2024-01-02 09:00:42
Evelyn was never Evelyn.
When she was born on January 5, 1993 and they registered her in the Civil Registry, everyone thought she would be Evelyn Andrea. But not.
Evelyn was always Ever.
The young transmasculine man with short hair and headscarves. Baggy clothes, big glasses and a jockey. The flirtatious and sociable boy who walked the streets of Los Angeles greeting half the world. “Daddy,” as they baptized him because of his resemblance to Daddy Yankee and the fact that he enjoyed hearing that nickname.
His family accepted him without further ado. His friends too. The rest don’t. The rest bothered him and hurt him internally, especially at school—teachers and classmates—who did not understand why he had such a masculine figure.
He never seemed to care. Being the oldest of three brothers, with an absent father, his permanent posture was to look forward and continue being that nice and charismatic child. Demonstrate maturity. But deep down it hurt him. His younger sister, Noelia Albarrán, remembers that she was aware of those emotional downturns.
When he grew up, the situation did not improve either. Ever worked as a bus attendant in La Vega, and spent his last months as a security guard in different parts of the city.
—Here in Los Angeles there is a lot of discrimination, because, for example, he went to work and, I don’t know, they saw him in person, and that’s it, he came all day. She arrived (the next day), she had to present the papers, they saw the name, they saw that she was a woman. And no, says Noelia.
Silent violence
Ever never began the legal process to change her registered sex. With her closest friends she expressed her intention to go to the Civil Registry and change your name so that your official documents would no longer be a problem when applying for a job.
—The thing is that Ever was not as informed in that sense—Noelia acknowledges—but she always had that intention of changing her name.
He never made it happen and although he sometimes suffered situations where he was rejected, he managed it anyway. He got sporadic jobs, generally construction. He didn’t need much either because he lived with his mother. Regardless, his family knew it was a bag he had carried since childhood. Noelia explains:
—The problem is that Ever never had a definition previously. She did not have support in her transition to transmasculinity.
Mainly due to ignorance. Neither he nor his family knew more about how to guide or what processes to carry out for an identity change.
—Some type of LGTBIQ+ foundation could have gone, which could guide him in that and also help in that transition. But he never had the information and he didn’t ask for it either,” explains Noelia.
From the Bío Bío Vanguardista Divergent Foundation (Love them), the only organization in Los Angeles that provides legal, social and psychological support on these issues in the region, confirm that Ever never approached her to ask for guidance.
—We didn’t meet Ever before. Yes, we do locate it on some occasions (…) What happens is that Los Angeles is relatively small and, furthermore, the trans population is a fairly elusive population —details Vladimir Urrutia, co-founder of Fuvadi.
And adds:
—Ever suffered silent violence.
“Anything, I’ll let you know.”
Another factor was added to the above. In the last days of August, Ever had a breakup with her girlfriend of just over a year.
—Ever always got sad when she broke up or had problems with her partners. It was like… dependent on their relationship. “How the world ended when she finished,” her sister details.
That had him crestfallen. That’s why on August 31, Ever decided to go out for a few beers. It was her way of letting go of her grief.
It also coincided that that day I had to go tear down a cement wall; an extra “little job” that Oscar Contreras, 32, offered him.
She met him there some time before, doing construction work. So they got together and went to share with a third person. Around 10:00 p.m. they moved to the Restobar Dejavú. From there Ever sent a message to her friend asking her to go look for him because she felt very bad. She didn’t get a response until the next morning.
They ordered an Uber and ended up at Oscar’s house. The investigation so far indicates that it was just the two of them.
From that moment on, no one heard from Ever. Her mother called him insistently. She also contacted all of her friends and no one acknowledged seeing her. It marked Oscar the same way.
—Because my mother knew that she had gotten together with him. And he: “no, aunt. We separated early. I’ll let you know if there’s anything” —Noelia remembers that moment.
The truth is that while Oscar was on that call, Ever was by his side. Dead.
The confession
On the night of September 1, two human legs appeared on Lynch Street with Alberto D’Halmar. Three blocks from Oscar’s house. The news went viral quickly. Some reported that it was a femicide. Noelia and her family investigated on her behalf for the first 24 hours and asked in the bars if they had seen Ever. When they found out that she was with Oscar, they gave her name to the police.
After the body was found, they barricaded themselves outside his house and cornered him, he confessed.
—It’s not that he turned himself in voluntarily, that is, the police were already at his house because he was the last person seen with him. In addition, the house had blood stains and an extreme smell of chlorine. So, faced with that dynamic, I wouldn’t say that he surrendered, I insist on that, because the investigative proceedings were already focused on him,” explains Nicolás Arismendi, the family’s lawyer.
According to Oscar’s own testimony, Ever tried to attack him and he responded.
“It has been determined that several of the injuries inflicted by the accused on Ever were already fatal,” explains the lawyer for the defendant. Diaz and Arismendi Study—. Therefore, he undoubtedly added greater pain to the victim than was necessary to cause death.
In addition to the cruelty, the family also suggests that it was a hate crime because part of the wounds, according to the lawyer, They are in intimate areas.
—We understand that this is a clear manifestation of hatred, since they are not sectors that cause death, but rather it is a message that the author tries to convey in this case, and this has a correlation precisely with the way in which he distributes Ever’s body, which is in three different places,” Arismendi argues.
Oscar’s defense denies this.
“The accused and the victim had a friendly relationship, where the accused’s gender identity is irrelevant,” states Carolina Valenzuela, lawyer from the Bío Bío Public Criminal Defender’s Office.
“The biggest hate crime”
Among the procedures carried out is an evaluation of Oscar’s injuries, those that Ever said were done to him. Arismendi says that they are “old-fashioned,” according to the results of the report.
A psychological expert opinion is also pending. Meanwhile, Oscar remains in preventive detention since September 5 for the murder with dismemberment of Ever.
Although Carolina assures that “there is no precedent to indicate that there is participation of third parties,” Arismendi does not rule out that possibility. On the contrary, seeks to exhaust all evidence to determine if other people intervened.
Ever’s crime knocked on the doors of several institutions that sought to expose their repudiation. It even reached pro-government deputies with the attempt to create a new law. For Vladimir Urrutia it goes beyond that because it altered the feeling of insecurity in the community.
—There is a very thin line between the verbal and the physical. And when it is physical, it is almost always resulting in death,” she explains.
Now, Fuvadi is trying to create the Ever Law that wants to integrate three amending articles. This boils down to the fact that, for example, if a trans person is the victim of a crime, that is classified as transmasculinicide or transfemicide. If it is a transvestite, it will be called transvesticide. Prison sentences would increase.
“What happened to Ever is the biggest hate crime this country has ever had,” says the co-founder of the foundation.
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