In October, a courageous gay Honduran leader named Erick Martinez spent a few weeks in California on a speaking tour educating LGBT and progressive political audiences about the problems facing LGBT citizens in his country.
At town halls, Erick presented an informative PowerPoint overview of Honduran politics since the democratically elected government was overthrown by rightwing military forces on June 28, 2009, and the links between gay activists, labor and peasant farmer organizers and moderate politicians resisting the coup.
Erick educated audiences about the situation using an array of slides that drove home key points about life since the coup, especially for LGBTI people. Since returning to Honduras, Erick has kindly shared with me all of his slides, which are posted here. Muchas gracias, mi amigo!
This slide shows statistics from 2005 through October 2012 for violent murders of 84 gay, lesbian and transgender persons, the majority of which have not been investigated by the police and no persons were charged, prosecuted or sentenced over the killings.
Among the murdered are five lesbians, 35 gay men, 35 male-to-female transgenders and 9 persons of unknown sexual identity.
In this slide, Erick reminded us one of the gay men behind the statistics was his friend and colleague Erick Avila. He was murdered in Tegucigalpa in May and after he was killed, his corpse was left in a ditch as seen on the right.
Another slide was illustrated with photos, left, of an unnamed transgender woman who was brutally assaulted and survived the attack, and murdered later on.
On the right is the late Walter Trochez in photos taken while he was still alive and active fighting for liberty and justice.
Speaking on behalf of Gays Without Borders, which has staged many solidarity actions with the LGBTI people and their allies in Honduras, I again salute the work of Erick Martinez and everyone resisting the rightwing government and demanding prosecutions in the murders of LGBTI people and labor and peasant organizers.
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