Emilia Schneider, Chile’s first trans deputy: “The LGTB community fears the far-right Kast”

At 25, the Chilean student Emilia Schneider, elected this Sunday as the first transgender deputy in the country’s history, has very clear ideas: “The LGTBI community is afraid that the next president is far-right.”

“When these types of alternatives advance, hate crimes increase because discriminatory discourses find validation.”, He assured in an interview with Efe the day after the elections, in which the ultra-conservative Catholic Jose Antonio Kast he was the most voted candidate for the Presidency with 27.9% support.

While this young feminist and activist LGTBI celebrating his rise as the representative of the capital in the Lower House, the leftist Gabriel Boric, the presidential letter of his coalition, was unexpectedly surpassed by closet and it was in second place with 25.8%.

Who is elected in the ballot, on December 19, will be “key” for the future of the country, added the elected parliamentarian, who will take office in March with the aim of leaving her mark on the country’s legislative agenda with pioneering proposals .

While one alternative “seeks to expand rights in a stable and dialoguing manner,” he said, there is another that seeks “to go back on some issues such as the Gender Identity Law (which has allowed for three years to change the registration of sex and name) or in abortion in three causes (which was approved in 2017) ”.

“Today the security, dignity and integrity of the rights of the LGTBI community and women are at stake”, he wielded.

FROM THE STREETS TO PARLIAMENT

She has already made history by becoming the first transgender president of the powerful Federation of Students of the University of Chile (FECH) in 2019, the same year in which she took to the streets with thousands of other young people seeking profound changes during the so-called “outbreak Social”.

That unparalleled crisis, which lasted for more than a year with massive marches for equality and which left about thirty deaths and thousands of injured, was for the elected deputy an attempt to build “a better Chile, which puts in the center life worthy of all people ”.

For this reason, for her, the vote last Sunday was a day “of mixed feelings”, “sweet and sour”, where the LGTBI community made history by electing the first trans parliamentarian and, on the other hand, it was possible to consolidate “a neo-fascist alternative and ultraconservative ”.

“The extreme right seeks fear to prevail, but we have to make hope prevail, the same one that led us to vote for a new Constitution (in 2020) and the one that has prevailed in this last decade of mobilizations”, He assured.

A WINDOW FOR CHANGE

What is clear to Schneider is that Chile faces a new cycle, since none of the three most voted presidential candidates are part of the large groups that have ruled since the transition to democracy.

“That is very revealing. Chile does not want to look to the past, but it is still not clear what the future is with two such different alternatives ”, he pointed.

For now, the young woman sees a “window of opportunity” in Congress, where she seeks to defend measures such as comprehensive sexual education and guarantee the social rights of the LGTBI community and access to decent work with a law that establishes a trans-labor quota. .

Regarding the second round, for which, according to experts, it will be crucial to summon undecided voters and those who abstained on Sunday (more than 50% of the roll), Schneider made a categorical call to go to the polls.

“There is little at stake – he concluded – They are your rights, mine, the freedom to plan our lives without ultra-conservative institutions telling us how we have to live.”

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