Image: Jeff O’Brien / Krystal DeBord / mattel

Maicao, Colombia – Gusts of hot desert wind drift through the broken window, shattered by a stone, in the house that Madonna Badillo shares with seven Venezuelan sex workers.

Badillo fixed the window many times before but eventually gave up. Harassers have repeatedly hurled rocks at the home as an act of aggression against her and the transgendered people taking refuge here.

Since 2017, an estimated one million Venezuelans have fled to Colombia, leaving behind a crippling economic meltdown, political persecution and extreme medicine and food shortages.

But for the most vulnerable groups, such as the LGBTQ population, there are few allies in Colombia.

For that reason, Badillo, a 49-year-old trans woman, has opened the doors of her humble home near Colombia’s border with Venezuela.

Her service started two years ago, just as migration from Venezuela started to swell, when she noticed two young trans women, named Champagne and Nicole, marooned in the dusty streets of Maicao.

“No one wanted to rent them a room because there is a lot of discrimination towards our population,” says Badillo at her home. “They were so skinny. Because of the situation [in Venezuela], they go hungry.”

The two-bedroom home has only basic furnishing, a few electric fans, and a muddy backyard reeking of sewage. In the living room stands a life-size figurine of Jesus.

“My house isn’t a palace, but they are able to live freely and I don’t charge them for rent or anything, so they help out buying food and things,” she says.

“Because of what’s happening in Venezuela, and as our neighbour country and members of the LGBT community, I find myself wanting to help them and give them refuge.”

Born to a Venezuelan Wayuu mother and a Colombian Guna father, Badillo says her cross-border indigenous heritage motivates her to continue helping.

A difficult place to be trans

Badillo’s home bears the signs of her own struggle throughout the years. The broken window, a scar of repeated attacks, is only one.

“‘F***ots, get out of here’ – they shout things like that,” she says.

In a stack of newspaper clippings sit several hundred photos and articles of the American pop star Madonna Ciccone, whose moniker Badillo adopted three decades ago when she began her transition to a woman.

Badillo once had a vast collection of Madonna photos, LPs and cassettes, but they were destroyed when torrential rains flooded her home and ravaged Maicao around 30 years ago.

“She has been my alter ego since I was very young, during the 80s. I identify with her. She’s a chameleon,” Badillo says.

“When I present myself to people, I believe they are thinking: ‘Who’s that girl?” she says with a laugh, alluding to her favourite Madonna song.

For Badillo, growing up in Maicao came with a lot of obstacles as an “extremely prejudice and machista place”.

Badillo says she was the first openly trans woman in Maicao, and during the 1980s, she endured discrimination, harassment and violence at the hands of intolerant townspeople.

“There are a lot of people from the LGBT population crossing over who don’t feel secure and they confide in me,” she says. “I tell them to take care of themselves here because there’s a lot of homophobia.”

Wilson Castaneda, director of Caribe Afirmativo, a leading Colombian LGBT rights group working in the Caribbean region, says that despite the challenges Badillo faced, she “created her trans identity with dignity and made a place for herself”. 

“It was difficult and she faced a lot of insult and negativity, but she persisted; because she didn’t want to leave her hometown,” Castaneda says. 

Colombia Diversa, the country’s largest LGBTQ rights group, says attacks against LGBTQ people, especially trans women, are reaching worrying levels.

The most recent statistics, from the end of 2017, show that over 109 members of the LGBT population in Colombia were murdered that year. Of that total, trans women accounted for 36.

‘She died’ 

Some of those Badillo takes in are living with HIV/AIDS and facing death because of the lack of antiretroviral medication in Venezuela. The migrants, like hundreds of thousands of the Venezuelans who have fled, often arrive in Colombia with little money and possessions.

Isabella Ferrer is a 19-year-old trans sex worker and beautician who fled the Venezuelan city of Maracaibo. She says she knew many people who were unable to get access to antiretroviral medication.

“She was like this,” Ferrer recalls, holding up her finger to describe how skinny her Venezuelan sex worker colleague had become.

“She died. It was impossible to get the medicine. She was about the same age as Madonna [Badillo],” she explains.

Ferrer, who learned of Badillo from a news segment on television, has lived here for two months. “I saw Madonna on TV. She was being interviewed, so it was a complete coincidence,” Ferrer says.

“After that, I spotted her outside. I saw her during the day walking down a street and I asked her, ‘Are you the Madonna that was on TV?’”

Since then Badillo has shared her home with her – one of roughly 25 Badillo estimates have come and gone over the past two years.

“She’s fabulous. I love her personality. Although, if you get on the wrong side of her, she’ll tell it how it is. She doesn’t mince her words,” Ferrer says while straightening her blonde wig before a night of work.

‘Humanitarian crisis’ 

Badillo herself, who has never been a sex worker but a stylist and beauty product saleswoman, was diagnosed with HIV more than 25 years ago and blames her own promiscuity as a young woman. She has also been battling cancer since two years ago and now lives with a colostomy bag.

“I faced lots of discrimination because there’s a lot of stigma around the illness, even nowadays there are people who don’t understand,” she explains

“I’ve had clients who’ve left me because they think that when I pluck their eyebrows they’re going to catch it, or even just by touching them.”

Although hard data on the issue is scarce, Caribe Afirmativo says many Venezuelan migrants living with the disease have gone without medication and cross over to Colombia. They arrive in areas with poor HIV care, even for Colombians. People have to wait a long time to get assessments for medicine and it often leads to AIDS.

“Last year, in Barranquilla, eight gay Venezuelan men died of AIDS while waiting to be assessed to get their medicine,” Castaneda says.

“One thing that happens is that many Venezuelans who arrive can’t find formal employment and end up in sex work. Some of them use protection, some don’t, and this has caused a rise in the virus and a greater risk to Venezuelan people living in this situation,” he adds.

Another problem stems from the undocumented status of many Venezuelan migrants. Worried of possible deportation at health centres, many do not attend medical checks.

“We can say that the situation of Venezuelans living with HIV in Colombia is a humanitarian crisis and we need to see an immediate response by the government,” Castaneda says.

In recent years, Castaneda and many NGOs have invited Badillo to speak about HIV/AIDS prevention at schools in Maicao and elsewhere in Colombia.

Badillo also takes her migrant guests to a local LGBTQ safe house, Caza de Paz, where they can obtain medical tests free of cost.

“Thank God, I have been able to live with this illness,” Badillo says. “I’ve been on national radio, TV and in newspapers and I go and speak at schools about HIV. I am also very involved with spreading this message within my own community.”

Although she recognises the hardships she’s endured, Badillo insists that trans women ought to be proud and determined in their quest for equity and equality.

“We may be ‘different’ to other people,” she concludes, “but we still have the same rights as anyone else.”

Image: Brianna Soukup/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images

Pulwama, India-administered Kashmir – Whenever there would be a gun battle, 40-year-old Hamida would sink with anxiety, fearing that her 20-year-old rebel son might be one of those involved.

On the afternoon of February 14, she was milking her cows when a suicide bomber, only 10km away, rammed his explosives-laden car into one of the buses transporting Indian armed forces in south Kashmir’s Pulwama district.

Hamida says the news of the attack jolted her, but she wasn’t as restless since she believed her son would never become a suicide bomber.

After all, it was only the second time in the 30-year history of the Kashmir conflict that a local boy had blown himself up while targeting Indian forces.

In a similar incident in 2001, Afaq Shah drove his car filled with explosives to the entrance of the largest Indian army cantonment in Srinagar city and blew himself up.

In Kashmir, most suicide bombings (“fidayeen” attacks as they are locally called) have been carried out by foreign rebels.

However, the February 14 suicide attack in Pulwama that killed 42 Indian paramilitary troopers indicated a change in the nature of Kashmir’s armed rebellion, now marked by local boys willing to take extreme steps.

The bomber, Hamida’s son Adil Dar, carried out the deadliest ever attack in Kashmir, which has increased tension between India and Pakistan.

The nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours have been fighting for seven decades over the Himalayan region of Kashmir, now one of the most militarised zones in the world.

The armed rebels in India-administered Kashmir want either independence or a merger with Pakistan.

‘I left it to God’

At her home in Pulawama’s Gundibagh village, not far from the blast site, Hamida’s voice can hardly be heard.

“She is in deep shock,” says her sister.

Among her three sons, Hamida describes Adil as the calmer one. She says he was always ready to help her and wanted to achieve something in life.

Police records also display a similar profile of Adil: “a not-so-orthodox Muslim, who did not offer prayers regularly and was obedient to his family”.

“I did not have a daughter. He helped me in home chores. He worked hard and was a big fan of cricket. He liked the Indian cricket team. He would burst crackers when India would win,” says Hamida.

“One fine day in March last year, he left home and never showed up again.”

“When I heard that he has joined the rebels, I searched for him for a month, waited for him but he did not return. Then I left it to God,” she says.

Who wants their children to pick up a gun and invite death? What does the death of a young son mean to his parents?

Ghulam Hassan Dar, Pulwama bomber’s father

Adil’s father Ghulam Hassan Dar, 50, a frail man with trimmed white beard, is busy attending to a trickle of reporters at their two-story house.

He insists it is the “zulm” (oppression in Urdu) in Kashmir that is forcing its youngsters to pick up guns.

“Tell me, who does not want his son to become a doctor, an engineer or something, to stand on his own feet? Who wants their children to pick up a gun and invite death? What does the death of a young son mean to his parents?” he asks.

Dar says he is saddened by the killings of Indian forces and demands a “solution to the Kashmir dispute once for all to save more lives”.

“We are tired. Everyone is. We want an end to it,” he says as others in the room, including his other two sons, shake their heads in agreement.

Burhan Wani killing a trigger

Dar’s village Gundibagh became a rebel stronghold after the killing of young rebel commander Burhan Wani in 2016.

Residents say more young men, irrespective of their education or family background, chose the same path after Wani’s death.

In the Dar family, Adil was the fourth man to pick up a gun in last three years.

Among the other three, all his cousins, one was killed in a gunfight days after joining the rebels, another surrendered and jailed under the Public Safety Act, while the third is still active as an armed rebel.

With no end to the cycle of violence, there is visible fatigue among the residents, who say they feel drained mentally and economically.

We do not want death. We do not want anyone killed on any side.

Abdul Rashid, Resident

“We do not want death. We do not want anyone killed on any side. But these boys are just resisting oppression. We lose our children, our houses and our peace of mind. But everyone seems to be deaf,” says Abdul Rashid, Adil’s uncle, whose two sons turned rebels, with one now killed.

“The way the situation is now, we do not see any end soon,” he says.

Sameer Ahmad, one of Adil’s cousins who was pursuing his master’s degree in geology, also left his home in March last year for his university and disappeared.

A month later, his picture brandishing an AK-47 rifle surfaced on social media, where he announced joining Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), the Pakistan-based group behind the February 14 attack.

“There is no justice. When our children witness harassment, killings and maiming, it forces them to take extreme steps,” Rashid says.

The villagers fear the situation could get worse after the Pulwama bombing.

Rise in civilian deaths

Wani’s killing in 2016 brought this region in Kashmir to a standstill for more than five months. Since then, civilian deaths, particularly in south Kashmir’s Shopian, Kulgam and Pulwama, have also increased.

Rights groups say nearly 150 civilians were killed in this region in 2018 alone.

The latest civilian killing that has created outrage in the region is that of Mushtaq Ahmad, a 43-year-old shopkeeper with two young daughters.

Four days after Pulwama attack, Ahmad was home when a loud bang on his door woke him up, according to his daughters Momina, 15, and Monisa, 11.

“A civilian called him out and then some soldiers came and asked my father to show the whole house. They checked everything and then took him along. He asked us to remain inside and wait,” says Monisa.

The family claims Mushtaq was used as a human shield by the army, while the police said he was killed when rebels fired “indiscriminately”.

“The moment they took him out, there was heavy firing,” Momina says, as the two sisters struggle to come to terms with their father’s killing.

Villagers say the unprecedented spike in civilian killings has caused more fear and alienation.

“We feel we may also be killed anytime? Life has become uncertain; everyday, there is a death. Like Mushtaq, I also have two daughters,” says Ahmad, who did not want to be identified with his first name.

“Even the animals are not spared,” he says, referring to the reported killing of two cows in Pinglan village during a gun battle on February 18, in which four Indian troopers were killed.

“The houses are destroyed [during a gun fight], but they can be rebuilt. But what will happen to the children being orphaned every day,” asks Khadija, who lives 50km away in Srinagar and is visiting her mourning relatives.

The impact of recent violence in Kashmir is visible on its highways. There is a thin movement of traffic from Srinagar to Pulwama, with hundreds of villages nestled among the apple orchards along the road.

‘We live with our Muslim neighbours’

The unrest in Kashmir is not confined to Muslim-majority villages, but also in Saidpora, 8km from Pinglan, and inhabited mainly by 80 families from the Sikh community.

“What can we say? Like everyone else, we also want a solution,” says a 45-year-old farmer outside a “gurudwara”, the Sikh temple.

“We have also suffered in this war that is getting more and more brutal now.”

Six Hindu-minority Kashmiri Pandit families living in Tahab village share the sentiment.

“This is our home too. We never left it in the worst of times. But now, we are fed up of the bloodshed. We want peace, we want a solution,” says Basanti Kumari, 40.

Kumari says every community in Kashmir is bearing the cost of the ongoing turmoil.

“We live with our Muslim neighbours. We have never been touched by anyone, God forbid. But yes, the current situation has increased our anxiety.”

The thing is India is in denial to accept that Kashmir is a political problem.

Nazir Ahmad, Resident

The fear among Kashmir’s residents has also surged following a recent statement by India‘s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

As anger in India over Pulwama attack grew, Modi said the “security forces in Kashmir have been given a free hand and there is no chance of a dialogue with Pakistan”.

With tension between India and Pakistan on a high, Kashmiris are certain they will continue to bear the cost of the conflict.

“The way the two countries are reacting, we do not see an end to bloodshed soon,” says Nazir Ahmad, a businessman. “The thing is India is in denial to accept that Kashmir is a political problem.”

In desperation, some Kashmiris even believe a war may resolve the decades-old conflict. “It seems a war is the only solution to our problems,” says 27-year-old Mubashir.

“We are already living a war. We die every day. Isn’t it better to die just once?”