Details of the Tehuel case, which keeps Argentine society in suspense

“I still can’t understand how so much cruelty can exist,” Verónica de la Torre tells Argentine radio AM750, on November 16, 2021, the date on which 250 days have passed without seeing his brother Tehuel, a 22-year-old trans young man who disappeared.

She speaks from the indignation that eight months have passed without Tehuel returning home, where his family, where his sister, girlfriend, parents and friends.

The Male transgender went on March 11 for a job interview at Alejandro Korn, a town that is part of Greater Buenos Aires (Argentine capital), to work as a waiter at a social event. Since then he has not returned home.

The job was offered by Luis Ramos (46 years old), one of the two arrested along with Óscar Montes (37 years old) for the cause that on November 9 was investigated as homicide aggravated by hatred of sexual orientation and gender identity, with a criminal penalty of life imprisonment.

Until that day, the case was being investigated as a “whereabouts investigation” and the two detainees were accused of “covering up in a real contest with false testimony”, since at the beginning of the case they refused to testify.

The change was adopted by the Cañuelas Guarantee Judge, Martín Rizzo, after a request from the prosecutor in the case, Karina Guyot, reports the digital medium telam.com.ar.

The defendants pleaded not guilty when they were investigated for the murder of the victim. Montes, dedicated to collecting scrap metal, denied his participation in the possible homicide and confirmed that both Ramos and Tehuel were at his house and that they left at midnight. Ramos claimed to have been with the missing person until the evening, but said that the young man later went to a clandestine party.

Veronica is clear. “Let them give it perpetual and that they don’t come out anymore. Let them pay for what they did to Tehuel ”, he says in dialogue with AM750.

Tehuel’s sister remembers that her brother “always had a smile when one was wrong. He was very familiar, he loved his family. He was kind, respectful, and a hard worker. We laughed a lot together. I miss him every day.

On Tuesday, November 16, a sit-in was held in Plaza de Mayo, in the center of Buenos Aires, to bring the cry for justice that is evident in social networks to the streets. “I want to thank society for accompanying us every day. I thank you all for being with us at this time of so much pain, ”says Verónica for the support she received.

The news of the disappearance and the follow-up of the case is in a large number of Argentine media of general interest and specialized in LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex) or gender-focused media. Social pressure is also evident in networks with hashtags #justiciaparaTehuel, #DondeEstaTehuel, “Miss Tehuel, #BuscamosATehuel, among others.

These are reactions that local activists see as distant within Ecuadorian society to the crimes that members of the LGBTI community in Ecuador experience.

Rizzo He justified his ruling in that, according to the evidence and expertise, both were responsible for the death of the young man.

The tests include the analysis of the Montiel and Ramos telephones, which locate them in the same place in Tehuel; the remains of the missing person’s garments, which were burned; and the genetic material found (pints of blood) on a wall of Ramos’ house, plus the testimony of witnesses.

The psychological reports made to Montes and Ramos indicate that they present aggressive, explosive, manipulative and unstable features. And in reference to the gender issue, Rizzo clarifies that the distinctive characteristic of this criminal type, and of the case in particular, is “the hatred of the perpetrator” or the aversion that the perpetrator feels “for the victim.” “The fact manifests a deep hatred for the choice of the victim,” says the 27-page argumentation report, the Argentine media indicate.

The Ecuadorian LGBTI activist Pedro Gutiérrez affirms that in the region there is a generalized context of misogyny, hatred of the feminine, which usually occurs before homophobia (irrational repulsion towards homosexuality). And that prejudices make it difficult for Ecuador to have a generalized reaction of rejection of violent crimes that have as victims those who are part of this group.

“Myths are built around LGBTI people: that they are pedophiles, bad, street people or that they deserve this type of violent death for who they are. A prejudice fueled by fear, which in the end can be read as a generalized hatred. It is a reaction that is in the collective imagination of many people ”, he says.

Argentine law is different, Gutiérrez adds, and has the only world precedent for transvesticide. “In Ecuador it would be femicide, but it ends up being misapplied, therefore, in the country there is no date of the sentence in relation to the murder of a transgender woman victim”.

The art. 141 of the Comprehensive Organic Penal Code (COIP) defines the femicide as “the person who, as a result of power relations manifested in any type of violence, Kill a woman because she is or because of her gender condition”. And it establishes a custodial sentence of twenty-two to twenty-six years.

Gutiérrez says that by including the gender condition, female trans people, transsexuals or transvestite women can be covered. “Until the last research we did, There is no sentence in Ecuador for femicide that has a lesbian as a victim, a bisexual woman or trans woman”.

And there are cases, only that they end up being investigated as murders even though the victim has a female gender expression. “In Cuenca there is a case that is about to be sentenced to murder. Everyone knew it was a trans woman called Constellation, but the judge said it was a man, ‘the lord such’. His family was not present, there was no technical defense to fight there, despite the fact that the prosecutor asked that the case be tried for femicide, but the judge is the one who ratifies it. “

This 35-year-old victim died in August 2019 after stabbing her legs, chest, shoulder and arms by her partner, according to statements from a neighbor who testified at the trial. The case is chronicled in a podcast posted on the website ethnodata.org.

One of the The last cases prosecuted in the country for the murder of a member of the LGBTI group is that of Javier Viteri, a gay man who died on May 20, 2020 at age 22 with 89 stab wounds, in Arenillas (province of El Oro).

The Responsible, a 19-year-old ex-conscript, was sentenced last July to 34 years in prison, the payment of $ 50,000 to the relatives of the murdered and of $ 400,000 to the State.

Both had chatted on the social network Facebook Messenger, in which they agreed to a sexual encounter at the home of the murdered, the night he died, according to the review of the messages, says Gutiérrez.

The sentenced person admitted the crime during the trial, which was initially investigated for the crime of murder by robbery, since the person responsible fled the scene with the backpack of a friend of Javier.

However, the country’s LGBTI activists reacted and demanded that he be investigated under the hate crime, typified in the Comprehensive Organic Criminal Code, for the fact that he killed him with 89 stab wounds, but finally the change was not achieved and the person responsible was sentenced for aggravated murder.

Gutiérrez affirms that although it was sentenced because what happened in Argentina with the case of Tehuel was not achieved, not being able to make visible the central issue of sexual orientation (in the sentence of Javier’s case) without the symbolic message to society of a fact that speaks about cruelty and a specific hatred that there is to a generalized idea of ​​what the victim.

“In the sentence the issue of his sexual orientation is not mentioned as something important, because it was an encounter via social network that in this case Javier had with Hilmar (name of the sentenced person), who escapes from where he was conscription, which are battalions of which you can not get out.

The art. 177 of the COIP defines the perpetrator of a hate crime as “the person who commits acts of physical or psychological hate violence against one or more people because of their nationality, ethnicity, place of birth, age, sex, gender identity. or sexual orientation, cultural identity, marital status, language, religion, ideology, socioeconomic status, immigration status, disability, health status or carrying HIV … If acts of violence cause the death of a person, they will be punished with a privative penalty of freedom from twenty-two to twenty-six years ”.

From August 10, 2014 to April 2020, 123 complaints of hate crimes were registered, of which five ended in sentencing. In Ecuador “there is not a single hate crime sentence with gender-based death”Says a report from the agencypresentes.org, which does gender, diversity and human rights journalism in Latin America.

The specialist adds that in the country it is very difficult to configure the hate crime, because the prosecutors do not know the issue of sexual diversity. “The one who has the public action is the Prosecutor’s Office, they formulate charges in a specific crime.”

There are other cases, such as Samuel Chambers, a trans person who had his throat cut. His head appeared in the middle of the forest in the Guápulo area of ​​Quito, as did his body, on November 7, 2017. His death remained undetermined.

“Murder is much easier to prove and to bring to court, while these other crimes (like Chambers’s) become complex, because sometimes you need an expert opinion from the person who knows about specific violence and if there is any . We have cases that have reached the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, such as that of Vicky Hernández versus Honduras. These generate jurisprudence in Ecuador. There are already tools to use, but there come the prejudices, this great ignorance, there is no money, there is no human talent, ”says Gutiérrez.

The report Runa Sipiy (which in Quichua means ‘murders’) of the Silhouette X Association “records ten murders, transfemicides, violent or unclear deaths against LGBTIQ + populations” so far this year in Ecuador. In 2020, fourteen were identified, but the document indicates that there may be an under-registration of cases not reported or that were not made public.

Cristian Paula, LGBTI activist and president of the Pakta Foundation, affirms that the concept of justifying these crimes has been forged for decades, starting in 1870, when the crime of sodomy was established in Ecuador, which became homosexuality in the years thirty of the last century.

“The report of the Truth Commission of Ecuador precisely shows that the fact of the criminalization of homosexuality at the time justified torture, forced disappearances, extrajudicial executions, homicides perpetrated by the public force and society, under this idea of ​​homosexuality as a crime. A social practice of widespread and unpunished violence that became naturalized. So unpunished that not even family and friends had the confidence to report. It is not something recent, it is structural and historical … Culturally, the idea of ​​the social cleansing of the LGBTI population has become normalized, ”says Paula.

Reactions on social networks from profiles located in Ecuador to news related to gender identity or sexual orientation demonstrate this reality. “Most feel that the LGBTI population is unnatural, sinful, sick, criminal, depraved, so that any form of violence justifies it, normalizes it, and is unfortunately part of the dynamics of our country forever,” he says.

It was only on November 27, 1997 that homosexuality was decriminalized in the country. “We were one of the last in South America to do it”Says Paula.

While in Ecuador the 24 years of this milestone will be remembered, in Argentina the sentence is awaited to see if the case of the disappearance of Tehuel de la Torre is condemned, with constant pressure from that society to make it happen. (I)