Transgender people face discrimination, violence amid Latin American quarantines

Alis Nicolette Rodriguez is bracing themself, nervously looking over their shopping list and preparing in case someone tries to bar their way at the grocery store. It has happened before.

Luisa Gonzalez/Reuters

To keep crowds thin during the coronavirus quarantine, Colombian capital Bogota - like some other places in Latin America - has specified that men and women must go out on separate days. That has turned a routine food shopping trip into an outing fraught with tension for social work student Rodriguez, who is transgender and non-binary.

From Panama to Peru, transgender people say gender-based quarantine restrictions have exposed them to discrimination and violence from people questioning their right to be out.

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'May the quarantine work': Bogota's emergency services swamped by COVID-19

Luisa Gonzalez/Reuters

In the 14 years he has worked on ambulances, Dr. Carlos Barragan got used to attending up to three calls during his 12-hour shift, often traffic accidents.

Coronavirus changed that.

Now Barragan and the two others on his crew are handling up to seven calls per shift in high-altitude Bogota.

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In indigenous Colombia, Venezuelan migration sparks conflict

In the sun-baked scrubland of northern Colombia’s remote La Guajira province, a bitter quarrel rages between two neighboring Wayuu indigenous families, one of them seeking refuge from a humanitarian crisis across the border in Venezuela.

Luisa Gonzalez/Reuters

Luisa Gonzalez/Reuters

Their feud was sparked by goats. Without fences to stop them, their herds mingle amid the low bushes between the two homesteads, whipped by a hot and dusty desert wind here in ancestral Wayuu territory.

One family, the Ipuana Montiers - who recently arrived from Venezuela, fleeing shortages of food and medicine - say they have lost 50 goats to the herd belonging to their more established neighbors, the Ipuana, who count local leaders among their ranks.

Such conflicts over land, water and animals are increasingly common as Venezuela spirals into disaster and thousands of indigenous Wayuu who once left their Colombian homes for Venezuela return. The influx is testing the limits of tribal unity, according to Wayuu police and tribal mediators, known as pütchipü’üs.

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Coca eradication best way to fight violence in Colombia, Duque says

The eradication of Colombia’s plantations of coca, the raw material for cocaine, is the best way to protect peace efforts and fight the drug trafficking that fuels violence in the South American nation, President Ivan Duque said on Wednesday.

Colombia, long a leading source of the world’s cocaine, announced last week it eradicated a record amount of coca last year after coming under pressure from the United States following a jump in crop figures.

“The great security challenge is derived from drug trafficking,” Duque told Reuters ahead of a meeting of the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission. “Drug trafficking is the fuel of criminality and the fuel of terrorism.”

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Protests put Colombia's Duque in the hotseat on tax reform

Widespread street protests in Colombia are likely to force embattled President Ivan Duque to make major changes to his tax reform proposal if he wants to pass the bill before a year-end deadline.

Galvanized by nearly a week of protests and inspired by demonstrations across Latin America, unions are clamoring for the government to scrap the bill, which includes tax cuts for businesses, while opposition parties are trying to slow the legislative debate in hopes of winning concessions.

The constitutional court has ruled the bill must be passed by year-end or the tax regime will revert to 2018 provisions.

If Duque fails to pass the reform or is forced to water it down dramatically, he will frustrate business leaders and conservative allies who say the bill is essential to maintain the country’s credit rating and reduce debt.

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