Esteban Guzmán

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights on Wednesday ruled Chile is responsible for the discriminatory treatment of a teacher who was removed from her position in 2007 because she is a lesbian.

Sandra Pavez Pavez had worked as a Catholic religion teacher since 1985 at Colegio Municipal Cardenal Antonio Samoré in San Bernardo, a city that is just south of the country’s capital of Santiago. The Chilean Catholic Church on July 25, 2007, revoked her certification that the Chilean Ministry of Education required to work as a religion teacher.

The reason?

Pavez came out as a lesbian after a rumor indicated she was in a relationship with another woman. Pavez also refused to undergo psychological and psychiatric therapies the church offered her in order to change her sexual orientation.

The clergy acted under the Ministry of Education’s Decree 924, which the Pinochet dictatorship issued in 1983, that “regulates religion classes in educational establishments” and empowers churches to decide who may or may not teach the subject.

El Movimiento de Integración y Liberación Homosexual (Movilh), Chile’s main LGBTQ rights group, appealed the decision to the San Miguel Court of Appeals. It was rejected and the Supreme Court upheld the ruling.

Both Chilean courts ruled Pavez had not suffered discrimination under Decree 924, so Movilh sued Chile in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

More than a decade later, the court ruled “the State of Chile is responsible for the violation of the rights to equality and non-discrimination, personal liberty, privacy and work, recognized in the American Convention on Human Rights, to the detriment of Sandra Pavez Pavez, for the discriminatory treatment she suffered … based on her sexual orientation.”

“At no time were the effects that this measure would have on Sandra Pavez Pavez’s personal life or on her teaching vocation taken into account,” reads the decision. “The court determined that the right to work was compromised to the extent that, through the reassignment of functions, her teaching vocation was undermined and constituted a form of job demotion.”

As part of the resolution, the court ordered comprehensive reparation measures that include a public act of recognition of international responsibility and guarantees of non-repetition.

Chile is also required to amend its policies towards educational institutions, pay Pavez $35,000 in material and non-material damages and another $30,000 in costs and expenses.

‘This is a historic moment’

Pavez retired in January without being able to return to the classroom.

“I am very happy because from now on, with this sentence, in no country in America will teachers, and in particular religion teachers, be able to be discriminated against because of their sexual orientation or gender identity,” said Pavez. “Religious freedom and the right of parents to educate their children can no longer be used as an excuse to discriminate against LGBTIQA+ people. This is a historic moment not for me, but for all discriminated people.”

“It was 15 years of struggle after my country denied me the right to practice the profession I studied and loved so much,” she added. “I regret that the discrimination I suffered at the hands of the church and the Supreme Court was accompanied by the total silence of successive governments in Chile, which never showed solidarity with my cause. I trust that the current government will turn things around and fully comply with the sentence.”

Movilh President Rolando Jiménez said “we are in the presence of an act of justice in the face of some of the most brutal abuses suffered by a person because of their sexual orientation or gender identity in Chile.”

“In an unprecedented event in the world, Sandra Pavez has defeated the State, but also all the churches in the country that last year united for the first time in its history to appeal to the Inter-American Court to deny rights to the teacher under an alleged religious freedom,” added Jiménez. “The court has been clear, the State cannot discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, nor can it allow churches to do so. This is a landmark ruling, a double triumph over religious and State abuses.”

Friday was historic moment for transgender rights in Chile because the country’s Gender Identity Law came into force. 

Trans people who are at least 18 and single can now change their name and legal gender with a simple procedure in the country’s Civil Registry. Teenagers who are between 14-18 can do so in court, but the new law does not include trans children and adolescents who are under 14.

“Today alone we have 136 people who will complete their procedure throughout Chile,” Justice and Human Rights Minister Hernán Larraín told local media.

“There was an invisible reality here; people who had a gender identity different from their biological sex and who could not exercise their rights,” Larraín added.

Daniela Vega celebrates new law

Another 921 people are already registered to exercise the right to their identity in the next few days. Daniela Vega, a trans actress who starred in “A Fantastic Woman,” a Chilean movie that won an Oscar in 2018, shared a message on her Instagram page to celebrate.

“I dedicate this day to the beautiful conquest of ruling the name,” she wrote. “I dedicate this day to those who did not see it arrive. To their bodies, dignified by the memory of rebellion.” 

“Finally, today, to have the right to live the name previously denied, to govern time dressed as testimony, to belong,” added Vega. “Future body, white canvas of new struggles, of new utopias, of movement, of dignity.”

Paula Denmark and Alejandro Berrios, who lamented Chilean laws that excluded trans children, began the process that led to Sunday’s historic milestone.

“I feel that I was born again, with the identity that I always had, but that it was always denied,” said Denmark after she legally changed her identity. “I feel happy and able to take this step.” 

Alessia Injoque, president of Fundación Iguales, a Chilean LGBTQ organization, will also change her identity in the next few days. Injoque said, “we are aware that this is only a first step.”

“We are indebted to the children, who were left out of the law,” said Injoque. “There are also debts to the trans community in education, health and work.”

 In less than three days a protest organized by students against the increase in subway fares turned into an imposing and unexpected national protest over years of inequalities in Chile that completely paralyzed the country and put the entire Chilean political class on notice. Millions of people have taken to the streets over the last few days to demonstrate their discontent.

Some of the massive marches have nevertheless ended with protesters attacking businesses, torching and looting supermarkets in the worst unrest the country has seen in decades. Chilean President Sebastián Piñera declared a state of emergency, deployed soldiers to the streets and imposed a curfew that deepened the conflict by unleashing the worst cases of human rights violations in the last 30 years in the Latin American country. A group of lawmakers have announced a constitutional complaint against Piñera. 

“These weeks have been a time bomb that we all knew was going to explode, but we did not know that it would explode now and with such intensity,” said Alessia Injoque, executive president of Fundación Iguales, a Chilean LGBTQ organization. Franco Fuica, legislation and public policy coordinator of Organizando Trans Diversidades (OTD), a trans advocacy group, has a similar opinion.

“We are living a social revolution,” he affirmed.

The crisis in Chile has been brewing for a long time. Dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1973 staged a coup to topple Salvador Allende, Latin America’s first democratically elected Socialist president. Pinochet reversed Allende’s model and began to implement a diametrically opposed economic formula. The country became a sort of neoliberal laboratory and a cruel dictatorship that persecuted, tortured and killed its opponents.

A group of liberal economists who were educated at the University of Chicago, where they learned the ideas of Americans Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger, who were known as the “Chicago boys,” led Pinochet’s economic changes. They implemented economic and social reforms that privatized everything, and were enshrined in Chile’s 1980 constitution that was adopted in 1980 and remains in place.

Chile is the only country in the world where water is privatized, retirement pensions are low, health is bad and the majority of households have difficulties making ends meet at the end of the month. A report the U.N. Economic Commission of Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) published in January that analyzed the evolution of poverty, spending and social inclusion revealed Chile continues to maintain its high rates of inequality. “1 percent of the population holds 26.5 percent of wealth,” the investigation concludes.

“We have been in an unfair system for years, where everything is done to ensure the same people always win. Beyond that injustice, there was impunity where nothing happened to people who caused a lot of damage that runs from pain to frustration. The government was indolent and everything came to a head,” said Injoque. The trans activist said they were truly afraid.

“I had chills when I found out that soldiers were out on the streets,” they said.

“Piñera declared war against my grandchildren on national television, deployed the army to shoot and kill them for peacefully protesting (against) their enormous suffering and the people realize there is complicity there and I hear another loud clamor: ‘Resign Piñera,’” Pamela Jiles of the Frente Amplio, a new political force in the Chilean Congress who has lead the impeachment movement, told the Washington Blade.

“My duty as a lawmaker is to constitutionally accuse Piñera, as Humanist Congresswoman Laura Rodríguez would have done, using a parliamentary procedure and a constitutional provision, to turn my back to the elite and face the people,” Jiles explained. “It cannot be anything else because he has already seriously jeopardized the nation’s security, has plunged the country into misgovernment and is the main — although not the only — person responsible for the deaths of those they should have protected.”

Brutal cases of human rights violations allegedly committed by the Chilean armed forces have been reported since the onset of this social revolution. Repression, abuse of power, indiscriminate violence, illegal detentions and deaths prompted U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, who is Chile’s former president, to decide to send a team of observers to verify the cases, which include a young gay man who was illegally detained, tortured and sexually abused by the police.

Josué Maureira, a medical student at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile who was arrested while bringing first aid to injured protesters, claims he was beaten until he was unconscious, mistreated because of his sexual orientation and gender identity, beaten again until his septum was broken, violated with a baton, threatened with death and jailed because of alleged attacks against police officers. The National Human Rights Institution has filed a sexual torture complaint.   

“The states of emergency authorize the restriction of free movement, but not attempts to take people’s lives. The ‘exit from the crisis’ as the elite likes to say, is only Piñera’s exit. it is our obligation to stop the killing of innocent people,” said Jiles.

Shane Cienfuegos, an activist and investigations coordinator of Colectiva Neutres who in recent weeks has managed to unify the majority of LGBTQ groups, mentioned that “I have been in the streets since the subway evasion, activating constituencies. We summoned all the organizations and more than 50 came. We made a diagnosis and discovered that we were vulnerable.” 

A massive demonstration across the country was called for Oct. 25. #LaMarchaMásGrandeDeChile (Chile’s biggest march) was a trending topic on Twitter around the world and television stations across covered the historic protest, which drew more than 1.5 million people. “The other thing that I was going to say, that we have also forgotten to mention, is apart from soccer teams and Chilean flags that are very important, there are many flags from the LGBTQ movement, many people with different sexualities are also present and they are movements that are protesting today and their flags are there in the streets,” interrupted Mónica Rincón, a CNN reporter and LGBTQ ally, on live television.

The majority of Chilean LGBTQ institutions on their social media networks backed the protests, while people of diverse sexualities were deployed in groups to participate. “We went out with a lot of passion and creativity to rise up with force and at the same time claim our rights that have been violated by the Chilean state for decades and go against a neoliberal system that oppresses us,” added Cienfuegos.

Chile in 1999 decriminalized sodomy, and in 2012 enacted an anti-discrimination law — to which activists have pointed as inadequate — and same-sex couples since 2016 have been able to enter into a civil union. A gender identity law that will recognize trans people’s right to identity will take effect in December of this year. There are also public policies that benefit sexual and gender diversity, but however, there is still much to do to win full equality in the country.

“We created a roundtable with 19 civil society organizations with a presence throughout Chile, to be able to work on certain matters of law that need to be modified to be able to ensure recognition, rights and guarantees to the LGBTQ+ community,” said Natalia Castillo, a young member of the Chilean House of Representatives from the leftist Frente Amplio party who is behind a multiparty group for the rights of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, trans and queer called the “Diversity Caucus.”

A marriage equality bill stalled in the Senate’s Constitution Committee more than a year ago. The “Diversity Caucus” led by Castillo, on the other hand, is working on the creation of other legislative initiatives in favor of sexual and gender diversity that will be presented in the coming weeks.

“I think that it is a great opportunity to perfect the anti-discrimination law, to promote a law that penalizes the incitement of hatred, and perhaps, this is the moment that LGBTQ+ people will be compensated by the Chilean state for their historic violation,” Fuica concluded.