate on the matter, which has led several states to virtually ban terminations of pregnancies, emboldened conservative sectors that have even talked about banning same-sex marriages again.

In Puerto Rico, activists fear more anti-trans legislation, such as that proposed on more than one occasion by Proyecto Dignidad representative Lisie Burgos. They are also pushing for legislation against different types of discrimination, especially in housing, which especially affects older adults, who, according to Serrano, are discriminated against in shelters, where they often have to hide their sexual orientation or gender identity in order to live.

Serrano recalled that there is legislation against housing discrimination, already approved by the Senate and the House of Representatives, but that Governor Pedro Pierluisi decided not to sign it until an exemption for religious entities is added, which has held up the measure, Serrano said.

They also expect compliance with the provisions of the Police reform that forced the suspension of the practice of operations in places of intimate encounters between adult homosexuals, which have been occurring despite the ban, Serrano said.

Ever Padilla, executive director of the Civil Rights Commission, who participated in the forum, invited the community to file complaints with the entity he heads when they feel discriminated against – something they don’t do often – and urged them to inform themselves about the positions of the candidates for all positions in the elections, so as not to vote for people who do not recognize the struggles of the LGBTQ+ community.

“I don’t vote for anyone who doesn’t represent me, or anyone who denies me,” Padilla said.

“There are 40,000 people here this weekend. 40,000 people can take someone out of Fortaleza,” added Serrano.

In the audience was Ámber Cofresí, a 60-year-old trans woman who exemplifies some of the day-to-day and year-to-year challenges of members of this community.

Cofresí was, for years, a public school high school Spanish teacher and volunteers to offer courses for dropouts to take the fourth grade equivalency exam. “It was difficult to deal with the students, but I was able to make them see me as a person who helped them,” she said.

For six years, she has worked as a dispatcher at the Mayagüez Municipal Emergency Management Office. There, she said, she is discriminated against by a supervisor who insists on calling her by a male name she no longer uses.

“He doesn’t want to recognize my identity,” said the woman, who filed a complaint, for which she is still awaiting a response, with the City Hall Personnel Office.

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This content was translated from Spanish to English usingartificial intelligence and was reviewed by an editor before being published.