SAN MIGUEL, El Salvador — Rejected by her family, Zashy Zuley del Cid Velásquez fled her coastal village in 2014, the first of a series of forced displacements across El Salvador. She had hoped that in the larger city of San Miguel she could live as a transgender woman without discrimination and violence, but there she was threatened by a gang.
One day after Del Cid’s murder, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris identified anti-LGBTQ violence in Central America as one of the root causes of migration in the region during a virtual meeting with the president of neighboring Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei. She is scheduled to visit Guatemala and Mexico this week.A friend shows a digital picture of Zashy Zuley del Cid Velasquez on a mobile device, in San Miguel, El Salvador, Tuesday, May 25, 2021.
“They took her, they wanted to kill her,” Nolasco said. “I begged them not to kill her, to let her go and she would leave the neighborhood.” Del Cid rented a home and opened a beauty salon there. She hired another woman to help her and was participating in a entrepreneurship program. She was preparing a business proposal to move the salon out of her home into its own space.
“She was excited about her new plans and her new life. And unfortunately and tragically, everything came to an end,” she said. A report prepared by the organization found that gangs were responsible for nearly two-thirds of the violence against the LGTBQ community, while government authorities accounted for another 21%. Since 1993 in El Salvador, a country of only 6.5 million inhabitants, more than 600 LGBTQ people have been killed, according to their tally.
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