Abstract
Drawing from geo-ethnographic data collected during a participatory action research (PAR) project funded by the National Science Foundation and subsequent research conducted in Colombia with marginalized youth populations, this article explores the sociospatial exclusion and (im)mobility of the oppressed, subjugated, and persecuted through the social cartographies, geo-narratives, and auto-photographic images of transgender sex workers that were displaced by paramilitary-led gender-based violence and forced to leave their birth cities and rural communities in Colombia at an early age. As is the case for thousands of victims of the armed conflict in Colombia, displaced transgender populations seek refuge and opportunity in the streets of Bogotá, Colombia. The (im)mobilities of transgender sex workers are explored in two stages—the forced, violent mobilities of their displacement, followed by their experiences of discrimination, sociospatial exclusion, and persecution through hate crimes and social cleansing killings on arrival in Bogotá. This article discusses how research actors constructed their own spaces of cohesion and resistance to the multifaceted discrimination and marginalization from mainstream urban society through PAR. The PAR project presented in this article continues as part of the broader struggle of transgender sex workers to challenge the exclusionary discourses and praxis that limit their mobilities and autonomy in the city. This article concludes with examples of how research actors use the action-driven elements of PAR to negotiate, analyze, and resist the relationships of power and violence embedded within their urban environment and begin to re-present and change the reality of their immobility within the city.
运用一项由国家科学基金会所资助的参与式行动研究 (PAR) 计画中所蒐集的地理—民族志数据, 以及随后在哥伦比亚和受到边缘化的青年人口一同进行的研究, 本文藉由受到准军事驱动及根据性别的暴力而流离失所, 并且被迫在其年幼时离开他们在哥伦比亚的出生城市及农村社区的跨性别性工作者的社会製图、地理叙事和自我摄像照片, 探讨受压迫者、从属者和受迫害者的社会空间排除与能 (不) 动性。如同哥伦比亚武装冲突的数千万受害者的情况一般, 流离失所的跨性别人口, 在哥伦比亚的波哥大街头寻求庇护和契机。跨性别性工作者的能 (不) 动性, 在两个阶段中探索之——他们流离失所的被迫且暴力的能动性, 随后是他们抵达波哥大后, 因仇恨犯罪和社会清洗屠杀而遭受歧视、社会空间排除以及迫害的经验。本文探讨研究行动者如何透过 PAR, 建构自身的凝聚和抵抗空间, 应对主流城市社会中多面向的歧视和边缘化。本文中所呈现的PAR计画, 继续作为跨性别性工作者挑战限制其在城市中的能动性和自主性的排除性论述与实践的广泛斗争的一部分。本文于结论中, 以案例显示研究行动者如何运用 PAR 中以行动为导向的元素, 协商、分析并抵抗镶嵌在其城市环境中的权力与暴力关係, 并着手改变他们在城市中的不动性之现实。
A partir de datos geoetnográficos recabados con ocasión de un proyecto investigativo de acción participativa (PAR) financiado por la Fundación Nacional de Ciencia y la subsiguiente investigación llevada a cabo en Colombia entre poblaciones juveniles marginadas, este artículo explora la exclusión socioespacial y la (in)movilidad de los oprimidos, subyugados y perseguidos por medio de las cartografías, geonarrativas e imágenes autofotográficas de trabajadores sexuales de condición transexual, víctimas de violencia basada en género promovida por paramilitares y obligados a temprana edad a dejar sus ciudades de origen y comunidades rurales en Colombia. Como en el caso de miles de víctimas del conflicto armado en Colombia, la población transexual desplazada busca refugio y oportunidad en las calles de Bogotá, la capital colombiana. Las (in)movilidades de los trabajadores sexuales transexuales se exploraron en dos etapas – las movilidades forzadas y violentas del desplazamiento, seguidas de sus experiencias de discriminación, exclusión socioespacial y persecución a través de la criminalidad del odio y los asesinatos de limpieza social a su llegada a Bogotá. Este artículo discute cómo construyeron los actores de la investigación sus propios espacios de cohesión y resistencia a la discriminación multifacética y marginalización de la corriente principal de la sociedad urbana, a través del PAR. El proyecto PAR que se presenta en este artículo continúa adelantándose como parte de una lucha más amplia de trabajadores sexuales transexuales para desafiar los discursos y prácticas excluyentes que limitan sus movilidades y autonomía en la ciudad. El artículo concluye con ejemplos sobre cómo los actores de la investigación usan los elementos orientados hacia la acción del PAR para negociar, analizar y resistir las relaciones de poder y violencia incrustadas dentro del entorno urbano, y empezar a re-presentar y cambiar la realidad de su inmovilidad dentro de la ciudad.
Alexa watches the rest of the city flash by her on the TransmilenioFootnote hundreds of times daily as thousands of passersby gaze at her body in the brothel entrance (). Whereas millions of Bogotá citizens do move and can move throughout the city en route to work, to school, to wherever they want and need to go, Alexa's life and mobilities are limited to four blocks of the city, as is the case for the majority of transgender sex workers in the city center.
Figure 1. Caracas Avenue and the gaze on trans sex work.
This article explores the lives of transgender sex workers in Bogotá, whose geo-narratives of (im)mobilities are far more complex than the reality imagined by mainstream urban society and passersby in Bogotá. In the Colombian context, the most recent official human rights report on violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) populations reports 824 homicide victims from 2006 to 2014; of this total, nineteen of the thirty homicide victims during 2013 and 2014 were transgender women and all nineteen of those cases were documented by the government as hate crimes committed due to the victim's gender identity (Colombia Diversa Citation2015). In terms of police abuse, the report also shows considerably higher incidence among transgender women across multiple regions in Colombia (Colombia Diversa Citation2015).
In addition to homicide and police abuse, human rights violations are also committed against LGBTQ populations within the context of the armed conflict in Colombia. As is the case for thousands of victims of the armed conflict, displaced transgender populations seek refuge and opportunity in the streets of Bogotá. In this article, the (im)mobilities of transgender sex workers are explored in two stages—the forced, violent mobilities of their displacement, followed by their experiences of discrimination, sociospatial exclusion, and persecution through hate crimes and social cleansing killings in Bogotá.
Conceptualizing Trans (Im)mobilities
Displacement [for me] is having to move from one place to another and not having peace anywhere … because everywhere I go someone wants to displace me because of my sexual condition or my physical appearance. (Estrella, semistructured interview, 11 September 2014)
As set forth by Cresswell (Citation2010), three interconnected aspects of mobility include “the fact of physical movement—getting from one place to another; the representations of movement that give it shared meaning; and, finally, the experienced and embodied practice of movement” (19; see also Cresswell Citation1999, Citation2001). Cresswell (Citation2010) also discussed six facets of a politics of mobility, including “the starting point, speed, rhythm, routing, experience and friction … that can serve to differentiate people and things into hierarchies of mobility” (26). To examine particular cases of (im)mobility, Cresswell argued that we must take into account how the movement, representation, and practices of particular people are “implicated in the production and reproduction of power relations. In other words, how they are political” (Cresswell Citation2010, 26).
Within this conceptual framework, in the following sections I untangle the movement, representation, and practice of trans (im)mobility in Colombia, starting with their experiences of forced displacement, what I refer to as mobilities at gunpoint, and contextualizing their subsequent (im)mobility limited to four blocks in the center of Bogotá. Nash and Gorman-Murray's recent work connects Cresswell's constellations of mobility to the geographies of sexualities through their conceptualization of transformations in LGBTQ neighborhoods (Gorman-Murray and Nash Citation2014; Nash and Gorman-Murray Citation2014). For them, the politics of mobility and “who or what is ‘mobile’ … has historical and geographical specificity and is constituted through relations of power between social groups based on such categories as class, race, age, gender, and … [as they argue], sexuality” (Gorman-Murray and Nash Citation2014, 627).
The case of transgender sex workers' forced displacement and their subsequent immobility in Bogotá illustrates how gender shapes movement and how “gendered processes create, reinforce or change patterns of daily mobility” (Hanson Citation2010, 8; Silvey Citation2004). (Im)mobilities are forcibly imposed as a means of maintaining traditional, heteronormative relations in society and as a means of eliminating deviant gender identities from society or keeping them at a distance (Adey Citation2006; Giddings and Hovorka Citation2010; Hanson Citation2010). Within this context, Namaste's discussion of “genderbashing” is crucial to the conceptualization of how and why the construction of transgender bodies and the public presentation of transidentities become a factor of exclusion, violence, and forced (im)mobilities. As argued by Namaste, “a perceived transgression of normative sex/gender relations motivates much of the violence against sexual minorities, and … an assault on these ‘transgressive’ bodies is fundamentally concerned with policing gender presentation through public and private space” (Namaste 2006, 585; see also Namaste Citation2000). Multiple embodied practices of violence and exclusion, from explicit threats at gunpoint to looks of disgust and disapproval, indicate where transgender sex workers should and can be in Colombia.
Previous scholarship on the movement of LGBTQ populations has explored the relationship between transgender identity and immigration (Cerezo et al. Citation2014), gay men's migration within countries (Lewis Citation2014), the definition of queer migration (Gorman-Murray Citation2009), and conceptualizations of the overlap between the mobilities and forced migration literature (Gill, Caletrío, and Mason Citation2011). As argued by Schapendonk and Steel (Citation2014), the incorporation of a mobilities approach within migration research pushes interrogation beyond the descriptive analysis of migratory movement toward a more profound examination of the politics shaping these processes.
To conceptualize the politics of immobility of transgender sex workers in Bogotá's public spaces, it is necessary to explore the factors contributing to violence against this population identified in previous work. Edelman (Citation2011) contextualized the exclusionary practices and policies generated by the implementation of “prostitution-free zones” and the relationship between urban improvement initiatives and the elimination of trans bodies from public spaces. In recent work in Atlanta, Doan (2014) highlighted the relationship between official efforts to clean up public space and the removal of transgender sex workers from these spaces. In terms of the incidence of violence and aggression against LGBTQ populations in U.S. cities, Doan (Citation2007) identified high levels of verbal and physical violence against transgender populations as well as high levels of fear about safety.
Within the Latin American context, previous work has examined the often-conflated social categories surrounding the sexual orientation and gender identity of transgender sex workers in Brazil and Mexico (Kulick Citation1997; Prieur Citation1998). These studies raise important considerations for the Colombian context in which transgender sex workers are subject to both physical and discursive violence used by police officers that refuse to recognize their gender identity. Namaste (Citation2006) highlighted the danger of the fusion of sexuality and gender in the examination of violence and suggested that “an attack is justified not in reaction to one's sexual identity, but to one's gender presentation … women and men who transgress acceptable limits of self-presentation, then, are among those most at risk for assault” (588). As the following empirical sections demonstrate, violence against transgender sex workers in Bogotá is justified in reaction to their gender presentation and their transgression of gender norms, identified principally at the scale of the body.
The growing subfield of trans geographies also emphasizes the importance of prioritizing the lived experiences of transgender people and including their voices in the generation of knowledge about their struggles in different contexts (Hines Citation2010; Nash Citation2010).
Methodology
As part of a long-term participatory action research (PAR) initiative, the Mobilities at Gunpoint project was designed collectively with transgender sex workers to document the human rights violations experienced by transgender populations in Colombia and to attain the social justice–oriented goals established with the transgender and activist community in Bogotá. Our PAR work in Colombia is driven by what I have referred to elsewhere as “sustainable structures of care” forged by university–community partnerships in our collective fight for the social justice and rights of transgender sex workers and other historically marginalized communities (Ritterbusch Citation2012).
To conceptualize trans (im)mobilities in Colombia, I draw principally from semistructured interviews conducted with ten transgender sex workers in 2014. All qualitative data collection, including interviews, auto-photography, and mapping, was completed within a PAR framework and transgender sex workers were involved in decision making and action research design throughout all project phases. The ten project phases were (1) definition of social justice and transformative objectives; (2) collective design of research instruments; (3) mobilization of the research community; (4) immersion and trust-building activities; (5) point of entry focus group and story sharing; (6) semistructured interviews; (7) destabilizing the camera: visual methods workshop; (8) auto-photography exercises in urban space; (9) participatory data analysis: “story ranking”; and (10) reclaiming the city: mobilizing against gender-based violence.
Our approach triangulates photographic, mapping, and ethnographic data collection techniques to visualize the (im)mobilities of transgender sex workers and ensures that these data will be used for social justice purposes by completing the project within a structure of activism already constructed through previous initiatives involving the same PAR team.
Our team used particular inclusion criteria for the interviews, including variation in the year of displacement, region, and the profile of the illegal armed actors causing displacement (guerrilla vs. paramilitary actors). To provide additional empirical evidence supporting the immobility argument, I also draw from interviews conducted with transgender sex workers from a previous project conducted from 2009 to 2012.Footnote
The semistructured interview process included a social cartography exercise to visualize the physical trajectory of forced displacement and research actors'Footnote mobilities, activities, and perceptions of Bogotá, including the spatial variables listed in . Within the instrument, each research actor drew a symbol representing each category and the third column is an explanation designed by peer leaders of each spatial variable. Additionally, research actors were asked to associate an emotion with each trajectory or movement traced on the map as a means of uncovering the representations surrounding their mobilities.
Figure 2. Social cartography research instrument and spatial variables.
During the auto-photography phase, we conducted a group session of walking, talking, and photographing spaces to capture individual, place-specific visions of violence and exclusion in the city. The auto-photography or self-directed photography approach has been extensively employed in projects led by children geographer's in multiple research contexts and aims to “document ways in which … [individuals] transact with their environment” (Aitken and Wingate Citation1993, 66). Auto-photographic exercises seek to give research actors control over the camera, a traditionally exploitative tool used to capture bodies and places in time.
In the following empirical sections, I prioritize the voices and vision of transgender sex workers through the presentation of their cartographies, photographs, and interview excerpts that illustrate their experiences of forced displacement and immobility in Bogotá. The stories shared in this article were chosen during a participatory data analysis exercise we refer to as story ranking (see ). In this exercise, we read through the interview transcriptions as a group and collectively prioritize which story excerpts represent the most urgent data for action. At the beginning of the exercise, it is crucial to acknowledge the importance of each story and voice and to clarify that the excerpts will be chosen by the group based on their communicative power.
Figure 3. Participatory data analysis exercise: Story ranking.
Stories of Forced Displacement: Mobilities at Gunpoint
Good boys … go to sleep early, bad boys like robbers, gays and junkies are “put to sleep” by them. (Madonna, semistructured interview, 12 September 2014)
In the following empirical section on the forced mobility of transgender sex workers, Cresswell's mobility constellations are grounded through maps that illustrate the physical movement from one town or city to another in Colombia. The geo-narratives drawn from interview excerpts describe in detail the meanings or representations of each movement in the lives of transgender sex workers. The voices of transgender sex workers contextualize how they were forced at gunpoint to leave their homes at a young age (ranging from eight to eighteen years of age) by illegal armed groups (including guerrilla and paramilitary groups).
The forced displacement of the research actors of the Mobilities at Gunpoint project spans twenty municipalities and twelve departments of Colombia (see ). Previous work in Colombia has also documented that this violent phenomenon occurs across multiple regions of the country (see Prada et al. Citation2012).
Table 1. Trajectory of forced displacement
During the social cartography exercise, Estrella traced her forced movement from Yotoco to Cali to Pasto to Cali to Bogotá, associating multiple emotions representing her experiences of mobility throughout the country. Estrella's emotions range from anger (rabia) and disillusion (desilusión) in reference to the violent rupture of family ties at the age of eleven years old to calmness (calma) and peace or harmony (paz) associated with the distance now between herself and the armed actors who threatened her life (see ). This approach to mapping out emotions over time and as connected to particular forced movements provides a method for empirically grounding Cresswell's discussion of the elements of a politics of mobility, in which he called for an exploration of the feelings connected to particular mobilities (Cresswell Citation2010). How does it feel, then, to be constantly on the move to flee from death threats and acts of gender-based violence?
Figure 4. Estrella's trajectory of forced displacement.
The majority of cases include different forms of verbal abuse, discrimination, and physical violence, and all research actors were given a limited amount of time (between twenty-four hours and one week) to leave their hometown and never return. It was made clear that if they remained in their hometown or city they would be killed.
In the case of all research actors, paramilitary or guerilla actors issued violent warnings throughout the community:
They told us “motherfucking fag I don't want to see you around here or I'm gonna shoot the hell out of you … you know I don't wanna see you around here motherfucking fag gonorrhea [an insult not referring in this context to a sexually transmitted disease, but rather to the repulsion they feel]” … then they fired gunshots into the air. (Francy, semistructured interview, 13 September 2014)
“We give you eight days to leave or you know what will happen.” … they told my Mom I had to leave because if not they will kill her and everyone. (Tulia, semistructured interview, 12 September 2014)
Additionally, multiple research actors discussed the violent details of the torture and murder of other LGBTQ peers who did not make it out in time:
Olimpo was left paralyzed … we were seven, from those seven, three remain alive, I'm fine thank God, Olimpo is in a wheelchair, he was stabbed eight times for being a fag because someone passed by and he said, “What a hot boy” and pam! … They stabbed him eight times … two of them are disabled, the other one ended with a permanent limp and the other one is me … one month later they killed Ricardo, they chopped him up and they put his penis inside his mouth and he was found in the canal. … They chopped him up with a machete. (Madonna, semistructured interview, 12 September 2014)
Madonna's narrative contextualizes the violent practices causing the mobilities of transgender women throughout Colombia and the consequences of resisting forced movement, as in the case of Olimpo and peers.
The voices of these research actors demonstrate the multiple embodied experiences of violence that resulted in their forced movement throughout the country, from village to village, from city to city, in pursuit of refuge, protection, and a place where they are accepted and respected. During the story ranking exercise, research actors discussed their feelings associated with these embodied experiences of mobility since childhood, including anger, fear, outrage, and powerlessness as the most frequently stated emotions and also sadness, pain, hate, danger, terror, discrimination, panic, and instability.
Through transgender sex workers' narratives representing their feelings attached to particular movements, it is evident that in this context mobility is not a privilege and becoming a mobile subject is not about going somewhere to fulfill a purpose or desire but rather is about getting any place where their lives are not at risk. Thus, for transgender sex workers, movement is a strategy for survival and their associated embodied practices include whatever means enable them to flee from threat and risk.
Police Abuse, Urban Violence, and Immobility in the City: “My Life in Four Blocks”
In the case of all research actors, gender-based violence and others forms of violence did not end with their experiences of discrimination and forced displacement within their towns or cities of origin. On arrival in Bogotá, all research actors arrived directly to Santa Fe, a zone in the city center spanning from 19th to 24th Street and between Caracas and 18th Avenue.
While in this area of the city, research actors found a new sense of belonging, family, affordable body transformation practices, love, and work. Within this same space, transgender women also experience social cleansing killings, police abuse, and other forms of gender-based violence.
This is where Wanda was killed. Afterward all of us were frightened. … Santa Fe was desolate … all of us went running in panic to other cities. (Tulia, auto-photography 11 November 2014)
One of the first places identified in Santa Fe as a space of violence during the auto-photography exercise is the corner where Wanda Fox, trans community leader and activist, was killed during a drive-by shooting led by paramilitary actors. The community-based organizations and leaders within the community designed a mural in honor of Wanda's life and service to the community. As stated by one of the leaders of Red Comunitaria Trans, one of the nongovernmental organizations leading the initiative, “This mural represents sparks of color that reflect light and energy in the gray, solemn context of these streets” (Daniela, Facebook, 26 June 2014).
During the auto-photography exercise, research actors chose this corner to raise consciousness surrounding social cleansing killings and hate crimes against transgender sex workers and community leaders. In reaction to this process of group reflection among research actors, we participated in the annual protest led in memory of Wanda and other transgender sex workers who have been killed by hate crimes, social cleansing campaigns, and police violence. In addition to the tragedy of Wanda's death for the community, the following interview excerpts describe research actors' multiple experiences of violence and police abuse in Santa Fe, which should technically be the “safe” zone for sex workers as the zone where prostitution is legally permitted:
He took the nightstick and pram … he broke my head … he was always around making my life difficult to the point that I had to stop prostitution for a period of time … he threatened me and various times he took me, after beating my head in, to the police station that is far from the city … and beat me with a water hose. (Violeta, semistructured interview, 10 September 2014)
They took us to the 11th station … and at midnight they said, “Okay, say your last prayers … because we are going to kill you.” … They were going to kill us [up in the woods above the Circunvalar road]. … They started yelling. “All of you take your clothes off in the patrol car.” … We had to go running down the hill naked … they chased us with gunshots … they forced us to jump into the freezing stream and left us soaked, without makeup, without anything … barefoot … without high heels … to simply bully and laugh at us … to banish us … this is torture … it was their entertainment laughing at us getting wet. (Marbel, semistructured interview, 12 September 2014)
The dynamics of police abuse and violence in Santa Fe include excessive use of force, abuse of power, arbitrary arrest, sexual violence, physical and verbal abuse, use of discriminatory language, and forced displacement within the city to keep them from working and to make their life unlivable. As a means of resistance against police abuse, transgender sex workers use a strategy of cutting their arms to scare away the police and to be able to keep working (). Madonna described this mechanism:
Figure 5. Self-infliction of violence to defer police abuse.
I did like this, watch [showing us how she cuts her arm] … “Touch me and I'll give you AIDS.” … The saying is that we trans are the ones who have AIDS … so you cut yourself, they see you bleeding and no one touches you, they let you die. (Madonna, semistructured interview, 12 September 2014)
These images and quotes illustrate the manner in which self-inflicted violence has paradoxically become a strategy of resistance to violence, which has been replicated not only in Bogotá but also in other parts of the country in response to police abuse and harassment. The embodied practices of resistance to forced displacement or movement within the city also evidence the HIV-related stigmas surrounding transgender populations and sex workers and the fear of their bodily fluids. Instead of running the risk of being infected with HIV or of a sex worker dying on his or her watch, police officers prefer to leave them alone as soon as blood is shed.
It is not, however, only police who violate the human rights of transgender sex workers. Other actors in the community are also responsible for acts of violence, as demonstrated in the following testimonies.
One time when I was stabbed … it was here on 19th Street and they were six [men] … one told the other “Let's give it to those fags.” … They stabbed me here [pointing to her heart] … they almost killed me. (Yurleny, semistructured interview, 10 September 2014)
24th Street scares me a lot. They kill a lot there … the paramilitary of the zone kill a lot of trans there. (Alexa, semistructured interview, 13 September 2014)
In light of these experiences of violence within Santa Fe, making the zone a paradoxically unsafe and violent “safe zone,” one might assume that transgender women would choose to leave this area of the city; however, there are several reasons why research actors are attached to Santa Fe and avoid the rest of the city. First, their sense of belonging and ability to transform and exercise their gender identity and corporeal image keeps them from leaving. Second, when they leave the imaginary borders of Santa Fe and cross Caracas Avenue, the experiences of rejection, disgust, and social disapproval keep them from leaving the four blocks of their spatial existence in the city. The experience of transgender sex workers is an interesting case for understanding Cresswell's discussion of correct mobilities and friction. What are the correct mobilities for transgender populations in Colombia and when and why does their mobility stop (Cresswell Citation2010)? All research actors mentioned that during their multiple trajectories of forced movement throughout Colombia they were directed by allies to Bogotá, which is seen by many as a safe haven for LGBTQ populations in comparison to other cities. This perception shaping transmobilities partially contextualizes why the majority of research actors' mobilities stopped in Bogotá.
In the following cases, research actors described this reality.
The “zone of tolerance” … is my place, it is my territory … I feel safe, I don't feel badly … because … I demand respect [here]. I don't leave Santa Fe. (Michel, semistructured interview, 15 September 2014)
This is evident as well in the maps of Bogotá collected during the social cartography component of the project.
As discussed in the methodology section, the social cartography exercise was guided by multiple questions about research actors' activity spaces and place perceptions associated with violence, rejection, and exclusion in the city. Findings suggest that research actors' activity spaces are limited to four blocks within the city. Twenty-four hours per day, seven days a week, research actors follow the same sociospatial routines to protect themselves from experiences of gender-based violence and rejection outside of the imaginary boundaries separating Santa Fe and the rest of the city.
As illustrated through Carolina's account of the consequences of leaving Santa Fe and attempting to work or socialize in other parts of the city, transgender sex workers cannot move throughout the city without experiencing physical, verbal, or psychological violence:
[The police officer screams] “You can't be here [referring to the north of the city] … here no … here no. … Get out of here.” … So I left and came back later and [as soon as] he saw me … he came to beat me to the ground. (Carolina, semistructured interview, 8 May 2010)
Carolina's account is one of many acts of aggression against transgender sex workers that occur in multiple spaces outside of the Santa Fe safe zone, which demonstrates that transgender sex workers' immobility in the city is not merely perceived or self-imposed but rather reflects the violent reality of gender bashing in multiple cities in Colombia. These accounts of immobility further contextualize why transgender sex workers' mobilities stop so abruptly in Bogotá and how particular frictions in urban space limit their movement to four blocks of the city.
As part of the action component of the PAR project, research actors decided to plan a protest in both public transportation and privileged places in the city to communicate their message and project findings to society: “We, too, are victims of the armed conflict and we, too, have the right to the city” (see ).
Figure 6. Street occupation campaign: Mobilizing trans bodies in the city.
We collectively designed the activity, got dressed and prepared materials together, and took to the streets to communicate our message to mainstream society. To do so, we chose two strategic locations in the city: the Transmilenio route to the northern (affluent) end of the city and one of the designer shopping districts (known as la zona ‘T’). Throughout our trip to the T, we shouted “We are trans-women … and we are here to stay!!!”
On arrival, we silently entered in a line and walked to the center of the T to shout, one by one, the messages on our posters: “I, too, have the right to the city,” “I am also a victim of the armed conflict,” “I deserve a voice in society,” “I want to be heard,” “I deserve respect,” “No to discrimination,” “No to gender-based violence,” and “I am more than Santa Fe.”
The mobility constellations surrounding our protest in the T and transgender sex workers' abilities to move through the city can be explained by the force of collective movement. The meaning and purpose of the mobile practice of taking public transportation to move from point A to B in the city is radically different in the context of the T protest. Moving in a crowded, public space of transportation was a strategic action chosen by the group to communicate our social justice message about trans (im)mobilities to a broad audience while enacting resistance through the occupation of spaces not normally occupied by transgender populations. Additionally, this very movement, from Santa Fe to the T zone in the north, is neither safe nor comfortable for transgender sex workers, and without the collective strength of group movement, it would not have been possible.
Conclusion
In this article I have illustrated how transgender sex workers, such as Tulia (), are trapped within a vicious cycle of violence and feel as though they are unable to be anywhere in Colombia: neither here nor there.
Figure 7. Tulia's story: “Neither here nor there.”
This article presents the forced mobility of transgender youth from their towns or cities of origin and their subsequent immobility on arrival in Bogotá illustrated through maps tracing their movement, narratives contextualizing what these movements mean in trans lives, and photographs opening a window on their world of exclusion and immobility.
Additionally, the voices and vision of transgender sex workers support the underpinning argument that the movements, practices, and representations constituting transmobility in Colombia should not be conceptualized as a privilege but rather as a way of disciplining and displacing transgressive bodies from public, heteronormative spaces. Both empirical cases illustrate the importance of examining the movement, practices, and representations of marginalized, persecuted, and oppressed populations at the juncture of geographies of sexualities and mobilities literature as a means of more profoundly interrogating the power dynamics, social differences, gendered relations, and politics implicit in the movements (or lack thereof) of these populations.
Within this framework, a closer examination of transgender sex workers' immobilities reveals that their movement restricted to four blocks of the city is not self-imposed but is a reality shaped by violent reactions to their gender presentation in other parts of Bogotá. Furthermore, the article discusses how these forced immobilities in the city are resisted at the scale of the body, including the mobilization of the fear of blood contamination and through the force of collective movement in public space as a means of resisting exclusionary urban practices of segregation.
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my profound appreciation and gratitude to all research actors involved in and touched by the PAR process and to all those who continue as part of our social justice community in Colombia. I would also like to thank my colleagues of the organization PARCES for their dedication to the movement and Sebastián León Giraldo, Julian(a) Salamanca Cortés, and Andrea Correa for their leadership and vision throughout the action and visual method components of the project.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Amy E. Ritterbusch
AMY E. RITTERBUSCH is an Associate Professor in the School of Government Alberto Lleras Camargo at University of the Andes, Bogotá, Colombia. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research works against the human rights violations and violence experienced by multiple street-connected communities (trans and cisgender sex workers, homeless individuals, and glue and bazuco users) in Latin America through participatory action research for social justice.
Notes
1. This is Bogotá's rapid transit bus system.
2. The total research population was thirty-three street-connected youth (including sex workers, drug users, and homeless individuals in Bogotá).
3. I use the term research actors in referring to participants to discursively work against the hierarchies traditionally maintained between university and community-based research actors.
Related Research Data
References
- Adey, P. 2006. If mobility is everything then it is nothing: Towards a relational politics of (im)mobilities. Mobilities 1 (1): 75–94.
- Aitken, S., and J. Wingate. 1993. A preliminary study of the self-directed photography of middle-class, homeless, and mobility-impaired children. The Professional Geographer 45 (1): 65–72.
- Cerezo, A., A. Morales, D. Quintero, and S. Rothman. 2014. Trans migrations: Exploring life at the intersection of transgender identity and immigration. Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity 1 (2 Geographies of Mobility): 170–80.
- Colombia Diversa. 2015. Cuando la guerra se va la vida toma su lugar: Informe de derechos humanos de lesbianas, gay, bisexuales y personas trans en Colombia [When the war concludes life takes its place: Human rights report on lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans individuals in Colombia]. Bogotá, Colombia: Colombia Diversa.
- Cresswell, T. 1999. Embodiment, power and the politics of mobility: The case of female tramps and hobos. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 24 (2 Geographies of Mobility): 175–92.
- ———. 2001. The production of mobilities. New Formations 43:11–25.
- ———. 2010. Towards a politics of mobility. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 28 (1): 17–31.
- Doan, P. 2007. Queers in the American city: Transgendered perceptions of urban space. Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 14 (1): 57–74.
- ———. 2014. Regulating adult business to make spaces safe for heterosexual families in Atlanta. In (Sub)urban sexscapes: Geographies and regulation of the sex industry, ed. P. J. Maginn and C. Steinmetz, 97–218. London and New York: Routledge.
- Edelman, E. 2011. “This area has been declared a prostitution free zone”: Discursive formations of space, the state, and trans “sex worker” bodies. Journal of Homosexuality 58 (6): 848–64.
- Giddings, C., and A. J. Hovorka. 2010. Place, ideological mobility and youth negotiations of gender identities in urban Botswana. Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 17 (2 Geographies of Mobility): 211–29.
- Gill, N., J. Caletrío, and V. Mason. 2011. Introduction: Mobilities and forced migration. Mobilities 6 (3): 301–16.
- Gorman-Murray, A. 2009. Intimate mobilities: Emotional embodiment and queer migration. Social and Cultural Geography 10 (4): 441–60.
- Gorman-Murray, A., and C. Nash. 2014. Mobile places, relational spaces: Conceptualizing change in Sydney's LGBTQ neighborhoods. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 32:622–41.
- Hanson, S. 2010. Gender and mobility: New approaches for informing sustainability. Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 17 (1): 5–23.
- Hines, S. 2010. Queerly situated? Exploring negotiations of trans queer subjectivities at work and within community spaces in the UK. Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 17 (5): 597–613.
- Kulick, D. 1997. The gender of Brazilian transgendered prostitutes. American Anthropologist 99 (3): 574–85.
- Lewis, N. 2014. Moving “out,” moving on: Gay men's migrations through the life course. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 104 (2 Geographies of Mobility): 225–33.
- Namaste, V. 2000. Invisible lives: The erasure of transsexual and transgendered people. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
- ———. 2006. Genderbashing: Sexuality, gender, and the regulation of public space. In The transgender studies reader, ed. S. Stryker and S. Whittle, 584–600. London and New York: Routledge.
- Nash, C. 2010. Trans geographies, embodiment and experience. Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 17 (5): 579–95.
- Nash, C., and A. Gorman-Murray. 2014. LGBT neighbourhoods and “new mobilities”: Towards understanding transformations in sexual and gendered urban landscapes. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38 (3): 756–72.
- Prada, N., S. Herrea, L. Lozano, and A. M. Ortíz. 2012. ¡A mi me sacaron volada de allá! Relatos de vida de mujeres trans desplazadas forzosamente hacia Bogotá [I was kicked out of there!: Transgender women's life histories of forced displacement]. Bogotá, Colombia: Office of the Mayor of Bogotá and National University of Colombia.
- Prieur, A. 1998. Mema´s house, Mexico City: On transvestites, queens and machos. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Ritterbusch, A. 2012. Bridging guidelines and practice: Toward a grounded care ethics in youth participatory action research. The Professional Geographer 64 (1): 16–24.
- Schapendonk, J., and G. Steel. 2014. Following migrant trajectories: The im/mobility of sub-Saharan Africans en route to the European Union. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 104 (2 Geographies of Mobility): 262–70.
- Silvey, R. 2004. Power, difference, and mobility: Feminist advances in migration studies. Progress in Human Geography 28 (4): 490–506.