Bamby Salcedo, trans and migrant activist in the US: ‘Even if they kill us, they will not be able to extinguish us, because we are part of humanity’

“A lot of things happened for me to be able to get to where I am today.” Bamby Salcedo (Guadalajara, Mexico, 1969) is the president and executive director of one of the most prominent non-governmental organizations in the protection and defense of the transgender community in the United States, The TransLatin@ Coalition, which she founded 16 years ago. It began with a free telephone line and the volunteer work of dozens of Latina trans women to collect and send money to fellow detainees in immigration centers, visit them, and connect them with lawyers, doctors, and other services. Today the coalition employs 68 transgender and non-binary people and occupies almost the entire floor of a building in Koreatown, Los Angeles. There they offer lunches, legal consultations, shelter, clothing, counseling, health services, training and employment opportunities to hundreds in the community. It is the help that Bamby needed before, and that paved the way for her to get to where she is: a spacious office decorated with blue and pink clouds that remind her of a beautiful place and allow her to let go of everything that once hurt her.

“I am an investment in the community. My community has been the one that has supported me, lifted me up, encouraged me, guided me.” Bamby’s is an unlikely story. She grew up on the streets and in juvenile recovery centers in Guadalajara and at 16 emigrated to the United States to join a father she barely knew and work in California’s Central Valley. At 18, she arrived in Los Angeles, and was also on the streets. She spent 14 years in and out of prison, was deported four times and returned, survived an overdose, reoffended. All this while navigating her transition. One day, after several dazed nights on Skid Row — a neighborhood in downtown populated by homeless people — she took a bus to sleep as it rolled through the city; when the route ended, she took another and another, until she woke up outside a rehabilitation center, where she was admitted. There she began a long process of recovery that, in 1998, also led her to activism and, years later, to her first job doing community outreach among Latina trans women. “I was already going to the corners where I had been before with my peers in a different way. I began to see more clearly how I had had the privilege of being able to reform my life and get the treatment I needed, and I felt that I had a responsibility.”

Bamby’s name became prominent in forums where HIV prevention and the civil rights of transgender and non-binary communities in the United States were discussed. She took advantage of these events to call together Latina trans women and founded the coalition in January 2009. Then, in 2015, she had the idea of creating a center in Los Angeles for the prevention of violence and for the well-being of the trans and non-binary community. Bamby has also been invited to the White House and Congress to speak about the safety and inclusion of trans and non-binary people. “We believe in influencing change in those institutions that have oppressed us, that continue to marginalize us and encourage violence against us. We need to transform the culture of organizations so that they can understand that we deserve services,” she argues.

The last decade had been one of slow but steady growth, with the creation of more organizations led by transgender and non-binary people and public resources allocated to the community, until the most extreme conservatism led by Donald Trump reached the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court. “Today we have an administration that is seeing that we are indeed ascending to our power as people, and they want to take it away from us little by little. But in the same way, we are going to continue, to advocate, to fight, to scratch, to kick to ensure that we continue to exist. Even if they violate us, even if they kill us, they will not be able to extinguish us, because we are part of humanity.”

During Trump’s first term, from 2017 to 2021, murders of trans women doubled in the United States. Last year, at least 36 trans and non-binary people were murdered, according to a report by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation. In addition, 33 of the 50 states in the country have passed laws that limit the fundamental freedoms and rights of the community. In this context, The TransLatin@ Coalition is focused on ensuring that at least in the next two years, transgender and non-binary people seeking help in California get the services they need, and that they insist on reporting violence against them. “I aspire to be like Dolores Huerta,” says Bamby, referring to the legendary Chicana activist, founder of the United Farm Workers Association, who for decades has sought better working conditions for farmworkers. “I would like to be 95 years old and still be running around.”

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