The Trans and their Fight to Escape Conscription in Colombia

Surrounded by soldiers, Santiago moves uncomfortably towards the room where the psychologist of an army base awaits him. She wears a girdle that hides her breasts. As a transgender man, he wants to be exempted from the obligation to join the ranks.

A 22-year-old flight attendant, Santiago, who was assigned the female sex at birth, enters the small room alone. After a while, it comes out with the rating of “Unfit”.

Against her will, she had to tell the specialist that for eight years she has not defined herself as a woman and that as a trans man she does not want to perform the 12-month compulsory military service imposed by law on all Colombian men between the ages of 18 and 24, in a country with more than six decades of internal conflict.

The psychologist's opinion freed him from going to the army, but at the cost of uncovering his privacy. “It doesn't feel right (...) to show my body, to have to explain that I am trans, that I have breasts and, in my case, to have to take off my blouse and show my body,” says to AFP Santiago, legally recognized as a man since 2019.

To escape the stigma, he omits his real name and hide his face in front of the cameras.

Experiences such as yours have pushed trans men in Colombia to fight a battle before the Constitutional Court to be exonerated from military service, as is already the case with blacks, indigenous people and trans women thanks to the rulings of the same court.

In 2017, Congress approved the exemption of transsexual women, but excluded trans men from that benefit.

The law also exempts orphans, only children, religious, convicted, married and victims of conflict, while women may join voluntarily.

Cuba, Brazil, Bolivia, Mexico, Guatemala, among other countries, also impose passage through barracks.

- Without law -

Colombians who are recruited or exonerated receive a certificate known as a military book, which they must submit to study postgraduate degrees at public universities, obtain scholarships or to fill some State places. Others, to get hold of that document, have to pay considerable sums of money.

Since 2015, trans men have won the right to replace in their identity card the “F” for women with the “M” for masculine.

However, they allege that neither the military nor the police automatically exempt them from compulsory service.

Before being exonerated, Santiago says he lost a job opportunity at an airline because he didn't have a military book.

It has been “a struggle to get out my notebook, just as it was a struggle to change my component of 'sex' and name” in the documents, he laments.

Jhonnatan Espinosa, director of the Ayllú Foundation, which drafts the legal appeal for trans men, warns of the social and economic challenges facing this minority.

“The law left us out (...), that will end with many trans men going to have informal jobs, poorly paid, without their social benefits, without being able to have a truly dignified life,” he emphasizes.

This NGO claims that it has listened to more than 300 trans men in Bogotá with difficulties in resolving “their military situation”, but recognizes the existence of underreporting in regions where the armed conflict is still active.

The army recruits some 60,000 men a year to perform their compulsory service, according to Colonel Milton Escobar, head of the Recruitment and Reserve Control Command, who claims that the institution is a “guarantor” of trans rights.

To date, 13 million men are waiting to report to the barracks to define their situation, he adds.

However, human rights organizations denounce military raids to recruit young people. Although these operations were outlawed in 2011, fear persists.

According to the state-run Historical Memory Center, the raids were “systematically” directed against “people who deviate from the norms of gender and sexuality.”

“The main fear is basically that I will encounter a security agent, whether police or military, because from the moment I made my change I don't have my military notebook,” says Juan José Lizarazo, a 34-year-old trans who claims that because of it he almost lives “locked up” at home.

Other members of the Ayllú Foundation assured AFP under reserve that they had been beaten by the soldiers or police who detain them in the streets. In Colombia, trans men are victims of “a permanent circle of violence”, points out the director of the NGO.

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