Dignifying and Decolonizing Queer Histories in Ecuador: In the fight for LGBTQI+ rights and reparations, undoing centuries of transphobia calls for uplifting pre-colonial gender and sexual diversity

Abstract

Purita speaks confidently with a slow pace andfirm tone. Her voice is neither too loud nortoo sof, and she keeps eye contact. Despite theweight o her story, she laughs rankly, showing nobitterness, only determination. Purita knows that shehas rights and deserves vindication. For her, lie itselhas been a battlefield.Purita Pelayo, also known as Alberto Cabral, isone o the transgender activists who led the strug-gle or the decriminalization o homosexualityin Ecuador, won in 1997. Now, she has a greatergoal, as ambitious as it is just: a public apology andindemnification or the state-sanctioned injuries an harassment suffered by trans people in the country, especially in the 1980s. In the 1980s and 1990s, physical and psychologicalmistreatment o non-normative people at the handso the police was a common practice. Among thesegroups, trans people were easy victims, given theirinability to go unnoticed. Any pretext served as jus-tification, and the mistreatment ranged from insultsand humiliation to beatings, unlawful detention, tor-ture, rape, forced disappearance, and murder.