Dandara dos Santos
Tammye Nash | Managing Editor
nash@dallasvoice.com
At least 25 transgender people — mostly transgender women of color — have been killed in the United States so far in 2017. And that number — up from an estimated 23 in 2016, and 21 in 2015, with each consecutive year setting a disturbing new record — is widely agreed to be lower than the actual number of transgender people because trans murder victims are often misgendered, either by law enforcement investigating their deaths or by family members who were unable to accept the truth of the victim’s gender identity.
According to the Remembering Our Dead project, online at TDOR.info, there have been more than 300 transgender people murdered around the world since the 2016 Transgender Day of Remembrance last November.
That number does not include at least two transgender men killed by police in the U.S. this year and at least one transgender woman known to have been killed in this country. It does include two individuals who identified as gay men but were presenting as feminine when they were killed: Imer Alvarado, shot to death in May in Fresno, and Anthony “Bubbles” Torres, shot to death Sept. 9 in San Francisco. It also includes India Monroe, also known as India Thedarkvixen, who was shot to death Dec. 21 in Newport News, Va., after TDOR in 2016.
In terms of the number of known murders over the last year listed by Remembering Our Dead, the U.S. with 24 had the third-highest total behind Brazil with 151 and Mexico with 47.
India Monroe
According to statistics released Monday, Nov. 15, by the FBI, of the 6,121 hate crimes reported to the bureau last year, .5 percent were bias crimes based on gender identity. Since, according to a report released in 2011 by the Williams Institute, only .3 percent of the U.S. population identify as transgender, that is a significantly disproportionate number of hate crime victims targeted because of their gender identity.
According to a recent article by Maggie Astor for the New York Times, the National Center for Health Statistics puts the annual murder rate for Americans ages 15 to 34 at about 1 in 12,000, while an investigation by the news organization Mic indicates that for black transgender women in the same age group, the rate is 1 in 2,600.
According to the FBI’s report, there were 130 charges in 124 hate crime incidents based on gender identity in 2016, committed against 131 victims by 165 offenders. Of the victims, 111 were targeted in 105 anti-transgender crimes and 20 non-gender-conforming victims were targeted in 19 incidents.
In many instances, the murders of transgender people are marked by “over kill” — in other words, these attacks are often carried out with extreme violence and brutality, far beyond force necessary to kill.
Transgender murder victims are often tortured in some manner before they are killed. If they are shot, they are shot many times; same goes for those who are stabbed.
Their attackers often do things that are intended to erase a transgender victim’s identity, such as shooting or cutting their face or mutilating their genitalia. After the victim has died, the violence and mutilation continue. Bodies are burned, beaten beyond recognition, dismembered.
For example, last February in Fortaleza, Brazil, Dandara dos Santos, 42, was beaten and then stoned to death by a mob, in a crime that gained international attention after a video of dos Santos being beaten and tortured in the street by a group of men went viral.
Dos Santos was beaten, tortured, shot and then bashed in the head with a large stone. The video shows the woman sitting on the ground, covered in dust and blood, as she is kicked in the face, beaten with a plank of wood and forced into a wheelbarrow. Authorities say that she was then taken to a nearby street where she was shot twice in the face and then bludgeoned with the large rock. Her death was not shown in the video.
By March, police had arrested three teenagers and two other men in connection with her death but said they were still looking for others who were involved.
That same month, an unidentified trans person in Recife, Brazil, was drowned after having their legs tied down, and about a month later, an unidentified trans person in Cachoeirinha, Brazil, was burned alive.
Cases from Mexico show how trans victims continue to be defiled after they are dead. Last January Anahí Tapia Llamas was shot to death in Guadalajara and her body thrown into the street. In March, a trans woman named Paola was beaten to death in Tamaulipas and her body, too, was then thrown into the street.
