Rosa Diaz and her daughter had been using their motorcycles via rural Brawley, California, this twelve months once they seen a teen who appeared lost strolling down town’s well-known aspect freeway. Diaz, who runs the handiest LGBTQ helpful resource middle for miles, sensed that the person can be short of beef up.
She urged her daughter to continue ahead, and Diaz made a U-turn.
“I requested her for her name,” and the person shared a male name, Diaz acknowledged in an interview. “I acknowledged, ‘Is there but another name that you pick?’ And that’s the reason when she urged me, ‘Successfully, I adore Marilyn.'”
Diaz requested her whether she predominant anything. “I desire a brand new wig,” Diaz recalled Marilyn asserting, gesturing to her frail apparel and hairpiece. Diaz gave her a enterprise card, and Marilyn promised to name her after the weekend. Diaz’s crew came upon her a wig, but the option by no manner came.
“I didn’t be taught about Marilyn again till I changed into known as concerning her loss of life,” Diaz acknowledged.
Marilyn Cazares, 22, changed into came upon unnecessary last month in an deserted building in Brawley, about a half of-hour north of the Mexican border. It has been an extraordinarily deadly twelve months for trans folks — especially trans ladies folks of color. In 2019, 27 trans folks died thanks to violence in total. In 2020, the quantity has already reached 25, in step with the Human Rights Marketing campaign.
In July alone, there had been six violent deaths of trans and gender-nonconforming folks across the U.S. — all but one among them trans Sunless or Latinx ladies folks — making it the deadliest month up to now for this inclined neighborhood.
Within the weeks following her stumble upon with Cazares in February, Diaz and her runt crew at the Imperial Valley LGBT Resource Middle tried to attain out to Cazares. But they did not have her last name or any diversified data about her. Since her loss of life, family and friends have spoken out about a young girl who lived her fact no topic being bullied, ridiculed and violated by people of her neighborhood. Her family acknowledged they imagine her loss of life changed into a despise crime.
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Brawley police are investigating Cazares’ loss of life as a homicide, and Diaz acknowledged the neighborhood is hungry for answers.
Mindy Garcia, Cazares’ aunt, urged NBC affiliate KYMA of Yuma, Arizona, which serves the Brawley station, that her niece changed into “very mettlesome,” “very outspoken” and “very cherished.”
“She changed into very heavenly,” Garcia added.
An overtly opposed ambiance
Diaz, who grew up in Imperial County, the set Brawley is found, came out as lesbian in her 40s. She describes the station as one that at handiest lacks LGBTQ sources and at worst is an ambiance that’s overtly opposed to lesbian, joyful, bisexual, transgender and abnormal residents.
She began a beef up neighborhood in 2014 after she had nowhere else to indicate for a sense of neighborhood — and folks began turning up in immense numbers.
“These that came to this neighborhood had been telling me, ‘You realize, we like what you are doing, but I want counseling, I want hormone treatment, I want man made insemination,'” she acknowledged. “I wasn’t ready for all of that.”
But within six months, she had based the Imperial Valley LGBT Resource Middle. She acknowledged she has needed to “tread lightly” for it to be viewed as a revered neighborhood organization. It be composed the handiest LGBTQ middle in Imperial County, which entails seven cities and about 180,000 residents.
“That is the set I began to listen to reviews,” Diaz acknowledged of the guts. “Those that had been a cramped bit flamboyant and extremely elated with themselves … they had been regarded as to be crazy, unfamiliar, even unhealthy to a degree.”
She acknowledged she’s clear Cazares skilled that roughly medication in her short lifetime.
“In accordance with what I heard from the family — and because I know my neighborhood — Marilyn or any one that would possibly perchance appear like they’re one gender but name as but another gender are ridiculed,” she acknowledged. “They’re viewed as folks with a psychological illness, or, , folks which can be now no longer appropriate.”
She acknowledged LGBTQ folks in Imperial Valley are pushed out of their families, their church buildings and their communities. She moreover acknowledged Cazares’ loss of life marks the 2nd high-profile homicide of a Latina trans girl from Brawley, after the abolish of trans teen Gwen Araujo in 2002.
“The neighborhood is angry, pointless to claim, because all americans is aware of that trans ladies folks are being killed in each set,” Diaz acknowledged. “A quantity of folks imagine that this stuff handiest happen in substantial cities, and here, it has hit residence.”
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Diaz emphasised the need for LGBTQ schooling in communities adore Brawley, the set, she acknowledged, many residents are unaware of how their LGBTQ neighbors would possibly per chance also battle. Since her loss of life, Cazares has been misgendered within the media — even by people of her family. But Diaz acknowledged her aim is to handbook with schooling and data in wish to attacks, especially for working-class folks which can be composed studying.
“It be a sad event,” Diaz acknowledged. “But it absolutely’s moreover an opportunity to in point of fact honor Marilyn and to let the family know: ‘We be unsleeping her adore this, because this is who she changed into.'”
