Transfemicides in Ecuador: Between Structural Invisibilization and the Urgency of Legal

Abstract

This article examines the configuration of violent deaths of trans women in Ecuador from the paradox between advanced constitutional normative frameworks and the systematically invisibilized and unpunished lethal violence they face. Through the analysis of in-depth interviews with trans activists, justice operators, and public officials, a triple structural failure is evidenced: the absence of specific criminalization of transfemicide in the Comprehensive Organic Criminal Code, the persistence of institutional prejudices that minimize these violences, and the disconnection between general normative frameworks and specific public policies. The analysis reveals how underregistration operates as an erasure technology that denies gender identity even in death, classifying cases under common murder rather than femicide, generating serious procedural consequences in terms of investigation and prosecution. Trans women's testimonies document a continuum of violence that traverses their entire existence—from familial and educational expulsion to institutional revictimization in prosecutor's offices and hospitals—evidencing that access to justice requires individual agency and constant negotiation with officials. The absence of family to claim justice in many cases aggravates structural impunity. The article argues that visibility from trans voices themselves constitutes both an act of resistance and an epistemological demand, and that the criminalization of transfemicide as an autonomous crime is not a favor but a demand for recognition of the specificity of these violences as a necessary mechanism to interrupt cycles of impunity and guarantee fundamental rights.