Photo by Rainer Lee/OutWrite
Content warning: violence, transphobia, police brutality, hate crimes, death, genocide, mentions of sexual violence
Daniela Maldonado Salamanca, a transgender Colombian sex worker activist and punk singer, spoke about queer resistance at the People’s University for a Liberated Palestine on May 20. Hosted by the UCLA chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the People’s University offers a space “to foster our own learning and mutual support.” SJP established the People’s University following UCLA’s failure to protect and care for its people.
At Dickson Court, students and faculty alike partook in a community lunch and gathered around Salamanca and her Spanish-to-English translator, Amy Ritterbusch, an Assistant Professor of Social Welfare at UCLA. Salamanca brought her experiences as a trans sex worker and community organizer in Colombia to equip and encourage student protestors fighting for a free Palestine.
From the mid-20th century until the present, the U.S. has backed far-right Colombian government and paramilitary groups against the leftist guerrilla groups. Salamanca explained how the Colombian state and far-right paramilitary groups suppress and eliminate street resistance, detailing the heavily policed streets, state-sanctioned gender-based violence, criminalization of non-traditional identities, and illegally-armed right-wing groups. Like many other Latin American countries, the Colombian state and paramilitary groups seek to socially cleanse the streets of undesirables like queer people and sex workers.
Salamanca outlined how she and her friends have built a movement despite the State and terrorists repeatedly removing them from their spaces of struggle, paralleling her experiences to the Zionist attacks and police brutality against pro-Palestinian protestors at UCLA.
The Toloposungo movement, a shortened version of “Todos Los Policias Son Una Gonorrea,” translates to “All Police Are a Gonorrhea.” In Colombia, trans sex workers have popularized fighting for the abolition of oppressive structures like the police force. They state that the police are not just a few bad apples; rather, the entire tree must be uprooted.
Notably, the movement opted to avoid the American phrase “All Cops Are Bastards” (ACAB) to avoid the misogynistic implications of the word bastard. Calling cops “bastards” names and blames their mothers for giving birth to them and implicates sex workers in particular. Quoting Salamanca, they did not give birth to cops and do not wish to be accused of doing so. Instead, they’ve opted to call cops a gonorrhea — an especially derogatory insult in Colombian Spanish which is not misogynistic, anti-sex-worker, or queerphobic.
Salamanca emphasized the life-saving necessity of collective care in the movement. When the State does not care for and rather aims to injure us, “we take care of each other” — a mantra forefronted by both Salamanca and pro-Palestinian organizers abroad. Pro-Palestinian organizers at UCLA echo their own iteration: “We keep us safe.”
For instance, Salamanca defined cooking together as a form of ritual care and feeding our bodies as an act of healing. For her movement family, food security is collective care. Caring for each other means embracing the love that society at large has denied queer and trans people and sex workers. She uplifted the heart of the Toloposungo movement as spreading the message: “You are not alone.”
UCLA’s pro-Palestinian student movement has practiced similar collective care. Throughout the duration of the Palestine Solidarity Encampment and at the People’s University, community members bought and cooked food to nourish our protest against the University’s complicity in the Palestinian genocide and our education about a shared hope for liberation.
Salamanca shared how, like food, artistic expression has become a tactic to denounce the violence being enacted against the movement and to generate political consciousness. She named her and her trans sisters’ reclamation of traditional and patriarchal Colombian dances as an act of resistance. Dancing has also become an anti-violence tactic against the police for their movement.
The Toloposungo movement has been forced to defend themselves on the front lines of protests. From 2020 to 2021, thousands of Colombians participated in a national strike against the government’s tax-reform bill and corruption. In response, the police massacred dozens of protestors. It is important to note that even other protestors may enact queerphobic violence against queer people at mainstream Colombian protests.
Despite this, the Toloposungo movement has rushed to the protest frontlines singing, dancing, and chanting to counter police violence. As an innovative defense tactic, a fashion designer in their community crafted neon green outfits for members to wear to protests. In Colombia, the anti-riot police wear neon green uniforms for police to easily identify who not to attack when breaking up protests and opening fire on protestors. The movement has also taken to satirizing the physicality of the police by marching like them while mobilizing. By appropriating the colors and movements of State violence which have been weaponized against them, the Toloposungo movement disrupts the police’s effectiveness.
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On one occasion, Salamanca described singing “Toloposungo” repeatedly and dancing in front of the anti-riot police — “moving bodies, shaking ass, voguing.” She said, “Our only weapons were our thongs and high heels.” While trans sex worker activists frequently face extreme brutality from the anti-riot police, the police did not know how to respond to their singing and dancing. The movement uses art as a powerful, generative tool to combat State violence.
The Palestine Solidarity Encampment and the People’s University have likewise utilized art as resistance at UCLA. SJP and other UC Divest organizations have facilitated multiple community art builds where participants create artistic posters and even textiles in support of Palestine.
Throughout her discussions of direct action and documentation, Salamanca additionally stressed the importance of uplifting the voices of trans women and sex workers. She denounced the extractive logic of the university where unaffected academics come into communities, lead research, and leave with data. The academics’ failure to center the communities they study can retraumatize people when examining sensitive topics like police violence — specifically sexual violence — and reinforce vertical power structures where institutions bar marginalized people from creating and holding knowledge. Salamanca’s community of trans sex workers document police violence by conducting the research themselves. They write about their practices of love and resistance, building knowledge together.
“Nothing about us without us,” Salamanca said, employing a phrase which originates from disability rights activism. Both disability rights activists and the Toloposungo movement assert that conducting research and creating policy without the direct inclusion, consideration, and organization from affected groups is a form of exclusionary violence. The police violence against the Toloposungo movement and the Israeli genocide of Palestine are both disabling events which render the intersections between queerness, sex work, disability, and colonized peoples all the more crucial.
Towards the end of her talk, Salamanca said that she’s currently in the U.S. because she has received a new wave of death threats from right-wing groups, and the Toloposungo movement has been forced into hiding in the Colombian countryside. While the current situation is far from an end to the movement, she did speak on some of her losses: the assassinations of her fellow trans social leaders and the rage, fear, and pain which accompany them.
Speaking to us about our own rage, fear, and pain following the terrorist and State violence we’ve faced, Salamanca encouraged us to take time to embrace what we feel collectively in spaces like the People’s University. “Don’t lose strength because of fear,” she said. “It’s okay to feel fear.” However, she warned us not to remain paralyzed by our feelings after processing our emotions, and instead channel them into action. Crucially, she spoke to the necessity of protecting love, choosing to surround ourselves with our movement family, making food and music, smoking, and feeding our bodies.
Salamanca concluded by expressing how impressed she is with everyone fighting for Palestinian liberation and underscoring the importance of our voices as students. She reiterated that we should continue speaking out against the Israeli genocide in Palestine and centering the Palestinian people.
If you’d like to learn more, you can find Daniela Maldonado Salamanca, the Toloposungo movement, and Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA on Instagram.
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Author: Rainer Lee (He/Him)
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