“Thirty years, yet this is strangely familiar, isn't it? A trans person killed by fascists. This could have happened yesterday.”
– Judith Juanhuix
Content note for murder, transphobia
Transgender Day of Remembrance is an impossible day no matter how it is observed. In a world with increasing visibility for transgender people, there is increasing danger. There are celebrities spending every cent of their social currency attacking the most marginalized amongst us and politicians scrambling to unravel every inch of progress that has been made. Most pressingly, the violence has not stopped. It has not stopped since the first vigil was held in Rita Hester’s honour. Not since Chanelle Picket’s murder. This year as the names are read, there will be too many to remember fully.
In 2022, the name Nila will be mixed in with the others. The story of Nila, a transgender woman who was only twenty-four when she died, killed by teenagers. One of her murderers was fourteen. Somewhere in her story is a memory of another: Sonia Rescalvo Zafra.
Lesbian author Elana Dykewomon, who also died in 2022 wrote:
“Whenever you tell the story of one woman, inside is another.”
Almost nine thousand kilometers and thirty-one years separated Nila in Bangladesh and Sonia in Spain. There is an echo.
Maybe it is because when Sonia Rescalvo Zafra was murdered in 1991, it was also by teenagers. Their attackers’ names are remembered in print, though they will not be remembered here. Not because they are powerful, but because they are not. Because these teenagers were powerless and pathetic instruments of a larger society that has hated and continues to hate transgender people.
Nila was killed by two teenagers, Sonia Rescalvo Zafra by six. It comes across as terribly cowardly, doesn’t it? Even in one of the most horrific acts of violence, it is not done alone. Sonia Rescalvo Zafra’s murderers had been collecting neo-nazi paraphernalia long before the murder. While these teenagers were six in that particular moment of violence, they were pushed to it by a legacy of thousands.
The first Transgender Day of Remembrance was in 1999, a year after the death of Rita Hester. Nila was killed after twenty-three years of remembrance. Sonia Rescalvo Zafra was killed eight years before. There is something holding these women together, despite different life experiences, cultures, and stories. Nila’s murder came before the death of Joyeey Akter Nagini, another Bangladeshi transgender woman who was murdered this year. Both names are starting a slow conversation about the violence against transgender people in their shared country.
Sonia Rescalvo Zafra’s death sparked something. While change has not come in the global wave we deserve, she was not forgotten. Her murder was a starting point for queer organizations in Spain to discuss transphobia and hate crimes. She has since been memorialized by a plaque in the park where she was murdered. The bandstand where she was sleeping when six teens found her and her friend Doris has been renamed in her honour.
Still, it does not feel like enough. It will never feel like enough. Even when the six teens who killed Sonia Rescalvo Zafra were sentenced to three hundred years in jail, it did not feel like enough. When their sentences were lowered to the point that they walk the streets today, it was just another failure in a world that fails transgender people every single day.
There is not enough room in our society for us to fully feel those failures. To feel the weight of every single one of them without buckling beneath it. This is why Transgender Day of Remembrance is just one day—an hour longer of this type of pain is too much to ask of any community. But it is also not enough. The queer community feels so small when put up against the violence of eight teenagers. It gets cut into smaller pieces every day, and the network that built these teenagers up grows bigger.
In each story of violence against a transgender person, there is a legacy of pain. More than the twenty-four years of remembrance could ever contain. More than any one person could ever hold. It is an impossible day. In the most horrific legacy of violence, we cannot shoulder any part of it alone. So we carry it together. We mourn together. And we remember together.
REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING
Disclaimer: some of the sources may contain triggering material
Council, B. C. (n.d.). Remembering Sonia Rescalvo Zafra | Info Barcelona | Barcelona City Council. Retrieved November 16, 2022, from https://www.barcelona.cat/infobarcelona/en/tema/lgtbi/remembering-sonia-rescalvo-zafra_1107060.html
Espejo, B., Cuenca, P. A., & Tarrés, J. P. (2020). Articulations and controversies in sex-work trans-activism. Critical Social Policy, 40(2), 279–297. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261018319897042
Gayles.tv. (2021, October 6). 30 years of the transphobic murder of Sonia Rescalvo. Gayles.Tv Televisión LGTB+. https://gayles.tv/en/30-anos-del-asesinato-transfobo-de-sonia-rescalvo/
Latest trans murder in Bangladesh is part of a worldwide problem – Erasing 76 Crimes. (n.d.). Retrieved November 16, 2022, from https://76crimes.com/2022/10/20/latest-trans-murder-in-bangladesh-is-part-of-a-worldwide-problem/
Remembering Our Dead—Nila (30 Sep 2022). (n.d.). Remembering Our Dead. Retrieved November 16, 2022, from https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/2022/09/30/nila_dhaka-bangladesh_27cd6708
Remembering Our Dead—Sònia Rescalvo Zafra (6 Oct 1991). (n.d.). Remembering Our Dead. Retrieved November 16, 2022, from https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports/1991/10/06/sonia-rescalvo-zafra_barcelona-catalonia-spain_bdc3b13f
Sonia Rescalvo Zafra: The brutal murder that galvanized the trans rights movement. (2021, October 6). https://www.catalannews.com/society-science/item/sonia-rescalvo-zafra-the-brutal-murder-that-galvanized-the-trans-rights-movement
The Murder of Sònia Rescalvo Zafra Historical Marker. (n.d.). Retrieved November 16, 2022, from https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=199194
Williams, A. (2022, August 14). Elana Dykewomon, Author Who Explored Lesbian Lives, Dies at 72. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/14/books/elana-dykewomon-dead.html