Behind the cheers and applause for the women vying for the coveted title is a deeply conservative society with little or no tolerance for anything that goes against heterosexual standards. However, Sofía Salomón is willing to challenge them.
“I think it is a great platform to give visibility to my community, to echo the positive and for people to know the reality of transgender women,” Salomón said.
With no end in sight to the protracted crisis that has plunged millions of Venezuelans into poverty and forced 7.3 million of them to emigrate from the country, LGBTQ+ rights are far from being a topic of ordinary conversation among families. or a dominant campaign issue ahead of the 2024 elections, in which the opposition will seek to defeat President Nicolás Maduro.
The planned pride parade in the capital, in Caracas, may have drawn hundreds of people on Sunday, but nationally there is almost no acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community, unlike other Latin American countries whose conservative values are based on the Catholic faith. And Venezuelans who often admire the European way of life have largely resisted the inclusion of that community as has happened in other parts of the continent, nor have they relented in rejecting homophobia and transphobia.
The Supreme Tribunal of Justice, Venezuela’s highest court, in March annulled a provision punishing same-sex military personnel for engaging in sexual relations, but for seven years it has failed to resolve a case that would help secure the right to marry for people of the same sex. same sex.
Nor has the court ruled in the case filed by Tamara Adrián in 2004. The transgender woman wants to legally change her name and sex on her birth certificate and in public records. The government argues that the law already allows this, but Adrián and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which examines human rights violations in the hemisphere, disagree. She has requested hearings and filed more than 30 briefs on her case to no avail.
However, Adrián became the first transgender legislator in the country in 2015 representing a district in Caracas and in June of this year he was included in the internal opposition contest to define the presidential candidate who could throw Maduro out of the presidency. .
“In order for there to be changes in social matters, it is necessary to have public policy, and in that sense there is undoubtedly a penetration of changes (in other Latin American countries) that you cannot see in Venezuela,” said Adrián. awareness many times that a certain phrase is racist or homophobic or transphobic or misogynistic”, he added.
Last year, Salomon finished in the top six contestants in Miss International Queen, the world’s largest beauty pageant for transgender women. During the competition, Salomón mentioned the law that Adrián keeps fighting against.
“I would like the law to be changed so that transgender women can be accepted under the name they feel most secure with,” she added.
The selection in February of a transgender woman to participate in the Miss Universe of Puerto Rico — for the first time on the Caribbean island — raised Salomón’s hopes that she would be accepted in the pageant in Venezuela.
Salomón said that her parents, siblings and boyfriend support her decision to sign up and that the comments and emojis on her Instagram account are mostly positive.
The Miss Venezuela organization did not respond to a request from The Associated Press for comment on the matter.
The winners of Miss Venezuela compete in Miss Universe, and the global pageant was opened to transgender competitors in 2012. Because of that decision, Osmel Sousa, then holder of Miss Venezuela, declared that “the simple Venezuelan public, Christian, is not going to accept never that position.
Marcia Ochoa, associate professor of feminist studies and critical racial and ethnic studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz, praised Salomón’s efforts.
“She is doing something that makes a lot of sense for a Venezuelan,” Ochoa said. She pointed out the space that Venezuelan culture has for an idiosyncratic gender identity: “Miss” (miss). “You can look at someone and say if she could enter beauty pageants because she has the look of a beauty pageant competitor. She can say: ‘she is a total miss’”.
The phrase is a true Venezuelan compliment: beauty is rewarded with the phrase “she is absolutely a Miss (Venezuela).”
In 2018, the Spanish Ángela Ponce became the first transgender woman to participate in a Miss Universe pageant; and last year, the billionaire Thai businesswoman and transgender woman bought the Miss Universe Organization, once co-owned by former US President Donald Trump, for $20 million.
Miss Venezuela winners achieve instant fame that can catapult them into positions of influence. The 1981 Miss Universe winner, Irene Sáez, later became mayor of the Chacao municipality in Caracas and governor of Nueva Esparta. She was a presidential candidate in 1998 but lost to Hugo Chávez.
Josefina Mejía, who lives in Caracas, has watched Miss Venezuela for decades with her family and friends. Among all they choose her favorites and compete to see who guessed the name of the winning contestant. Mejía, 65, said she is not opposed to Salomón’s efforts but she would prefer that transgender women not participate in Miss Venezuela.
“Society is conservative, and sometimes we judge, that we shouldn’t be judging, people… I would like a separate contest for that genre.”
In 2022, the Venezuelan Observatory of LGBTIQ+ Violence —run by activists— recorded at least 97 cases of violence against members of that community in the country, including 11 homicides. The figure may be lower than the real one because many cases are not reported. A formal complaint was filed with the authority in at least 10% of the cases.
Salomón, interested in a career in real estate, received an email confirming that the Miss Venezuela organization had received her application but she still does not know if they accepted it.
She said she believes that her experience in modeling and pageants gives her an advantage over the other contestants.
“I am one of the people who think that the experience is not improvised… And that is why people trust that I should make history in the country.”
FUENTE: Associated Press
