# Karla Avelar

Karla Avelar is a Salvadoran transgender rights activist was born in 1978 in El Salvador. Karla Avelar is the executive director and founder of Comcavis Trans an NGO dedicated to combatting discrimination against trans women living with HIV in El Salvador. COMCAVIS Trans also advocates against discrimination of transgender individuals and anti-trans sentiment in various sectors of Salvadoran society. Speaking about violence against transgender people in Salvadoran society, Avelar states, "Now they are after your life. Now it's more of a silent society, one that today won't humiliate you, but kills you." As such, Karla Avelar has dedicated themselves to multiple organizations, such as El Nombre De la Rosa (The name of the Rose) including Aspidh Arcoiris Trans since the 1990s.
Under Avelar's leadership, the COMCAVIS organization has kept and continues to keep records of violations and cases of homicide against LGBT individuals living in El Salvador for the past 15 years. COMCAVIS Trans records reveal that after homicide cases occur, Salvadoran authorities cannot provide reparations, protection, or guarantee that homicides will not occur again for LGBT communities. For example, in October 2016 a transgender man beat by police and over 73 percent of authorities in Salvadoran society view homosexuality as a "mental disease." COMCAVIS Trans, therefore, has serves the transgender community through legal assistance and a care shelter.
Currently, Karla Avelar resides in Switzerland after being extended asylum for receiving extortion and death threats from maras (gangs) in El Salvador. Karla Avelar continues to work with COMCAVIS Trans by serving as a delegate for the UN in Geneva, advises the International Platform against Impunity, and is a member of the Asile LGBT organization.

## Biography

Karla Avelar was born in the Chalatenango Department a region of El Salvador that was the extremely impacted by the Civil War alongside the Morazán Department. Avelar was raised by a Catholic family and experienced sexual abuse within her family. At the age of nine, Karla Avelar experienced sexual assault by a family member, specifically a form of "corrective rape" which drove her to flee from her home. More specifically, corrective rape is constituted as a hate crime. Perpetrators perpetuate corrective rape against individuals who do not conform to society's norms of sexuality or gender in order to "correct" their sexual orientation as a product of homophobia and misogyny. Moreover, Karla Avelar fled to San Salvador where she was unhoused. In San Salvador, she experienced and encountered sexual violence at the hands of maras known as gangs in El Salvador.
The first assassination attempt to her life was in 1992, when she was just a teen, she was able to disarm her assailant who drew a .45 at Avelar. She has received several death threats, and survived assassination attempts. Avelar was forced to leave El Salvador because she did not believe she would survive a fourth assassination attempt.

## Organizing & Advocacy Work

In 2008, Avelar founded the support organization for transgender people called Comcavis Trans, it was founded as a response to the needs of trans women participating in the various support groups, such as HIV Prevention who were unable to obtain information to combat stigmas in El Salvador's society. In recent years, Karla Avelar has utilized her platform to help transgender individuals from El Salvador apply for asylum, specifically in the United States. Immigration policies in the U.S. aim to control citizenship and reinforce definitions of who belongs to the nation-state. According to Guadalupe Marquez-Velarde et. al, many transgender migrants from Latin America migrate to the U.S. or begin the asylee process because of a perceived level of safety in the U.S. and "greater acceptance" of transgender identity in contrast to El Salvador. Historically, individuals from Central America have not been extended or granted refugee status due to the geopolitical and historical forces shaping policies of exclusion against Central American refugee seekers.
Karla Avelar is known as one of the first trans women in 2013 to denounce and present themselves against the Salvadoran government at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for discrimination and hate crimes against LGBT individuals.

## Recognition & Awards

She was a finalist of the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders in the year of 2017.