Death, death and more death. The first time Kenya Cuevas, Mexico’s best-known trans activist, faced death was at the age of nine, when she ran away from home and began prostitution on the streets of the capital. The second time happened when she was sent to the HIV-infected ward at Santa Marta prison north of Mexico City and, with her last breath, began accompanying her companions. The nurses didn’t dare touch her. She sat down next to him and told them, “Everything will be fine, you can rest.” He did this with up to 200 women. The third time occurred the death of her partner Paola Buenrostro, who was shot by the man who picked her up at the corner where the two worked as prostitutes.
Paola died in the arms of Kenya, and “out of sheer rage” she began an activism that eventually took her life and became a three-pronged spear: she blocked roads so the alleged killer was imprisoned, she founded the first house, so trans women could get off the streets and educate themselves (now there are three in different states). And a third activity, much quieter and more solitary: Kenya began rescuing the bodies of dead compañeras and burying them with dignity. She is already 60. At first she did it alone, “alone”, with little means and with the request that the gravediggers could dig a hole for her for free. Now he is building the first mausoleum for trans women in Mexico.
“And the world,” ventures Kenya from the San Lorenzo Tezonco Cemetery in the Mayor’s Office of Iztapalapa in Mexico City. He came here on the first Thursday in June to inspect the work of the workers and the mayor’s office that is funding the project. She wears tight jeans, a low-cut white t-shirt and lots of necklaces and rings. Two weeks ago there was a big act to start construction. Kenya laid the foundation stone for the mausoleum accompanied by Clara Brugada, the mayor, and Ernestina Godoy, the capital’s chief prosecutor, who delivered speeches in support of a community that for decades has been ignored or outright criminalized and marginalized by the authorities.
Kenya Cuevas, his secretary and construction manager of the mausoleum. Daniel Alonso Vina
After checking the work on site, Kenya and the three friends who are accompanying them go to see Paola Buenrostro, who is buried a few hundred meters from the mausoleum. There, they sit down to smoke and talk about their new projects, the hard work the organizations they lead put them through, or the difficulties of getting funding. When the conversation gets too serious or boring, one of them always has a joke or a macabre joke on the tip of his tongue.
Kenya doesn’t like to talk about her age, so her friend Andrea asks her, “And how old were you?” Kenya just smiles. “The media talks about 78 and older,” she emphasizes. That’s not true: Wikipedia says he’ll be 50 soon. Nevertheless Kenya laughs and answers: “But what do you say if you are from my litter.” “Oh no”, answers Andrea. “We will register you so that you can inaugurate the mausoleum,” jokes Kenya. “Don’t believe it, let’s see if I’m one of those who close it,” replies her friend, amused.
The brave and fun attitude with which these women face death is only understood in a group whose life expectancy does not exceed 40 years, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, in a country where people die at around 75 years of age. Trans women in Mexico suffer a level of violence unparalleled in other parts of the world. According to the NGO LetraEse, Mexico is the country with the highest number of murders of trans people, after Brazil, with 461 in the last five years. This, along with the addictions and illnesses that life on the streets brings, shortens the lives of many of these people significantly.
The mausoleum Kenya is building is meant to be a place where they are worthy. “Now they will have a beautiful, eye-catching and impressive place where their presence will be respected after everything they’ve been through in life,” he says while checking that the mausoleum has the necessary tombs. It’s still bare of all the paraphernalia it plans to put on it – stained glass windows, lights, a coffee maker – but the goal is to make room for 126 people among coffins, urns and bones.
Kenya Cuevas and her friends in front of the grave of Paola, the transgender woman whose murder sparked Cuevas’ activism. Daniel Alonso Vina
It’s Thursday afternoon and the girls are talking next to Paola Buenrostro’s grave. The gravedigger José Luis wipes the rotten water out of the pots and puts new flowers on the grave. “I took care of the first cases alone,” she says. “Now I call and people I don’t even know come and bring water, coffee, bread, I feel company, but at first I went alone, alone, alone,” she says without a trace of sadness or anger in her Voice . “I watched over them all night, I didn’t even have money for the candles, I slept next to them and in the morning I spoke to the gravediggers and the truth is they put me out of a job [la ayudaban] and they didn’t ask me to make the hole. And then the three of us, the two gravediggers and I, loaded the coffin and buried her,” says Kenya.
“A decent burial should be a human right,” says Kenya with a cigarette between her fingers. “It’s unacceptable that trans women continue to be abused after they die.” Because the families of many of these women have forgotten them or never accepted their identities, no one claims their bodies and after a while they end up in a mass grave. She still comes here, she buys flowers to decorate her friends’ graves and now, yes, she tips the gravedigger well. Then he sits down opposite Paola and tells her how he’s doing. “When I buried her I promised her that I would not stop fighting for us, but the truth is that in that moment the anger spoke, I did not know that I would do so many things. Now that I have it I can’t stop thinking what a dad it is to keep moving forward.
Britany, a friend of Kenya Cuevas, in front of Paola Buenrostro’s grave on Thursday. Daniel Alonso Vina
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