https://fighting-words.net/2019/01/22/death-of-transgender-migrant-bears-legacy-of-imperial-horrors/
By Cassandra Devereaux
Roxsana Hernández Rodriguez, a 33-year-old Honduran transgender woman, died on May 25, 2018, in the custody of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Officials proclaimed her death as being a result of complications due to HIV. A recently released independent autopsy paid for by the Transgender Law Center has added a new wrinkle that government officials left out: she had been severely beaten while in the custody of the state….
….There are many stories like this in the many countries of Central and South America. There are no countries in this region that have not known the boot of colonial military powers and only French Guyana has not been touched by U.S. forces. This exception shows that one empire has regard only for another and none for the people they dominate.
It was into this long legacy of colonial violence and domination that Roxsana Hernández Rodriguez was born. It’s impossible to know what her life may have been like if Honduras had never been a prize of U.S. imperialist powers. Perhaps Hondurans would have been among the many indigenous peoples never to develop a hatred of transgender people under colonial oppression. Maybe she never would have been raped for this difference, so fundamental to who she was as a person and to her personal dignity. Perhaps she might have thrived. Instead, she fled and sought asylum, but was incarcerated by a brutal xenophobic state. And so, she died, gravely ill and violently beaten in the care of the very powers that had brought subjugation and death to her region. As her body lies dead, the chorus of ruthless reactionaries and their agents cheer “Build the wall!” and drown out any reasoned examination of the blood on our hands. Until we rise as one to bring justice to bear, the ghosts of the dead will haunt us.
Say her name! Liberation for transgender migrants and all oppressed peoples! Revolutionary justice for Roxsana!
Roxsana Hernández Rodriguez died in custody of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in May 2018. New information in an independent autopsy shows that she was severely beaten while in ICE custody. | Photo: Transgender Law Center
Wisconsin Bail Out the People Movement 
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