Around the world, the rights and safety of LGBTQI+ people are under attack. But pockets of progress – life saving progress – do exist, often in unexpected places.
“10 years ago, our sisters were getting murdered here,” says Antony Montesino, from his home in La Unión, El Salvador, and a member of the town’s LGBTQI+ community. “But today, people have turned towards us, and they’ve embraced us. It is a total change.”
In La Unión, a town on El Salvador’s eastern border with Honduras, LGBTQI+ people once feared for their lives — and felt as if they needed to hide who they were. Rates of violence against them were high, stigma was rampant, and employers and doctors barred them from entry. But AJWS grantee Estrellas del Golfo (Stars of the Gulf) have slowly but surely achieved a transformation that, to many in this community, feels miraculous.
“Everything I am today, I gained from Estrellas del Golfo. I am the realest version of myself. I am finally comfortable in my own skin. I am recognized for who I am, and for the community I’m a part of,” says Estrellas del Golfo member Benjamin Umana.
But how did a small, community organization change an entire town? By strengthening their own community, then slowly but surely integrating into society.
Estrellas del Golfo was founded by a group of LGBTQI+ friends who desired a place to feel safe — and knew that others in their community needed protection. As the collective grew, they began offering their community comprehensive sexual education, human rights workshops, peer education and counseling. In 2016, they were involved in the opening of a medical clinic just for LGBTQI+ people. They have successfully advocated for local companies to change their hiring practices and guarantee jobs for the LGBTQI+ community. A member who served as the mayor’s assistant pushed for the inclusion of LGBTQI+ people in state-wide events; today, Estrellas leads a whole day of La Unión’s annual celebration.
In 2020, Estrellas opened a community kitchen to support LGBTQI+ people who had lost work due to COVID-19 lockdowns. In the years since, that kitchen has expanded to become a popular, affordable restaurant employing an inclusive staff, and helping diminish anti-gay stigma in the community, as folks from all over town come to eat breakfast and lunch.
“We’ve broken stigmas and taboos. We’ve shown that we are useful, not useless. We’ve made our community visible,” says Estrellas del Golfo’s director Ever Daniel Pacheco. “We have changed society’s perception of who we are. It’s all a process to make people understand: we are just like you.”
Below, read how this powerful collective has changed two members’ lives.
