Before Kataleya Nativi Baca left Tapachula, Mexico, she called her sister from the apartment she was sharing with two other migrants from Central America. “Tomorrow I’m going to be a lot farther away,” she said.
Kataleya, 28, a transgender woman, was a pariah in her hometown of San Pedro Sula, in Honduras. Her mother rejected her. Her brother beat her. In a country where spiraling violence is fueled by machismo—exaggerated expressions of masculinity—hundreds of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex people are harassed, often violently. A network of rights groups found that more than 1,300 of these individuals have been killed in Latin America and the Caribbean since 2014, 86 percent in Colombia, Mexico, and Honduras. For many, braving the dangerous journey to seek asylum in the U.S. is preferable…
